To his surprise and great annoyance, the woman he was trying to get away from shifted, moving faster than he did. She got in front of him. More than that, she got in his face.
Pointing to his wound, she said, “I can take care of that for you.”
Against his will, he winced, the result of taking in a shallow breath. His side felt as if it was on fire. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“I’m not the one who shot you,” she pointed out. Somewhere in the back of her head, she could envision her father, his frown so deep it imprinted itself into the furrows of his deep jowls, demanding to know what she was possibly thinking, standing and arguing with a man with a gunshot wound. But she couldn’t just leave him here. That wasn’t why she’d become a doctor.
“Lady, get out of my way,” the stranger growled menacingly.
Marja stood her ground on knees that didn’t quite feel solid. “I’m a doctor,” she told him. “I can take you to the hospital and treat you.”
There was disdain on the handsome face. He looked dangerous, she thought, wondering if she was making a fatal mistake.
“Business that slow?”
Rounding the hood, she got over to the passenger side and threw open the door. “Get in,” she ordered in the most authoritative voice she could manage. She was channeling her mother, who no one disobeyed.
Obviously her future was not in channeling. The stranger didn’t move. If anything, his expression grew darker. “No, thanks.”
He was about to go. Again, she moved so that she was in front of him, blocking his way out of the side street. He was breathing harder, she noted. It was getting more difficult for him to stand, she guessed.
Marja did her best to brazen him out. “That wasn’t an offer you were supposed to refuse.”
“I can’t go to the hospital.” He couldn’t afford for his cover to be blown, not when things were beginning to come together, however slowly.
“Why?” Marja demanded.
Even as she asked, she had a feeling she knew. Anyone who came into the hospital with a gunshot wound had to be reported to the police. The man she’d hit with her car was undoubtedly standing on the wrong side of the law and couldn’t risk it. Ordinarily she’d be tempted to back off. But part of this was her fault. She’d hit him with her car and that made her at least partially responsible for this man. Who knew what kind of damage he’d sustained from the impact, however slowly she’d been going?
She couldn’t let him just disappear into the night without trying to help. That wasn’t the way she had been raised, that wasn’t what her Hippocratic oath meant to her.
For one long moment Kane seriously debated just pushing this woman out of his way and making good his getaway.
But despite the fact that there’d been no one to teach him manners, no one to drill the difference between right and wrong into his head, not even when he’d been very, very young, it was second nature to him to rein in the explosive temper that dwelled inside of him. Women were the softer sex and should be treated with a measure of respect—even when they ran you down with their cars.
So rather than become physical, Kane decided to resort to his voice, a voice that had been known to make his handler, a fifteen-year veteran with the Company, cringe and look decidedly uncomfortable. He figured at the very least, that would make the woman back off and leave him alone.
“What the hell do you think you are, lady? My conscience?”
His manner was malevolent, but there was something in his eyes, something that told her she didn’t have anything to fear. He wasn’t going to hurt her, not for trying to help him at any rate.
“Why?” she asked, her voice mild, curious. “Do you need one?”
His eyebrows narrowed, his eyes looked like thunder. “Get out of my way, lady.”
Marja stood her ground and tried again. “I’m a doctor—”
Kane sucked in his breath, struggling to keep the pain at bay. It was distressingly close. “Okay, get out of my way, Doctor.”
Marja made a quick decision, not one her parents or her brothers-in-law, all three of whom were in some branch of law enforcement, would have praised, but one she knew she could live with. Hopefully. “If you don’t want to go to the hospital, I can still treat you.”
She saw suspicion rise into his eyes to replace the darkness.
“And just why would you do that?” Each word was carefully measured out.
“Because I hit you with my car and I owe you one.”
Kane found himself leaning against the hood, his knees growing watery. “If you ‘owe me one,’ get out of my way and we’ll call it even.”
The infuriating woman moved her head slowly from side to side. A hot breeze moved her hair independently about her face. “Can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.” Getting air into his lungs was becoming difficult. “There’s your car.” He tried to wave toward it and stopped. The effort to stand grew increasingly difficult. “Get in it, drive away and go hit someone else.”
She ignored his protest. “I don’t live far from here. I’ve got everything I need to treat you at my apartment. Please,” she pressed, taking a step toward him.
The air turned sweeter. Fruit? Perfume? His brain was scrambled.
“That could get infected.”
She was talking about his wound, he thought, his brain oddly feverish. Maybe she had hit him harder than he thought. “And that’s your concern how?”
“I’m a doctor,” the woman repeated for the third time. She was really getting on his nerves.
“You keep saying that,” he accused angrily.
To his surprise, he saw her smile. Or was that just a hallucination? “And I’ll keep repeating it until you let me treat you.”
He knew better, he really did. But he felt dangerously light-headed. Losing all that blood and then getting hit by a car, even if it wasn’t going all that fast, had conspired to wreck havoc on his stamina. He began to doubt he could make it back to the hotel room.
And there were cops out. It would be just his luck to attract the attention of one of them. Right now, he wasn’t at liberty to explain to one of New York’s finest why he was weaving through the streets like a drunken sailor with a gunshot wound.
Like it or not—and he didn’t—he was going to have to take a chance on this woman.
“Okay,” he growled in his most threatening voice. “But just so you know, I’m armed and dangerous.”
Her father had taught her that when she had her back up against a wall, she needed to tough it out and put on the bravest face she could, even if her insides were rapidly turning to jelly.
“Never thought anything else,” Marja replied matter-of-factly as she helped the wounded stranger into her car.
He passed out the moment she shut the door.
Chapter 2
Marja drove quickly, squeaking through amber lights about to turn red. She hoped all the police squad cars were in another part of the city. She’d deliberately left the radio off so that she could hear her passenger in case he suddenly came to and said something.
He didn’t.
The stranger was still out cold a few minutes later when she pulled into the underground parking garage located directly beneath her apartment building.
Zipping into the assigned parking space, she turned off the