Caught in the Crossfire
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Nichole Severn
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HarlequinChapter One
Your husband is alive, Kate.
Blackhawk Security profiler Kate Monroe stared at her reflection in the broken picture frame on the floor. Had it really been an entire year? She hadn’t set foot in this house since the ambush, too traumatized to pull the bullets out of the walls, too sentimental to put it on the market. Everything had changed that night.
Tightening her grip on the manila folder in her hand, she couldn’t ignore the truth. Declan hadn’t died as she’d been told while recovering in the hospital from her own injuries. He’d survived. He’d disappeared. And he’d left her behind.
Glass crunched under her shoes, bringing her back into the moment, and the photo came into focus. Her and Declan dancing at their wedding, surrounded by smiling guests.
Burying the burn behind her sternum deeper, she stepped over the frame. Blackhawk’s private investigator had found proof—a timestamped photo—of Declan taken a month ago in downtown Anchorage. She’d stared at it for hours, picked it apart pixel by pixel to fight the anger and resentment bubbling up her throat. In vain. The photo was real. Declan was alive, and she deserved to know why he hadn’t come home.
There had to be something here that would lead her to his location. Setting the folder on what was left of the kitchen table, she fought back the memories of hundreds of dinners as she dragged her fingers over the bullet-riddled surface. She pulled out drawers in the kitchen, emptied the bookshelf beside the desk Declan had built for her, scattered old patient files across the carpet.
Bending to pick them up, Kate froze as the dark stains at her feet came into focus. Blood. Ice worked through her veins. She couldn’t think—couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes against the memories fighting to rush forward and forced herself to take a deep breath. She’d been a psychologist. She’d helped others through their trauma—their pain—why couldn’t she get past her own?
She traced over one mound of scar tissue below her collarbone, leaving the files where they fell. Swallowing against the tightness in her throat, she straightened. Gunshot wounds never healed. Not really. Six months since the last surgery, and the physical pain from three shots to the chest still lingered. Then again, she’d been lucky to survive at all. The gunman who’d opened fire on her and Declan hadn’t meant to leave anyone alive.
Movement registered off to her right and she automatically reached for the Glock in her shoulder holster. Depressing the safety tab, she took aim, heart in her throat. Blackhawk Security’s founder and CEO insisted his agents trained in wilderness survival, weapons, hostage negotiation, recovery and rescue and more, but she was a profiler. Not former military like Anthony. Not a former NSA consultant like Elizabeth. She’d never had use for a gun.
Her hands shook slightly as the weight of heavy steel threatened to pull her arms down. She’d never aimed her gun at another human being. “You’re trespassing on private property,” she said. “Come out with your hands where I can see them, and I promise not to shoot you.”
The house had been abandoned for a year. Wasn’t hard to imagine the homeless taking advantage of a roof over their heads, and she wasn’t interested in forcing them to leave if that was the case. The house wasn’t going anywhere. It took everything she had to stay here this long.
Shadows shifted across the intruder’s features, and her breath caught in her throat. Hints of moonlight highlighted the familiar shape of his stubbled jaw, his broad chest, muscled arms and short blond hair. Her heart beat hard as she stood there, unsure if he was real or a figment of her imagination.
He closed the distance between them slowly, cautiously, as though he believed she might actually shoot him. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes in the darkness but pictured the ice-blue depths clearly from memory as he stared back at her.
“It’s you.” She suppressed the sob clawing up her throat but couldn’t fight the burn against her lower lash line. Rushing forward, Kate wrapped her arms around his broad chest, his clean, masculine scent working deep into her lungs. A year. A year he’d put her through hell. The grief, the anger. Why hadn’t he reached out to her? Who had she buried all those months ago? Why wasn’t he hugging her back?
Clenching her teeth to keep the scream at bay, Kate backed off but didn’t holster the weapon. Why was he just standing there? “Say something.”
“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” That voice. His voice.
An electric sizzle caught her nerve endings on fire and exploded throughout her entire system. She never thought she’d hear that voice again.
Declan Monroe shifted closer, the weight of his gaze pressurizing the air in her lungs. “You don’t need the gun. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“That’s all you’re going to say to me?” It felt as if someone had driven a fist into her stomach. “You’ve been alive this whole time, and that’s all you’re going to say? They told me you died in that hospital. I—” The pain of that day, of losing her best friend, of losing the man she’d intended to spend the rest of her life with, the man she’d planned on starting a family with, surged to the surface. “I buried you.”
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.” He reached out, smoothed his fingertips down her jawline. Even with the ice of shock coursing through her, warmth penetrated deep into her bones, but his expression kept her from reveling in his missed touch.
Declan lowered his hand as he studied the aftermath in the living room. The bullet holes in the walls, the broken picture frames, the destroyed sectional and cushions. She didn’t have the guts to see what’d become of the rest of the house, a home that was once their safe haven from their dark careers. “Is this where it happened?”
Confusion gripped her hard, and Kate narrowed her eyes to see his face. “What do you mean—”
“I get these flashes sometimes. Of this house, of different things.” Declan motioned to his head, then his gaze locked back on her. “Mostly of you. Some days it’s glimpses, other times I can see you so clearly walking through that front door with stacks of files in your arms and a smile on your face. Like it was real.”
Her head jerked to the side of its own accord slightly as though she’d been slapped. Instinct screamed. This wasn’t right. She took a step back, the gun still in her hand.
“But I still don’t know your name,” he said.
Air rushed from her lungs. She struggled to keep upright as the world tilted on its axis.
Strong hands steadied her before she hit the bloodstained floor a second time, but the gun slipped from her hold. Leveraging her weight against the desk, she pushed back stray hairs that had escaped from the low bun at the base of her neck. She had to breathe. Her pulse beat hard at the base of her throat as his hand slipped down her spine.
How could he have forgotten her name? Every cell in her body rejected the idea her husband had been walking around Anchorage without the slightest clue he’d been married, had a life, had a job. Where had he been all this time?
“You okay?” He was still touching her. Even through the thick fabric of her cargo jacket, she’d recognize those familiar strokes. “I’ll get you some water.”
“No.” The city had probably turned off the water a long time ago. She’d been paying the mortgage on the house in addition to the rent on her small apartment, but utilities would’ve been a waste. Kate maneuvered out of his reach. “I’m fine. I...need some air.”
Lie. Nothing about the situation, about the fact the husband she’d lost was standing in front of her, was fine. Fresh air wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.
Space. She needed space. The home they’d shared for more than half a decade blurred in her peripheral vision as she headed for the front door. Debris and remnants of their life together threatened to trip her up, but she wouldn’t stop until there was at least two inches of door between them. Couldn’t.
The cold Alaskan night prickled goose bumps along her arms as she closed the door behind her. She set the crown of her head against the wood, pressing her shoulders into the door. One breath. Two. She kept counting until she mentally reached ten.
None of this made sense. His surgeon had told her Declan hadn’t survived the shooting. That he’d done everything he could to save her husband, but nothing worked. Declan had lost too much blood, the bullets had torn through major arteries and nobody could’ve saved him.
No wonder he’d suggested she take the time to heal from her own wounds before identifying the body. It hadn’t been to save her from seeing her husband on a slab. It’d been to cover his mistake. By the time she’d had the strength to get out of that damn bed, it’d been too late. The hospital had released who she thought had been her husband into her custody, and Declan’s former partner had taken responsibility for all of the funeral arrangements. Had anyone but the surgeon known her husband hadn’t been inside that coffin?
The surgeon had lied. Why?
She swiped at her face as the tears finally fell. Declan didn’t know her name?
Tires screeched on asphalt a few houses down. Headlights flared to life, but she couldn’t see the driver through the truck’s windshield. Probably one of the neighbor’s teenagers. It’d been so long since she’d lived on this street, she didn’t know who had moved away after the shooting, her new neighbors’ names or if any of them had kids old enough to drive.
Wasn’t important. Staying calm long enough to assess the situation, that was all that mattered now. The engine revved loud in her ears as the faint outline of the passenger-side window lowered.
The door supporting her disappeared, and strong hands pulled her inside a split second before the first bullet of many shattered through the house’s main window. Kate hit the floor hard, her head snapping back as Declan returned fire. She checked her holster—empty—and recognized the gun in his hand. Her Glock.
The sound of pealing tires faded, and the gunfire ceased.
Declan barricaded them inside the house, his back to the front door as he dropped the gun’s magazine, counted the rounds left and slammed it back into place. Apparently there were some things amnesia couldn’t destroy, loading a weapon being one of them.
Light blue eyes settled on her as he offered her his hand. Calluses slid against her palms as he wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her into him. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m getting tired of people shooting at me.” Her awareness of him hiked to an all-time high. The pounding of his heartbeat against her palm, the pressure of his attention on her. Even the way he held her took a bit of the strength out of her knees.
She shook her head and stepped out of his reach to counteract the heat rising in her neck. He’d saved her life. The least she could do was help him recover his. “It’s Kate, by the way. My name is Kate.”
KATE.
That name was perfect for the blonde beauty with the shadows in her gaze. Striking green eyes, eyes that had haunted his memories for over a year, narrowed in on him. Thinner than he remembered from his memory’s brief flashes of her, she shook his insides like the earthquake that hit Japan and brought down the nuclear reactors, leaving him breathless and full at the same time. A T-shirt and jeans hugged her athletic form, her frame hidden by an oversized green cargo jacket. But he knew every curve, every scar, every valley and ridge of muscle from memory.
The realization he hadn’t gone crazy after waking up alone in a hospital room settled his nerves. He hadn’t imagined her. Hadn’t imagined this house. From what he’d been able to tell, they’d lived here. Together.
The real-life sight of her was enough to help him forget he’d just taken a bullet.
He let go of the gun, the crash of metal on hardwood loud in his ears, as his strength drained drop by drop. The driver had fishtailed out of the neighborhood a few seconds ago. No telling if that bastard would circle around for another shot at her, but adrenaline was already leaving his system. He was losing blood. Fast.
“Declan?” Those mesmerizing green eyes shot to his side as his shirt soaked through. “You’ve been shot.”
Declan Monroe. That was his name. Not the one he’d adopted over the last year.
Her attention dulled the pain in his side. He’d find the SOB who’d taken a shot at her. He couldn’t remember a damn thing about his life before waking up in that hospital bed, but he’d remembered her. She was important enough for his brain to hang on to, and he’d sure as hell do what he had to to keep her safe.
Blood spread across his T-shirt faster than he thought possible. “Isn’t that supposed to stay inside my body?”
“Bullets tend to have other ideas. Lie down. I need to look at the wound,” she said.
So levelheaded. So rational. She’d been shot at and now had to inspect a bullet wound. How was she able to keep this calm?
He clamped a hand over his side and stumbled as the pain reared its ugly head, but Kate kept him from collapsing to the floor when the dizziness took control. Her fingers brushed against his oversensitive skin, and a jolt of awareness chased the nerves up his arm and into his chest. The flashlight from her phone blinded him. Swiping her tongue across her bottom lip as she knelt beside him, she holstered the weapon without meeting his gaze. Had she felt it, too? The invisible pull urging him to touch her?
Lifting his shirt, she paused. “I need some hydrogen peroxide and towels to see past the blood. Don’t move.”
It’d taken him a year to get here, inside this house, to her. He wasn’t going to lose her now. He forced himself to straighten. “No. That shooter could come back any minute to make sure he’s finished the job. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Big words from the man bleeding out on my floor. You’re not going anywhere. At least, not until I see how bad it is.” Setting her hand over his chest, she pushed him flat onto the floor. Kate disappeared from his side, everything inside of him aware of the space between them.
He focused on the sound of shifting debris and the slamming of cabinets to distract himself. In less than a minute, she crouched beside him with a stack of towels and a bottle of whiskey. “This is all I could find. If you move, you’re going to wish you were really were dead.”
I buried you. Her words echoed through his head.
“You know what happened to me.” None of the flashbacks had revealed that particular memory. Before she stepped foot in the house, he’d gone through most of the paperwork stashed in the desk for leads, each folder detailing therapy notes by Dr. Kate Monroe, a psychologist. He’d studied the holes in the walls, the broken picture frames, the destroyed personal effects. But nothing had triggered another memory.
“You were ambushed.” After dousing her hands in the whiskey, she prodded at the sides of the bullet wound. Her fingers feathered over his skin, cooling the fire spreading through his pain receptors. “One of my patients became obsessed with me, and when he discovered he couldn’t have me, he decided no one should. You were caught in the cross fire.”
“There are pictures of us together. I remember you.” He hissed as she poured the alcohol over the hole in his side. Stinging agony rippled through him, and he fought to catch his breath. He might’ve been shot, but he’d gone an entire year without knowing who he was, where he came from, who he’d left behind. “Who am I to you?”
Using one of the towels she collected from the kitchen, she applied pressure to the wound. Still refusing to look at him. She reached for another towel. “We can’t stop the bleeding while the bullet is inside. We need to get you to a hospital.”
Anxiety accelerated his pulse. The last hospital he’d set foot inside had kept him fully stocked with enough nightmare material to last him a lifetime. Waking up alone. Four holes in his body. Not knowing who he was. There was no way in hell he was going back for another round.
“No hospitals.” Declan wrapped one hand onto her forearm, and her attention snapped to his. His heart rate slowed, the pain disappearing as time seemingly stood still. He noted the slight change in her expression, the furrow between her brows deeper than a moment ago. He blinked to counteract the darkness closing in around the edges of his vision. “You have to get the bullet out.”
“I’m a profiler for a security firm.” She tried pulling out of his grip, but he only held her tighter. The tension between her neck and shoulders visibly strained. “I never went to medical school. I’m not a trained medical doctor—”
“I trust you, Kate.” And he meant it. Every word. Because even though he’d lost his memories from before he woke up in that hospital bed alone, something deep inside knew her as well as his body knew how to breathe. He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t need a reason why or how. She’d left enough of an impression that his own brain couldn’t get rid of her as it had everything else, and he wasn’t about to give that up. Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding how he’d ended up in that hospital in the first place. “You can do this.”
She studied him. “Blackhawk Security has a doctor on staff. She can help—”
“No.” He growled. “It has to be you.”
“Remember that when you bleed out all over the floor.” The tightness drained from her shoulders as she shifted her weight between both knees. She swiped the back of her hand across her face. “Okay. If we’re going to do this, I need to find something sharp enough to widen the wound so I can extract the bullet. Hopefully, it’s still in one piece.”
He set his jaw against another surge of pain and replaced her hand with his own for pressure to slow the bleeding. She disappeared deeper into the house.
His heart pounded loud behind his ears, a slow, rhythmic beat that made his eardrums ache. The seconds ticked by, maybe a minute. They were running out of time.
When she came back, her phone’s flashlight beam highlighted her supplies beside him. He used every last bit of strength to focus on her as she gently removed the towel.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
He nodded, quick and curt, the words stuck in his throat with the weight of pain squeezing the air in his lungs.
“Okay. Then no matter what happens,” she said, “I need you to hold still.”
Sirens echoed. One of the neighbors must’ve called the police. Cops meant ambulances, questions he couldn’t answer and hospitals.
“What’s one more scar, right?” She was trying to distract him, keep him focused on the present when all he wanted to do was compare the woman in front of him to the memories in his head. He’d noticed his own scars, of course, the mounds of tissue peppered across his abdominals, and from the slight dip of her neckline, he recognized a similar mass peeking out from beneath her shirt. Did that mean...
“Declan?” she asked.
“Who did that to you?” Rage—pure and hot—engulfed him, pushed the fact that someone had put a hole in him to the back of his mind. Someone had shot her. Too fast, too hard, the crack in his control started to spread as he imagined her lying in one of those bloodstains on the carpet in the dining room. Who the hell shot her? He’d tear them apart with his bare hands. He’d find the bastard and make him pay, just as he’d find the one who’d tried a few minutes ago.
Another dose of adrenaline and pain drove him to try to sit up. A dangerous combination with a gunshot wound. The quicker his heart beat, the quicker he’d bleed out.
“Declan, you have to stay still.” Setting her palms against him, she struggled to keep him in place. “The bullet is too deep. If I keep digging, I could permanently damage something or kill you, and I’m not willing to take either of those chances. We have to get you to the hos—”
“No hospitals.” Black spiderwebs snaked across his vision, and suddenly he didn’t have the strength to keep himself upright. He collapsed back against the tile. Damn it. He’d lost too much blood.
“Fine, but you need a doctor. Blackhawk Security keeps one on site.” Dim lighting illuminated her face as she raised her phone to her ear, and he blinked against the sudden brightness of her phone’s screen. Her exhale brushed across his neck as she smoothed her hand across his forehead. “Anthony, track my location. I need an evacuation. Adult male, gunshot wound to the left side. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
No emotion in her voice or on her expression. Too clinical. Too rational. That wasn’t the woman he remembered. Or had the flashbacks of her been a lie all this time?
“ETA?” Kate nodded, that brilliant green gaze he’d dreamed about for months centering on him. “See you in ten minutes.”
“You never answered my question from before.” He closed his eyes for a moment. Forget the bullet. There was only one thing that mattered. He leveraged his heels into the floor and forced himself to sit straighter against the front door. Pressure released on the wound, and he could breathe a bit easier. His fingertips tingled with the urge to touch her, but a hollowness had set up residence in his gut at the sound of her emotionless conversation with someone named Anthony. Maybe they hadn’t been as close as he thought after all? Maybe he’d imagined everything. “Who am I to you?”
Kate wiped the back of her hand across her forehead again. A nervous habit?
“Everything that happened the night you died was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t take his threats seriously. I didn’t think he’d—” The flashlight from her phone streaked across her face as she turned her phone over in her free hand. And there it was. A chink in that self-controlled armor. “My patient came to the house that night because you’re—you were—my husband.”
