Prologue 1

Five years ago. Denver, Colorado.

Doctor Shane MacIntyre entered the hospital trauma unit almost at a run. Yeah, when he got called in, it was always bad – Mac got the urgent-as-all-hell and hopeless-as-all-fuck cases more often than not – but Dr. Sam Innis’ voice over the phone had been more than urgent and hopeless. It had been downright terrified.

Mac rounded the corner, skidded to a halt. Dr. Innis was standing there with a chart and some x-rays. When he spotted Mac, his dark eyes lit up behind his glasses.

“Doctor MacIntyre,” he said, the relief evident in his entire body. “Thank God.”

“Where is she?” Mac said brusquely.

Sam Innis took exactly zero offense at Mac’s growl. Shane MacIntyre was nothing less than the best neurologist that the hospital had ever seen, and he’d both trained and worked at the hospital for almost a decade. When he’d left a year earlier to start his own private consultation practice, he’d agreed to be on call for his former workplace when really devastating head trauma cases came in. At moments like this, nobody was anything but grateful for that access, and they’d happily put up with Mac’s brisk and gruff manner, no goddamn problem.

“In there.” Sam pointed to the trauma ICU. “She’s – she’s really bad.”

“Summarize.” Mac set his motorcycle helmet on the nurse’s station desk, shrugged off his leather jacket. His long blond hair fell around his handsome, rugged face, and the nurses who’d been standing around waiting for Doctor MacIntyre to come blasting in exchanged heated, charged glances. Good Lord, the man was smoking hot.

“She was severely beaten,” Sam began, not wasting any time. “Mostly around her head, but her shoulders, back and stomach received a great deal of injury too. Her right cheekbone is shattered, and her right eye is swollen totally shut. She has four broken ribs, a broken arm, six broken fingers, internal bleeding. I removed her spleen almost immediately upon her arrival six hours ago.”

Mac glanced at the young doctor. Sam Innis was barely out of the intern program, but he was already recognized by his peers as an outstanding trauma surgeon. He was cool and calm under pressure, precise and controlled in the OR, kind and warm with patients and their loved ones.

“Go on,” Mac said.

“Unbelievably, there’s no sign at all of rape, or any kind of sexual assault.”

Mac heaved a sigh at relief that she’d been spared that particular degradation and trauma. “What else?”

“She’s stable now, but she hasn’t been conscious for more than a minute or two,” Sam said. “When she does come around, she fights us.”

“Tries to get away?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Sam said.

“Yeah. Means that she knows other people are there, so she’s aware of her surroundings. Also means that she’s got some guts, and she’s going to need those.”

“Yes.” Sam thought about the young woman’s broken, battered body. “She sure will.”

“OK, I’ll go in and see her now.”

Mac stepped into the ICU, nodded at the staff there. Right away, he spotted the woman in question, and despite his years of seeing people smashed up in car accidents and falls and beatings, he stopped, his breath freezing in his broad chest.

Holy fuck, she was bad. More than bad, actually. With damage like this, she should be dead, or at least in a coma. How the hell was she still alive, still hanging on? And who had done this to her? This was the work of an animal – quite probably more than one. This was nothing less than a deliberate, brutal, vicious attempt to wipe this young woman’s soul right off the planet. Mac knew nothing about her – not even her name, he suddenly realized – but he knew that there was no way she’d done anything to deserve this.

He approached her bed, his practiced eye taking in her injuries. Gently, he lifted her eyelids, flashed some light to check her pupils. She was responsive, and Mac stared down at her for a few seconds, astonished at that fact.

When she opened her one eye and looked up at him, Mac almost fell to his knees beside her at what he saw in its depths.

Good Christ, he’d never seen that eye color in a woman’s face before, not in the whole of his life. It was a startling, vibrant violet. The color of the brightest, most gorgeous autumn sunset over the Rocky Mountains. As he looked down at her, Mac thought of holding this woman naked and close and safe in his arms as they watched the sunset together… after making passionate love in front of his cabin’s massive windows.

But it wasn’t just that amazing color that shocked him. It was what he saw in that bright, perfect eye that grabbed him by the balls and the throat; that grabbed him hard and shook him. That made him both admire and desire her.

Fire. Fight. Fury.