A Burning Rage (McIntyre Security Bodyguard #20)

Chapter 1 – Shane McIntyre

Five years ago…

I want to rage. I want to pound this wall until it disintegrates beneath my fists. I want to end Andrew Morton—the psychopathic monster who nearly killed the love of my life today. If he weren’t already in police custody, I’d be doing that right now, to hell with the consequences.

“Breathe, Shane.” The deep voice beside me belongs to my best friend, Daniel Cooper. He’s here for me, but he’s also here for Beth. Probably more so for Beth. Since the two of them met, they’ve grown close. He’s become a father figure to her.

I turn my head to meet Cooper’s steely gaze. He’s hurting as much as I am. It’s written all over his face, especially in his eyes, which are bracketed by worry lines.

“He could have killed her,” I say. My voice cracks. I have never in my life known such pain. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know being in love could hurt so bad, especially when the one you love is lying battered and bruised in a hospital bed.

We’re in the ER department, and I’m holding vigil outside my girlfriend’s hospital room attempting to wrap my mind around what’s happened.

My thoughts are reeling, and my guts are tied in knots.

Beth—my Beth—was physically assaulted about an hour ago in her office at the Kingston Medical School library in Hyde Park, Chicago, where she works as a reference librarian.

My Beth.

Assaulted.

Her beautiful face is so bloody and swollen she’s hardly recognizable. Her lip is split open. It’s obvious, even to my untrained eye, that her left arm is broken. Andrew reportedly stomped on her arm with his boot, and I can’t help but imagine the sound of her bone snapping beneath his heel.

How in the hell could anyone do something like this to Beth? She’s the sweetest, most gentle soul I’ve ever known.

But the real question—the one I keep asking myself—is how could I have let this happen?

Cooper’s hand comes down firmly on my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, Shane.” He knows me well enough to read my mind.

I turn my head to look into his sympathetic gaze. But whether he’s trying to comfort me or convince me of the truth of his words, he’s failing miserably. Because he’s wrong on both counts. There’s no comfort to be found—just a lot of self-recrimination and regret.

So much fucking regret.

Because it is my fault. It’s absolutely, one hundred percent my fault Beth got hurt.

The woman I love more than life itself is lying in a hospital bed, afraid and in pain, and it’s my fucking fault.

I jerk away from Cooper’s grasp, dismissing his attempt to placate me, and resume pacing. “I should have insisted she have a bodyguard at her side at all times, even inside the library.”

“Tyler didn’t want his sister to know he’d hired private security to protect her.”

I stop in my tracks to face him. “Fuck what Tyler wanted! If I’d followed my instincts, she never would have gotten hurt!”

“Keep it down,” Cooper says, always the voice of reason. “She’ll hear you. If you want to blame someone, blame that pigheaded brother of hers.”

“Tyler Jamison isn’t the CEO of McIntyre Security. I am. The responsibility is mine. Her protection was my responsibility.”

It was my job to protect her. Not just because I’m the CEO of the company, but because I’m the man who loves her.

I move to stand in front of her door so I can glance through the narrow window into her room.

The privacy curtain is pushed aside, allowing me to view her as she lies in bed.

Her face is so badly battered I hardly recognize the beautiful, sensitive, young woman I love.

There’s blood on her face and in her hair.

A young brunette wearing pink scrubs is gently dabbing Beth’s face with a damp cloth to remove the blood.

Beth’s much older brother, Tyler Jamison, is standing on the other side of her bed, scowling, his arms crossed over his chest. He must have come straight from work because he’s still in his austere black suit and white dress shirt.

He’s got the Men in Black vibe down pat.

He looks very much like the homicide detective he is—stern, wound way too tight, and all business.

I can tell from his stiff posture that he’s livid, but I can only wonder if his anger is directed at me or at the young man who attacked his sister.

As if he can feel my eyes on him, Tyler glances my way, meeting my gaze through the window. His scowl deepens instantly.

Clearly, it’s me he’s pissed at.

Tyler hired my company—McIntyre Security—to provide around-the-clock protection for his young sister when the man who’d kidnapped her when she was only six was about to be released early on parole.

Tyler was afraid the kidnapper still presented a risk to Beth, so he hired us to watch over her.

He just didn’t want Beth to know she had bodyguards secretly tailing her everywhere she went. He didn’t want to scare her.

The one place my bodyguards weren’t allowed to enter was the medical school library where Beth worked. And that’s where she was attacked. Not by the man we were protecting her from, but by a psychotic medical school student. No one could have foreseen what Andrew did to her.

Suddenly, Tyler heads right for the door. I move aside to let him step out and close the door behind him.

“Tyler.” Whatever he wants to dish my way, I’m ready for it. He’s only just learned that his sister and I are involved, and I know he’s not happy about it.

“You and I have a lot to talk about, Shane. But right now, I’m going down to the County jail to oversee the charges.

” He glares at me through the same ethereal shade of blue-green eyes that Beth has.

But where she is fair, he’s dark—his hair, his personality, even his mood.

His posture is stiff, and his jaws are tightly clenched.

I half expect him to take a swing at me, and I’m surprised when he doesn’t. “Let me know what you find out.”

Tyler nods curtly. “You’ll stay here and keep an eye on her?”

“Of course.” Hell, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from her.

“I won’t be long.” He acknowledges Cooper with a perfunctory nod before he walks away.

“Does he know about you and Beth?” Cooper asks.

“He does now. When Beth first woke up a short while ago, he walked in on us talking. I didn’t hide my feelings, nor did she. He knows.”

* * *

After Tyler leaves, I return to my post at Beth’s bedside, holding her good hand and doing my best to comfort her through the pain.

We’re waiting for someone to take her to X-ray her arm.

As she dozes on and off, I catalogue every mark on her body.

Seeing her like this is almost more than I can take.

Over the next few hours, I hover nearby as visitors come to see her—her mother, Ingrid; her housemate, Gabrielle. I’m glad her mom is here. I think some tender motherly attention is probably what Beth needs most of all right now.

But underneath my calm facade, I’m still raging inside.

I’m angry at myself, as well as at Andrew Morton.

Andrew attacked Beth to get back at me for humiliating him at the annual hospital charity gala.

The lovesick college student who’d been crushing on Beth cornered her in the hallway leading to the restrooms, and when I caught him in the act, I practically dragged him in front of his father, Richard Morton, a prominent Chicago cardiologist.

When Richard punished his son, Andrew took his anger out on Beth because she was an easy target, and because he couldn’t hurt me. She paid the price for my handling of the young medical school student.

Every time she winces in pain, every time she cries out, I feel a dagger twisting in my gut.

She could have died because of me, and I’ll have to live with this guilt for the rest of my life.