prologueDALLAS, TEXASLila Daley forced her hands to stop shaking. She wasn’t this person. She wasn’t the person whose hands shook. Who stammered or couldn’t speak in the face of tragedy. She stared straight ahead and her logical mind understood where she was. She was in the waiting room of the ER she’d worked at for years. But when she blinked, the scene changed and all she could see was blood and bodies and the careful walls she’d built shuddering and crashing around her.
“Lila?”
She looked up and her brother was standing there. Her brother. For much of her life Will had been the person she looked up to. Their childhood had been all about staying together, keeping their family intact in the wake of their mother’s chaos. Will and Laurel and Lisa. They’d been her whole world for the longest time.
“Yes?”
Will dropped to one knee, his face creased with concern. “The police are asking about taking a statement. I think you need some rest. You can do this tomorrow. I’m going to send them away.”
And then she would have to deal with the problem in the morning. Then she would have to know it was still waiting for her, still sitting there and wanting attention. She managed to shake her head, forcing a calm she didn’t feel. “Don’t. I would rather get this over with. I have to be at work in eight hours.”
It was the weekend. She couldn’t miss work. The crazies came out on the weekend. And the team was down one because . . .
The team was down one because Maryanne was dead. The team was down one because someone had walked into the ER and shot her friend. Lila was used to having blood on her. Trauma nurses weren’t squeamish about blood.
But this was Maryanne’s blood.
Trauma nurses weren’t squeamish about death.
But she’d watched as the light had faded from Maryanne’s eyes.
It had been easier to watch her friend die than it had been to look at the man who’d held a gun on her, told her if she touched Maryanne, if she helped, he would shoot her.
God, it was easier than thinking about the fact that if she’d been the tiniest bit braver, Maryanne wouldn’t be dead.
“Lila, you are not going to work,” Will said gently. “I think we should get you cleaned up and take you home. You can come with me or you can go to Laurel’s if you like. She and Mitch are on their way up here right now. I’ve already talked to Lisa. She’s getting in a car as soon as she can. She’ll be here by morning.”
Her youngest sister lived in Louisiana. She’d gotten married a couple of months before in a ceremony Lila hadn’t truly understood. There had been raucous dancing and an outdoor service where the groom had written poetry for his bride and her sister had looked radiant. Will and his wife and Laurel and her husband had been there. They’d brought their kids.
Her siblings had kids. They were all married and she was alone. She’d sat at her table as they’d all danced and known that she wouldn’t have that. She wouldn’t glow the way her sisters and Will’s wife did. She wouldn’t dance the way they did. She would be alone, always holding herself apart from the rest of them because she had work to do, because she couldn’t let herself open up.
A brief vision of a muscular man in a tux floated over her brain. Dark hair and striking blue eyes, broad shoulders that seemed to go on for days. He’d smiled at her, a warm, sensual thing that she hadn’t returned. When he’d started her way, she’d known he was going to ask her to dance and she’d excused herself quickly so she wouldn’t have to say no. She’d been a coward.
Like she’d been tonight when she’d had to make the choice between saving Maryanne’s life and saving her own.
“Why would Lisa drive up here? I’m fine.” She said the words and was pleased with how perfectly normal they came out. The world around her had turned chaotic again, and it was her job to make sense of it, to force it to be normal through sheer willpower.
“Lila, you were held captive for over an hour,” he said gently. “You watched two people die and you couldn’t help them. You could have died yourself. I know you’re a strong woman, one of the strongest I know, but you’re not okay.”
Before she could reply that she was fine, that she’d survived and was relieved to have done so, Laurel was rushing in. Her sister’s brown and gold hair was up in a messy bun and it looked like she’d done nothing more than throw on a coat before rushing out in the middle of the night.