Shelter from the Storm

“She’s been through a terrible ordeal. She must be exhausted.”

Lauren took the films from him and slid the first of several into the light box hanging on the wall. She studied it, then exchanged it for another and finally a third, a frown of concentration on her lovely features.

“Just as we suspected,” she said after a moment. “She’s got three broken ribs, a fractured ulna and a broken nose.”

“Somebody did a real number on her.” He was angry all over again at the viciousness behind the attack. “How’s the baby?”

Lauren studied tape spitting out from a machine that was attached to a belt around Rosa’s abdomen. “The contractions have stopped. That’s a good sign. We did an ultrasound earlier and the fetus seemed healthy. It’s a miracle. She’s a dozen different shades of black and blue on her abdomen. My guess is somebody kicked her hard at least two or three times in an effort to induce abortion.”

Daniel had a feeling this was one of those cases that would grab on to him with rottweiler jaws and not let go until he solved it. “Can I talk to her?” he asked.

Lauren pursed her lips. “My instincts say to let her sleep for a while, but I understand your urgency. You likely have to return to Moose Springs as soon as possible.”

“I do. I’m sorry. We’re shorthanded tonight.” He paused and met Lauren’s gaze. “It’s not just that, though. I want her to tell me what happened. The quicker she identifies whoever did this to her, the quicker I can lock the bastard up.”

Though he spoke with a hard determination that didn’t bode well for the perpetrator, Lauren didn’t feel so much as a twinge of sympathy for whoever had done this. They deserved to feel the full wrath of Daniel Galvez, a terrible thing indeed.

“I’m right there with you on that sentiment,” she told him. “In fact, if you gave me half a chance, I’d like to be the one twisting the key in the lock.”

“I’ve got to catch him first and I can’t do that until I talk to Rosa.”

Lauren sighed. “All right. Why don’t you wait in the hall while I wake her, though. She might panic if you’re the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I really that scary?”

She felt her face heat and regretted her fair coloring that showed every emotion to the world like a big neon billboard. “I meant your uniform,” she answered stiffly, though she had to admit, she found the man absolutely terrifying.

Could he tell? she wondered, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as her blush. She wasn’t afraid he would physically hurt her, though he was big and powerful and all large men tended to make her uncomfortable on some instinctive level.

With Daniel, though, she was more wary of her own reaction to him and all the feelings he sparked in her, emotions she would rather not be experiencing for someone with whom she had such a tangled, complicated relationship.

To her relief, he let the matter drop. “Yell when it’s safe for me to come in, then,” he murmured, slipping out of the room with far more grace than a man his size should possess.

The room immediately felt about three times bigger without his overwhelming presence filling it. Lauren let out the breath she always seemed to hold around him and moved to her patient’s bedside.

“Rosa? Niña, I need you to wake up.”

When she didn’t respond immediately, Lauren gently shook her shoulder. “Rosa?”

The girl’s eyes blinked open and she looked around in wild confusion, panic blooming in her dark eyes. Her gaze shifted to Lauren and a light of recognition sparked there. “Doctora.” She covered her abdomen with her hands. “El bebé. Está bien?”

“Sí. Sí. Está bien.” She smiled, wishing she had a little better command of Spanish. If things weren’t so tensely uncomfortable with Daniel, she might ask for private lessons. But of course, that was impossible, so for now she would have to muddle through.

“Rosa, the sheriff is here to talk to you about who hurt you.”

The panic returned to her features. “No. No policía.”

Lauren sighed. The physician in her wanted to urge her patient to rest, to promise her she could have this difficult interview later when her body had a chance to begin the healing process.

She couldn’t, though. Daniel had a job to do—a job she very much wanted to see him conclude with an arrest. She just had to trust that he would handle a frightened girl with both tact and compassion.

“I’m sorry, Rosa,” she answered in Spanish. “But you must tell him what happened.”

The girl shook her head, her hands clasped protectively around her abdomen as if she feared Daniel would snatch the child from her womb. Lauren gave her a reassuring pat. “It will all be all right. You’ll see. Sheriff Galvez only wants to help you.”

Rosa said something in Spanish too rapid for Lauren to pick up on. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing.

She went to the door and opened it for Daniel. “She’s upset and doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said in an undertone. “I honestly don’t know how much she’ll tell you. I’m sorry. I can give you a few moments but if I think you’re upsetting her too much, I’ll have to kick you out.”

“All right.”

When he entered the room, Rosa shrank against the bed linens, her fine-boned features tight with tension. Daniel pulled out one of the guest chairs and sat on the edge of it. He moved slowly, like someone trying to coax a meadowlark to eat birdseed from his hand.

He spoke Spanish in a low, calm voice. She couldn’t understand him well, both because he pitched his voice low and because he spoke too quickly for her limited comprehension skills.

After a moment, Rosa answered him quickly, reluctance in every line of her body.

Lauren found it a surreal experience trying to follow their conversation when she only understood about one word in five. Even without a perfect command of the language, she could hear the compassion ringing through his voice.

He genuinely cared about Rosa, Lauren thought. The girl might be just a stowaway he had never seen until an hour ago, but he wanted to get to the bottom of things. She suddenly knew Daniel would go to any lengths to protect the girl. Fate had dropped her into Moose Springs, and she had become one of his charges.

She had a feeling his sincerity wasn’t translating for Rosa. She shook her head vehemently several times, and Lauren could at least understand the most frequent word the girl employed. “No” sounded the same in English and in Spanish.

After several moments of this, Rosa turned her head against the wall, a clear message that she was done talking to him. Daniel said something, his voice low and intense, but Rosa didn’t turn around.

At last Daniel stood with a sigh, his big handsome features tight with frustration. He tucked a business card in Rosa’s hand. The girl closed her fingers around it, but didn’t even look at either the card or at Daniel. With another sigh, Daniel nodded to Lauren and left the room.

She followed him. “She won’t talk?” she asked when the door closed behind them.

“She claims she doesn’t remember what happened to her.”

Lauren frowned. “She has no head injury that might account for a loss of memory. I suppose it might be some self-protective psychological reaction to the trauma…”

“There is no loss of memory. She remembers perfectly. She’s just not telling.”

“Doesn’t she understand her safety and that of her baby is at stake here?”

“I think that’s exactly what she’s thinking about. I think she just wants to pretend none of it happened. ‘I’m fine, the baby’s fine. That’s all that matters,’ she just kept saying over and over.”

“I’ll talk to her. She’ll be under my care and the attending’s here for at least the next two or three days. I want to consult with the high-risk ob-gyns on staff here and make sure we monitor her closely to ensure no lasting harm to the fetus from her injuries. I don’t know that it will do any good, but I’ll try to persuade her she has to talk to you, or whoever did this to her will get away with a double attempted murder.”

“Thanks, Lauren. I’ll try to stop back in first thing in the morning. Maybe she’ll change her mind about talking to me by then.”

“You put in long hours, Sheriff.”

He smiled and the sight of those white teeth flashing in that darkly handsome face sent her stomach trembling. “I could say the same for you, Doc.”

She gazed at him for far longer than was probably polite, until he finally cleared his throat.