Harlequin Intrigue, February 2022: Box Set 1 of 2 by Lena Diaz

Author:Lena Diaz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Her lungs burned.

Smoke inhalation, mild hypothermia, choking grief for someone she’d hardly known. Chloe closed her eyes against the onslaught of noise coming from the monitors tracking her vitals and the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window. Emergency personnel had rushed her to the small medical center located at the southern end of town once they’d been able to get to the main cabin and keep the fire from spreading. The neutral colors eased the headache at the base of her skull, the scratchy sheets long past their prime. What she wouldn’t give to be able to go home, to pretend what’d happened out in those woods hadn’t been her fault.

Flashes of fear, of pain, exploded through her as she memorized the gauze across her hands concealing the blisters underneath. Jonathan Byrd was systematically and methodically tracking down each surgical team member involved in his wife’s death and seeking his own sense of revenge. Roberta Ellis had already paid the price, and he’d come for Chloe twice. It was only a matter of time before the grieving husband set his sights on the others. She’d severed contact with anyone from that life when she’d left Denver, but she wouldn’t let anyone else die for a mistake she’d failed to notice during that surgery. No matter who was really at fault. She had to warn them.

Hospital staff had taken her clothes and bagged them as evidence and left a pair of dark blue scrubs as a temporary replacement. Shoving back the blankets, she set her bare feet against the floor and removed the sticky nodes from her skin. The tug of her IV catheter reminded her dehydration had been a large proponent of why she’d gone into hypothermia so quickly, but she couldn’t afford to wait around for Jonathan Byrd to strike again. Not when he’d already destroyed so many lives.

She peeled the adhesive sticker from her skin, the sting intensifying at the entry of her IV, and discarded it on the bed. A couple drops of blood back-loaded into the line as she pulled the needle from her vein. She stripped the blood pressure cuff from her arm, the Velcro louder than she expected, and stood. Cold worked up through her heels and into bone as she shuffled to the end of the hospital bed. The monitors had gone quiet without anything to report. Dressing quickly, she tossed the thin gown over the blood pressure cuff and slid her legs into the scrub pants. She secured the drawstring and locked her jaw against the ache in her right side from being thrown from James Ford’s four-wheeler. She nearly collapsed as she replayed those terrifying seconds over and over. She recalled the acceptance in his eyes as she stared up at him, the gut-wrenching sorrow that’d crushed her as effectively as the pickup slamming into the ATV. Only she’d been the one to walk away.

Chloe forced herself to thread both arms into the scrub top. She shoved her feet into

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.