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“And whoever tried to kill her the first time will most likely try again.”
“Right, again. Murderers don’t normally like loose ends.”
“She’s the only one who saw the crime take place?”
“As far as we know. No one else has stepped forward.” The D.A. nodded toward her door down the hall. “She hasn’t actually pointed any fingers. Since she probably didn’t shoot Rodriguez, I can’t put her in jail.”
Dawson scoped the hallway again with new purpose, his gaze narrowing at every person passing by. “Whoever killed Tomas Rodriguez won’t want to give her the chance.”
A dull ache throbbed against the side of her head. She struggled to open her eyes and adjust to the fluorescent light in the hospital room. She lifted her hand to press against her temple, but her hand was tied to something.
An IV was taped to the top of her hand. She vaguely remembered the tubes from the last time she’d woken, when the nurses had insisted on cranking her bed into an upright position to eat a breakfast she couldn’t taste. What had happened? Why was she lying in a hospital and why did her head hurt?
What else was wrong with her? She tested movement of her toes. The sheet near the end of the bed wiggled and she let out a sigh. She wasn’t paralyzed. She attempted to sit in the bed and made it halfway up before collapsing back. The effort was exhausting.
Again, she tried to remember what brought her here. Had she been in a wreck? Where was her family? A sudden emptiness filled her chest, pressing hard against her heart. Did she have a family? She glanced around at the sterile room. No flowers, no get-well cards, no signs of anyone caring whether she lived or died. She didn’t know which was worse, that she couldn’t remember who should care about her or that she didn’t actually have anyone who cared about her. For the life of her, she couldn’t picture anyone, couldn’t name a name, not even her own.
Her heartbeat jumped, her breath coming in low shallow gasps. The more she tried to remember, the more she realized she couldn’t. Where had she been, what was she doing? How had she gotten hurt?
A violent shiver shook her body, having nothing to do with the temperature in the room and more to do with the fact she couldn’t remember her name or even what she looked like.
She tried again to sit up in the bed, this time succeeding. An uncontrollable urge to run hit her. Before she could think, she yanked the tape off her hand and pulled the IV needle out. Cool air raised chill bumps on her legs as she slid them from beneath the sheets and let them drop over the side of the bed.
She slipped off the mattress, her bare feet touching the cold floor. For a moment, she thought no problem. Then her knees buckled, her muscles refusing to cooperate. With a dark sense of the inevitable, she cried out as she crumpled to the floor.
She lay still for a few moments, willing the air to return to her lungs.
The swoosh of a door opening and closing made her turn toward the sound.
“Help,” she called out.
No one answered.
Irrepressible fear gripped her so firmly she couldn’t breathe. A hospital usually meant a safe place where people went to recover from their injuries. Why then did panic seize her and squeeze the air from her lungs?
Footsteps neared, rounding the corner of the bed.
She shrank back, looking up at a man wearing green-blue staff scrubs.
“Savvy Jones?” he asked through the matching mask on his face, his words heavily accented.
“I d-don’t know,” she whispered.
The man’s dark brown eyes narrowed, his bushy black brows dipping low on his forehead. He lifted a pillow from the bed. “Let me help.” Instead of reaching out to lift her, he bent beside her.
“I can get up myself,” she said, although she doubted she could. “If you’ll just move back. Please.”
The man didn’t move back. He reached out, his dark-skinned arms covered in tattoos of vicious red devils and blue-green dragons.
Alarmed by the violent nature of the pictures on the man’s arms, she scooted backward until her head bumped into the table beside the bed. “Leave me alone.”
“I will,” he said, his voice cold, menacing, “once I take care of you.”
The pillow came down over her face, pushing her head against the cool tiles of the floor.
She fought and screamed into the pillow, her struggles useless.
The man held her down with minimal effort, his body bigger, stronger—his goal, murder.
Chapter Two
“I have a court case at ten,” District Attorney Young said. “I left an officer at her door, but he knows he can leave as soon as you arrive. I’m counting on you to keep the woman safe. Can you handle it?”
Despite his self-doubt, Dawson nodded.
The D.A. handed him a business card. “As soon as she’s coherent, give me a call. I’ll be here. Hopefully she’ll wake up soon, this time with her memory intact so we can get down to the business of catching a killer.”
A killer who could be very anxious to finish the job. Dawson accepted the card and turned it over in his hand as the man in the suit walked away.
Okay, so he had his work cut out for him. One witness to a murder, one drug lord on a mission to kill the person who killed his son. A stroll in the park, no doubt.
He walked to the corner in the hallway. As he turned and spotted an empty chair outside the room Ms. Jones was supposed to occupy, the skin on the back of his neck tightened. Where was the cop? Had he gone in to check on the patient? Had he left his post?
Dawson jogged the remaining distance to the door, his hand raised to knock against the wood. He probably worried for nothing. The cop had to be inside.
A muffled thump carried through the solid door. Dawson shoved the door open and raced inside, his first impression one of an empty bed.
His first day on the job and he’d already lost his client.
Movement caught his attention on the floor around the other side of the bed. A figure wearing blue-green scrubs hunched close to the floor, a pillow in his hands, devils and a dragon tattooed on his forearm. Beneath him slim, curvy legs flailed and kicked.
“Hey!” Dawson grabbed the man by the shoulder and yanked him off balance. He threw the guy to the floor, away from the woman he assumed to be Savvy Jones.
Savvy shoved the pillow aside and gasped for air, her face red, her eyes wide. “He tried to k-kill me!”
The man masquerading as a member of the hospital staff rolled to his feet and swung a tree-trunk-size arm, backhanding Dawson.
Dawson raised his hand to block, but the force of the man’s swing sent him slamming against the wall. He stumbled and righted himself, but not soon enough to stop the attacker from racing for the door. Nor did he get a good look at him; his face was covered in a surgical mask. Dawson threw himself at the man, catching him by the ankle before he cleared the door.
The big man tripped, fell into the swinging door and out into the hallway, crashing into a nurse passing by with a cart filled with medication. The cart upended, the nurse hit the floor and pills scattered. The perpetrator scrambled to his feet. In one awkward leap, he cleared the nurse and ran for the stairwell.
Dawson followed, skirting the nurse and cart. Before he got halfway down the hallway, he realized he couldn’t go after the man. If he did, that left Savvy Jones unprotected. He stopped just past the spilled cart, his fists clenched, his heart pounding. Then he turned and helped the nurse to her feet. “Call the police. Tell them someone just tried to kill one of your patients. The man is headed down the stairwell.”
The woman nodded and limped toward the nurses’ station.
A man dressed in a Laredo police uniform rounded the corner and ground to a stop, his eyes widening. Then he ran toward Dawson, pulling a pistol from his holster. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
Anger surged through Dawson and he advanced on the man.
The man’s eyes widened and he pointed the gun at Dawson’s chest. “I’ll shoot.”
“Then make it count.” In a flash, he knocked the pistol from the cop’s hand, sending it clattering across the floor. His next move had the cop slammed face-first against the wall, his arm locked behind his back in a painful grip. “Were you the officer assigned to guard Savvy Jones?”
“Yes,” he gasped. “Let me go, or I’ll bring you up on charges.”
“And I’ll have your badge,” Dawson said. “I’m the bodyguard the D.A. hired to do the job you obviously couldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You left your post.”
“I got called away to handle a shooting in the E.R.” He didn’t struggle. “It turned out to be a false call.”
“And you left Savvy Jones unprotected.” Dawson jammed the man’s arm up higher. “She was almost killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dawson shoved the man away. “Get out of here.”
The officer retrieved his weapon, holstering it. “I’ll have to clear this through the D.A.”
“Then clear it. I have a job to do,” Dawson said.
“As do I. Step aside.” A man in green scrubs, with a stethoscope looped around his neck hurried toward Savvy’s door.
“Stop right there.” Dawson’s tone brooked no argument.
The man in scrubs held up his badge. “I’m Savvy Jones’s doctor.”
Dawson scanned it, his eyes narrowed. “No one goes in here without my permission.”
The doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “And what clearance do you have?”
He patted his chest where his Glock usually rested in the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and moved to block the doorway. “I’m Ms. Jones’s bodyguard. If you need any more clearance than that, contact the D.A.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” The doctor performed an about-face and marched toward the nurses’ station. A gathering of orderlies and nurses keeping at a distance from Dawson’s threatening stance, parted to let the doctor through.
Dawson had been away long enough. He entered Savvy’s hospital room and dodged around the end of the bed to find a slim young woman lying on the floor, gasping for air. Her hospital gown had hitched up in the struggle, exposing a significant amount of peaches-and-cream skin and a silky slip of forest-green panties. Strawberry-blond hair spilled down her back and across the floor in long wavy strands. A bandage covered the left side of her head with a white band of gauze wrapped around her forehead to keep it in place.
“What’s going on?” She pressed a hand to her eyes, dragging in deep breaths.
“Someone doesn’t like you much.”
She groaned. “I don’t think I ever want to see another pillow. Especially if it’s over my face.”
“Are you okay?” Dawson squatted next to her. “Want me to call the nurse?”
“No, as long as I can breathe, I’m okay.” Deep green eyes blinked open and widened. “Who are you? You aren’t armed with a pillow, are you?” She leaned to the side to peer around him.
“No pillow, just me, Dawson Gray.” He held out his hand. “I’m your bodyguard, and if anyone asks … your fiancé.”
“Bodyguard? Fiancé?” Her green eyes widened. “Which one is it?”
“Officially, your bodyguard.”
Savvy shook her head. “And I didn’t think this day could get weirder. Well, thanks for coming to my rescue.” Her forehead crinkled into a frown and she winced. “Ouch. Remind me not to frown. It hurts.” She looked at the outstretched hand, but didn’t take it. “Should I know you? I mean, you being my fiancé and all.”
“No. We’re meeting for the first time.”
“Good, because I don’t remember you. Still, how could you be my fiancé if I’ve never met you? Am I a mail-order bride or something? I’m confused.” She pushed up on her elbows and closed her eyes. “Is it me, or is the room spinning?”
“It’s definitely you.” He nodded toward her head. “You’ve got a head wound and someone just tried to smother you. I’m sure neither is helping. Other than that, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I think so. Although my legs didn’t give me any warning before they gave out.” Her lips twitched.
“Give yourself a break. You’ve been through a lot by the looks of it.” He shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you, maybe we could get you into the bed.” He scooped his hands beneath her legs and lifted, straightening. For as tall as she was, she couldn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds.
“Hey!” Her eyes widened and she wrapped an arm around his neck. “Not so fast.”
“Sorry.” He laid her back against the pillows and adjusted the hospital gown around her, his fingers brushing against the silky skin of her thigh. What was he doing? Dawson snatched his hand away and stuffed it into his pocket.
Savvy lay still, her face pale. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
The urge to protect hit him so hard, he stepped away. He had no right to be her protector. Qualifications for this job included a proven success rate.
His record stunk. He’d lost his wife, lost a soldier and almost lost his mind. Dawson turned toward the door, retreat foremost in his mind. “Excuse me. I have a call to make.”
“Please,” she called out in a small, scared voice.
The one word halted his forward progress and made him turn back. Big mistake.
She leaned toward him, her wide-eyed gaze darting from him to the door. “Do you have to leave me—” her voice faded, and she shrank back against the sheets “—alone?”
With his hand in his pocket already fishing for his cell phone, he paused. “I’ll be right outside the door. I won’t let anyone past me.”
“Please …” Her fingers plucked at the hospital gown, bunching it, causing the hem to inch up her legs. “I don’t even know how I got here.”
Dawson clutched his cell phone, his brain telling him to leave. Now. But his misguided instincts pulled him back toward the bed and its occupant. “You don’t remember how you got here because you were unconscious.”
Savvy shook her head slowly and winced. “No, it’s worse than that.” Her full, bottom lip trembled and she turned away from his gaze.
Dawson’s chest squeezed tight and he forced himself to hold back—not to reach out to her. The woman needed someone to talk to. That someone was not him. “How so?”
“I don’t remember where I was.” She looked to him with those trusting green eyes. “Can you tell me?”
Dawson sighed. He couldn’t leave her when she looked at him like a lost puppy. Calling himself every kind of fool, he retraced his steps to the foot of her bed. “You were found in an alley behind a bar.”
She reached up to brush away a tear slipping from the corner of one eye, her shoulders straightening. “What bar?”
