Protecting His Witness Read online

  Which meant she had to treat him on the floor. Everything in her training balked at that, but you couldn't always pick your settings.

  "Not exactly the ideal conditions," she murmured to herself. She laid him flat on his back. "Who are you and why are you here?" she couldn't help wondering aloud.

  Well, there was time enough to learn that later, once she stopped the bleeding and sewed up his wound. Despite the situation, a small thrill raced through her. It had been much too long since she'd done anything close to her profession—and she missed it. Missed her life. Missed a lot of things.

  She hurried off to the bathroom to wash her hands and to get what she needed in order to take care of this man that fate, with its sardonic sense of humor, had deposited on her doorstep.

  She couldn't help the dry laugh that rose to her lips. The way her luck had been going this last year and a half, the man on her floor would probably turn out to be a serial killer. Wouldn't take much for her to be his next victim.

  Drying her hands, she started throwing things she was going to need into the small, pink rubber basin she kept under the sink: alcohol, swabs, a scalpel and sutures she kept in a small blue container on the top shelf of her medicine cabinet.

  Being his next victim might not be so bad, she mused. It might even be a blessing in disguise. She was weary of hiding, weary of looking over her shoulder so often. Maybe, if he repaid her act of kindness by killing her, at least this awful game of hide-and-seek would be over and she'd finally know some peace. Know what it was like not to have her heart leap up, hammering wildly with anxiety every time the door to the bookstore opened, or she looked up to see someone looking her way. She was tired of all the paranoia. If she couldn't have her life back, she didn't want any life at all.

  You're just tired and not making any sense, she chided herself ruefully.

  If she meant any of that, she wouldn't be double-locking her door, or taking all those precautions every day. Maybe this life she led wasn't so great, but it certainly did beat the alternative. At bottom, she wanted to live. And live long enough to get the person who had killed Jim and tried to kill her.

  After checking to make sure she had everything she needed, for now she focused on her patient. Kasey didn't have to look in the mirror to know that, as uneasy as she was, she was still smiling.

  The smile faded the moment she stepped out into the living room again.

  There was no one lying on the floor by the back entrance.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  For one frantic moment, Kasey thought the stranger had either left, or, worse, lay in wait for her somewhere in the house.

  But then she saw him. It took a second for her heart to stop pounding as she realized that the stranger had just moved. He was still on the floor, but now closer to the kitchen. She guessed that he must have come to, tried to get up and collapsed when he found that the effort was too much for him.

  But why the kitchen? Why hadn't he tried to go out the door?

  "You were probably disoriented," she said under her breath as she crossed to him. She knelt down, setting the basin with its supplies next to her. "I can certainly relate to that."

  Every day, when she first woke up, she had to take stock of where she was and who she was. There were times when it all felt so jumbled up in her brain, she wanted to give up running, give up hiding and just return to her old life.

  Which, she guessed, she'd probably be allowed to live for a total of ten minutes before word got around that she was back and among the living. And someone decided to do something about the latter.

  Was that who this man was on her floor? Someone running from something?

  Or was this an elaborate plan to flush her out, she wondered, her fingertips growing icy. Someone sent to get her, once and for all. She knew there was always a chance of that, but getting shot just to lull her into a false sense of security seemed like quite a stretch.

  When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. It was one of the mantras she'd been taught in medical school and it applied not just to the field, but to life. The unconscious man in her living room was probably a horse, not a zebra. Some poor victim, not a hit man.

  And if he was to continue being a horse, she had to help him live. And pretty damn quick.

  She raised his blood-soaked shirt away from his body. It was a bullet wound all right. Right there just under his arm. She'd seen worse, but there was no such thing as a good bullet wound. Slipping on a pair of plastic gloves she'd picked up at the local drugstore, she took a sterile swab, soaked it in peroxide and proceeded to clean the wound.

  With each stroke, Kasey raised her eyes and watched the unconscious stranger's face with apprehension. But there was no reaction, no indication that he was only pretending to be unconscious. No involuntary wincing. He was out cold.

  "Lucky for both of us," she murmured. "I'm probably a little rusty at this."

  The wound cleaned, she reached for the scalpel she'd scrubbed less than five minutes ago.

  Poising the blade over the bullet's point of entry, she told him, 'This is going to be the hard part." Still nothing.

  Which was good. But she still wished she had something to knock the man out in case he woke up and began to struggle. But things like that, other than 101 proof whiskey, couldn't be purchased in the local pharmacy. Besides, she honestly never thought she'd need something in the way of an anesthetic ever again. She'd left that life behind, not willingly, but of necessity. It all boiled down to the same thing. She wasn't a practicing doctor anymore.

  Very carefully, she began to probe the wound. Glancing up at the stranger's face, she saw him tense even though he was in another realm where hard-core pain didn't exist. Her patient continued sleeping. Satisfied that, at least for the time being, he was unaware of what was happening, she probed deeper. Just where had this bullet gone?

  After a couple more minutes, she was finally rewarded with the feel of metal against metal.

  Gotcha.

  Holding her breath, she secured the bullet and gingerly retracted the instrument until she could pull it free of the flesh around it.

  Like a fisherman who had managed to finally pull a marlin out of the water, she held up the tiny bit of mangled metal, examining it against the overhead light. She shook her head.

  "Not much to look at, is it?" she marveled. Small but deadly was an apt description. She wondered if the man on the floor knew how close he came to never seeing another sunrise. "Bet that could have ended your life with no effort at all if it'd hit just a little bit higher and to the left. Talk about lucky..."

  Again she shook her head, awed how some people died after tripping on the sidewalk and hitting their head, while others walked away from what appeared to be certain death after taking a fall from a second-story window. Or catching a bullet just beneath their rib cage, she thought, amazed.

  Cleaning the wound a second time, Kasey then picked up the sutures and very carefully sewed up the small hole. She wished she had access to some antibiotics to insure against infections, but he would have to take care of that for himself. Once he was awake.

  It didn't take long to finish stitching him up, even though she took her time, studying his face after every stitch was taken.

  "You really are dead to the world, aren't you?" she marveled. Finished, she put what was left of the sutures into a small white envelope and sealed it again.

  There wasn't much.

  "Now what?" she asked herself out loud, looking down at her patient.

  He was still unconscious, still in her house. What did she do with him? She had no one to turn to, no one to go to for help. And that was strictly her own doing. Edwin Owens, the owner of the used bookstore Rare Treasures, had indicated that he was very willing to be her friend. Very willing to be more than that if she wanted him to be. But while he seemed like a nice man, she knew better than to make friends or form attachments. Friends asked questions, they noticed things about you.
Things they could repeat, however innocently, to people who might come looking for you.

  So this was better, remaining an isolated mystery. It was also far less complicated. Now that she thought about it, this path she'd been forced to choose was also a great deal more lonely. Until right this minute, loneliness had not been a real problem for her. God knew she had more than enough on her mind to keep her occupied and busy. Too busy to feel lonely.

  But right now, if not an actual shoulder to lean on, she could have really used an extra pair of hands to help her with this man.

  Blowing out a long breath, Kasey shrugged as she put everything back into the basin and went back to the bathroom with it. There was no point in dwelling on what she didn't have. She would have to make the best of it.

  The way she had these last endless months.

  Switching off the bathroom light, she went to the minuscule linen closet next. It was hardly big enough to hold a handful of towels and the extra bedding she kept there for cold winter nights. Grabbing the pink flannel blanket and the lone pillow from the top shelf, she returned to her patient.

  On her knees, Kasey gently raised his head and slipped the pillow under it, then threw the flannel blanket over him. She spread it out, making sure all of him was covered.

  "Who are you?" she asked softly as she rose again to her feet.

  He'd had no wallet on him, no ID. She'd already checked his pockets. Had he been mugged? Or was there some other reason he didn't have any identification with him?

  Too many questions, no answers, she thought.

  Looking down at herself, Kasey realized that she'd gotten the stranger's blood on her when she'd dragged him in as well as on the floor and her rug. It wasn't going to scrub itself out. So, for the next forty-five minutes, she did what she could to wash the telltale streaks of blood from her house and herself.

  When she was finally finished with that, she paused to check the lock on the bathroom door. Satisfied that it would hold, she still brought in a chair. Closing the door, she wedged the chair underneath the doorknob— just in case. She'd learned the hard way that trusting made you exceptionally vulnerable.

  Kasey took the world's fastest shower.

  Coming out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of jeans and a fresh shirt, still relatively damp from the shower, she checked on the stranger one more time. This time, he was exactly where she'd left him and he was still unconscious. The body was doing its part to help him heal.

  As for her, she knew that her body was far too keyed up now to sleep. Resigned to yet another restless night, not unlike so many other nights, Kasey staked out a place for herself on the sofa, turned the TV on to one of the classic cable channels and turned the sound down to a whisper. She didn't really need to hear what was being said. She knew the dialogue to this particular movie by heart. Even so, there was a certain amount of comfort in hearing the familiar repeated.

  She smiled as Cary Grant, resplendent in a tuxedo and radiating charm, came on the scene. Some things you could always count on. It made her feel a tad better.

  * * *

  He felt as if his body had been disassembled and then put back together incorrectly, with some of the parts missing. Every single bone and muscle in his body made its presence known with one hell of an ache.

  But pain was a good thing, right? Pain meant he was alive.

  Either that or in hell.

  With effort, Zack pried open his eyes. The first thing that came into focus was the flannel blanket.

  He was no expert, but he was fairly certain that there were no pink blankets in hell. Which meant that his first impression was right. He was alive.

  It was a good starting point.

  He played dead for a moment, lowering his eyelids until all that remained opened were two tiny slits. Zack scanned the immediate area in front of him. He was lying on the floor of someone's house.

  Whose?

  And for that matter, what was he doing on the floor, covered with a blanket? It wasn't pulled over his head, so they—whoever "they" were—obviously didn't think that he was dead. But why had they brought him here?

  And, while he was at it, just where was here?

  And what the hell was that searing pain all about? It threatened to take off the top of his head. The only way he could have felt worse was if he'd fallen headfirst into a wood chipper.

  Zack struggled to extract his brain from the center of its cotton-batting prison. He needed to think clearly in order to piece things together.

  He thought back. The last thing he remembered was going out into the alley behind the Internet cafe.

  No, wait, the last thing he remembered was being shot and struggling with the man he'd been tailing. He'd tried to get possession of the man's weapon before he could get off another shot. But it did go off again. And this time, the bullet had gone into the other man's body.

  Had it killed him?

  Zack didn't know. He always hit what he aimed for but this time, he wasn't aiming. The discharge had been by accident, forced by the other man's hand.

  No, wait, that wasn't the last thing he remembered, he amended again, desperately trying to hang on to loose, stray thoughts. He remembered trying to get away. He did get away. He'd managed to leave the strip mall and find his way into a development of white brick houses. A whole village of them. It was like something out of that silly fairy tale about the three little pigs. Except that he wasn't the big bad wolf.

  Even so, when he'd knocked on one door after another, nobody would let him in. No one would help him. And then, too weak to go on, he'd fallen to his knees before the last house.

  After that, there was nothing. Had he passed out?

  There was a woman on the sofa, dozing from the looks of it. Did he know her? He didn't think so. He would have remembered a woman who looked like this one did, he thought. Even from this distance, with his eyes all but shut, he could see the woman with the curly brown hair had class. And looks.

  Too bad he wasn't going to meet her, but he really had to get out of here. There was someplace he had to be by noon. Dawn was breaking, so he judged that he still had some time left. But he had a feeling he wasn't exactly himself today and that getting to where he had to be would require a lot of energy. If he didn't make it in time, all hell could break loose. He knew that without being told. This was a delicate operation that required precise timing.

  Removing the blanket from his body with a hand that felt incredibly stiff, Zack started to sit up.

  The flash of sharp, excruciating pain was completely unexpected. So was the moan that involuntarily escaped his lips.

  The woman on the sofa was awake and on her feet before he realized that the sound had come from him.

  She had long, curly light brown hair and blue eyes that flashed as she came closer.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded sharply, crossing to him.

  He would have thought that would have been obvious. "Trying to get up."

  "Wait," she cautioned, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She squatted down beside him. "Put your arm around my shoulders."

  Why did that sentence sound so familiar to him? As if he'd just heard it moments ago. But that was impossible. He had a feeling he'd been out at least several hours.

  Shaking off any extraneous thoughts, he tried to do the same with the woman. "I can get up by myself," he told her.

  "No, you can't." She said it with such authority, he almost believed her. "If you strain yourself, you'll wind up breaking open your stitches." Her tone left no room for argument. "Now, lean on me and let me help."

  No matter what she sounded like, the woman looked like a delicate little thing. Just proved that looks could be deceiving. The strength he felt in her hands as she wrapped one around his waist surprised him.

  Though he hated to admit it, even to himself, getting up was a lot easier with her help.

  She got him up and onto the sofa. But he didn't want to sit, he wanted to leave. Had to leave. Still, he was grat
eful for the momentary respite. Just getting to his feet had taken a lot out of him. He wasn't used to playing the invalid.

  Breathing hard, he mumbled, "Thanks." After a beat, his breathing more regulated, he asked her, "How did I get here?"

  She watched his face as she answered, looking for some telltale sign that this was a ruse. So far, he seemed genuinely confused. "I found you on my doorstep and dragged you inside."

  Zack frowned. "Why didn't you call the police?" That would have been what most people would have done— if they would have done anything at all. If this had happened in one of the more metropolitan areas, the good citizens of that city would have probably walked right by him, pretending not to notice that he needed help.

  She saw no reason to embellish on the truth. "You were bleeding and had a bullet wound. I didn't know if calling the police would have gotten you into more trouble."

  "More?" he echoed.

  "You were wounded," she pointed out. "That seemed like enough trouble for one person for the time being." She saw him glancing down at his side. Raising his bloodstained shirt, he exposed the large gauze bandage that wrapped around his rib cage. "I took the bullet out," she explained matter-of-factly, second-guessing his next question.

  He let the shirt drop back into place. "You a doctor?"

  Kasey congratulated herself on not batting an eyelash. Instead, she nonchalantly shook her head. "No. I work in a secondhand bookstore."

  He raised a perplexed eyebrow at her answer. "I don't follow."

  "I do a lot of reading in my spare time," she elaborated, adding, "I particularly like reading medical books."

  He supposed that made sense, in an odd sort of way. He couldn't argue with the fact that she'd taken out the bullet. He spotted it in the center of a coaster on the coffee table.

  "Lucky for me you retained what you read," he commented, amused.

  She merely nodded. Getting up off the sofa, Kasey glanced toward the window. The sun was up. Time for her to get ready for work even though she'd had approximately an hour's worth of sleep. The television set was still on, softly droning in the background. Someone was extolling the virtues of a newly developed body cream that did everything up to and including finding Prince Charming.