on her stomach. Her dark hair was long, tangled. Dirty.
And she hadn’t said a word.
Of their own accord, his fingers reached for her pulse, registering a steady, strong beat. Yet she made no sound. No reaction to being touched.
She was sweating, though. In a thick sweater, exposed to the sun, so sweat by itself wasn’t alarming.
“What the hell...”
He needed to see her face, some age identifier, to look at her eyes, her pupils, her lips, but he didn’t dare move her. Not until he knew that her neck was okay...
Already feeling for breaks, he gave an inward shudder as he pictured his idiot self, prodding this poor person with his walking stick.
What had he been thinking?
Finding no obvious breaks, he leaned down, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’m going to roll you over now,” he said. “I’m a doctor and I’m here to help you.”
She appeared comatose, but many could hear while in that state.
Lying beside her, he used himself to support her entire body, and turned with her. Then, sliding aside, he sat up. She had major maxillofacial trauma. Severe facial edema. Her face was badly bruised, so swollen he couldn’t make out her normal features, with open lacerations on the right cheek and chin. Medical terms came to him, but as a doctor of children who had to remember he was speaking to children even in tense or emergency situations, he’d begun translating in his thoughts as well as his words. Her lips were oddly healthy looking, considering the rest of her face, with no cuts or signs of bleeding. He lifted her lids enough to note pupil activity. Gums had good color. No immediate sign of oxygen deprivation.
Breathing was shallow. Skin warm, but not hot.
Lifting up her sweater, he made a cursory check of her torso, finding nothing unusual.
He couldn’t be sure about internal injuries. What he was sure about was getting her inside. Assessing more thoroughly. Doing what he could in the moment.
And then, as loath as he was to expose himself to anyone, anywhere—he was going to have to call for an ambulance to come get her.
Either that or pray that she regained consciousness and could tell him who to call on her behalf.
HIS ARMS WERE GENTLE. Lying inert, as much by instinct and habit as anything else, Cara remained limp as she awoke to feel him lifting her. He settled her against his body.
Her head shrieked with pain. Please God, let him be in a good mood.
Shawn was kind to her, caring, when he wasn’t tense.
He’d changed his shirt. The day before he’d had on the denim one over his T-shirt, but this one was softer. Must be the blue flannel she’d bought him for his birthday...
The fact that he was carrying her so carefully boded well. Her head fell sideways, settling against his chest and she almost drifted out again.
But the smell. It was unfamiliar.
Shawn didn’t wear aftershave. Or cologne. But they’d been on the run. Maybe he’d stolen a bar of soap from someplace?
He smelled like more than just different toiletries. Nothing that she recognized. Why such a small detail was keeping her conscious, she didn’t know. She kept trying to place the scent.
She liked it.
A lot.
It reminded her of something. She had no idea what. But it felt...safe.
He felt safe.
So maybe he was in a good mood. Maybe she’d be okay for a while. At least long enough to sleep off the headache so she could figure out what she was going to do...
* * *
“OKAY, MY DEAR, let’s get you more comfortable so I can get a look at you.” Simon spoke aloud more out of habit than because he expected a response.
The reaction of the woman in his arms was an instantaneous stiffening. She didn’t fight him as he carried her through the cabin’s main room to the one bedroom. Didn’t say a word. She could still be unconscious, but she was coming back to him.
So he kept talking.
“I’m just going to lay you down on the bed,” he said, leaning over to keep her against him until the bed took her weight. Slowly, watching as her face came into view, searching for signs of consciousness, he stood up. Cursing the right eye that hindered the normal speed of his initial assessment.
She was older than his usual patients, to be sure, but not old. “You look to be about thirty,” he told her. Maybe late twenties. It was hard to tell with the state of her face. In the light from the ceiling fixture he saw something else.
Two things registered at once.
Her eyes had moved beneath her closed lids. Which meant she was conscious.
And the bruises on her face weren’t all recent.
“You’ve been hurt before,” he said softly, his mind racing with possibilities. The obvious first one...a spouse hitting her? If they lived off the grid, as he was doing, it could have been happening for years without anyone being the wiser.
It could also mean that the son of a bitch could turn up at his cabin at any time. Looking for his “goods.”
“Recently, too,” he added, looking for other explanations for the varying degrees of discoloration on her. He could come up with nothing but deliberate torture of some kind. Some of the bruises and lacerations were more than a week old. Maybe even two or three. Some only a day or so.
He’d need to get them cleaned up...
He caught another eyelid movement. Not a twitch. More like an attempt to remain still. And he thought of how this might seem to her. A man carrying her, telling her he was laying her on the bed...
“My name’s Dr. Simon Walsh,” he said, wishing he’d paid more attention when peers at work had mentioned abused patients. They rarely ended up with heart injuries so hadn’t been in his area of expertise. And with his peers, the patients had been children. “I’m a thoracic surgeon. On...vacation,” he added when he realized the absurdity of his current life within the explanation he felt obliged to give. “I just bought this cabin, came up here a month ago.”
He added the latter in case, as he suspected, she was from the area. Probably living somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Nevada.
A lot of the residents he’d seen in the nearest burg, Prospector—less than a town, but more than nothing—had been Native American. He was living on the border of their reservation.
His current patient was clearly Caucasian.
“I need to see how badly you’re hurt,” he said next. He wanted to remove her outerwear. To make certain that her limbs weren’t misshapen—indicating breaks—or swollen—indicating any number of other things. He needed to see if there were worse lacerations. He needed to call someone.
But first, he grabbed the bag he never traveled without. Pulled out a blood pressure cuff and, pushing up the sleeve of her sweater, wrapped it around her arm and pumped. If her vitals told him this was an emergency, he wouldn’t have time to wait for help.
Simon was concentrating so completely on the simple blood-pressure reading—his first medical action since he was attacked and something he hadn’t done himself in years—that he was startled to glance at her face and see her watching him.
She was cognizant. Her gaze was clear. Assessing.
She glanced at the cuff, as if asking, Who travels to a cabin on vacation with a blood-pressure cuff?
“My