Guarding His Witness. Lisa Childs

      Sure, she would rather not have him as her bodyguard. But after the shooting, she knew she needed one. Probably more than one. Maybe she shouldn’t have had him lose the Payne Protection SUV that had been following them.

      Before Clint could beckon for her again, she walked over to the stretcher on which he was sitting. The resident glanced over at her. “Where’d you find this guy, Rosie?”

      “What—why?” she stammered. She hadn’t found him; he had found her. Well, first he’d found Javier. While he’d taken her out of danger, he’d put her brother in it.

      And no matter how damn good-looking he was, she couldn’t forget or forgive that.

      “He’s some kind of superman,” the young doctor remarked in awe. “He refused to take any kind of painkiller, just a local anesthetic. There’s no way his shoulder is even numb yet, but he insisted I start stitching him up because he’s in a hurry to get out of here.”

      “Can’t you see why?” Clint asked him as he grinned at Rosie.

      And her traitorous heart skipped a beat as her pulse began to race. Damn him for being so good-looking...

      The resident’s face flushed, and he stammered now. “Uh, yeah.”

      “So that looks good enough, Doc,” Clint said, even though the resident was still suturing.

      “You need a few more to close up the wound completely,” the resident insisted.

      But Clint was already pulling away.

      “Let him finish,” she told him through the smile she forced herself to hang on to.

      “But sweetheart,” Clint said, “we have plans, and we don’t want to keep our friends waiting.”

      “Friends...” Who the hell was he talking about?

      He was looking beyond her now. Had those other bodyguards followed them after all? She glanced behind her and noticed a couple of teenagers. They were definitely not Payne Protection bodyguards.

      Why was Clint staring at them? Did he think they were some of Luther’s crew?

      He must have, because he used his free hand to tug her into the space with him. Then he told her, “Pull that curtain, honey.”

      The resident glanced nervously from one to the other of them. “Really, Mr. Quarters—”

      “Clint.” He corrected him as if he’d done it before. “And really, this is good enough.” But he didn’t wait for the young doctor to finish. Using his right hand, he grabbed the scissors from the suture tray and clipped off the thread and needle himself.

      “And I don’t suppose you want a prescription for painkillers?” the resident asked.

      “No thanks,” Clint told him.

      The young doctor sighed and murmured. “Badass.”

      Why was it that Clint Quarters inspired such hero worship in young men? What was it about him? That he was tough? That he was fearless?

      But he wasn’t really. She’d seen fear on his face right before she’d walked into that room with Parker Payne and the chief of police.

      And she saw it now as he reached for his shirt. “We need to get out of here.”

      “Have fun,” the resident said as he slipped away.

      “What’s wrong?” she asked.

      “Those guys out there...”

      “The teenagers?”

      “They work for Luther.”

      “Are you sure?” she asked. “Or are you just being paranoid?” Like she’d been when Anita had questioned her.

      “I’m being realistic,” Clint said. “And it’s time that you were, too. Did you really think Luther Mills would let you live to testify against him when he has never let anyone else?”

      That was why he’d killed Javier—because her brother had been going to testify that Luther Mills was a major drug dealer.

      Clint shook his head. “I’m surprised it took him this long to go after you.”

      She knew Luther had always had a thing for her, since they were kids in elementary school. Maybe that was why no one had ever hassled her growing up. But that had all changed now that he’d ordered the hit on her.

      She glanced around the edge of the curtain. Neither of those teenagers looked hurt. They had no reason for being in the ER—except that they were probably looking for her.

      “We need to get out of here,” Clint said.

      And this time she didn’t argue with him. She knew she was in danger. And because of her, they had no backup.

      * * *

      Clint was glad he’d finally gotten through to Rosie. She took him the back way out of the ER, through the employees’ locker room. Once inside the stark white-tiled room, he riffled in some of the open lockers, taking only the things that would aid in their escape.

      “You can’t do that!” she cried out in protest of his petty thefts as she glanced nervously at the door.

      “I can guarantee that Luther sent more than a couple of teenagers out to look for you,” he said. “We need to disguise ourselves in case more of his crew is waiting outside the hospital for you.”

      She opened her mouth, as if to argue some more. But he unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them.

      And all she did was gasp.

      It wasn’t like he’d stripped down entirely in front of her. He wore boxers beneath his jeans. He stepped into the scrub pants and pulled them up, tying them low on his waist. They were too loose for him to tuck his weapon into the back of them, like he usually did with his jeans.

      But he hadn’t smuggled his Glock into the hospital that way. He’d carried it in a pocket of his leather bomber jacket. But in case any of the shooters from her apartment were here, he needed to change his look. He needed to ditch his torn jacket. He grabbed a white doctor’s coat from another open locker and dropped his gun into the deep pocket of that before pulling it over the scrub shirt he already wore. A nurse, not Rosie, had had to cut off his torn and bloodied T-shirt.

      “You can’t—” she began again in protest.

      “I have to,” he interrupted.

      Then he found her a parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Before they opened the back door that led out to the parking lot, he pulled the hood over her head. While he kept one hand in the deep pocket of that white jacket, wrapped around his weapon, he slid his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side.

      She tensed against him and whispered, “What the hell are you doing?”

      “My job,” he said. But he might have been enjoying her closeness a little too much. She smelled good—like vanilla and some other spice.

      “What?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear as she peered around them. “Do you see someone out here?”

      The employee parking lot was dimly lit, so Clint couldn’t see much. “No,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not out here, watching us.”

      She looked up into his face, and her dark eyes were narrowed.

      “If they’re looking for you,” he said, and he sincerely believed that they had been, “they’re going to be checking out the employee parking lot.”

      She tried to wriggle out from beneath his arm. “But until we see someone, we don’t need to act like...”

      “Like lovers,” he finished for her.

      And she shuddered, probably in revulsion.

      He