Jessica Andersen - Internal Affairs

She didn’t see anything out of place in her pretty kitchen, but the back of her neck prickled, warning her that someone had been there who shouldn’t have been. Holding her breath, she eased through the doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room. And froze in horror.

A man lay on the floor beside her sofa, blood soaking the carpet beneath him.

Sara stifled a scream, swallowing it in a bubble of hysteria. Her saner self said, Run! Get the hell out of here! But something had her stalling in place as her heart hammered in her chest.

Her brain racked up impressions in quick succession: the big man lay motionless, but he was breathing. He wore jeans, a dark blue jacket and boots with soil and gravel embedded in the treads. She could see their bottoms because he lay on his face, hands outstretched, one nearly touching a pen and notepad as though he’d dropped them when he fell.

Her panicked brain replayed info from the radio bulletins: a group of men had disappeared in one direction, carrying a couple of bodies. A single man had gone off alone. Having spent the day listening to snippets about the dead agents and the unsuccessful manhunt in the forests of Bear Claw Canyon State Park, Sara knew damn well she should be running for her life, screaming her head off, doing something, anything other than standing there, gaping. But she didn’t move. She stayed rooted in place, staring at the notepad.

She knew that writing.

Emotion grabbed her by the throat, choking her and making her heart race even as logic told her it was impossible. That wasn’t his writing. Couldn’t be. The man lying there, bleeding, was a stranger. A danger. Get out of the house, she told herself. You’re imagining things.

But she didn’t run. She edged around the man and leaned down to read the note. It said: Nobody can know that I’m here. Life or death.

Sara reached for the notepad, then stopped herself. Her hand was shaking and tears tracked down her cheeks unheeded.

“No,” she whispered, the single word hanging longer than it should have in the silence. “He’s dead.”

But she knew that writing, had seen it on countless notes tucked under her coffee mug, or left beside the phone, telling her where he was going, when he’d be back, or that he’d pick up dinner on the way. Love notes, she’d liked to think them, even though he’d never said those exact words.

Hope battered against what she knew to be true. He’s dead, she thought. I went to his funeral.

Yet she reached out trembling fingers to touch thick, wavy black hair that was suddenly, achingly familiar. And stopped herself.

All rational thought said she should call for help. The note, though, said not to. She wouldn’t have hesitated, except for the damn writing. It was shaky, but it was his. She’d swear to it.

She could turn him over and prove it one way or the other. It wasn’t as if he was going anywhere fast. He was out cold, his back rising and falling in breaths so shallow they were almost invisible. Blood soaked the rug beneath him; the smell of it surrounded him.

Sara’s inner medical professional sent a stab of warning as she dithered on one level, assessed his injuries on another. He’s pale, probably shocky. If you don’t do something soon, it won’t matter who he is because he’ll be dead.

“Call 9-1-1,” she told herself. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Instead, she reached out and touched him—his stubble-roughened cheek first, then the pulse at his throat. As she did so, she tried to get a sense of his profile, tried to see if it was—

No. It couldn’t be.

Yet her heart sped up, her head spun and her breath went thin in her lungs as she debated between checking his spine—which was the proper thing to do before moving him—and turning his face so she could see, so she’d know for sure.

Then he groaned—a low, rough sound—and said something unintelligible in a voice that was achingly familiar. Heat raced through her. Hope.

He moved his right arm and let out another groan of pain. Then, as though sensing that she was there, he shifted, snaking out his left hand to grab her ankle—not hard, more looping his fingers around her, touching but not restricting her.

Sara squeaked and would have jerked away, but once again she was frozen in place, paralyzed by the memory of a lover who’d kept a careful distance between them when awake, but in sleep had always wanted some part of him touching some part of her, as though reassuring himself she was still there.

“Romo?” she whispered. The single word burned her lips and hurt her chest.

Then he shifted again, this time turning his face toward her, so she saw him in profile against the bloodied carpet.

Her throat closed on a noise that might’ve been a cross between a scream and a moan if it had made it past the lump jamming her windpipe. As it was, the cry reverberated in her head.

She knew that profile—the clean planes of his nose and brow; the dark, elegant eyebrows; the angular jaw. If he was awake and smiling—or snarling, for that matter—at her, she would’ve known his square, regular teeth and the glint in his dark green eyes. It was really him, she realized, her chest aching with the force of holding back the sobs.

Detective Romo Sampson. Internal affairs investigator. Live-in lover-turned-nemesis. And a dead man back from the dead.

In that first moment of recognition, Sara’s brain threatened to overload with shock and an awful, undeniable sense of hope. She wanted to scream, wanted to laugh, wanted to shriek, “What the hell is going on here? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why did you let us—let me —think you were dead?”

Instead, she forced herself to do what she did best—she buried her emotions, smoothing out the roller coaster.

Clicking over to doctor mode, she shoved her feelings aside, bundling them up along with all the questions that echoed inside her skull. Where had he been for the past four months? What had happened to him? Whose grave had she stood over, dry-eyed but grieving? Whose blood was spattered on his face, arms and hands? It wasn’t all his, that was for sure.

He couldn’t answer those questions now, though, and might not ever be able to unless she worked fast. Instinct told her he was close to dying a second time.

Sara’s heart stuttered a little when she cataloged Romo’s injuries and vitals. His breathing was too shallow, the pulse at his throat too slow. And his eyes, when she peeled back his lids, were fixed, the pupils unequal in size, indicating a concussion, or worse.

Shock , she thought, head injury, and… She checked him over without rolling him, hissing in a breath when she zeroed in on the wet seep of blood beneath the jacket. A gunshot wound.

The hole was ragged at the edges, indicating that the bullet hadn’t been going full power when it hit him, and the bruise track suggested it had deflected off his shoulder blade and done more damage to his trapezius muscle than his skeleton. The skin around the injury was inflamed and angry, the blood clotted in some places, still seeping in others. She pressed on his back near the wound, digging into the lax muscles on either side of his spine, hoping the bullet had stayed close to the surface, praying it hadn’t fragmented and deflected into vital organs.