past him as he came forward to meet her, turning left out the door. He could hear her running lightly and damned quickly.
“Hey!” he yelled and took off after her. Blessed—or cursed—with a Texan-sized curiosity bump, he had to catch her. She could tell him why there had been a fight, who the unconscious man was, her name, and if she was free for dinner any night this week. This year. She was the most intriguing woman—certainly the most beautiful—he’d ever seen.
He couldn’t say “he’d ever met” because they hadn’t exactly been properly introduced. A fact he intended to remedy, posthaste. Part of him wondered what he was doing, chasing a stranger around hospital hallways in the wee hours of the morning. Another part of him urged him to run faster.
He caught sight of her just before she darted around a corner and forced himself to put on speed. Come on, Dean, you wimp, he thought contemptuously. You’ve got to be a head taller at least—certainly your legs are longer. Catch up! And, on the heels of that: Where the hell is security? For that matter, where the hell is anybody?
Speaking of dead ends, he just about had her cornered in one; she’d zigged when she should have zagged and there was no door at the end of this hallway, just a window, too far above her head to climb out. She was facing him, trapped with her back against the wall, when he jogged around the corner.
“There you are,” he panted, slowing his pace. “Are you okay? Did that guy hurt you? Before you hurt him, I mean?”
Her eyes, which had been narrowed to blue slits studying him, now widened in surprise. He was hopelessly dazzled and gave in to the feeling—he was a long way between girlfriends and she really was spectacular. Had he thought her eyes were an ordinary blue? Coming closer, he could see they were the color of the sky on a cloudless day, pure and perfect. Paul Newman blue. Not that he was attracted to Paul. Because he wasn’t. But the man had gorgeous eyes, and Jared was comfortable enough with his heterosexuality to admit it.
“If you’re hurt,” he said, trying not to wheeze, “I’d be glad to take a look at it for you. It’s the least I can do, since you got me out of finishing my chart work. Dull stuff, believe me.”
He heard himself babbling and told himself to shut up. She said nothing, just kept studying him. He noticed she wasn’t even out of breath. Kicking ass must keep her cardiovascular system in top form, he thought.
“Seriously,” he said. “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do? If you’re in some kind of trouble, I can call a shelter, find you a safe place to stay.”
Still she said nothing, but her lips twitched, as if fighting a smile. He wasn’t sure what the joke was, but took a cautious step forward. “Everything’s all right,” he soothed, as if calming a wild doe, “now if I can just get you to come with me, I mean without rearranging my kidneys first, we’ll find an exam room, make sure you’re okay, and then we can talk about the trouble you’re in. Whatever it is, I bet we can fix it if we put our heads together.”
She opened her mouth and he waited eagerly, then they both heard the noise of pounding feet. Well, well, he thought tiredly, what do you know—security finally woke up from ye olde one A.M. snoozefest.
Whatever she had been about to say was forgotten as she reached up, just barely catching the bottom edge of the window. The hospital’s windows were old—no wire mesh—and deep-set. He watched with utter astonishment as she grabbed hold of the ledge and flipped her legs up and over her head, her boots smashing through the glass and the rest of her following through.
He figured it was a good thing they were in the lowest level of the hospital, because he had the feeling she would have gone through that window even if they’d been ten stories up. He wondered if the boots she wore had protected her from lacerations. Given the woman’s incredible speed and luck, he assumed they had.
“Well, it was nice meeting you,” he said numbly, and was nearly run over as two security guards came thundering around the corner. “She went thataway,” he added, pointed to the shattered window. “And don’t even try, she’s long gone. Come on, I’ll show you where the other one is.”
The guards had a thousand questions. Jared couldn’t tell them much and what he could tell them—the woman won, the woman was incredibly tough but seemed strangely vulnerable, the woman had eyes like the sky, the woman was going to be the mother of his children—he prudently kept to himself.
“You said the other one was in here, Dr. Dean?” one of the guards asked, and that was when Jared saw the woman’s assailant was gone. The only thing left of him was a small puddle of blood on the table, presumably from a nosebleed. “Fan out,” the guard said to the others, “he can’t have gone far, not after Dr. Dean bashed him around.”
“Actually,” Jared began and then shut up. He didn’t want to get the woman in more trouble, so he’d take the blame for KOing the bad guy. It hadn’t been the first time people had taken in his size and assumed he was capable of violence. And he had been, in his youth—certainly he’d been in more of his share of after-school scuffles. But years of stitching up victims, of probing for bullets and setting smashed limbs, had made him lose his taste for it. “Uh … actually, I should get back to work.”
“You got a description for us, doc?”
“For Nosebleed? Sure. About six-five, two hundred fifty pounds, shaved blond hair, one black eyebrow, one dislocated shoulder, one broken nose.”
“Uh-huh,” the guard asked, stepping close to Jared and sniffing him. This might have been intended to be a subtle move on the guard’s part, except the man had a deviated septum and Jared could hear the shrill whistling intake when the man inhaled. “Broken nose, one eyebrow, we’ll get right on it. You have anything to drink before you came on shift?” Sniff-sniff. Whistle-whistle.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jared snapped. “I gave up booze when I took up heroin. Seriously, I haven’t had a drop. The bad guy really did look like some sort of mutated freak of nature. Now go get him!” Before he catches up with what’s-her-name, he added silently.
The guards went, save for one who stayed behind to make sure Jared did his part of the dreary paperwork. Jared obediently followed him to the security office to fill out a report.
For the rest of his shift, he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder and peeking around corners, as if the woman might have come back. Ridiculous thought … but Jared kept an eye out, regardless.
He wondered who she was.
It took Kara an hour to stop trembling. Every time she started to calm down, the thought … Jesus! He almost had me! … would cycle back into her brain and she’d get the shakes again.
Carlotti, who’d been an utter creep since he was ten—and possibly before that—had chased her around like a dog, cornered her, and likely would have killed her—after having a little fun first, the raping swine—if she hadn’t gotten the drop on him.
She had spotted him before she was even all the way through the door of the club and immediately turned and walked out. She started running when she heard him scrambling behind her and the chase was on.
Now, in the privacy of her apartment, she collapsed on her thirty-dollar thrift shop couch—tastefully upholstered in puke orange—and relived the chase. Carlotti was big but fast—and driven. If fear had been the fuel for her legs, hatred was his.
Screw
