Her gaze darted down the hall and landed on the closed door to exam room two. Thankfully, there was no sign of Dr. Mercer.
“Look, can we please keep this down?” Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “I don’t want anyone else to know about this.”
And there it was. Beneath the strong, hardened exterior. Beneath the woman who walked into a medium-security prison every day like it was nothing. Beneath all that armor she’d built to survive. There was a woman with tears welling in her eyes. A woman whose lip was trembling, just slightly. A woman who had been hurt by someone who was supposed to love her and who was now terrified that people would find out.
My hands curled into fists so tight, my knuckles ached.
I would make him pay for that too.
“Give me his full name.”
Harper crossed her arms over her chest. Something that might have been a laugh escaped her throat. “Yeah. That is absolutely not happening.”
I straightened to my full height and looked down at her. She barely came up to my chest. This tiny, fierce, beautiful woman who had somehow become the center of my entire existence.
“I’ll find out who he is.”
“You won’t.”
“And when I do …” I let the silence stretch. Let her imagination fill in the blanks. “He’s going to pay for what he did to you.”
Harper lifted her chin, defiant even now. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re in here and he’s out there. Beyond your reach.”
The door behind us opened wider.
“Excuse me.” A correctional officer stepped into the room. Someone older, with a clipboard and an air of bureaucratic importance.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I wanted to introduce our newest team member.” He stepped aside, gesturing to someone in the hallway. “Harper, this is Officer Whitmore. He’ll be overseeing transferring inmates to and from the infirmary starting today.”
A man walked through the door.
Tall. Clean-cut. The kind of face that looked trustworthy at first glance. The kind of smile that charmed people before it destroyed them.
But it wasn’t his face that made my blood turn to ice.
It was Harper.
The change was instant. Like watching someone get shot without a single bullet being fired. Every drop of color drained from her cheeks. Her body went rigid, shoulders climbing toward her ears, chin tucking down in that protective posture I’d noticed the very first day I met her.
The posture I now understood.
Her hand drifted up to touch the base of her throat.
And I knew. I knew before my brain caught up. I knew in the part of me that had learned to read danger the way other men read newspapers.
The man’s eyes found Harper and lit up with something dark and possessive. His smile widened into something that made me want to rip his jaw clean off his skull.
“Officer Whitmore,” the man said, extending his hand toward Harper like they were meeting at a fucking cocktail party. “But you already knew that, didn’t you, Harper? Pleasure to see you again.”
She didn’t take his hand.
She couldn’t. Her fingers were frozen at her throat, pressing against that spot like she was trying to protect something vital. Something he’d already damaged.
The room shrank. The buzzing lights grew louder. And everything inside me went quiet.
My gaze moved slowly. The way a predator tracks wounded prey.
First, to Harper.
