Page 8 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

I mold the SAM splint to the contour of her ankle and foot, layer gauze first, then the splint, then the elastic bandage in a figure-eight pattern. Capillary refill in her toenails is good. I prop her foot on the folded blanket again, elevating it above her heart.

While I'm down here I check her feet. The sneakers drying by the fire are finished. Soles cracked through, canvas separating from the rubber. She walked eight days in these. Twenty-dollar shoes asked to do a thousand-dollar job. Her feet themselves are blistered but not frostbitten. Skin abraded where the wet canvas chafed. I clean each spot with antiseptic, apply thin pads of gauze, and pull a pair of my wool socks over them carefully. My socks reach past her knees.

The dress is still draped over the back of a kitchen chair where I hung it to dry. Thin. Cheap. A little faded at the seams. A coffee stain on the hem. I changed her out of it fast and focused when I first brought her in, the way I'd handle any casualty. Clothing is an obstacle between the patient and warmth. You deal with it clinically and you don't let your hands register anything beyond the task.

I noted the bruises on her upper arms. Fingerprint patterns. Someone gripping too hard. Raw spots on her wrists that could be zip ties or rope. I studied them the way I'd catalog evidence, and I filed the rage behind the discipline where it can burn without consuming.

But there was a moment. After the shirt was on and I was pulling the quilt up to her shoulders, when her head turned and her hair fell across the pillow and I saw her face without the terror in it. Just the bones of it. The line of her jaw. The dark lashes against too-pale skin. Something in my chest shifted.

I shut it down immediately. Not because the feeling was wrong. Because the timing was wrong. She is a victim of a federal crime I am actively investigating. She is injured and malnourished and traumatized and unconscious in my bed. The power differential between us right now could not be more absolute. I have shelter, food, medical supplies, and a badge. She has a ruined dress and an ankle that won't hold her weight. Any feeling I have toward this woman is compromised by every one of those facts.

She is in your care. She is not yours to want.

I say it like a patrol cadence while I clean the kitchen and check the generator one more time. The saying doesn't make the feeling go away. It just puts a fence around it.

I should call Mason. I've been putting it off because he'll ask questions I'm not ready to answer. How long do I plan to keep her here? Has she been medically evaluated by someone with actual credentials? All reasonable questions that imply she should be somewhere else, with someone else, in a system designed for exactly this. And she should. I know she should.

The storm answers for me. Satellite phone signal is intermittent at best. I'll try him tomorrow. For tonight it's me, the fire, the generator, and the woman in the bed.

I eat a plate of leftover elk stew standing at the counter because sitting at the table feels too much like this has shape and routine. I wash the plate. Dry it. Put it back on the shelf.

I locked it after she went under. Not to keep her in — the deadbolt turns from the inside and I told her so. To keep the mountain out. There's a difference and I need her to know it.

The couch is old leather, cracked at the seams, deep enough to be comfortable if you're under six feet and a hardship if you're not. I'm not. I pull a wool blanket from the closet and stretch out as best I can, one boot still on, sidearm on the floor within reach. The cabin is dark except for the firelight. The wind sounds like something alive trying to get in.

I close my eyes. I don't really sleep. I drift into the shallow edge where my body rests but my ears stay open, sorting sounds. Fire. Wind. Generator hum. And underneath all of it, the sound of her breathing. Steady and thin. Proof she's alive.

The scream pulls me off the couch like a detonation.

I'm on my feet with the sidearm in my hand before my conscious mind catches up. Training. Muscle memory. I sweep the room in a second and a half. Door locked. Windows sealed. No breach. No intruder. Just the woman in the bed, sitting upright with her hands fisted in the quilt and a sound coming out of her that I've heard before in combat hospitals and places where people are taken apart from the inside.

She's screaming. It’s a raw, scraped sound of pure animal terror. Her eyes are open but she's not seeing the cabin. She's seeing the shipping container or the face of the man who told her she belonged to him.

I holster the weapon. I don't go to her.

Every instinct I have is telling me to cross the room and put my hands on her shoulders and hold her until the shaking stops. But I've held enough people through enough nightmares to know that touch, in this state, with this history, can make it worse. Her nervous system is firing blind right now. If a large male body suddenly grabs her in the dark she won't feel comfort. She'll feel confirmation.

So I stay where I am. Ten feet from the bed. And I talk.

"Zoe." I keep my voice low and steady, pitched just above the wind. "Zoe, you're in the cabin. Ryker's cabin. The one with the stone fireplace and the blue quilts and the elk broth. You're warm. You're dry. The door is locked and I'm the only one here. Can you hear me?"

The screaming breaks into ragged breathing. Her eyes are still wide, still unfocused, but her hands have loosened in the quilt by a fraction. She's hearing me.

"You're not at the mine. You're not in the container. You're not in the woods. You're in a bed in a cabin with a bolt I threw against the mountain, not against you. It turns from the inside. You can walk out that door any second you want to, and a US Marshal is standing across the room who is not going to come any closer unless you tell me to. I'm right here. I'm not leaving. And nobody is getting through that door tonight."

Her breathing slows. The tremors downshift from full-body convulsions to a fine shaking in her shoulders and hands. Her eyes track the room. The embers. The shadows. The shape of me near the couch. I watch her come back to herself the way you'd watch someone surface from deep water.

"Ryker." My name comes out broken.

"I'm here."

"I was—" She stops. Swallows. "I was back there. In the container. Tyler was closing the door. The metal door. And it was dark and I couldn't⁠—"

"You don't have to tell me. Not right now."

"I can still hear it. The sound it made when it closed." She presses both hands flat against her ears. "It's still in my head."

I cross to the hearth, not toward her, the opposite direction, and add two split logs to the grate. The bark catches. Light swells back into the room.