Excerpt 1 The
Fugitive (Safe For Work)
Adrian headed for his Chevy pickup at the far corner of the
parking lot, Jose’s fifty dollars tucked into his back pocket. Out of the
corner of his eye, he caught sight of a pale blue fabric flitting past between
two cars. In the strange pallor cast by the parking lot lights, he could’ve
sworn he saw a flash of butt cheek from a woman wearing one of those
open-backed hospital gowns. He changed course and headed straight for this wisp
of fabric, intrigued.
He reached the shadows between two vehicles and paused, a
sense of wrongness flashing in his mind. He made an about-face and headed back
to his pickup truck. He had learned that it didn’t pay to stick his nose into
things not his business. He had a date with a Serta Perfect Sleeper mattress in
his air-conditioned apartment.
As he reached the truck, he glanced around once more and
considered calling hospital security. A renegade patient was their job, not
his.
Without a single sound, she
was suddenly there, right next to him, her pale blood-splattered hand on his
arm – the gunshot victim, the woman who damn near died in the back of his
ambulance.
Her weak grip tugged at his arm. “I need your help. You have
to help me.”
Her black hair hung limp, plastered to her forehead. Blood
speckled her chin, neck and light blue gown. She must have coughed up blood,
which would mean her lungs were not doing so good. Pneumonia, collapsed lung,
punctured lung, all the possibilities slid across his mind as he stared at her,
perplexed. What the hell was she doing out here? Walking around? The woman had
flat-lined a couple of days ago.
“Let’s get you back to the Emergency Room. They’ll take care
of everything.” At the risk of ruining his jacket with blood stains and who
knew what other bodily fluids, he put his arm around her and pulled her close
to hold her weight. She wasn’t wearing anything under the paper-thin gown. The
contours of her naked hip fit his hand perfectly. He tried to ignore those
thoughts and instead steered her back towards the hospital.
“No, wait, I can’t.” She stopped him from going any farther
by turning in his grip to face him.
Shit.
“Do you need me to carry you?” Please
no. My back can’t take any more tonight.
“I can’t be here.”
Her face, which had held a look of pleading, turned dead
serious. Dark eyes bored into his soul with a depth of intensity. “I need you.
Take me with you. I must leave now.” There was something fascinating about her
eyes. She never blinked even once, and he found he couldn’t look away from her.
“You have to help me.”
Yes, of course. He had
to help her.
He suddenly understood, and really, it was a simple request.
She needed a ride. No big deal. Helping her was the right thing to do. The
soldier part of his mind rapidly assessed the risks. The CCTV cameras only
covered the entrance area of the hospital. Nobody would know where she went
from the parking lot. He glanced around, looking for any sign of a witness to
this strange moment. Then he recalled her little issue, she was a mafia target
or something like that. He had no desire to become collateral damage on a
botched hit job. A saner voice nagged him, get
rid of her. No upside in helping her,
no upside at all. She stank like old blood and medicine, that sick-hospital
smell. She stood in his arms staring at him, unblinking, her dark eyes a well
filled with raw, intense need.
Something stirred inside him. Even in her present condition,
she was eerily compelling.
He had deliberately trained as a paramedic to help people.
The bastard shrink had called him a sociopath,
unable to care about people. So, here he was, trying to care, trying to help,
trying to be like everyone else, normal. It was his job to help people like
her, more so than the police who were probably looking for her right now.
Do your job, Adrian. Prove the bastard shrink wrong.
“Okay, I’ll give you a ride. Come on.” She snuggled into his
embrace with a grateful smile on her bloody lips as he pulled her back towards
his truck. He reacted to her appreciation low in his groin. Obviously it had
been way too long since he got laid. Messing around with patients was a major
fail, quick way to get fired and prosecuted.
He helped her up into the truck – impossible not to end up
with a handful of her ass in the process. She held his gaze with that creepy
look, and a small grin split her lips. Adrian smiled back at her reassuringly,
then shut the door and jetted around to the driver side for the packet of
Clorox wet wipes on the seat. Without surgical gloves, no knowing what nasty
germs he might get from touching her.
She just sat there, blood splattered, in nothing but her
paper-thin gown, watching him. She looked so vulnerable, and she had put so
much trust in him. He started the truck and navigated out of the parking lot
with her furtively watching him all the while. She kept glancing back at the
hospital entrance, as if looking for someone in pursuit.
“Shit!” She dropped flat on the truck bench seat as a police
car sped past. The car screeched to a stop at the emergency entrance and two
cops piled out, jogging into the hospital.
Her huge brown eyes looked up at him. She had laid her head
in his lap. The girl might be afraid of the police and everyone else, but she
trusted him.
He tried not to think about her face on his thigh, or the
complete absurdity of the moment. He just kept on driving up to the
intersection at the highway. Then it occurred to him he had no idea which
direction to take.
“So, where are we headed? We’re on I-35 and I-37, on the
south side.”
Still she just stared at him, head resting on his lap like
he had become her personal pillow. Damn, he’d have to wash his jeans with Lysol
disinfectant.
She shook her head, rubbing her lank black hair all over his
jeans. “I … I don’t know.”
Fucking great.
“Look, I understand you’re afraid. I was one of the
paramedics who brought you in. Somebody tried to kill you. It’s amazing you can
even walk, and you don’t need me to tell you that you need medical attention.
You should be in a hospital.”
She shook her head. “I can’t go back.”
He knew she was gonna say that. “If you won’t go to a
hospital, then I’ll take you home. I can check your wounds, change your
bandages, but I’m not a doctor. I’m not qualified for anything else. Tell me
where you live. I’ll get you there, do what I can to help, and then we’re done.
We never met. You don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who you are. I could
lose my job for this.”
He felt a twinge of something as her emotions flickered
across her face. She was afraid. He’d seen plenty of that in Iraq. He stared at
her for a minute, until a honking car behind him drew his attention to the
stale green light. He took off for the north onramp to I-35. Cruising the highway,
he kept glancing down at her. She had her hands over her face, like an ostrich
hoping the problem would go away if they simply didn’t see it anymore.
One more exit and they would be at his apartment complex. He
tried not to think of the implications. This girl needed to go somewhere,
definitely not to his home. “I need a direction, an address, something.”
She uncovered her face and there were dark wet tears in her
eyes. Was that blood? Fuck. Why the
hell would she be bleeding from her eyes? She choked as though crying. Damn
women were always crying.
Adrian hadn’t cried in years. He hadn’t felt that kind of
intensity about anything, apart from a few insane moments in Iraq. How could
people function when they feel so much? The only thing that got him going,
beyond sex, was full-on combat, kill or be killed. The EMT calls got a bit wild
once in a while, but not very often.
He reached over to the glove box to find the Kleenex tissues
and handed her one. “You’re bleeding.”
She dabbed at her eyes, looked at the tissue and then back
up at him. Lost, bewildered, scared, her huge dark eyes raked at him with the
urgency of her plight. She choked out the words, “I don’t know where to go. I
don’t know anything.”
The problem hit, and he didn’t like the way it made his
stomach turn. She wasn’t local. She didn’t live in San Antonio. Where the hell
could he take her?
“You don’t have anywhere to go? No friends, no house, no
hotel?”
She wouldn’t speak, held her lips tight, as if to stop
herself from screaming, and shook her head again.
Damn. He knew he shouldn’t have put her in his truck. No
upside to this deal at all. Now, he just wanted to be rid of her. But the woman
was still in his lap, looking at him like he owed her something, like he was
going to be the one who saved her from … whatever.
Isn’t that why you took this job, to save people? Do your job, Adrian.
“Look, I’ll get you cleaned up, some clothes, a bus ticket,
and that’s it. I can’t do anything more. Seriously.”
Huge, wet, doe eyes held his gaze while she slowly nodded
acceptance. She covered her face and curled up on his seat, shivering. He
turned up the heat, even though it wasn’t cold in the truck. San Antonio spring
nights were never really cold. Pulling into the covered parking in front of his
apartment complex, he realized he had a new problem.
“Stay here a minute, I’m going to get you a blanket. Just
stay low, make sure no one sees you.”
He scooted his thigh out from under her and closed the truck
door to peek in through his driver side window, ensuring she stayed down. She
stared at him all the while. This was one strange chick. He found it hard to
reconcile the Latin goddess who had almost died in his ambulance with this
half-naked, crazy chick hiding in his truck. She had looked so beautiful, and
fragile, whereas now she was this needy, pushy, intense girl who wanted to dump
her whole damn life in the palms of his hands.
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