LITMIR.BIZ

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he was making a commitment to keep her safe until he could hand her over to the police. It was a commitment he was willing to make for Jamie’s sake. Matthew’s mother had been his saving grace growing up without a father. He sensed Rochelle possessed the same maternal strength. Without at least one parent, Jamie didn’t have any kind of a shot. Matthew couldn’t let that happen to a child when he had the power to prevent it.

      Her shoulders drooped, and she turned back toward him, nearly falling into his arms. He lowered her into the chair. At the door, he peered up and down the hall. When he saw Blondie lean in to check a room a few doors down, he pushed the chair into the hallway. He quickened his pace but not so much as to call attention to himself.

      “It’s him, isn’t it?” Rochelle’s voice came out in a harsh whisper as she bent her head down so her long brown hair hid her face.

      Matthew spoke under his breath. “He’s behind me. He can’t see you, and he doesn’t know who I am.” Matthew slipped into a supply closet and pulled his phone off his belt. He dialed the police station. “I need to talk to a police officer.”

      A crisp female voice came on the line. “This is Officer Bridget O’Connor. How can I help you?”

      “Listen, this is Matthew Stewart over at the hospital. I’ve got a woman who needs to be hospitalized, and I believe there is a physical threat against her. She was assaulted earlier today at her home and now there is a different guy searching the hospital for her.”

      “We can send an officer over to talk with her and take it from there,” said Officer O’Connor.

      “That sounds good. If he could meet us by Admitting, that would be great.”

      He hung up the phone.

      Rochelle looked up at him in earnest. “He’s going to meet us here?”

      He was struck by how helpless she seemed sitting in the wheelchair. “We’ll be in Admitting. There’s lots of people around. I’ll stay with you until we’re sure you have the protection you need or that guy is taken into custody.”

      “But that man hasn’t technically done anything to me, and he’s not the real problem,” she said.

      “Maybe, but they can stop him and question him. And you can at least give them the description of the guy who grabbed you at your house, the one with the scar.”

      “What if the police say that there is no reason to provide protection?” Her voice filled with anxiety. “Taking those two men into custody won’t make it stop. There is a different man behind all of this.”

      Again, he wondered exactly what she was up against. She looked as though she might cry. Compassion flooded through him. Lindy the nurse was wrong. He didn’t have a rescue complex. Rochelle needed his help. He couldn’t abandon her and that kid now. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Let’s see what the police say. I’ll stay with you until we get this taken care of. You need to focus on your recovery.”

      She looked up at him for a long moment, probably trying to figure out why he was going to all this trouble. “Can I have your phone so I can call my son? I need to know that he’s okay at my friend’s house.”

      He placed the phone in her hand, opened the door to the supply closet and backed the wheelchair out. “Everything is going to be all right. I’ll see to it that you get well so you can take care of that kid of yours. It would help if you told me why these men are after you—”

      Matthew heard the thud of a single footstep. The blow to the back of his head caused an explosion in his brain. The last thing he heard as his cheek collided with the floor was Rochelle’s anguished scream.

       THREE

      “You’re coming with me, lady.”

      The blond thug jerked her up out of the wheelchair, making her dizzy from the pain. There were no other people in the hallway. The empty nurses’ station suggested the wing might be unused. Panic washed over her like a wave.

      Rochelle did not have the strength to resist the man as he dragged her toward the exit. She turned to stare down at Matthew, who had already begun to stir. “Who are you?”

      “Look, lady, I was hired by a man. I’m supposed to take you to him.”

      “The man you work for is a bad man. He wants to kill me.” She tried to pull her arm free, causing her to drop Matthew’s phone. The thug kicked the phone down the hall out of view. Pain sliced through her torso like a thousand tiny knifes.

      “That’s not true.” Blondie squeezed her good arm tighter. “Just come on. He said you’d be resistant. He only wants to talk.”

      She doubted Elwood only wanted to chat. Why go to all this trouble for a conversation? The only thing Corben wanted from her was her silence, and the only way he could get that would be to murder her. It seemed odd, though. If Corben wanted her dead, why not hire someone to kill her outright?

      With a grip like iron on her upper arm, Blondie pushed her toward the exit. Any resistance she put up only caused more discomfort and made her light-headed. He led her out a side door into the employee parking lot, which unfortunately was empty. He shoved her into the back of the car. She laid her head against the leather seat. The pain had grown so intense she was having a hard time focusing let alone moving.

      He grabbed her uninjured arm and pushed it upward toward the one in the sling. He pulled a piece of wire from his back pocket and secured her hands together with the insides of the wrists touching each other. She glanced around hoping, praying, that someone had seen them. He placed a blindfold over her eyes and then pushed on her shoulder. “Now get down.”

      The thug got into the front seat and sped off through the parking lot. Any hope that Matthew would recover fast enough to help her faded. He’d already done more than any stranger should have and for that she was grateful. But now she was on her own.

      Her captor swerved through traffic and then picked up speed. They must be headed out of town. She tried to push herself up, but when the pain intensified, she collapsed onto the seat. Her heart raced as fear surrounded her every thought.

      This was it then. She wouldn’t see Jamie again. He was all that mattered to her. Jamie had guardians, a nice couple from her church. She’d made the legal arrangements shortly after he was born. He’d be loved and taken care of, but she wouldn’t be with him. Images of her son as a baby and a toddler flashed through her mind. Her eyes warmed with tears. He was her whole life.

      She slipped in and out of consciousness, uncertain how much time had passed. At one point, the noise the tires made indicated that the road had changed from paved to dirt. The car came to a stop, and she heard the driver’s-side door open. She struggled to push herself up, but putting any kind of pressure on her injured arm was excruciating.

      The back door opened. She assumed it was the thug until she heard a soft tenor voice. “Rochelle, it’s me.” Matthew slipped the blindfold off her.

      She stared into the deep brown of his eyes, and gratitude washed over her.

      He tugged on the sleeve of her good arm. “He’s making a phone call. Sounds like he’s lost and getting directions. Crawl out this way so he doesn’t see you.”

      She inched across the seat, careful to keep her head down. Matthew’s courage amazed her. If it wasn’t for him, Elwood might have a gun to her head right now. She slipped out of the car and crouched, taking in her surroundings. The sky had turned dark gray with the promise of evening less than half an hour away. They were on a country road. Elwood must have rented a secluded cabin somewhere. The thug continued to talk on the phone and look out at his surroundings, probably trying to assess where he was.

      Matthew pulled her into the cover of the trees and then quickly untwisted the wire that bound her hands together. “My car is down the road. I turned around when I saw he’d stopped.”

      Twenty feet

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