Undercover Protector. Melinda Di Lorenzo

the local authorities investigating had ruled it an accident. But now Nadine was stuck in a hospital bed with an IV in her hand and a generally bad taste in her mouth. And of course there was the wannabe guard at her door. A detective from Freemont with his own ties to the crimes in question.

      Her eyes drifted to the narrow blinds of her interior window. She could just see the man’s slumped-over form on the bench in the hall. So far, Detective Anderson Somers hadn’t budged much from his spot. She was pretty sure he’d been living off vending-machine sandwiches. Maybe the same watery coffee dispensed there, as well.

      Nadine let out a heavy breath and looked away. If his presence didn’t bother her so much, she might’ve felt a little sorry for him. She doubted that being her watchdog was as exciting as his usual day-to-day work.

      He probably hates it here as much as I do.

      But even with that acknowledgment, she could barely manage to drum up more than a trickle of empathy. Because Anderson Somers’s presence was the real reason she couldn’t discharge herself. It was he who’d insisted to the doctor that Nadine needed the extra recovery time. He’d said it all in a too-nice voice, reeling off some medical jargon about head injuries, smiling like he cared. He had a nice smile. Even teeth. And it always touched his eyes. So the doctor had bought it. Of course.

      Nadine narrowed her own eyes at the window. What, exactly, had the detective said to the staff at the care facility about his relationship with her? she wondered. What would make them think he could speak on her behalf? She was truly curious, but she wouldn’t dare ask.

      Like he could feel her eyes on him, Anderson shifted in his seat, his head lifting enough that Nadine could see his shaggy blond mop. She quickly sank back against her pillow and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he hadn’t caught her staring. A second later, she worried that maybe he had, for her door whooshed open and soft footfalls tapped along the floor, then stopped not far from the edge of her bed.

      Nadine feigned sleep, inhaling and exhaling at a carefully measured pace. At a count of ten, the steps receded, and then the door shut. When she lifted her lids and peered through her lashes, she saw that the bench outside was now empty.

      Hmm. So he’s been sneaking away when I sleep.

      For some inexplicable reason, the idea bothered her as much as the fact that he’d been watching her around the clock. She narrowed her eyes again. Then pursed her lips. And finally smiled as a realization occurred to her. This was the perfect opportunity to free herself. From both the detective’s scrutiny and the doctor’s.

      Nadine slid her legs out from under her covers, then swung them over the side of the bed. She waited for a reaction of some kind. A yell from the nurses station, or for Anderson to suddenly pop his head in and shoot her one of his too-sympathetic smiles. But there was just the same silence as there had been when she was tucked nicely under the blankets.

      So she took it a step further. She reached over to her automatic IV unit and pressed the off button. Then she waited some more. No alarm sounded. No one came running.

      “All right, then,” she murmured to herself.

      With her eyes on the door, she took ahold of the tape that held the plastic tubing to her hand and pulled it off. Then she pressed her pinky finger firmly against the port and tugged out the tube itself. It came free with ease—no mess, no pain. It was almost too easy.

      Nadine breathed out. Maybe she should’ve felt a bit of guilt as she shouldered into her sweatshirt. Or as she grabbed her shoulder bag. Maybe she should’ve admitted that it was a bit unreasonable to go running out of the care facility like she was doing. But she wasn’t going to let either thing stop her. No way would being stuck where she was get her any closer to getting justice for her brother. Or any closer to filling in the gaps in her memory. She needed to be moving. Looking. And in order to do those things, she couldn’t be kept under guard in a hospital bed.

      She cast a final look over the room, slid her feet into her slippers and slipped out into the hall.

      * * *

      As Detective Anderson Somers rounded the corner in the hall that led to ward 3B, he just about dropped his coffee. A woman who looked an awful lot like Nadine Stuart was moving very quickly in the other direction.

      Blond hair, almost shaved up one side and a shock of bluntly straight locks on the other. Yep. Brown eyes, a little guarded and a lot defiant. Uh-huh. Then she turned her head just enough that he could see the distinctive scar along the line of her cheek. It was her. No doubt. Complete from the rosebud mouth to the sheep-print pajama bottoms.

      For a second, Anderson was too startled to do much more than stare. What was she even doing awake, let alone scurrying through the hall? It was two in the morning. He’d barely seen her out of the bed since she’d been admitted the week before, and less than five minutes earlier, he’d checked in on her to make sure she was asleep before he took off to grab some coffee that wasn’t vending-machine swill.

      “Were you faking it, princess?” he wondered aloud.

      She must’ve been. It wasn’t like she’d made it a secret that she wasn’t happy being cooped up. Imprisoned, she’d called it at one point. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that she would—

      “Dammit,” Anderson muttered, his brain catching up to the fact that she was on the run just as she disappeared into one of the elevators at the end of the hall. “You were faking it.”

      He took a final, irritated sip of his coffee, then set it down on the lip of a nearby trash bin and strode after her. When he reached the elevators, though, his mood grew even sourer. The lights over the first set of doors—the ones that had swallowed Nadine—were burned out, so he couldn’t tell if she’d headed for the lobby or the underground exit or some other escape route entirely. The second set of doors had been hung with an out-of-service sign. To top it all off, as Anderson turned to the final set, a team of frantic nurses pushed by him, wheeling a gurney and a crash cart. He jumped out of their way. Even if it wouldn’t have been tacky to join them in the elevator, there wasn’t room.

      With a frustrated grumble, he spun toward the stairs. At least shoving the heavy door open provided a much-needed release of annoyance. Slamming his feet into the concrete steps was pretty good, too. As he moved down them as quickly as he could, he tried to calm his mind. He considered himself to be a patient man. More than reasonable. Since the moment his partners had asked him to keep tabs on Nadine Stuart, however, both his patience and reason had been sorely tested. From her snippy comments and looks full of distaste to her need to call him by his title—Detective with a capital D—every time no one else was in earshot, yeah, she was definitely putting him about as close to the edge as he ever got. It was the whole reason he’d moved from keeping vigil inside her room to acting a glorified bodyguard outside of it instead.

      He kept reminding himself that she’d been through some tough things in the last little while. Things that could break a person. Losing her brother violently. Being thrust under the very dark microscope of Jesse Garibaldi—the same man who was responsible for his own father’s death fifteen years earlier.

      Jesse Garibaldi.

      Just thinking that man’s name was enough to make Anderson grit his teeth.

      Fifteen years, he and his three partners had been chasing the man. They’d finally found him holed up here in Whispering Woods.

      Holed up? No. That’s not quite right.

      The evil man wasn’t in hiding. He was in plain sight. Ruling the town through money. Using the people in it to further his own agenda.

      Anderson knew just what it felt like to be on the losing end of that particular stick. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Smart-mouthed Nadine Stuart included.

      Somehow, though, being forced to chase the woman through the medical center dulled his ability to be quite as sympathetic as he should be. What kind of person ran from help? She had to know unequivocally that Anderson wasn’t a threat. Hell. She was the only person in all of Whispering Woods who was fully aware of his agenda.