That was when the radio at the nurses’ station squawked with an incoming emergency. Female, late twenties. Hit-and-run downtown. Head trauma, patient unconscious. Probably a good thing considering the pain she’d be in if she weren’t. Leah had watched too many patients scream through the agony of their injuries before her staff could help lessen the pain. Sometimes the unconscious ones were a blessing.

  Paramedics had kept the woman stable enough on the short trip to the hospital, where Leah, her staff, and Dr. Rogers had taken over. One of the good guys. Leah hadn’t worried about the woman’s chances with Rogers treating her. No, what haunted her was the total isolation of the patient that morning. She’d been alone when hit, according to witnesses, run down and left for dead with a massive head injury, her body covered in cuts and contusions. No ID. No purse. No jewelry. Nothing to indicate who she was or who might know her. Even the labels in her clothing were gone.

  The cops who took over the investigation later told Leah they had been unable to get a tag on the SUV that hit her. The nearest camera had been blocked by a cargo van, and no witnesses had remembered the license number. Though they’d canvassed the area, no one recognized the woman either. Which, given her injuries, wasn’t surprising, but a still captured from a traffic camera a couple of blocks away hadn’t helped the identification process. The woman was a mystery, period, full stop. She’d been unconscious, at first from injuries and then from a medically induced coma to give the swelling time to come down. Only then could they assess any permanent damage. She’d been shipped up to the ICU.

  And that should have been the end.

  Except Leah hadn’t been able to forget. And few days later, she’d heard through the grapevine that the woman had woken with total retrograde amnesia.

  Not only was complete amnesia rare, making the patient fascinating from a medical point of view, but Leah couldn’t help identifying with the woman, stuck in her ICU bed, alone, no one to give her answers or comfort her as she started to heal. Something about it felt much like Leah’s ordeal with Brooke, when she’d been alone with no one to help her find her kidnapped daughter. Until Remi came along. He’d walked beside her, held her, found Brooke for her, and helped get her back. Leah couldn’t fight the urge to help this woman somehow, if only to honor the way she’d been helped when she needed it.

  And so her trip to the ICU.

  The elevator dinged her arrival, and the doors slid open to allow her to exit.

  “Back again?” Martha asked, a teasing smile quirking her pink lips. The nurse was getting used to seeing Leah arrive after her normal daytime shift.

  “Can’t stay away.” Leah leaned against the counter at the nurses’ station. “Any change?”

  Martha shook her head. “She’s been moved to the step-down unit”—a definite sign of physical progress—“but she still won’t know you.”

  Leah had visited twice already, and the second time the patient hadn’t remembered meeting her before. It wasn’t unusual for patients with amnesia to have problems not only with prior memories, but making new ones for a while, especially if the amnesia was caused by a traumatic brain injury. How much of this particular case was TBI and how much was emotional trauma, they couldn’t know. They simply had to wait—for the woman’s brain to heal, for her memories to return, or for someone to claim her. The cops had collected her fingerprints, but they hadn’t shared any new developments with the hospital staff, which likely meant the prints weren’t on file, at least in Atlanta.

  For a second Leah considered collecting prints to share with Eli, Remi’s brother, to see what he might dig up in his expansive database, but doing so would violate the patient’s privacy. Not that such a little thing as privacy would stop Eli. The Agozi family had its own ideas about right and wrong. But Leah couldn’t let go of the ethics of her profession as easily. Not that she wouldn’t do it if it meant keeping the patient safe, but there hadn’t been any evidence of danger either, so…

  “She’ll remember me eventually,” Leah said, praying her words were true. There had been occasional stories about people losing their complete memory permanently, but those were the sensational ones. The majority of patients recovered at least some memories, although Leah doubted the woman would ever recall her accident. That much they could be thankful for, she guessed. Who wanted to remember the agony of being hit head-on?

  “I like your optimism.” Martha winked. “If you want to go in, we have a few minutes before dinner trays come around.”

  Leah headed down the long green corridor, her tennis shoes squeaking on the seen-better-days linoleum tile. Her nose hairs had long since fried to nothing from the harsh antiseptic used throughout the hospital, but that didn’t mean she no longer noticed it. She wrinkled her nose as she passed the ICU cubicles and moved onto the step-down unit her Jane Doe patient was now housed in.

  Well, not exactly hers—nurses weren’t supposed to get possessive over patients—but this patient…

  The glass door to cubicle 1092 stood partway open. “Hello?”

  Silence. Leah pushed through quietly, knowing the patient might be getting some much-needed sleep before shift change and a vitals check forced her awake. But when she peeked through the white drape that provided what little privacy could be had in the hospital, it wasn’t to find a snoozing patient. No, the woman’s big brown eyes were wide open, the whites clearly visible from Leah’s position a few feet away. She was partially sitting up, white sheet and blanket pulled up to her stomach, her light-blue gown somehow highlighting the fact that her olive complexion held a sickly gray tinge. Leah gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile to the obviously frightened woman. “May I come in?”

  That gaze dropped to her uniform, one eyebrow developing the faintest arch.

  “I know; I’m a nurse, so why am I not barging in, right?” Leah did just that, moving carefully so as not to startle the patient. “I’m not here in an official capacity. You probably don’t remember me. I’m Leah.”

  If she hadn’t been hyperaware of the woman’s expression, she would have missed the aborted attempt to speak before Leah said her name aloud. As it was, the slight movement caught her eye—Leah had spent years vigilant for the slightest hint that her brother and the mob he worked for would find her, and details kept you alive, so she’d noted them constantly. Every single one. This one told her the woman might not remember her previous visits, but something was definitely tugging at the patient’s mind. Leah cheered inside at the sign of physical progress even as the rest of the woman’s expression registered.

  The fact that her lips were now a tight line, as if suppressing whatever had wanted to escape, told Leah she wasn’t ready to admit the truth. Given how terrified she must be, for good reasons or not, Leah couldn’t blame her.

  Some semblance of her memory was returning, but the woman was too frightened to admit it.

  Leah leaned against a blank space on the wall about halfway up the bed. “I was the nurse who treated you when you arrived at Fulton County Memorial,” she said, hoping the name would give the patient some clue as to her surroundings without her having to ask. She nodded toward the bandage covering a shaved patch of the woman’s hair. “You were pretty banged up. I’m so glad to see you’re awake and healing.”

  The mention of her injuries sent tension through the woman, her fists clutching the ball of blanket and sheet against her belly, and Leah softened with sympathy. What must this all be like for her—not knowing her name, not knowing anyone she came in contact with, not knowing why she was here and what had happened to her?

  “I’ve come by a couple of times to check on you,” she continued. “Give you some information. I hope that eases your mind, even though I know right now you can’t remember it well.” She shifted her hips, trying to ease the strain of being on her feet for most of the past ten hours. “We’ve given all your information to the police, and they took your fingerprints.” She nodded toward the woman’s hands. “They will search for them in their databases, search missing persons reports. They will let you know the minute they find out anything about your identity. In the meantime your injuries are improving.” She gave a quick rundown of those injuries for the patient’s benefit. The woman sat, wide-eyed and silent, until Leah trailed off to a halt.

  This didn’t seem to be helping.

  “You can ask me questions, you know. I’ll answer them as best I can.”

  The room was quiet but for the sounds of the equipment. The woman’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. Leah held her breath. Would she finally speak?

  “When will I be released?”

  Damn it. Of all the questions she couldn’t answer, this was probably the biggest one. “I honestly don’t know. We have a few more days before you are well enough to even consider leaving. That gives the police time to see what they can uncover.”

  One corner of the woman’s mouth quirked up. “Time is one thing I do have.” Fear flickered in those deep brown eyes. “What happens if they don’t find anything?”

  Leah dared to move closer, to ease one hand over and place it gently atop the ones gripping the covers like they were the only thing anchoring the woman in place. Her Jane Doe watched the move like a snake approaching.

  “We’re not going to abandon you,” Leah promised before easing her hand back.

  The woman gave a sharp, abbreviated shake of her head. “I don’t know any of you.”

  I can’t trust you, she meant. I can’t trust anyone.

  Leah nodded. The woman likely wouldn’t be here long enough for true trust to build, but Leah couldn’t escape the feeling that she needed to try to help anyway. “I know,” she said. She’d been where this woman was, no one to trust, no one to turn to. She truly did know. Turning to the bedside tray, she poured half a glass of water and passed it to the woman. “But that will get better as your brain heals, I promise.”

  As if her promises were worth anything right now. Leah watched as the patient sipped the water, chatted inanely for a few more minutes, then took the glass back as the woman’s eyes began to droop. Squaring her shoulders, she gave the woman another smile. “I’ll be back to visit you tomorrow. Leah, remember?”

  “For now?” The woman almost returned her smile, then closed her eyes. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Good.” Leah moved toward the door. “See you tomorrow.”

  As she stepped into the corridor and down the hall, passing the orderly pushing the cart of dinner trays, she held the glass by its rim, tucked close to her thigh. When she reached the elevator, she pulled out her cell and placed a call to the Agozi brother she knew could help her most.

  Chapter Eight

  Remi Agozi stuffed another chocolate chip cookie into his mouth and chewed like it was his mission. It had become a habit, indulging his sweet tooth while he waited for the woman he loved to finish work. The parking garage outside Fulton Memorial felt about as safe as a fucking drug den, and until he could convince her she didn’t need to work—hell, didn’t need to live anywhere but with him, much less work—he tried as often as he could to be outside the elevator doors when she walked through them each night.

  Cookies just naturally became his sidekick.

  He grabbed another soft brown circle from the container on the dashboard and brought the sweet thing to his mouth. Leah and Brooke had made the batch together this past weekend. He’d never tell either of them that he preferred the oatmeal molasses cookies his brother’s girlfriend made, though he did. Abby’s cookies were perfection, but he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at the dark-chocolate goodies Leah and her daughter had supplied him with. Sugar was sugar.

  Maybe for the upcoming holidays they could attempt making the ones with a chocolate kiss in the middle of a peanut butter cookie—Brooke would get a kick out of that, and every time the six-year-old gave him a happy smile, a fist squeezed around his heart. He and his brothers hadn’t grown up with that kind of excitement. Hell, they’d never celebrated Christmas, although he had vague memories of Hannukah. Their parents had been Jewish, keeping the faith throughout their short lives. After their murders, Remi and his brothers had been on the streets.

  Not much call for celebrating when you were literally fighting to survive. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how fucking far they’d come from the scraps of flesh and bones they’d been in the past.

  The steel elevator doors split open, breaking into dark thoughts better left locked away. In the beam of light that spilled into the garage, his Leah exited, her gaze locking immediately on his SUV, her steps beelining for him like she had a homing device implanted. Maybe she did. He sure as fuck knew exactly where she was the second he entered a room. She was the lodestone that drew him no matter where she stood—or walked, in this case. A quick lean and pop and the passenger-side door opened to invite her to join him.

  “Hey, lev sheli.” My heart. And she was. No sooner had her ass hit the leather than his hands were on her hips, pulling her closer. Her mouth opened in surprise, and he took full advantage, covering her lips with his, tongue taking no prisoners as he delved deep. Beneath the layers of hospital cleanser and humanity that she always wore at the end of her shift, he found the feminine scent that belonged solely to her and savored it, drew it into his lungs as if it were his first real breath of the day.

  Leah returned his kiss with her own intensity until they were both breathless and the ache in his cock had him eyeing the back seat. Her little laugh as she eased back sent precum seeping into the material of his boxer briefs. “It wouldn’t do for any of the staff to catch their head ER nurse making out with some stranger in the parking garage,” she said, voice husky with need.

  “Then close the door,” he growled. “You didn’t think we tinted the windows this dark just so targets couldn’t identify us?”

  She slammed the heavy door closed. A smirk tugged at her lips. “Oh, so you were thinking about getting women alone in here, then?”

  “Not women—one woman.”

  She shook her head. “Yeah, whatever, Romeo.”

  “I’ll show you Romeo.”

  He pulled her back into his arms, and for long minutes nothing but the feel of her against him, her mouth yielding to him, filled his awareness.

  It was Leah who pulled away the second time too, and he frowned. Seriously, he needed to up his game if she was this capable of actual thought when he was kissing her. But then he noticed the dazed look in her eyes and felt his chest swell like a fucking asshole. He’d put that look on her face. Tonight he’d make it last—

  “Much as I really want to do this with you”—she brushed her blonde hair back with a shaky hand, and he grinned—“I still need to go visit my patient, and doing that with beard burn would be totally inappropriate.”

  He eyed the delicate color surrounding her mouth. Her skin was so fair. “Too late.”

  The color spread to her cheeks, and she backhanded his chest with a limp hand. “Thanks.”

  His grin doubled.

  “What did you and Eli find out?” she asked.

  He shifted his hips, trying to give his hard-on some room behind his too-tight zipper. “I want to meet her.”

  Alarm flared in Leah’s eyes. “Why?”

  He narrowed his eyes, debating where to start. “Eli hasn’t found anything in police records aside from her original case file. Nothing in missing persons, nothing in any state databases, just nothing. He’s expanding to other states tonight, see what he can find, but that’s a lot of states. She could be from anywhere, and though he’s a helluva lot faster than any detective will be, it still takes time.”

  “Okay.” Leah drew out the word. “That still doesn’t explain the visit, though.”

  He busied himself putting the lid back on his cookie stash. “Eli also hacked the hospital records and pulled video to get a still of your Jane Doe to use along with the prints the police had.”

  “He couldn’t use the photo the cops took?”

  “It was taken early, and her face was pretty bruised up. This morning’s shot was much clearer.”

  Leah nodded. “And?”

  Remi tightened his lips. After Eli had told him what he’d seen, he hadn’t been able to stay home. It was impossible. Leah might no longer be treating the woman, but his instincts were shouting that they were in danger, and he never ignored his instincts.

  “Eli found evidence that someone else had hacked your Jane Doe’s hospital records.”

  “What? Who?”

  That wasn’t alarm in her voice—it was anger. His woman was ready to fight.

  He reached for her hand, needing to touch her, to remind himself she was here with him, safe, protected. “That’s what we needed to find out. After Eli pinpointed the times and location of the terminal that was used, we went back to the surveillance video.” He dug his phone out of the pocket of his fatigues, cued up the image, and passed it to Leah. “This is him.”

  There wasn’t much to see—dark clothes, hair cropped so close it was impossible to determine a definite color on the grainy black-and-white screenshot, especially with most of it covered by a nondescript baseball cap. “He’s careful to keep his face turned away from any cameras, so we don’t have a clearer shot.”

  “Just jawline and body build,” Leah murmured, using her fingers to enlarge the photo on the screen.

  “And he’s good at staying in the background, unnoticed.” His heartbeat shifted into his throat just remembering what the security footage had revealed. “You’ve seen him more than once, lev sheli.”

  Her hand went to her throat. “He’s been in the ER?”