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It’s just a mug, she told herself. Probably a coincidence that it’s disappeared.

But when she tossed the coffee in the sink—half drunk and not worth finishing—the unease was still there.

She excused herself from the din of friendly conversations. “I’d better go inventory supplies. Make sure we’re ready for the day.”

After that, the day took on the usual rhythm of organized chaos.

Polly had barely tossed her gritty cup of coffee when the first trauma arrived—an elderly man with chest pains, followed by a toddler with a high fever and a terrified young mother clutching a threadbare blanket. The ER never stopped, not really. It just surged and lulled like a tide. And Polly, like every nurse here, had learned to ride the waves.

She moved swiftly between patients, checking vitals, hanging IVs, comforting frightened family members, grabbing bites of a protein bar between glove changes, scribbling chart notes and computer updates.

Somewhere around midmorning, she felt a familiar twist in her gut when a twentysomething male patient rolled in with a deep cut across the meat of his palm as if it had been sliced open with a knife. He claimed he worked in a kitchen and had cut himself with a knife, but the bruises on his knuckles and his swollen split lip indicated he’d been in a fight of some kind. His intake chart was flagged with a red allergy warning: Penicillin. Polly confirmed it twice, just to be sure. The young man, pale and edgy, insisted he’d be fine without any antibiotics at all. But protocol—and common sense—said otherwise.

It reminded her of Cayden Thornhill, a young man who’d attacked her in the ER earlier that year.

Her breath hitched in her chest as she remembered her encounter with the unpleasant patient who’d been a combination of wired energy and slimy flirtations. When he checked in as John Smith, Polly had known something wasn’t right.

Last fall, he’d come in with a bullet wound to the upper arm. He’d said lewd, flirty things to her that made her extremely uncomfortable. He’d touched her a few times, never quite by accident, and her skin had crawled. She threatened to call security, then sucked it up and did her job. The doctor had removed the bullet with calm efficiency, and Polly had been tasked with cleaning and bandaging the wound, prepping him for antibiotics. There’d been no mention of any allergies on John Smith’s chart. But within minutes of giving him a shot of penicillin, it was abundantly clear that the man had lied on his intake chart. He’d broken out in itchy hives and started to wheeze.

The moment she’d turned her back to get him an antihistamine to counteract the allergic reaction, he’d shoved her into her rolling supply cart and knocked her, the tray and everything on it to the floor. The next thing she knew, he was running out of the ER bay. It wasn’t until later that she realized he’d stolen the bullet the doctor had removed—the evidence that had been bagged and labeled to be handed over to the police as required by law.

She hadn’t known John Smith’s real name until later.

The very next day after that night in the ER, Polly had seen him again—this time with her sister Ashley—during a dogfighting investigation that had unraveled violently into murder. Cayden had been part of a group of men who had sabotaged Ashley’s car and cornered them at a bar in a dangerous part of town.

Even then, still fighting his reaction to the penicillin, he’d flirted with her in a way that made Polly distinctly uncomfortable. Cayden’s cousin and the rest of their crew had eventually been arrested. But Cayden had slipped through the cracks and vanished.

He hadn’t been seen since.

She hadn’t forgotten his voice, though. Or the look in his eyes—lustful, angry. Unpredictable. Every once in a while, she still dreamed about that night in the ER. About how close she’d come to helping a man who might’ve pulled a trigger and killed someone that same day.

She shook off the memory and moved on, hands busy, mind focused. But a sliver of unease clung to her, like a chilly draft that wouldn’t go away. If Cayden Thornhill was smart, he was long gone from Kansas City and was lying low beyond the reach of KCPD and the DA’s office. He was probably tormenting some other woman, or he was high on his drug of choice and rotting away in a run-down hotel somewhere.

The penicillin allergy was just a coincidence—and a reminder of a few scary days she had survived months ago. She needed to lose the paranoia and forget about her run-in with a criminal and surround herself with her family and friends and dive into her work.

By midafternoon, Polly finally got a break. She slipped into the supply closet to load up her bag with medical supplies for the satellite women’s free clinic where she volunteered each week. Since she’d have a shorter workday tomorrow, she’d have plenty of time to relax before taking Luna out to K-9 Ranch for her obedience school lessons. The gentle pit bull puppy was a sweet, loving companion, but she definitely needed some training to control all that puppy energy and become a welcome companion who she could eventually take to the clinic. She knew the right dog would be a big hit with the children who sometimes came in with their mothers—as well as being a morale booster for the staff.

She didn’t mind volunteering at the clinic—several of the St. Luke’s nurses did. She enjoyed working with mothers and children. It was a nice change from dealing with the back-to-back emergencies—both real and imagined by panicked patients—that filled her life as a trauma nurse. She grabbed several packs of sterile gloves, gauze, packaged syringes and alcohol pads, as well as a spare blood pressure cuff, and tucked them neatly into the bag. She’d get the requested medications from the doctor on duty at the end of her shift—the long, tiring, seemingly never-ending shift.

Polly let the bag drop to her feet as she leaned against the door for a moment, closing her eyes as the quiet pressed in, giving her ears and her mind a chance to rest. Her lower back ached. Her feet throbbed. Her thoughts drifted—just for a second—to an adorable one-eyed dog with a wagging tail. And to the taciturn man beside him with a guarded expression on his damaged face. She idly wondered if Pirate would get along with her Luna—and if Daniel Travis might actually smile if he met her klutzy toddler of a puppy.

The door opened behind her. Polly jumped and hauled her bag up to her chest, taking three quick steps to the supply shelves before she whirled around.

“Sorry about that.” Tate Emery slipped through the door and let it fall shut behind him with a quiet click. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Instead of coming in to retrieve supplies, he already carried something. It looked like an insulated paper cup with a plastic lid that had a smiley face drawn on it. When the smell of coffee filled up the enclosed space, she idly wondered if he’d snuck into the supply closet to doctor up his cup with a shot of something he’d hidden in here. Not that she thought he was an alcoholic, but his presence here felt weird. Of course, she’d been so riddled with paranoia lately that she was probably just projecting her suspicions onto every man she met—even her coworkers.

Polly shook off his apology and summoned a smile. “It’s all me,” she explained as she gathered the rest of what she needed off the shelves. “I think I was taking a little catnap while I was still on my feet.”

“Is that stuff for the satellite clinic?”

She nodded. “I volunteer in the morning.”

“You work too much.” His tone sounded concerned, but the amused arch of his eyebrow didn’t quite match. Tate was friendly—usually funny—and just so sure of himself that it made her uneasy. She never could tell if he was joking or testing boundaries. To her surprise, he thrust the steaming cup toward her. “Here. I brought you coffee from the cafeteria.”

“To the supply closet?”

He laughed as if she’d made a joke, and wasn’t just confused and cautious. “You were whining about how bad ours was in the lounge—and it is—that I wanted to treat you. Give you a decent jolt of caffeine to help you get over being so tired.”