“Who’s coming?”
My gut tells me to shut the door and walk away, but I know I’d never be able to forgive myself if he died and I could have helped.
Even though I shouldn’t, I step aside and gesture toward the warm interior. “Come in, and I can help you.”
He ambles forward while shaking his head, his body swaying with each step. “No time. Just need to stop the bleeding.”
My gaze gravitates to the spot between his fingers, tracking the blood already slipping free to splatter in fat drops across the porch boards. What this man needs is an ambulance, not a first-aid kit.
“It would be easier to help you if you came inside.” I try again. “Or at least warmer.”
His chest rises in a shallow jerk, the air expelling in a rasp as he struggles to breathe. “No! I just need some damn bandages.” Another gasping breath fills his lungs. “Can you help me or not?” The snap in his voice, laced with pain, gets me moving.
“I think so. Let me grab my first-aid kit.” I don’t know if that two-week first-aid course I took last summer will cut it in this situation, though.
Pressure. Elevate. Call for help.
I repeat the steps in my mind. “I’ll also call for an ambulance.”
“No!” he objects, and reaches for me, his hand closing around my wrist before I can take a step toward the hallway leading to the bathroom. His grip isn’t strong, and his fingers tremble. I know I should be scared, but I’m not. Not when I see the urgency in his eyes. “No hospital. No phones. Please!”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to demand that we call 911. Still, I hesitate because the raw fear in his eyes goes beyond the painof injury. It’s suffocating, life and death. Like he already knows his days are numbered. I don’t know what happened, or how he ended up on my porch, but only one family in this town is known for striking that kind of fear in people.
The Bishops.
The blood in my veins turns to ice. The Bishops own half the county—their five-thousand-acre ranch stretching across the wilds of Montana. Roman Bishop sits on every council worth sitting on, his name stamped across mortgages and deeds like a warning. His four sons are the same—handsome, dangerous, men who make rooms go silent.
My father warned me to stay away, and I did.
Mostly.Except for the one night, when I thought Calder might have differed from the rest of his family. Turns out he wasn’t. My father said every soul deserves redemption, but I know he didn’t mean them, not after the night of my eighteenth birthday.
The memory twists my stomach, his words, his stare. The porch feels colder, darker—like thinking of him might call him here.
Forget him. Focus.
“Okay,” I say, gently extracting my wrist from the man’s grip and pushing the memories of Calder to the dark confines of my mind. “No ambulance, but let me get the first-aid kit.”
The flash of relief in his eyes is followed immediately by another spasm of pain.
“I’ll be right back.”
He nods visibly, relaxing before sagging against the side of the doorway.
I close the door as much as I can with him leaning there and hurry through the house to the bathroom. My heart pounds against my ribs, a frantic rhythm matching each footstep on thehardwood floor.This is crazy.I should call Sheriff Tanner, not play nurse.
But you already told him you wouldn’t call.
I can’t go back on my word. Otherwise, it means nothing.
I yank open the cabinet beneath the sink where I keep the extensive first-aid kit. The white plastic box is heavier than it looks, packed with everything from bandages to antiseptic to the suturing kit I still barely know how to use.
“You can do this, Saint,” I whisper, using the nickname everyone in town has called me since I was a child. Not because I’m particularly good, though I try to be, but because my full name, Saintlyn, is a mouthful. Just one of Dad’s many nods to our family’s deeply religious roots.
I return to the kitchen and snatch a bottle of water from the fridge, then a blanket from the couch in the living room as I pass through. With my hands overflowing, I head back to the door. Balancing everything carefully so I don’t drop anything, I pull the heavy door open.
My breath forms small clouds in the air as I step out onto the porch. Goodness, the air has a chill to it that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I stare at the spot where I’m certain the man was standing when I went inside.
Wait… where did he go?
