Chapter Two #2
Back then, Gretchen Hawthorne and her wife Laura hadn’t yet formed the Night Herons or The Parker Foundation.
Theirs was simply a group of LA-based victims of Remy Blaze’s awful website, who came together to support each other through the feelings of violation and grief that no one else could fully understand.
Led by Gretchen, they had eventually helped the FBI take down Blaze, and they’d pooled some of the money they’d received in damages to create both a foundation—named after Gretchen and Laura’s late daughter—to help women in need, and a secret team to take down men who abused their power.
But she couldn’t explain all of that to Ford even if she had the capacity right now.
He knew about Blaze’s website and Nat’s stalker, but not the Night Herons.
All of that was “need to know” only. And even now, he didn’t need to know.
Her situation was the same, either way. If Gretchen had wanted to share the truth with him, she would have.
Natalie intended to feed him her cover story and tell him what she knew about who’d tried to kill her—very little—but the next time she opened her eyes, bright sunlight streamed through the window and Ford was gone again.
God, she had to pee. She pressed her call button, eliciting a visit from a nurse within minutes.
He helped her walk to the bathroom, opened the food containers on the breakfast tray next to her bed, and changed her dressing.
Tired, but no longer sleepy, Natalie adjusted her bed to sit higher and looked around. Where the hell was her cell phone? Then again, who could she call? Everyone believed she’d died last night.
Her throat closed up. For all intents and purposes, she was dead. Gone. No longer in her friends’ and family’s lives. Presumably, they were mourning her right now, rearranging their lives to deal with the heartache and the paperwork. For no good reason. She was perfectly fine.
Okay, not fine exactly, but alive.
They were going to hate her when she just popped up one day like, “Psych! Sorry to put you through that but my safety mattered more than your feelings.” Goddamn Ford for putting her in this situation. Could he really not have thought of a single other alternative to killing her off?
The negativity burrowed into her chest like a termite chewing through pine, and—hell no.
She recoiled from the dark spiral of emotion.
Glancing around she snatched up the TV remote and started flipping channels until she landed on reruns of Big Bang Theory dubbed in German, and watched Sheldon and Leonard bicker while she mowed through the bland hospital food.
Anything to get her mind off the clusterfuck that was her life—her death? Ugh, whatever—right now.
By midday, she’d binged too much television, learned the names of all the nurses, used the bathroom twice, doodled on a small notepad someone gave her, given her body a cursory wipedown at the sink, and gotten help putting her tangle of curls into a low ponytail—something she couldn’t do one-handed, which was going to be fucking annoying for the next month or two.
Finally, around one, Ford strode in wearing a baseball cap and square-framed glasses. It was a light disguise that would work from a distance but not register as too odd up close. He set a cloth tote bag on the chair and hooked the glasses on the placket of his polo. “How are you feeling?”
“Bored.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and her new goal was to trigger one of his rare full smiles. Except look where that had gotten them last time.
“Where’d you go?” she asked, trying not to pout. He was now her only connection the outside world, and he’d left her on her own for hours. Honestly, given their history, he should know better. She and boredom were mortal enemies.
“You’re supposed to be discharged this afternoon. I had a lot to set up before that happens.” He pointed to the bag. “Also, I got you some clothes and toiletries. I had to guess at sizes, so I got a couple options.”
“Thanks.” She combed her fingers through the ends of her ponytail. “Are the glasses real?”
His thick brows rose. “Yes. The prescription’s for distance, but it’s not too strong. I mostly use them for driving.”
“They look good,” she said. “Kind of give you that hot professor look.”
Pink washed his cheeks and he shook his head while briefly closing his eyes.
Score one for Nat. Any reaction was better than nothing.
“Back to that, are we?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that emphasized his sculpted biceps.
She shrugged with her good shoulder. “What else is there to do? I’m already tired of watching reruns. And I’m stuck in this box of blandness until I get my energy back.”
“The most important thing is that you’re safe here.”
And there it was. The one thing he cared about above all. “Safe is boring.”
“And God forbid you’re bored for more than one minute,” he said, his voice edging into irritation.
Yes, exactly. Boredom meant time to think. Time to think meant facing the hot mess her life had become. It gave an opening to the dark, scary shit that was always tapping at the glass of her carefully constructed mental shields. A busy mind provided a necessary diversion.
As ill advised as it might be, poking the bear named Ford was the easiest path to distraction right now. “Life’s too short to be serious all the time. I thought you might have lightened up a little by now.”
“Oh, really?” His jaw clenched. “Because last time I did that I got knifed in the back.”
Fuck. The old guilt, the fear, hit her like a bucket of tar, hot and dark and oozing. Why did she always take it one step too far? “Ford, I’m—”
He cut her off with, “I thought you might have grown up a little by now. You may not care about your own safety, but what about the people around you? Forget me, but Dr. Amadi, the nurses, their lives are at risk because they’re helping you right now.”
His argument hit home, but how dare he accuse her of not caring about others?
Her last three years had been dedicated to helping and protecting those who didn’t have the resources to do it for themselves.
She took down assholes like Warner Renfro—the man she and Emma were currently investigating—so the world would be a safer place for everyone.
She’d taken on the risks of being a Night Heron willingly, and in one stroke he’d thrown it all away. Her freedom, her job, her life.
“I appreciate that, but I didn’t ask for your help, or theirs,” she said, knowing she sounded like a petulant teen, but panicking as the bleak reality of her current existence threatened to overwhelm.
Her complete and utter reliance on Ford and the medical staff, the total lack of ability to dictate what came next…
She might as well be tied to a chair. It was almost more than she could bear.
People—especially men—had been trying to restrain her in various ways her entire life. Thinking about it made her want to punch something. “You had no right to put me in this position.”
“You called me.”
Despite the breach in his impassive facade, Ford’s look of disbelief gave her no satisfaction.
The small, rational part of her brain that hadn’t short-circuited understood why her reaction made no sense to him. Still, the need to throw herself at the bars of her metaphorical cage was primal. She could no more stop raging against the injustice than she could stop her heart from beating.
He made a frustrated noise and pulled a stack of magazines from his bag.
“Here.” He dropped them onto the rolling table at her side.
“They’re all in German, but it’s the best I could do on short notice.
Hopefully, they’re enough to keep you entertained until you’re discharged.
” Then he turned and walked out the door.