They’d have to try a new plan.

Her eyes were so wide. “Y-you were hurt.” Voice softer now. An attendant began pushing her toward the back of the open ambulance.

His wounds were nearly closed now. Shifters healed very quickly as a rule, but when they transformed, the healing process sped up about five times the normal rate. “Don’t worry about me.”

Dammit, her blood was everywhere. He was going to make the vamp pay. Blood for blood.

Cain stepped back when the attendant loaded her into the ambulance.

Time to go. Santiago could handle the scene while he—

A hand landed hard on his shoulder. “Just what the hell is going on here, Lawson?” Sam’s furious voice. “Why the hell was my cousin attacked? Why’d I get a dozen reports of gunshots tonight?” The questions fired one after the other. “And just why the hell are the Bureau folks acting like you’re the man in charge of this mess?”

Glancing back over his shoulder at the other man, Cain bared his teeth in the semblance of a smile. “Because I am.” The attendant was trying to close the doors of the ambulance.

Cain’s hand flew out, catching the edge of the metal. “I’m coming.” He wasn’t about to take a chance that Paul would get another shot at her.

“No, Lawson, you’re staying right here and—”

He shrugged, breaking the deputy’s hold. “Straighten him out,” he ordered a watchful Santiago and saw the man’s nearly imperceptible nod. Cain jumped into the ambulance, and the young blond woman checking Miranda’s pulse looked up. Her gaze dropped momentarily to his bare chest.

The driver started the engine. The lights began to flash. Right before the doors closed, Cain told Sam, “This isn’t your game anymore, Deputy. So stay out of my way, and let me track Roberts on my own.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open. “Paul Roberts is dead!”

Cain threw a hard glance to Santiago. “Straighten him out,” he repeated, just before another attendant slammed the doors.

At the hospital, a too-friendly doctor—Dr. Ben Abrams—stitched up the jagged wound on her shoulder, after ruling it as nothing more than a flesh wound. Then the doc discovered she had a mild concussion—courtesy of Santiago’s nice hurling of her to the ground—so Dr. Abrams sent Miranda to a sterile white room with not-so-friendly instructions to stay overnight.

Dammit.

When she went to sleep, Cain was sitting in the chair beside her.

And when Miranda woke the next day, Cain was still there, but now he was wearing a shirt. One of the scrub tops that the doctors wore. Dark green. And he was sleeping.

She stared at him, noting the shadows beneath his eyes. The tension that still lined his mouth.

So much more than a man.

Shifter.

Power. Strength. He was—

His lashes lifted. When he caught her stare, a little of that tension disappeared from his mouth as he smiled and said, “Hello, gorgeous.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.” Oh, jeez, but she sounded like some poor frog that had nearly been choked to death. What the hell was the deal with that? The paltry dose of pain meds? She cleared her throat and tried again, “I-I probably look like hell.” Better. Not perfectly normal yet, but a definite improvement.

She’d been bitten, mauled, shot—no way was she going to win any beauty prizes.

“You look beautiful.”

For a creature with supposedly superior senses, he seemed to be missing a few things.

Miranda tried to sit up and winced at the sting in her arm. Glancing down, she saw the thick bandage that circled her shoulder. “How bad is it?” It hurt, ached more than anything, but she really hoped Paul hadn’t screwed up her arm permanently.

The smile stretched a bit more. “Don’t worry, in a few days, you’ll be as good as new.” A pause. “You just bleed like crazy, baby. You had everyone on the scene worried.”

And Paul had probably been in the woods somewhere, salivating.

“The doctor was in here earlier. He gave orders that you’re to do no major lifting or”—now his eyes heated—“any other too strenuous activity.”

Oh, damn.

He leaned forward and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “So I guess we’ll just have to make certain I do all the work, you know, so things don’t get too strenuous for you.”

Now, she sure liked the sound of that.

“But first, we need to get you the hell out of here.”

Her breath caught. “Can we?” She hated hospitals. Hated. Them. Had ever since she’d been a kid and her mom had been brought in to St. Vincent’s. Her mom had been sick, much sicker than a child could ever understand, and once she’d been wheeled past the sliding doors of the hospital, she hadn’t come back out alive.

And Miranda’s life with Grandma Belle had begun.

Her lips pressed together. Shit. She didn’t need to be thinking about that time now. There was more than enough crap to deal with at the moment without—

Cain’s fingers wrapped around her chin and she realized that she’d turned her face away from him.

To better hide the memories.

“Miranda?” Worry. For her.

She licked her lips. “I’d really like to get . . . out of here.” The smile she sent him felt terrible on her mouth. “I’m not much for hospitals.”

He just stared at her, waited. “Why?”

“The smells.” Bleach and death. God, but she hated that stench. “I just—I don’t like ’em.”