The Protector by Dee Henderson Page A

friends hurt. She was moving the ice pack around in her hand, searching to find a way to rest her hand to lessen the pain. The painkillers the paramedics had given her were wearing off.
    Jack did not like where she lived. It was an impersonal apartment complex, an older group of eight brick buildings. She lived in building number three on the second floor in a corner apartment. The building foyer did not have good security, the carpet needed replacement, and the hallways were well lit but dreary. The only redeeming feature was the fact that her balcony overlooked the playground in the complex.
    Jack knew she had chosen the apartment because it was three minutes from the station where she had once worked. He wondered if she would consider moving now that she was no longer bound by residency requirements.
    He parked four spaces away from the building door. The sounds of nearby tollway traffic were intrusive. He walked around to open the car door for her.
    He knelt down when he realized she wasn’t even trying to release the seat belt. “Cassie?” He leaned across her and freed the seat belt clip. In the dim glow of the dome light he could see the tension.
    “Jack, it wasn’t what I saw.” His hand tightened on the door frame as the words were whispered. She surprised him by saying what she had been unwilling to say before. “It was what I thought.”
    Jack rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, wishing he could soothe the turmoil he heard.
    “He slipped his hands into his pockets and turned. The way he moved…” Her eyes filled with an incredible agony. “Jack, I think I saw Ash.”
    He stopped breathing.

Nine
    J ack used Cassie’s keys to unlock her apartment door. He found the light switch inside the door. Boxes were stacked in the entry-way. She was moving? Cassie passed him, stepping around the boxes and moving into the first room on the left. Jack turned the lock on the door and followed her.
    His gaze swept the living room with its green recliner and ottoman, couch and rolltop desk. If she was moving she hadn’t begun to pack this room; pictures were still on the walls, a jigsaw puzzle was spread out across a cardboard table. She’d been folding laundry. The basket was beside the coffee table and mismatched socks were lined up in a neat row from light colors to dark.
    Jack helped her off with the jacket. “Sit.”
    He headed toward the kitchen, flipped the lights on with an impatient hand, and tugged open cabinets until he found drinking glasses. Like his sisters she kept medicines beside the spices. He scanned prescription bottles, found the one for pain, and dumped two tablets in his palm.
    He wasn’t surprised at the extensive bandages and gauze she had stocked but it was sad she needed to use them again. He took out supplies for her hand.
    He was under no illusions that anything he said in the next few minutes would help. She thought it was her partner setting the fires.
    Few things would cut more than that.
    The humor he could normally dredge up to defuse a tense situation wasn’t there. And he never needed it more.
    She was on that brittle edge of tears. He hated being asked to deal with a woman who was ready to cry. Of all the things he could remember with clarity about his childhood, one of the most vivid was how lousy he was at comforting someone who was crying. He wished liked crazy she hadn’t told him. Why couldn’t she have waited and told Cole? His friend could deal with this.
    She hadn’t sat as he instructed. Jack set down what he carried on the mahogany end table next to the lamp, settled his hands on her shoulders, and put her into the recliner. He settled on the ottoman and handed her the glass. “Take the pills. This is going to hurt.”
    She set aside the ice pack as it had warmed. Jack carefully unwrapped the bandage Neal had put around the blisters. It was damp with more than just water; the blisters were weeping.
    He carefully added burn cream and replaced the gauze.