The ambulance slowed and came to a halt.
“Okay, okay,” the EMT said. “I’ll let you out. But you might as well let a doctor see you. We’re at the hospital.” He released the straps around her legs first.
“I don’t have time to see a damned doctor. I need to find my friend and my camera.”
As soon as he released the strap around her chest, she sat up and launched herself toward the back door of the ambulance.
The EMT grabbed her arm. “Miss Kekoa, let me help?—"
Still weak from exertion, Kimo fought to free herself from his grip. When her arm slipped free of his grasp, she was pulling so hard she flew in the opposite direction.
The back door opened at that moment.
Kimo fell through, crashing into a wall of hard muscle. The impact jarred what little air she had left in her lungs.
She would have dropped to the ground, except strong arms clamped around her and crushed her to the chest of the man they belonged to.
For a long moment, Kimo forgot how to breathe, and the automatic rhythm of her lungs was arrested as her heart stopped beating.
“Miss Kekoa, I presume?” a deep, warm voice sounded near her ear.
Kimo looked up into smoky gray eyes.
And blacked out.
Chapter 3
After confirming the woman’s identity with the EMT inside the ambulance, Rex Johnson carried Kimo into the Emergency Room. The EMT hurried ahead of him, clearing the path, opening “Authorized Personnel Only” doors and finding an empty gurney for Rex to deposit his charge onto.
Nurses and orderlies scurried around, securing an examination room for the patient and setting her up for an IV.
When they tried to shoo Rex out of the examination room, he refused to budge. “No way. I’m her bodyguard. I go where she goes.”
A slim nurse sporting a tight ponytail stood toe to toe with him, her hands fisted on her hips. She was close enough that Rex could see her name on her badge. Nurse Bowman. “Bodyguard or not,” she said, “at the very least have the decency to turn your back while we get her out of her wetsuit and under warm blankets to bring her body temperature up.”
Rex stared down at the determined woman, his eyes narrowing. “I stay in the room.”
“Fine,” Nurse Bowman said in that way women did when they really didn’t mean “fine.” “About-face, soldier.”
Rex reluctantly performed the maneuver, turning his back on the nurse and the woman he’d been sent to protect. He didn’t bother to inform the nurse that he could monitor her every move reflected off the dark computer monitor perched beside him on a rolling cart. Though the image was a silhouette, he could see enough to tell whether they were helping or hurting his charge.
Nurse Bowman was joined by another carrying two pairs of trauma shears. Quickly and efficiently, they cut the wetsuit from the woman’s body. They didn’t stop at the wetsuit, continuing to remove the bright red bikini beneath. They dressed her in a hospital gown, without lifting her to tie it in the back.
Another nurse appeared, carrying an armful of warm blankets, covering the woman’s body and tucking them around her.
He felt a stab of guilt for watching them strip and dress the woman, but having been awakened from a dead sleep, he was operating on limited information given in a quick briefing from his boss, Jace Hawkins. Hawk had ordered him to the Maui hospital to protect Kimo Kekoa, who had been en route and would arrive minutes after him.
Hawk had said she’d been attacked. He wasn’t sure by whom, or whether another attack was imminent. To do his job right, Rex couldn’t take his eye off her until he had more data.
As it was, she’d practically flung herself out of the ambulance as if trying to escape. If he hadn’t been there to catch her, she’d have crashed to the ground, compounding any injuries she’d already sustained.
He felt responsible for her, even above and beyond the fact he’d been assigned as her protector.
After they’d covered her, Nurse Bowman attached EKG patches, while another nurse set up an IV. They moved the monitor to a position beside the bed and connected the EKG leads.
The nurses whispered behind him.
He couldn’t hear what they were saying and no longer had the monitor’s reflection to see what they were doing. Rex turned to face them.
