Operation Swift Mercy (3 page)

Coming back into the room after
Dr Dolittle
had left, he
’d been unsure of his
reception;
as she pointed out, she didn’t even know him.
She might very well have a husband who was eight foot something and built like a tank
who may take acceptation to a stranger seated at his wife’s bedside. Then again, he thought any man who let this woman out of his site long enough for her to end up alone in the
wilderness didn’t
deserve to be called her husband anyway. Then he’d seen the fear flash through her eyes and the tears started
an
d
h
e knew
he wasn’t about to go anywhere.

He’d spoken to the police before she’d awoken, and they’d been out to the area she’d been
found in. There was no sign of anything that could explain how sh
e’d gotten there. It troubled him
now as he watched her fall into an exhausted sleep. What had she been doing out there all alone? Why had she been out there in the first place? What had put the fear of God into those beautiful green eyes earlier?

He had no answers for any of these things
,
but one thing was certain
—h
e wasn’t going anywhere until he had some.

****

When Mercy opened her eyes the second time she knew what she had to do. It had been just as frustrating as she
’d imagined
it would be, but she dug her heels in. “I want the papers to sign to discharge myself…now,”
she repeated in the firmest tone she could muster.

The nurse who stood by her bed stared back at her with equal firmness and
held her gaze with a disapproving frown. “The Doctor said he wanted you kept in for observation.”

“If you don’t get me the papers
,
I’ll just leave without signing them
. T
hink of the nightmare that will be for you filling out all those reports,” Mercy glared back.

“I’m going to go and call the doctor,” she finally huffed, tur
ning on her squeaky rubber heeled
foot to
vanish through the doorway.

“Is that the equivalent to
‘
I’m telling on you?
’
s
he asked Maloney as he sat watching on silently from the chair across the room.

His expression didn’t change but she saw his gaze was more than a little co
ncerned. “You should be staying
.
Y
ou’ve got some pretty nasty injuries going on there
.”

“I can’t stay. I need to get…out of here,” she said changing her phrase from ‘away from here’, when she realised it might sound slightly paranoid. Unfortunately he didn’t miss the slip.

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“I don’t like hospitals. I have stuff to do,” she hedged and her attempt at keeping calm began to unravel. This man was far too astute for her liking and he was making her extremely nervous.

“I think the police are going to want to come and talk to you. You can’t leave before they get here, so why don’t you just wait until then before you make up your mind
?
”
H
e suggested.

“Police?”
T
he pounding in her head intensified. “Why do I have to talk to the police?”

“Because, you were found, badly injured, without identification and possibly the victim of a crime,” he informed her, watching her with a renewed intensity.

Oh God,
she hadn’t thought about the police involvement. She couldn’t tell them what had happened,
Nikkos had connections everywhere. H
e’d find out
she wasn’t dead and come looking for her.

Her gaze zipped around the room as she tried to think. H
er mind worked frantically. If he’d already checked the hospitals in case she turned up,
someone could be on their way right now to get her. “I can’t stay,” she said, throwing the covers back and swinging her legs over the side. The movement
brought on a wave of
nausea
and she swayed slightly.

“Are you crazy? You can’t just jump up out of bed like that,” he told her, springing from his chair to take hold of her arms so she didn’t fall off the side of the narrow bed.

“I have to get out of here,
now
…let go of me…please,” she demanded almost hysterically.

“Just calm down,” he soothed.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! Take your hands off me now before I start to scream.”

“Okay,” he said, taking a step away but remained close enough to catch her if sh
e fell. “Hey, I’m not the enemy
.
I’m trying to help you.”

“If you want to help—t
hen get me out of here,” she threw at him with a desperation she’d rarely felt before.

It must have reflected in her gaze
because she saw his frown
as though he’d made a decision.
“Wait here.”

Keeping
her gaze fixed on the doorway
he’d left through, she was relieved when moments later
he was back with a clipboard and pen. “Sign this and we’re outta here, unless you want to wait f
or the Doctor to do his rounds
this afternoon and give you the okay to leave?”

“No. I want to leave now,” she told him taking the pen and signing the paperwork.

“Where are you going to go to? Do you live around here?”
H
e asked, watching as she scrawled her name in elegant penmanship across the bottom of the paper.

“I—”
she stilled, her eyes snapping up to his in alarm as she realised she no longer had a place to live.

“Are you sure you want to leave? Maybe you need the time to work out where you
want to go
?
”
H
e suggested.

She shook her head before he even finished talking. “I can’t stay here. I don’t have time to wait. I’ll just find…”
F
ind what?
She thought
in
despair. She had no money
—she
couldn’t afford a taxi, she couldn’t afford a new set of clothes
—she
couldn’t even buy a coffee!

“Look
,
I don’t know what your circumstances are
,
but if you need a place to stay tonight, I can get you a room.”

She snapped her head up and searched his eyes suspiciously.

Holding up his hands
he shook his head.
“No pressure
.
I’m just offering you a way out,” he assured her.

“Why would you do that?”

He shrugged one large shoulder but held her gaze with a straight forward honesty she’d rarely seen. “I feel responsible for you
.
I found you.”

She eyed him for a few moments
longer than decided she had nothing more to lose. She was without a cent to her name and if she stayed here
,
Nikkos would
come for her…then she’d be dead. “Thank you.” She maybe clinging to his life raft because it was the only one in sight right now
,
but at this precise moment in time she was eternally grateful to have him by her side.

He
helped her walk
from the hospital
,
his strong arm guiding her carefully and patiently. Once
at his car,
he
settled her
inside, shutting the door firmly
before
walking around to the dri
v
er
’
s side.

Mercy didn’t speak. She was too busy scanning the car park searching for any familiar faces that may be lurking. He pulled away from the curb and she saw him flicker a curious glance her way every so often.
It was dark outside and the traffic wasn’t as
heavy which
hopefully meant the shadows would keep her relatively hidden.
They travelled along the freeway and soon Mercy felt herself relax. She was so tired.

“Do you have anywhere you’d prefer to stay?”
H
e asked, breaking the silence.

“No.”

“
So, w
ho are you running from?”

His blunt question surprised her and she turned her head away to look out the side window. “I appreciate your help
—b
ut I
’d rather not talk about it.”

He
made no comment
but she was fairly sure he wasn’t about to respect her wishes either. He didn’t seem the type of man who’d let something like this drop. She watched him from the corner of her eye
, h
is hands held the steering wheel capably, and he drove with the same single mind concentration she’d witnessed him watching her with back in the hospital. His short cropped
hair
, gave him a tough appearance
—
it was dirty-blonde—a shade too dark to be blonde and too light to be a true brown. B
ut it
was his strange grey coloured eyes- almost
the colour
of silver that
startled
her the most. For the harshness of the shade
,
they were surprisingly gentle. He seemed a contradiction –this hero of hers
.

They pulled into a motel, one of many that lined the street and she waited in his car while he checked in. Still dressed in the borrowed hospital gown, she allowed him to help her inside the room and settle her on the bed.

“I can pay you back for the room. I just need a few days to sort out some…things.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mercy shook her head slightly as she watched him fill a clean glass from the small fridge with cold water and bring it across to her. “Who are you?”

He paused as he sat the glass on the bedside table beside her, sending her a frown of concern. “
I knew I should have taken you back to that damn hospital,” he said, leaning over her to stare into her eyes intently. “Do you have a headache? Is your vision blearing at all?”

He
placed
a hand
on either side of her head to steady her so he could check her eyes.
Pulling back, Mercy brushed his hands away
“Would you stop it! I haven’t
forgotten
your name
…I just meant, who does what you’re doing for a complete stranger?
”

She saw him visibly relax
and take a small step away from the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know where you come from, but where I’m from you don’t turn your back on someone who needs help.”

“And where are you from?”
She’d been too busy freaking out about Nikkos to give his accent much more than a fleeting thought, but now that he mentioned it, she was actually curious to place
it
.

His lips twisted into a
n
off centre grin at her question. “Originally
,
I’m from Montana
.”

His voice had a nice laid-back kind drawl to it, when he wasn’t going all mother hen on her. “
Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and I admit I’d be in a bit of a bind right now without your help, but you really shouldn’t go around helping strangers. You have no idea how much trouble you can get yourself into doing that.”

She saw him give a lopsided grin.
“Sweetheart—trouble just seems to find me.”

Chapter
Four

Chase bit back a smile at
her stranger-danger warning.
The last few years of his life had been nothing
but
trouble. First there was the whole eighteen months on the run thing after he and the rest of his unit had been set up for a weap
ons heist they hadn’t committed. T
hen
Tre
`
ago
, the slimy bastard, who had been the one to set them up, had sent a
hit man
after them.

He knew trouble, alright. He also knew that whatever so called trouble this woman was in, he couldn’t turn his back on her now. Finding her out there in the middle of nowhere so close to death had struck something deep down in his tired soul. His protective streak had been ignit
ed. He wasn’t the kind of guy who could just walk away from someone he knew needed help. Maybe that was what had called him to become a medic in the first place. It’s what he did—how he worked, risking his life to save others.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on in your life right now, but it’s clear to me you need help. I’ve never walked away from responsibility in my life and I’m not about to start now. So you’re stuck with me until I see that you have somewhere safe to go.”