Captor Mine (Base Branch Series Book 13) Read online

  At the very least, neither of them had a dog she’d have to outrun or more likely get eaten by.

  What the hell were they patrolling for? Maybe the Finnish threatened invasion? Why the hell else would they need all this security?

  Her gaze wandered back into the room to the basket Aron had left.

  “About that time, huh, Pete?” She scooped the linens from the lined wicker and walked toward the only thing that kept her grounded in this madness—her patient, a very dangerous man. “The guard isn’t sleeping yet, but it won’t be long now.” Kat shook her head. “You two need to exchange places. He’s far more suited for your gig and you his. You’d do a much better job. Then again, if I actually had any viable hopes of escape, they’d be dashed with you out there.”

  She didn’t know why she bothered to learn their schedules. The fear of getting shot in the back kept her prisoner as much as the glass and walls.

  Like all the mornings before, nothing had changed. She patted his hand, and a smile replaced the dour expression she’d had since yesterday. Maybe some things were changing. Touching his hand had become second nature. His brawn no longer scared her, not even after Aron’s manhandling. Actually, she’d grown to hate seeing such a capable man deteriorating before her eyes. Had he deserved this? Would he be the same person when he woke? What if he didn’t remember anything about his old life?

  “Pete,” she whispered conspiratorially, “what did you do that was so terrible that you, unconscious and completely vulnerable, warrant so much security?” She put the fresh gown, towel, and washcloths on the table next to his bed and then filled a basin with near boiling water and a mild soap.

  How was her father involved? Her brain played chess with the possibilities while she moved the basin to the side of the bed as she had done too many other times to count now.

  “Did you steal something? Hurt someone?” Kat stripped the bed. Starting with the top corners, she rolled the material down under his large body and off the end.

  He kept mum on the details, which was probably a good thing. It was bath day—a hell of an awkward time for him to come to. A foreign chuckle rumbled its way up her esophagus, expunging a little of the tightness cramping her throat. She pulled the covers off him and tossed them into a pile next to the basket.

  “I should empty your wound drain onto them and make Aron cart those off. He’d vomit, and that would give me great joy. But you’re all closed up.” Kat patted his foot, moved to his shoulder, and unfastened the snaps of his gown. “You’re ready to wake and take on the world, Pete. I mean…what a way to wake? Naked with a woman. There could be plenty worse ways.”

  Just because he was unconscious didn’t mean Kat took liberties with her patient’s body. As if he were awake—and incapable of washing his own broad chest, biceps, and abdomen—she started with his head and worked her way slowly down, scrubbing and wiping the soap and grime away, revealing only as much skin at a time as was necessary.

  “Focus, Kat.”

  She turned his head from one side to the other, cleaning each side and stretching him at the same time. With his head turned away, she moved around the bed, grabbed a fresh cloth for his face and chest, and wet it.

  Kat turned back. A gasp escaped her split lips.

  Coma Pete faced her. His eyes were closed, but he’d definitely moved. It wasn’t unheard of for coma patients, but it was a first for her.

  “Pete?” Kat eased to the side of the bed and leaned close, searching for any sign of movement. “Pete, can you hear me? It’s Kat, your doctor. You’re safe here.” Guilt gnawed at the back of her brain. Was he safe? She’d been ordered to care for him. So surely he was, but yesterday’s attack forced her to face the ugly question. Was she safe here? Sure, she was. Her father wouldn’t let anyone harm her, but where was he?

  “Pete, if you can hear me, move the fingers on your left hand.” Her gaze lasered onto the hand closest to her. Oxygen stalled in her lungs. Seconds passed. They turned to a minute and another.

  Nothing.

  “It’s Kat. I’m your doctor. If you can hear me, blink.”

  Again, she waited for him to reveal the amber orbs she’d seen only during examinations when she forcibly peeled back his lids. Again, disappointment kneed her in the belly.

  Would he have a scary, hollow gaze, or would he surprise her with kind eyes? The rich amber hue was so stunning and warm. What would they convey when they were awake?

  “Would you hurt me?”

  5

  He first noticed the change about sixty thousand beeps ago. The continuous, noisy intervals never ceased, but they irritated him less and less as the time passed. Hunter still couldn’t tell the amount of time that had elapsed, but he’d latched onto the concept of them moving by, if only at a snail’s pace. The beeps were the ruler that delineated the distance between the warmth on his hand, the intense darkness, and the brightening to gray. The blackness never truly receded, but something lightened it for about thirty-three thousand beeps at a time. He didn’t count that high. Who the hell had the patience for that? Not him, but he could calculate like a beast. Something very important depended on his ability to destroy numbers in seconds. Those beeps were the best because the warmth came more frequently.

  With increased frequency, things changed.

  Change was good. Change had gotten him out of Brentwood, and the rat-packed house that had nothing to do with men singing and dancing in suits or actual rodents. There had been so many people, so close to him, on top of him, holding him down. They’d drowned him in proximity and loneliness.

  A sound, separate and contrary to the insistency of his ruler, hummed on the far side of the gray. The soft melodic murmur—of what, he didn’t know—soothed his fraying edges. He focused, ignoring the beeps, ignoring the house and the past, and allowed the murmurs to stroke his temper. The hypnotic sound shoved the beeps behind a thick curtain. They still helped him keep measure of this strange world, but they gave way to undiscovered lands. In this new land, the gray lightened several shades. In this land, there was more. In this land, something mattered.

  If only he knew what that thing was.

  Hunter hadn’t a clue what drove him, yet a sudden urgency lit his brain on fire. What was it? The answer was so close. His fingers stretched, grasping through the cold dark toward the light and sound and new. It strained his flaming synapses, threatening to char them into a useless pyre. Hunter Masters wasn’t a man who caved under pressure. Under incredible strain, he flexed and pushed; he dug in and moved forward and remembered.

  He needed to find something.

  What?

  No damn clue.

  Necessity propelled him. Whatever he needed to find was vital, and the soft, sweet sound could find it for him if only he reached a little further. He was Hunter Masters, a…

  Well, shit. Another dead end. Whatever he was, he did not quit.

  The soothing sounds receded. Gray thickened to a viscous black. It eased in around him, blocking his reach and pinning him to the nothingness.

  Hunter roared. He crouched and pressed his boots into the blackened ground. Desperation to find the thing he sought but didn’t remember propelled him. The tips of his boots ate into the dark one step at a time. Each strain drained and invigorated him. Hope, ever alive even in the most dire of circumstances, and the return of that sound increased the push and pace of his efforts until suddenly he crashed through the pitch of night to pure and encapsulating sunshine.

  No, not sunshine. Sunshine was yellow and warm. This was blinding and cold.

  Fucking great. He was dead.

  He quit pushing ahead because screw this, he was more determined to find something than he was to die. Something required him to survive. So he would survive. He had to because Oliver needed him.

  Ha!

  Memories didn’t flood back in a deluge of ah-ha, but one tenacious image dogged his heels. Oliver’s bloody face haunted him like a kaleidoscope of Stephen King novels.

&nbs
p; Hunter had to find his friend. He had to save his friend now.

  The melodic sound returned, and warmth encapsulated his hand. As suddenly as he remembered Oliver’s plight, the murmurs morphed into words. The words were inquisitive. They thrilled him even though he couldn’t discern their meaning yet.

  6

  The chilling, unrelenting beep of flatline ripped Kat from the silence of sleep and tossed her into the ruthless world. She landed on her feet. Her veins revved with one-hundred-proof adrenaline. Her pupils dilated in the dark of night. Her heart shot across the room, propelling her forward to accept the challenge of death’s toll. As she ran, she struggled to calm her pulse with deep breaths and logic.

  Pete’s wounds had healed weeks ago. His vitals had been consistent over the past month—consistently better than most productive, non-comatose members of society. Maybe the power went out, causing the alert. She skidded through the doorway, held her breath, and sought the light switch. Brilliant, near blinding light filled the room. Her heart sank.

  He lay on the bed unmoving. The flatline flipped her the proverbial bird. Maybe the lead had fallen from the machine. From her position, the line was clearly and firmly attached to the monitor, just as she’d left it when she’d gone to bed.

  Kat shoved off the doorframe and rushed forward, ready for a bare-knuckle battle with death for this man’s life. Years of training and the solitary gathering of knowledge prepared her for this one moment. The desire to save this man’s life outweighed any patient in her past—the old, the young, the innocent. Although this man was far from innocent. He was dangerous. Guilt should have plagued her, but it remained cold and impassive. Kat wouldn’t save him for her father. She’d save him for her own selfish needs; the need to be free, the need for a marathon session with her therapist.

  She yanked the crash cart from a far corner, ready to beat him back to life for her own needs. The faintest layer of dust coated the machine she never expected to use, not after the first week of recovery.

  What if he’d had a heart attack? Not possible with his blood panels. An aneurysm? There would be nothing she could do to bring him back. Kat refused to accept defeat before even lifting a fist or, in this case, a paddle.

  “I’m going to fight for you, Pete. I thought you were a fighter. Fight, damnit. Fight if you want to live.” She pulled the pillow from behind his head and tossed it to the floor.

  His skin was warm, warmer than her father’s after he came back from a run. Pete couldn’t die, not with skin that reminded her of life…even as the toll of his passing continued to fill the room. The constant tone mocked her to the point of insanity. She ripped back his gown, exposing his massive heaving chest and froze.

  Pete’s heart beat against his sternum like an insistent fist. His ribs expanded and contracted in rapid form, revealing the perfect delineation of his abdominal wall.

  Kat placed her hand atop his heart. It thudded against her palm. She held it in place for longer than she should’ve. This wasn’t the professional way to take someone’s pulse, but she wasn’t a professional right now. At this moment, she was a woman fighting for the life she’d known. She needed reassurance more than five gold stars above her name. A first, for sure. Nothing came between her and her career. Not ever. Not until she’d been held prisoner against her will. Not until a man’s life meant more than her life’s mission.

  Each bump of his heart against her hand reassured her. It soothed the frazzled end of her nerves and calmed her own frantic heartbeat. The rhythm of his pulse mesmerized her, syncing with hers for two beats.

  She withdrew her hand as though his warmth burned her, and he had. Something passed between them, sealing her fate to this man’s like her father never could. Her fingers tingled. The sensation shot up her arm, tickling her chest. Every frenzied beat of her heart threatened to launch it right out of her chest.

  The flatline continued to scream inside the room that seemed to close in around them. Why? Kat moved around the other side of the bed. The sensor that she’d taped to Pete’s chest lay on the floor. She picked up the sensor. The adhesive was rolled back on one side and ripped on the other. Her gaze slid to Pete. She hung the line over the machine, disabled it, and eased onto the side of the bed.

  Clutched between his fingers was the NG tube she’d installed to nourish him weeks ago. He’d yanked it from his body.

  “You are fighting,” she whispered in the renewed night silence.

  Behind his lids, she watched as his eyes rolled rapidly from one side to the other as though he were looking for the way out of his unconscious. Kat swallowed the spike of excitement that bubbled up. No matter how much she cared for him, no matter how much she wanted him to be well, this man wasn’t her friend. She grabbed the hand she’d become too accustomed to holding and smoothed her palm over his darker one.

  “Are you going to wake up tonight and tell me who you are?” She watched his eyes for any sign of movement. Nothing more than the search.

  “Are you going to tell me about the no-good you’ve been up to, Pete?” Kat’s eyes drifted to his full lips. Her cheeks flushed. The heat dove from her face downward. She swallowed again for an entirely different reason, a reason she didn’t like at all. He was her patient. She shouldn’t think about what his lips would feel like on her mouth…and other places.

  7

  Holy mother. Give him back the darkness. Light brought pain unequal to any he’d experienced. He’d had the life almost beaten from him twice—his smart mouth. He’d been shot—a little more than a flesh wound. He’d been burned—military training exercise gone awry. He’d been stabbed—mouth again. None of that shit came close to the all-encompassing, bone-deep ache that radiated from his left foot. Light also brought awareness, which Hunter clung to with both hands. It was the only thing keeping him from begging for death or, at the very least, unconsciousness. He remembered what he’d searched for in the dark.

  Oliver.

  His friend’s safety eclipsed everything, even his own well-being. Oliver and Tyler were the brothers, hell, the only family he ever had, though neither DNA nor blood linked them. He didn’t have to worry about Tyler. He was safe, but Oliver… He’d been searching for Oliver. The kid had gotten himself into some deep shit, and Hunter had been dogged about saving him and the woman he loved from the clutches of Tor Royan.

  “Oliver?” Hunter’s voice sounded like rocks being pulverized. It felt that way too. With each syllable, the flesh in his throat caught and the sides stuck together like taffy. He swallowed nothing and pressed on, holding firm to awareness. “Oliver? Marina?”

  He peeled his eyelids open to search for his friends. Cobwebs created a blurred world. Several blinks pulled back the webbing and revealed a vibrant blue sky. No, not a sky. The sky had never been so bright and clear. At least, not in Hunter’s neighborhood growing up or in the countries he’d visited as an adult. He allowed his vision to adjust to the brilliant blue. Dark pupils formed in the center of the sky, transforming them into striking eyes.

  Awareness was a hand he crushed inside his own, despite the mind-numbing pain. His brain had taken all the vacation it would get. As the seconds passed, Hunter’s vision smoothed. Blurred webs became smooth lines. Those lines became a pert nose, sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, and gnawed red lips. She was gorgeous. The sight of her dulled the pain shooting up his leg and into his groin.

  This nurse was a hell of a lot prettier than his last nurse. She’d had helmet hair and a brown, crooked tooth. There was something to be said for personality. A great one could transcend almost any perceived physical flaw. Old helmet hair had made him laugh so hard he’d busted his stitches. Sweat beaded across Hunter’s forehead. Chills crawled up his arms and across his stomach. He could sure use some laughs right about now. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but his gut said he wouldn’t like it.

  The nurse lifted something to his lips. “Drink,” she demanded.

  Hunter fumbled with the straw. Her fingers grazed
his dry, cracked lips. She steadied the plastic, and he gulped down cool water. His throat felt as though it hadn’t worked in months. He choked and hacked. Water slipped across his cheek and down his chin. Still, what little water made it down soothed his parched throat. Before embarrassment could bubble up, his nurse wiped away the mess with the back of her hand.

  “Try again.” She readjusted the straw. This time, she didn’t touch him.

  Her crystal blue eyes narrowed to slits, and her teeth pinned the corner of her bottom lip. With her attention to detail, she did not touch him this time. Too bad. Her skin was smooth and soft against his cracked mouth. She didn’t work like a trained nurse. The stethoscope was missing from around her neck. The scissors and bandage tape were absent from her pocket. In fact, she didn’t dress like a nurse at all. Tousled curls hung wild about the tops of her breasts, the mounds of which crested the top of a pale pink cotton shirt with white lace trim. She looked as though she’d been yanked from a down and dirty dream.

  Were his foot not threatening revolt against his body, Hunter could have easily placed himself in that fantasy and brought it to life for her. As his luck would have it, though, shit never went to script.

  “Who are you?” Their simultaneous questions collided in the static laced air between them. Her sexy, sleepy laugh rolled over him, stealing the edge off the blinding pain.

  “I’m Kat.” There was gusto behind that dreamy voice. This woman had a backbone and a nice rack.

  “Short for Katherine, Kathleen, or Katie?”

  Her head tilted and one sharp brow rose. Maybe it was her command of the room or it could have been his pain and vulnerability, but her intensity revved the already frantic pace of his heart. Hunter shifted under her scrutiny.