Chapter Thirteen

Doc

I'm lost in the dark. Can't fight my way back to where I need to be. Voices pierce the silence, but they're too muffled. I can't understand the words. There's something I need. Someone I need. Where is she?

Where am I?

"Doc."

The single, breathy word is my anchor in the storm. I'm floating. Light and shadow, soft sounds that linger in a sea of confusion.

But that word cuts through the fog.

"I'm sorry." Lips brush mine. A light caress flits over my cheek. Something presses to my palm, and then there's a tug over my heart.

Alarms start to blare. People shout. I'm jostled, rough hands moving over me. My chest. My arms. The clamor fades, replaced by the steady beat of a heart rate monitor. And a single voice I recognize. Not hers.

"Nat! Get back here! Dammit!"

I force my eyes open in time to catch a glimpse of Graham racing down the hall.

Nat's citrus and floral scent still lingers in the room. But when I feel the smooth ridges of the sea glass heart under my fingers, I know. She's gone.

The click of the door drags me from the hazy cloud I'm floating on. I refused the last dose of pain meds, but there's still enough coursing through my system to keep me from staying awake for more than an hour at a time.

"You look like shit, Doc."

I blink hard until Ryker McCabe's scarred face comes into focus. I almost don't recognize him. The bags under his eyes could hold a week's worth of clothes. I've never seen the man in anything but all black, and today is no exception. It's almost laughable. He could walk right onto the set of any action movie and fit right in. If it weren't for the bright yellow baby sling with his three-month-old strapped to his chest. And the diaper bag slung over his shoulder.

It's the change to his demeanor that's truly jarring, though. He's at peace, and I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Wren, his wife, slips through the door behind him. "Is she still sleeping?"

"Of course. She likes it in here." He pats the baby's back gently, and Wren scowls.

"Well, then you're wearing her for the rest of the day. I need some sleep once we get home." She offers me a wan smile. "Hey, Doc. Harlow's teething. It's been a rough couple of weeks."

Harlow. So that's what they named her. Wisps of red hair peek out from under Ryker's massive hand where he cups the back of the little girl's head.

"So," he says once Wren sinks into the visitor's chair and pulls out her tablet. "Want to tell me why I had to finance a rescue operation in the middle of the fu—fudging—night for you and a woman who rabbited the first chance she got?"

In a word? No. I don't want to tell the man a thing. But he saved my ass. I owe him my life.

"I don't know." At his snort, I sit up a little straighter. The chest tube catches on the hospital gown, and I hiss out a breath. "It's…the truth."

"Breathe, Doc." Wren touches my arm, concern in her green eyes. "Do you need me to get a nurse?"

"Fuck, no."

"Language," Ryker snaps. "If I can watch mine, you can sure as shipping lanes watch yours."

"Sure as shipping lanes?" Chuckling is a mistake. Then again, my entire life feels like a mistake right about now.

"I'm working on variations." One corner of his mouth twitches into what might be his version of a smile. "Wren vetoed shifter though. Said it sounded too much like?—"

"I get the idea. Fine. Shipping lanes. Fudge. Gosh darn it."

"Goldilocks." Wren grins. "Though if we ever read her that story, she's going to be really confused."

Ryker scoffs. "I have better stories."

I can't imagine the man's stories involve anything other than murder and mayhem, but then again, I never expected to see him with a baby in his arms either.

"Back to the matter at hand," he says, his voice taking on the grave tone I'm used to. The one that warns he won't accept bullshit from anyone—especially not me.

With a sigh, I turn my gaze out the window. The sun shines brightly, and a stand of pine trees sways gently in the breeze. It's barely noon. Nat's been gone for five hours. She could be on a plane by now. Hell, she could be in Canada. I reach under the blanket for the piece of sea glass and rub my fingers over the ridges.

"I camp up on Blakely every few weeks. Been going up there for a year or so. Last night, I was asleep in my tent when I heard gunshots. I investigated."

"And almost got yourself killed." Ryker shakes his head. "You've been out of the game too long to play the action hero, Doc."

"I was holding my own, assho—jerk. Until the guy slammed a rock into my ribs. And I still managed to get the gun and shoot him. He must have been wearing body armor to survive two shots, center mass. There was so much blood, I was sure he was dead, so I got Nat up to her house and made sure she was okay." I don't tell McCabe about my leg going numb. Or how if I'd been two inches higher with my first knife strike, we wouldn't be having this conversation. He'd probably snap at me some more, and I'm kicking my own ass hard enough as it is.

"Fine. You're a godda—gosh-darned knight in shining armor. Who the fudge is Nat and why was this guy after her?"

"She manages the resort on Blakely."

"Does Nat have a last name?" Wren asks.

"Not one I know."

Ryker's brows shoot up. One lifts a little higher than the other. Half of his face looks like a jigsaw puzzle. The other half…he was a handsome man once. "Doc?—"

My chest constricts, the tube and the broken rib lending a rasp to my voice. "Do you know the name of the guy who bags your groceries? What about the hotel clerk at the last place you stayed? Your house cleaner?"

The big man levels me with a frosty glare. "Yeah. I do. All of them."

Wren reaches for his hand and gives his gnarled fingers a quick squeeze. "You're not exactly normal, Ry. You know all of their names because you're obsessive about our safety. Doc's a civilian."

The term hurts. Even if it is true.

A muscle in his jaw ticks Once. Twice. Three times before he releases a long, slow breath. The baby picks that moment to wake up and let out a wail worthy of a banshee.

Ryker cringes and starts bouncing on the balls of his feet, making desperate shhhing noises and…cooing at her.

How can the man go from lethal as fuck to doting papa so quickly?

Wren glances down at her watch, then digs in the diaper bag. "She's hungry. Can you feed her so I can keep looking for Nat?"

Ryker plucks the bottle from her hand. The only other chair is across the room, and his massive frame barely fits in the damn thing. I watch, mesmerized, as he unbuckles the harness and has Harlow cradled in the crook of his elbow, bottle in her mouth, in under thirty seconds.

"We have her leaving the hospital," Wren says. "Caught her on the camera outside the ER. But after that, she disappears."

"West better be ripping Graham a new one," Ryker grumbles. "How hard is it to keep an eye on one woman in a hospital room? He's not allowed to babysit Harlow once she starts walking. She'll slip right out the door under his damn nose."

Wren rolls her eyes. "Our daughter isn't going to yank the leads off an unconscious man's chest to summon a trauma team and slip out in all the confusion. And Harlow loves her uncles."

The ache in my chest grows the longer I watch the two of them together. Their love is a physical presence in the room, filling every look, every touch, every good-natured barb.

I thought I was happy alone. I'd accepted my solitary existence. It was better than risking the pain of loss again. But seeing this hard-as-nails man with love in his gaze makes me want what I can never have.

It makes me want Nat.

"Back to business," Wren says. "I pulled Nat's number off your phone, Doc. But it's registered to the owner of the resort. Clancy McNamera. Also, it's a freakin' flip phone. No GPS. I'm working on getting the text messages and call log from the carrier, though."

"You hacked my phone?" I glare at McCabe—as best I can since exhaustion is threatening to pull me under again. "What the fu?—"

"I'd stop right now if I were you," he says quietly. "I've never punched anyone in a hospital bed before, but there's always a first time."

"You had…no right." Breathing—simply existing at this point—hurts. If he weren't holding his kid, I'd tell him to go fuck himself.

"I had every right." He sets the bottle down, puts Harlow over his shoulder, and starts patting her back gently. "Wyatt spent two hours in the water this morning scouring the bottom of the harbor. The guy you claim you killed? We disposed of his body. And his rifle. You were right about the body armor, by the way. He and Inara wiped Nat's house clean. They even found some plywood to nail over the broken door. But do you know what they didn't find?"

I don't bother trying to come up with an answer. He's going to tell me anyway.

"Anything that would tell us who the fudge she is. There wasn't a goddamn thing in that house with her name on it. No paperwork. No driver's license. No passport. No bills in her name. Not even a single photograph. So yes. We hacked your fucking phone. Because whoever this woman is, she's either in a mess of trouble or she is a mess of trouble."

The very idea of taking a breath deep enough to speak exhausts me. But as I close my eyes, I manage seven words. "In trouble. Bet…my life on it."