Quiver (Revenge Book 1) (3 page)

Gage hung up the phone and clutched the balcony rails with both hands, letting his head fall as he tried to catch his breath, slow his heart, and expel the hot honey that felt like it was melting him from inside out.

2

Ten Years Earlier

Veda’s brown eyes flew open, wider than the moon in the inky sky. It was the first thing her gaze latched on to as liquid raced up her throat, choking her, convincing her death had come knocking.

Instead she was rolled onto her side by the strength of the hand gripping her waist and the back of her neck. Salt burned her throat as water flew from her mouth by the bucketful. Enough salt water, it seemed, to empty the ocean and refill it again, giving new life to the waves she heard crashing in the distance.

Her lungs sealed shut and expanded again, over and over, black sand sticking to her lips as her body expelled every ounce of water that seemed to be choking her and reviving her all at once.

Only when she was dry heaving, sure her stomach had more to give even though nothing else came, did the tight hold on her arm let up.

She dug her fingers into the sand, vision obstructed by the strands of the shock-red, sopping-wet hair stuck to her face. Her croaks moved to gasps, and she waited for more. More fire in her center as another one of them forced himself inside. More stabs to her heart as every shard of light was stripped from her. More dread. More revulsion. More agony.

When nothing came except a gentle caress on her back, Veda pushed up from the sand, still on her stomach, and peeked over her shoulder.

His hooded green eyes expanded the moment their gazes locked. His long brown hair was sopping wet as well, pasted to his tan forehead, dripping all the way down to his shoulders, bulky and broad in a police uniform—also drenched and sticking to his skin.

“You okay?” His own chest heaved.

He reached for her, but only managed to get the pads of his gentle fingers on her cheek before Veda screamed with all her might, throwing her arm out and dragging her nails across his face. His blood rolled down her hand and arm as she kicked away, digging her feet into the sand, her heels slamming against his strong thigh in her haste to escape.

His head fell at the blow, and he brought the gentle touch he’d just laid on her cheek to his eyebrow. When he came away with his own blood staining his fingers, his eyes reclaimed hers. He held that bloody hand out.

“I’m not going to hurt you, sweetheart.” His voice was deep. Just like theirs. Filled with authority she couldn’t match. Just like theirs. His arms were twice as big as theirs had been, bursting to be freed from his short-sleeve navy top. His chest and legs were broader too. She knew she wouldn’t stand a chance in overpowering him. Just like she hadn’t with them. “I found you floating in the water and gave you mouth-to-mouth.”

When he reached for her again, Veda whimpered and he stopped halfway, holding both his hands out so she could see his palms.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t touch you. That’s okay.” He searched her eyes for a moment. “How old are you?” When she didn’t answer, he licked his lips, faltered, and then reached into the breast pocket of his police shirt. He came back up with a bronze medallion in his hand, holding it out between their big, wild eyes. “Do you know what this is?”

Veda peered at the chip in his hand, cringing.

He shook the chip. “This is my mother’s. It’s a one year sober chip she got from AA. Whenever I’m scared, I just hold it in my hand, real tight, like this.” He gripped the chip, hiding it in his big palm. “And it reminds me that… that everything’s going to be okay.”

When he reached out again, she stiffened but didn’t retreat. He nodded, offering the chip to her. After another long hesitation, she snatched it, tightened her fingers around it, and then retreated again, pulling her knees to her chest, her entire body trembling.

Her eyes traveled over him. The soaked police uniform, the long brown hair, those green eyes, so patient and kind, even as a string of blood—unleashed by her own hand—raced from his eyebrow and down his chiseled jaw.

His own eyes took a voyage over her body, lingering at the bottom of her form-fitting white party dress.

Her eyes followed his to the hem of her dress, landing on the large bloodstain that saturated the front. When she realized her panties were still off, she yanked the dress down around her thighs, but it was so short that it caused the low-cut neckline to race down too, exposing her pert breasts.

His gaze seemed to rise to her chest before he could stop it, darkened, and, if it were possible, grew even more hooded.

Veda slapped her forearm over her breasts, biting her bottom lip and fighting back a cry.

The man looked away a moment later, a heavy lump moving down his throat. “We should….” He ran a hand over his mouth, avoiding her eyes. “We should get you to a hospital so they can do a rape kit. Whoever threw you in the water did it to wash away the evidence, but we should still…”

Veda waited for his eyes to come back to hers. They did. She knew what she saw in them. The same shadows, the same wickedness, the same depravity she’d seen in the eyes of the monsters who’d bent her over the white stone rails, still glowing in the distance at the top of the cliff behind him.

She looked down and saw the same tent in his navy pants as she’d seen in theirs.

He showed her his palms again. “I’m a police officer. I would never hurt you. You can trust me.”

Before he could say another word, Veda leapt to her feet and raced away. Her legs shook and made her stumble a few times, but when she imagined him coming after her, chasing her in the sand, how easy it would be for him to catch her, outrun her, hurt her the way they had, the race of adrenaline—of blind fear—forced her to find her footing.

She didn’t stop running until she’d made it all the way home.

—

Veda clutched the bronze chip in her hand. The sharp corners stabbed at her palm and she tightened her grip, breathing in the scent of plastic and sanitizer that permeated the sterile operating room at Blackwater Hospital.

She bobbed back and forth in her rolling chair, staring blankly at the state-of-the-art anesthesia machine before her. It was a machine she’d studied so thoroughly she could operate it in her sleep, so naturally she found her mind drifting, trying not to think about the dream that had woken her up that morning, two hours before she’d been set to check into Blackwater Hospital for day one of her four-year residency.

She tried not to think of the face that had filled her mind in that dream. The only face from her past that didn’t make her sick. The only face she’d yet to see since she’d landed over a week ago.

She wondered if he still lived on Shadow Rock Island. That green-eyed cop who’d breathed life into her all those years go. That long-haired cop she’d never seen again, but hadn’t gone a single day without thinking of at least once.

When the surgeon on the opposite side of the operating table spoke, Veda’s eyes snapped up to him. “I’m sorry, Dr. Britler. Did you say something?”

“Before we begin, I’d like to get one thing superbly clear, uh….” Dr. Britler faltered as a nurse wrapped a blue surgical mask around his nose and mouth, so all Veda saw was the widening of his cold gray eyes as he motioned to her with a gloved hand.

Her spine straightened and she pointed to herself. “It’s Veda. Veda Vandyke.”

“Veda….” Dr. Britler, who she’d only just met a few moments ago, took another unnecessarily long pause. LED lamps blazed from overhead as nurses milled all around him, preparing the room and the patient on the table for the upcoming procedure. A nurse slipped a pair of operating goggles onto Dr. Britler’s nose, slapped a plastic cap over his graying hair and helped him into his surgical gown. He held out his arms, showing his scrawny frame, his mask wobbling as he spoke. “Veda, I’d like to make one thing superbly clear. I couldn’t care less what they taught you during your time in med school at Stanford, nor do I need you to regale me on what I’m doing right or wrong in my operating room. In fact, I don’t care to hear from you, at all. This is not a team effort, nor is it a democracy.”

Veda’s eyes expanded.

“Push comes to shove, if a decision needs to be made about a patient on my table, I have the final say, regardless of whether or not it falls under the realm of anesthesia. You just sit there and look pretty, okay, doll?”

Good lord. Insulted, minimalized
and
sexually harassed, all in under a minute. Veda and the young black nurse lining up the blades next to him shared a look. “Well, with all due respect—”

“I’m so glad we agree,” he interrupted before she could interject, his eyes smiling.

“O… kay…” She clutched the edge of her machine.

Not even halfway into her first day of residency and she’d already found the hospital’s resident asshole.

It was always the surgeons.

—

“God, I hate surgeons,” Veda grumbled around the cherry-flavored sucker lodged in the corner of her cheek.

The young nursing assistant who’d helped Veda wheel the patient into a post-op recovery room frowned from the other side of the hospital bed. The patient still snoozed between them but was set to wake up any moment, and the assistant was ready with a red Popsicle the moment she opened her eyes.

“Yeah, me too,” the nursing assistant said. “Surgeons? Blech. The worst.” Her eyebrows pinched together, but it only made her look ten times younger. It was more adorable than scary, the frown on her face. She’d pulled her long black hair into a high ponytail and curled the ends into spirals. Wisps of it had escaped at her cocoa-colored forehead. With full lips, a straight nose that was just a touch too wide for her face, thin eyebrows, and big, expressive almond-colored eyes, she reminded Veda of an infant trapped in a teenage girl’s body. In the short time she’d been observing her, Veda already knew this girl never stopped smiling, loved to wave at strangers, and was way too excited about changing bedpans. An all-around ray of damn sunshine.

Veda couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow. It was always strange to her, finding young girls who hadn’t yet been destroyed, tainted, mauled by the monstrosities of the ugly world they lived in. A world just waiting to tear a pretty young black girl like her limb from limb.

She tilted her head, wondering when this one’s day would come. The day when some man walked into her life and tore it to pieces.

Veda’s mind wandered, curling her lip as her thoughts raced back to Dr. Britler, who had breezed through the appendectomy that morning like it was nothing. She took the sucker from her mouth with a pop, gazing blankly ahead.

“Is it terrible that I almost
wanted
something to go wrong with this patient’s airway, breathing, or circulation?” Veda asked. “Just so I could save the day and prove that asshole wrong?”

The assistant giggled. “Kind of. But no one in this hospital would blame you. We don’t call him Dr. Bitler for nothing. You know. Britler… Hitler… Drop the r. Dr.
Bitler
….”

“Not the greatest play on words, but I’m onboard.”

Giggling, the girl offered her hand across the still-sleeping patient. “I’m Coco. I student nurse here every summer.”

Veda returned the lollipop to her mouth and shook her hand. “Veda Vandyke.”

“Are you from Shadow Rock?”

“I was born here. Left when I was eighteen and never looked back.”

“You look really young to be a doctor.”

“I’m 28.”

“An anesthesiologist,” Coco dragged on. “That’s like a legit-ass job.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Why anesthesia?”

The real answer—that she wanted to learn how to kill without actually having to touch anyone—would only corrupt the wide-eyed angel sitting across from her, so Veda racked her brain for a more appropriate answer. “I wanted to be a clinician, but I don’t like ruining my nails. Nothing destroys a manicure faster than blood and guts. Not crazy about talking to people, so that ruled out psychiatry. X-rays bore me to tears, so adios radiology. Anesthesiology became the natural choice.”

“Where did you go to med school?”

Yep. This one liked to talk. Veda took one last taste of her lollipop before throwing it in the nearest trash bin, sick of talking around the stick. “Stanford.”

Coco threw her head back, then let it fall dramatically forward. “That is my
dream
school. I have to wait until senior year to start sending in my applications, but I want to be a cardiovascular surgeon one day.”

“I thought we hated surgeons.”

Coco’s eyes widened and her smile vanished. She yanked the arms of her long-sleeve white top, which she wore under her pink scrubs, pulling them down until they covered most of her hands. “No, I totally hate surgeons too. I don’t know why I said I wanted to be one. That was stupid.”

“I’m joking. If you want to be a surgeon, be a surgeon. It takes brains and balls. I talk shit about Dr.
Bitler
because I don’t like arrogant men, but I’d rather have an arrogant man cutting me open than an unsure one.”

“Totally….” Coco frowned, her voice breaking away, eyes falling. “I totally agree.”

Veda squinted at her. So someone
had
damaged this one. She was way too agreeable to be fully intact.