Sworn to Protect. Kimberly Van Meter

Mya’s brother and the tribal police officer, walked in, presumably to take her statement. She turned her head, groaning. Not Sundance. She couldn’t let him see her this way. “Not you,” she said, wanting to curl on her side but the pain prevented it. “Someone else.”

      “Iris, Sundance is the only officer on the rez, you know that. He’s here to help.”

      “Not him,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands. “Go away.”

      “Iris…” Mya tried again, her tone distressed, but Iris didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to get off that bed and run, and if she couldn’t run, she wanted to crawl. Iris felt herself folding in, anything to avoid telling Sundance what had happened to her, or rather, what she didn’t know had happened.

      Iris and Sundance had history—not romantic—but rather childhood history. Iris and Mya were best friends their entire lives, and so she’d known Sundance, as well. But they’d never been friends. And he’d never seen her as anything more than his little sister’s troublesome sidekick. That would’ve been fine, if she hadn’t awoken one morning with a completely different feeling about Sundance than she’d had before. Suddenly, she saw the man, not the overbearing, control freak that she’d always seen before.

      She’d gone to the bar in an attempt to get Sundance off her mind. She didn’t want to see Sundance as anything other than the annoying big brother of her best friend who lived to antagonize her. The fact that she’d begun to see him as a man had disconcerted her to the point of irrationality.

      A sob remained trapped in her throat. How had this happened? Her whole life had been tipped on end and it felt as though everything she held dear had fallen to shatter on the floor. How could she bear to look at herself in the mirror ever again? How could anyone else see anything aside from what had happened to her?

      “Iris…” The softness of his voice nearly undid her completely. “Tell me who did this so I can bring them to justice,” he urged.

      “I don’t know who did this,” she answered, wiping at the tear slipping down her cheek. “I don’t remember.”

      “Did you check for drugs?” he murmured to Mya.

      “Yes, we’ll do a tox screen with the blood and urine samples but they won’t be ready right away,” Mya answered. “We’ll screen for every known date rape drug. Ketamine, GHB, Rohypnol…if there’s anything in her system we’ll find it.”

      Iris closed her eyes, wishing she could block out their voices as they discussed her case. She knew both Mya and Sundance were doing their jobs but she couldn’t handle the routine just yet. “Please go away,” she whispered, meaning both of them. She turned to meet Mya’s questioning gaze. “I just want to be alone for a minute.”

      Mya nodded but the worry remained stationed in her eyes. “Okay, honey. Just a few minutes, though. I need to scrape underneath your fingernails still.”

      “Right,” Iris managed, but her vision blurred as more tears followed. Then Mya hustled Sundance from the room to give her the privacy she’d asked for.

      Her body ached and throbbed while her numbed brain wrestled with one question: Why?

      Sundance struggled to remain impartial, to stay cool but inside a white-hot poker of rage punctured his good intentions. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked, his jaw grinding on the words.

      “I think so,” Mya answered, wrapping her arms around herself. “What kind of monster does this?” she demanded in a harsh whisper so that her voice didn’t carry to Iris in the trauma room. “There’s not a piece of skin that doesn’t carry some kind of mark. It’s a miracle she’s alive, and honestly, I think that’s what this devil had in mind. When I think of how close she came to…” Mya shuddered. “I just get sick to my stomach.”

      Sundance understood his sister’s anguish. Seeing Iris—a woman he’d known his entire life and had most often found irritating, infuriating and intrusive—all tore up caused something inside him to roar like a wounded bear, swiping and snarling at anyone with the misfortune to get too close. And the reaction shocked him.

      “I’m going to have to question her,” he said, still processing his own reaction to the situation, trying to put it into perspective. Of course, he was bothered. It was his job to safeguard the tribe, to be the one to protect the people. To think there was someone on the reservation who could do this to one of their own… Sundance didn’t want to believe it. An outsider had to have done this. And he was going to find whoever it was and show him a little justice—American-Indian style.

      Mya hesitated, something plainly causing her to temper her tongue, and he furrowed his brow at her expression. “What’s wrong?”

      “It’s just that you and Iris…you haven’t always had the best track record with each other. I don’t know that she’ll open up to you. Maybe I could ask the questions for you.”

      “No, I have to ask them. I’m sorry but that’s procedure.” He understood Mya’s motivation and he didn’t fault her for it. His sister had a loving and protective heart, just one of the many reasons he thought the world of her. But he had a job to do. He met Mya’s eyes and gave her the most heartfelt assurance he could offer as he promised to be gentle. “I know we’ve had our differences, but I won’t let that get in the way of doing anything and everything I can to find whoever did this. I promise.”

      Mya searched his gaze and found truth. She exhaled and nodded. “I know you’ll do your best for Iris. I trust in you, my brother.”

      Sundance gave his sister a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder and then returned to the room where Iris remained curled in as close to a fetal position as her injuries would allow.

      Again that swell of rage welled inside him and he had to force it down. “Iris…”

      “Sundance, please, just go away,” she pleaded with him, eliciting a wince on his part for Iris had never, in her life, pleaded with anyone. She barreled, she cajoled, she went so far as to manipulate but she never begged. But she was doing it now, with him, and it nearly broke the grip he had on the gates holding everything in check.

      “You know I can’t do that. I can’t catch who did this unless you help me.”

      When she realized he wasn’t going anywhere she played with the swollen tissue on her bottom lip and stared at the floor. When she finally answered, it was without any emotion. “I don’t know anything. I told you, I can’t remember.”

      “Okay, let’s start from what you do remember,” he suggested softly, but she only squeezed her eyes shut and sealed her lips. “C’mon, let’s start from the beginning of the night. You remember that, right?”

      “Yes,” she answered, an edge returning to her voice. “But what does that matter? Remembering what I wore and what song I sang for karaoke isn’t going to tell me who managed to drag me from a bar full of people to some secluded place where the guy raped and beat me. So just go away, Sundance. I don’t…want to talk about this anymore.”

      That last part came out as a choked whisper and his hands tightened around his pen as she plainly locked him out for reasons he couldn’t really fathom.

      “Forget our troubles from the past, Iris. All I want to do is help you. We can do this together.” He tried again, coming at her from a different angle, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Her silence was answer enough.

      He swallowed a frustrated breath, not wanting to push, but needing to anyway. He felt rather than saw Mya hovering at the doorway and turned to find her standing there. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Iris,” he told her, giving her fair warning. As he passed Mya in the doorway, he murmured, “Try talking some sense into her, please. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

      Mya nodded but her expression was bleak. “I’ll do what I can…she’s so hurt, Sonny. I’ve never seen her so—”

      “I know,” he acknowledged