Sworn to Protect. Kimberly Van Meter

it.”

      Her eyes were dry but when he met her gaze he felt waves of grief and shame rolling over him and it made him want to put his fist through the wall. “I’ll be fine,” she said, nodding.

      “Stop saying that,” he bit out. “Damn it, Iris, you’re not fine. You’re punishing yourself by barricading yourself up in this house like some kind of communicable disease. It wasn’t your fault. Whoever did this is scum, not you. Help me catch this son of a bitch before he does it to someone else.”

      “I don’t remember,” she whispered, shaking her head in a pathetic, scared little rabbit motion that tore at his heart. “I don’t remember…I can’t help anyone.” She pulled the lapels tighter around her body as she began to shudder. “There’s a big white spot in my memory and I don’t think I want to remember. What if he’s someone I know? What if he’s watching me all the time, waiting to do it again?”

      “That’s not going to happen,” he said, fighting to keep the growl from his voice. “We’re going to catch him.”

      “You don’t know that.”

      “I know that I won’t stop until I do.”

      She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t help you. I wish I could. I can’t remember. It’s safer if I stay in the house. He might know where I work. He might follow me. If I stay here…he won’t find me.”

      He wasn’t angry with her but seeing her so broken, so torn apart mentally, it awoke a rage so fierce that he wanted to break things for her sake. But he couldn’t do that, not when he needed to keep a calm head in order to catch whoever did this, not when he needed to be the one person in Iris’s life to keep her focused and moving forward so that she could get through this. He didn’t know why he knew he was the one for the job but he accepted it as he accepted all his responsibilities. He walked slowly to Iris even as she kept her eyes screwed shut. He could see her body quivering through the robe and he didn’t know if it was caused by cold or fear. He lowered himself beside her, taking care not to crowd her but close enough to let her know he was there. He’d never been one to coddle people, never been accused of being much of a nurturer. But here, now, he wished he had more of those qualities. He felt ill-equipped to deal with this kind of emotional trauma but he couldn’t leave her this way either. They sat in silence for a long while until Sundance recalled a memory from their childhood in the hopes of distracting her.

      “Remember that time you hid a dead crawdad in my room and I couldn’t find it for weeks?” He smiled at the memory, remembering how bad his room had smelled before he’d found it tucked under his bed. “I’d known it was you even though you denied it. Even swore on your mother’s life that it wasn’t you. I wanted to kill you for that one.” But Mya had pointed out that if he hadn’t embarrassed Iris by snapping her bra in front of everyone during lunch recess, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to seek revenge. He’d grudgingly let that one slide. But there were countless other times when Iris had been the aggressor, the one who’d purposefully gone out of her way to make his life miserable for the simple pleasure of watching his blood pressure rise. He never thought he’d miss that Iris. But sitting here with that woman’s shell was almost too difficult to bear.

      “Why are you here?” she whispered.

      “Because someone has to be.” He looked her over with a clinical eye. There was no hiding the fatigue that bracketed her eyes, the sallow skin that usually glowed with health and vitality. “When was the last time you slept?”

      The minute shake of her head told him she couldn’t remember. “He’s out there. Every time I close my eyes he’s there, watching me. Waiting.”

      “I’m here.” No one was going to touch her. He’d make sure of it. He felt pressure against his biceps as she tentatively laid her head against him. “No one’s going to touch you.”

      “So scared…” she admitted in a tight, barely audible voice. “So tired…”

      “Then sleep,” he instructed softly.

      She settled and, after a moment, her breathing became deep and he knew she’d fallen asleep. Pure exhaustion had won out.

      Rising carefully, he maneuvered her into his arms and lifted her to the bed. With her eyes closed in sleep, lush lashes resting against her cheeks, and a full mouth that, until recently, he’d always teased her about, calling her fish lips, he found her features familiar yet foreign. Her hair, still wet from the shower, hung down his arm in a fall of black waves that shone like the liquid surface of a lake under the moon’s glow. He placed her on the bed and carefully pulled the blankets over her. Satisfied she was warm enough, he went to the window and closed it, not wanting her to catch a chill for the sake of fresh air.

      He couldn’t bring himself to leave, not until he knew she’d at least slept a full eight hours and eaten a decent meal. If that meant he had to stay until that was accomplished, so be it.

      The road to recovery was long, but she wasn’t alone. He just had to remind her of that fact.

      Iris remembered laughing, enjoying a drink at the bar. The music had been loud and the lights dim. She remembered returning a smile, thinking the guy was good-looking and an excellent specimen for her objective, which had been to get Sundance off her mind. She didn’t want to be attracted to her best friend’s older brother. She’d known him her entire life, so why now? It was as if a light had been turned on in her head and suddenly she was seeing him in a completely different way. She’d never noticed his lean hips and wide shoulders or the way his mouth gentled when he let his guard down and actually smiled. No, she absolutely hadn’t noticed those things. Thank God. Like life wasn’t complicated enough?

      And yet…

      So Operation Distract Yourself had been going well.

      In her dream state, memory and fiction blended together to create a nightmarish landscape. Soon, the music blared to the point of creating pain in her ears. The lights strobed in dizzying seizure-inducing patterns and the sudden touch on her arm as she was pulled from the bar seemed welcome at first.

      But then the grip tightened like a vise and agony radiated through her body as the hand that had seemed friendly became aggressive and demanding. Her vision was fuzzy and unfocused. She couldn’t make out his features but she was nauseated by the blend of malice and excitement washing over her. Hands grabbing, punching, violating…

      She slapped at the phantom attacker, a scream caught in her throat, trapped and useless, until the scene shifted with a slow slide to endless black that was somehow less frightening and even soothing.

      At least when she was drifting in midnight, no one was hurting her.

      Chapter 4

      Mya, on break between patients at the clinic, peppered him with questions.

      “How’d she seem?” she asked, frowning as if she already knew the answer, which she probably did, and just wanted Sundance to confirm or deny. “She’s having a rough time still, isn’t she?”

      “Yeah, you could say that,” he answered drily, still troubled over Iris’s departure from the human race. “She’s totally cut herself off from everyone and it’s not healthy. You of all people should know that. Mya…why haven’t you tried to coax her out?” Mya affected a wounded expression and tears welled in her eyes, making him realize he’d totally bungled that one and he tried to make amends. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s coming out of my mouth. The situation has got me all tied up in knots.”

      She rested her hand on his shoulder. “I know. And trust me, I tried. She won’t listen and I’m afraid to push her too hard. As a doctor I can be clinical about certain things but she’s my best friend and more like a sister. I can’t seem to separate my feelings. Any leads on who did this?”

      “No,” he admitted, frustrated. “But I don’t have much to go on with Iris’s memory of the event compromised. Have the toxicology reports come