Chapter 1 - The Man Nobody Dared to Touch
Nobody wanted to get close to Rafe Calder after the shooting.
Not the paramedics.
Not the hotel staff.
Not even the armed men surrounding him.
Then I walked straight up to the six-foot-six man everyone in Boston seemed terrified of, planted my hand against the center of his chest, and told him one word.
“Sit.”
For one strange second, the entire entrance of the Grand Hawthorne Hotel went silent.
The first paramedic had already tried.
“Mr. Calder, you need to sit down.”
Rafe had barely looked at him.
At nearly three hundred pounds, most of it muscle, Rafe Calder had the kind of presence that made rooms rearrange themselves around him. People straightened when he entered. Conversations stopped. Strangers somehow remembered appointments on the opposite side of town.
I knew his name.
Everybody in Boston knew his name.
Half the newspapers called him a businessman.
The other half used less flattering descriptions.
None of that mattered to me.
Blood had soaked through the right side of his white dress shirt, and underneath all that money, power, reputation, and muscle, the human body followed the same rules.
Lose enough blood and everybody falls.
Twenty feet away, his younger sister June sat against the rear tire of a black SUV while another medic examined a shallow cut near her forehead.
“Rafe, I’m fine,” she called.
His attention snapped toward her.
“You were ten feet from gunfire.”
“So were you.”
“I noticed.”
That was when I pushed through the circle of suited men carrying my trauma bag.
Four years as a combat nurse overseas had given me an unfortunate intolerance for dramatic men refusing medical treatment.
“Everybody stop moving.”
One of Rafe’s security men stepped into my path.
He was broad, shaved head, expensive suit, expression that suggested smiling had never interested him.
His hand hovered near his jacket.
“Back up.”
I looked at his hand.
Then his face.
“If you pull a weapon in my treatment area, I leave.”
His eyebrows moved.
Barely.
I pointed at Rafe.
“Then your boss can explain to the emergency room why he lost half his blood volume because you scared off the person trying to keep him alive.”
June laughed.
Actually laughed.
The guard looked deeply offended by that.
Rafe looked at him.
“Move, Malcolm.”
Malcolm stepped aside.
I approached Rafe.
No hesitation.
No nervous smile.
I looked at the stain spreading across his shirt.
“Sit.”
Rafe stared down at me.
Around us, six men became completely motionless.
“You know who I am?” he asked.
I opened my trauma bag.
“Right now?”
I pulled out trauma shears.
“You’re approximately two hundred eighty pounds of patient making my job harder.”
June laughed again.
Malcolm coughed into his fist.
To everybody’s surprise, Rafe sat on the rear step of the ambulance.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That wasn’t gratitude.”
“I know.”
I cut through the damaged section of his shirt.
When the fabric tugged near the injury, Rafe’s hand suddenly closed around my wrist.
Every guard moved.
I didn’t.
My eyes dropped to his fingers around my wrist and then lifted slowly toward his face.
“If you’re going to stop me, stop me.”
His gray eyes narrowed.
“If not, let go.”
He released me instantly.
“Good choice.”
Something flickered in his expression.
Not anger.
Surprise.
“You always talk to armed men like this?”
“Only the ones bleeding on my shoes.”
June covered her mouth.
I pressed clean gauze against the wound and examined the injury as quickly as possible.
The bullet had passed through without lodging in his chest.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that he was still bleeding.
“Through and through,” I said. “You got lucky.”
“I don’t believe in luck.”
“Then believe in anatomy.”
A vehicle suddenly accelerated somewhere beyond the corner of Arlington Street.
Rafe changed instantly.
His shoulders tightened.
Eyes sharpened.
“Malcolm.”
“Already covered.”
Two men repositioned without needing another command.
No shouting.
No confusion.
No wasted motion.
That was the first moment I understood why dangerous men followed Rafe Calder.
His power wasn’t loud.
It was efficient.
Rafe started to stand.
I put my palm flat against his chest.
“Sit.”
He froze.
Not because I could physically stop him.
I couldn’t.
Trying to wrestle Rafe Calder into a chair would have been like arguing with a refrigerator.
But something in my tone reached him.
His eyes dropped briefly toward my hand.
Then back to mine.
“Dizzy?” I asked.
“No.”
“More pain?”
“No.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
His gaze remained fixed on me.
“Nothing.”
“Excellent. Sit.”
He sat.
I started a line while the paramedic monitored his pressure.
“You’re going to the hospital.”
“No.”
I looked up.
“That wasn’t a survey.”
“My sister goes first.”
“She’s stable.”
“I’m staying until she leaves.”
I lowered my voice so the men around us couldn’t hear.
“She needs to see you survive more than those men need to see you standing.”
That reached him.
Rafe looked toward June.
For the first time that night, the feared man disappeared.
He was simply an older brother staring at his little sister.
“Fine,” he said.
Inside the ambulance, he immediately turned the compartment into a command center.
“June doesn’t leave without Malcolm. Lock down the hotel cameras. Nobody questions staff until we know who fired first.”
I grabbed his arm.
“Hold still.”
He ignored me.
“Get the guest list and—”
“Rafe.”
His eyes shifted toward me.
“You move that arm again, I restart this IV.”
The ambulance went silent.
Malcolm turned his face toward the window.
I was almost certain he was hiding a smile.
I secured the line.
“Thank you.”
Rafe stared at me.
“You threaten all your patients?”
“Only the difficult ones.”
“Do you know what usually happens when somebody threatens me?”
“No.”
“You don’t want to know?”
“Not particularly.”
That seemed to disturb him more than fear would have.
We started moving toward Massachusetts General.
June followed in another ambulance.
For three minutes, everything remained controlled.
Then Rafe’s blood pressure dropped.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
His face lost color.
His eyes closed for half a second too long.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m awake.”
“Then open your eyes.”
He did.
“How long were you overseas?” he asked.
The question surprised me.
“Four years.”
“Combat hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Which explains the attitude.”
“No. My mother explains the attitude.”
The faintest hint of amusement touched his mouth.
Then he winced.
I checked the dressing.
Still controlled.
“You’re going to be fine.”
“People always say that when they don’t know.”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
His eyes studied me differently after that.
Not as medical staff.
As a person.
“What’s your name?”
“Mara Vance.”
“Mara.”
The way he repeated it made the cramped ambulance suddenly feel smaller.
Before I could respond, Malcolm’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?”
Rafe straightened.
I pushed him back.
“What happened?”
Malcolm looked at him.
“The hotel camera system was wiped.”
Rafe’s face hardened.
“All of it?”
“No.”
Malcolm looked toward me, then back at Rafe.
“Only eleven minutes.”
“What eleven minutes?”
“The shooting.”
Silence.
Rafe’s jaw tightened.
“That means access.”
“Yes.”
“Internal?”
“Has to be.”
I looked from one man to the other.
“Someone inside the hotel deleted the evidence?”
Neither answered.
They didn’t need to.
The ambulance stopped outside the emergency entrance.
Doctors and nurses rushed forward with a stretcher.
Rafe refused it until I gave him a look.
He sat.
As we moved through the doors, Malcolm’s phone rang again.
This time, the color drained from his face.
Rafe noticed.
“What?”
Malcolm lowered the phone.
“There’s another problem.”
“What problem?”
He looked directly at his boss.
“The shot wasn’t aimed at you.”
Rafe went completely still.
“Then who?”
Malcolm’s answer changed everything.
“June.”
And for the first time that night, I saw genuine fear in Rafe Calder’s eyes.
Not for himself.
For his sister.
May you like
Then the emergency room doors closed between us.
But somehow I already knew this night wasn’t finished with me.
