CATCH A SHADOW by Patricia Potter Berkley Sensation

A USAToday bestselling author who "keeps getting better with every outing," (Publisher's Weekly), Patricia Potter delivers an explosive novel of romantic suspense about a woman whose good deed gets her into big trouble . . .

When paramedic Kirke Palmer agreed to the deathbed request of a hit-and-run victim, she thought she was doing the right thing. All she had to do was deliver an envelope -- and keep the police out of it. Little did she realize that her goodwill gesture would make her the target of a cold-blooded killer.

Caught in a deadly game she doesn't understand, she turns to Jake Kelly -- a man she isn't even sure she can trust. After all, he's a convicted thief who might also be a murderer. But when Jake risks his own life to save hers, she starts believing he was wrongly convicted. Unfortunately, with her life on the line, trust is a luxury she can't afford. Because if she can't outmaneuver her enemy, a future with Jake -- or anyone else -- will never be possible.

REVIEWS

"This is one good deed that definitely rebounds, throwing the heroine into a dark and extremely treacherous world. A mater of both plot and character, Potter weaves together a story that's both exciting and intense. It's not to be missed!" Romantic Times.

Patricia Potter's novels are "Pure Pleasure," Publishers Weekly (starred review)

... Potter . . . proves that she's adept at penning both enthralling historicals and captivating contemporary novels." Booklist (starred review)

"It's Potter's unique gift for creating unforgettable characters and delving into the deepest parts of their hearts that endears her to readers. . . a writer who always delivers what romance readers want: a love story to always remember." Romantic Times.

"Patricia Potter is a master storyteller." Mary Jo Putney

Just as agonizing was his thirst. His throat was parched, his lips dry and crusted, his tongue swollen.

He slowly opened his eyes as consciousness filtered through the pain. He tried moving. Thank God, his fingers moved, then his arms. His legs did as well, and he welcomed the new waves of pain that came with motion. He was alive, and every moving part of him seemed to work.

He shook his head to clear it, but the pain increased incrementally with the slightest movement, and he stopped for fear he might lapse back into unconsciousness. The others? Where were they? What had happened?

He raised up on one arm. Slowly. Every inch took supreme effort. How much blood had he lost? He was weak, weaker than he could ever remember being, and God knew he’d had bad wounds in the past.

“Chet,” he tried to call out but he knew it was only a whisper. A hoarse one.

“Chet,” he called louder, though the sound – scratchy as he knew it to be – echoed in his head like cannon shots. The silence was ominous. He knew what it meant. He knew he would not be lying here alone if Chet were able to answer.

Which meant Chet must be in a more dire state than he himself. And Adams? Jake had no idea where Adams would be. From the first moment Adams was assigned to his team, he and Adams had fought for control of the small Special Forces unit.

The diamonds? Where were the diamonds? He reached out for his pack, knowing instinctively he wouldn’t find it.

He also knew he must be badly wounded, or he wouldn’t have been left for dead.

Using every last ounce of strength he had, Jake tried to move again. Excruciating pain ripped through him. He forced his hand to explore his body, found the dried, caked blood on his shirt just above his heart. The probing of his fingers brought a new wave of agony. His head throbbed. His fingers felt hair stiff with dried blood. There was stickiness as well. He was still bleeding from a wound.

The effort exhausted him. He lay still for a moment, gathering his strength, trying to recall his last action before the darkness. They’d been driving on the road toward the stronghold of Emilio Camarro. They had encountered a fallen tree, and they had left the jeep to move it.

The joint Special Forces team was posing as terrorists, ready to provide the arms dealer with cash and diamonds for the weapons he’d bragged about possessing. They were charged with discovering whether he actually had the missiles he’d advertised sub rosa. If so, they were to trade a million in cash and four million in uncut diamonds for them. A cheap enough price to keep them out of the hands of less altruistic potential buyers.

They’d been promised safe passage and given the coordinates to a makeshift airport. A guide in a Jeep had been waiting for them. Everything seemed to be going according to plan when they encountered a log lying across the path.

That’s all he remembered. Camarro must have wanted both the diamonds and the missiles, even to risking his reputation as a reliable – if criminal – broker. An ambush? Were the two CIA guys dead? Taken prisoner?

Then he smelled an odor that was all too familiar. Death. He rolled over on his good arm. Chet. Not far from him. The odor didn’t lie. He knew from his friend’s twisted position he was dead.

He knew not to have friends. It was something he’d learned twelve years earlier when his best friend had been killed on a mission. Since then he’d avoided close relationships. They didn’t work for men in his job. Not with the men he served with. Not with marriage. But he and Chet had been part of the same team for five years. He’d liked and trusted him.

A darkness descended on him. It would be all too easy to surrender to it. He wanted to close his eyes again, to return to oblivion.

Coward. There were other men out there. He struggled to his knees, swaying as he fought the pain, the weakness. He crawled over to Chet, turned him over. A bullet in his back. It had gone through the body, paralyzing, then killing him.

Chet’s gun was gone. So was the knife he’d always strapped to his leg. Jake knew he’d had the unit’s money with him. He checked all the pockets. Nothing. The money was gone as well as the diamonds. All in all, Uncle Sam’s five million dollars had disappeared.

He crawled farther, looking for the others. He found one. Ramos had several bullets in him, probably died immediately.

Why couldn’t he remember? Had he been hit first? Where were the other two members of the team?

Had their mission been leaked? Camarro was known for his hatred of America. If their cover had been betrayed, Camarro wouldn’t hesitate to rob and kill them.

“Hit and run, Highland and North Avenue.” The dispatcher’s voice echoed in the close confines of the ambulance, sending an adrenalin rush through Kirke Palmer.

She hit the respond button and reported they were two blocks from the location, then signed off.

Her back stiffened, and her pulse pounded. She hated hit and runs, but still that rush titillated. It brushed away the weariness from a long, frustrating day as she mentally went over the steps for major trauma. After a year as an Emergency Medical Technician, then three as a paramedic, she’d memorized the protocols, but like a pilot she went over the checklist on every call.

Hal, her partner, turned on the siren and drove the ambulance like a demon. She usually tried to drive, but she’d been emotionally exhausted by the last call, an abused child they’d barely kept alive on the trip to the hospital. Kirke doubted she would ever forget the boy’s eyes. The emptiness in them as if he’d known nothing but cruelty in his young life.

In the years since she’d completed training as an EMT, she’d tried to build a shield around her emotions to keep her from caring too much. She’d been warned about that. Build defenses or burn out. She was thirty-three and on her second career. She didn’t want a third. Not any time soon. But the kids got to her.

She didn’t have to look at the map. Hal knew exactly where to go. She knew the location as well. She’d been there enough, first as a reporter and now as paramedic. Manuel’s Tavern was a landmark in Atlanta, a gathering place for the famous as well as the blue collar worker.

She glanced at her watch. Four p.m. Three more hours before their long shift ended. Already today, she’d seen too many forms of human mayhem. An arson where two people were badly burned. A bicycle rider struck by a speeding car. Head injury. No helmet. He’d died at the scene. A gunshot wound. Then the toddler with multiple fractures and third degree burns.

The ambulance screeched to a stop. The street was completely blocked. Kirke jumped out with their two bags and dashed toward the gathering crowd while Hal backed the truck and tried to maneuver closer to the accident site.

The crowd opened a pathway for her. As she approached the victim on the ground, a man knelt next to him. A good Samaritan? A doctor? Before she could see his face, he stood and disappeared among the sightseers.

One less problem. Good Samaritans were often more hindrance than help, delaying her as she tried to move onlookers back.

The victim lay bleeding in the street. White male. Probably in his late thirties. She checked vitals. Thready pulse and blood pressure dropping. He was bleeding out from multiple wounds, including a steady stream pouring from a jagged wound on his arm where a bone jutted out. He was conscious, though. Eyes open and focusing. But his color was poor. Body sweating.

She took a tourniquet from her bag and started to wrap it around his arm. He knocked it from her hands. “No,” he moaned. “No.”

“I’m Kirke, a paramedic,” she said softly in the most encouraging tone she had, even as she tried again to tie the tourniquet. A small artery was torn. She had to stop the bleeding before anything else. “What’s your name?”

He pushed her hand away and reached toward her. Then she noticed a bloodstained envelope clutched in his hand. He tried to thrust it into her hands.

Nothing was going to placate him except taking the envelope from him. She took the envelope and shoved it into her pocket. She would turn it in at the hospital.

“Give . . . to Mitch Edwards. Tell him . . . Dallas . . .” He grasped her hand. “Swear.”

“I swear,” she said just as Hal arrived. They both worked to suction the blood before he drown in it.

She looked at her watch. They were nearing the end of the ten minute scene time. They were supposed to be on their way by then.

Hal caught her glance and nodded. They immobilized the victim’s spine and moved him onto a stretcher, then loaded him into an ambulance. His eyes remained open, and he was silent, although she knew the pain was agonizing.

She got in the back with him as Hal drove. As the sirens wailed and the ambulance threaded its way through the heavy traffic, she checked his vitals again. His color had worsened, and he was having difficulty breathing. She administered oxygen and started an IV

He pushed away the oxygen mask. “Envelope,” he said again in a choked voice.

“I have it,” she said. “It’s safe.” What could be so important that it might be his last thought? He said nothing about family. She hadn’t even been able to get a name from him.

“The person –this Mitch Edwards – how do I find him?” she tried again. Perhaps the friend could tell the police and hospital staff whom to contact.

“Mili . . .Virgini . . . ” The word died on his lips and he lapsed into unconsciousness. The monitors showed his heart failing. Kirke frantically started CPR.

The ambulance roared up to the emergency entrance and they rushed the patient inside. After giving what information she had to the emergency room staff, she started on the paperwork as Hal flirted with one of the nurses. He was a good natured teddy bear of a man who was both compassionate and gentle. Kirke liked him immensely and felt lucky to have him as a partner. She was also amused by him. Hal was happily married, but harmless flirting was part of his nature.

When she finished the paperwork, she didn’t want to leave, not until she knew about her patient’s condition. “Why don’t you check on our patient while I clean out the ambulance?” she said to Hal. She wanted to know the victim’s condition without appearing unduly interested.

He agreed readily enough. As a paramedic, she was senior to his designation as a Emergency Medical Technician, but she always traded the chores: driving, cleaning the ambulance, paper work. It made for a good working relationship, especially because there was still some prejudice against women in the fire department, even paramedics.

She returned to the ambulance and started to clean out the back. They might well have another call before returning to the station. She started to wash the blood from the floor of the ambulance.

Her eyes caught something on the floor that shouldn’t be there. A wallet. It hadn’t been there earlier. Either she or Hal always cleaned the interior after a call.

A driver’s license and one credit card. A lot of cash in big bills. She made a note of the name on the driver’s license, then took the wallet inside to the nurse’s station. She hesitated for a moment. She should give them the letter as well.

But it was only a letter. And she had to admit that her old reporter’s instincts still lingered despite the fact her outspokenness had costs her a job at the Atlanta Observer. She’d always been compelled to solve puzzles.

Closing and locking the back doors, she noticed a dark sedan with tinted windows in the “drop off” zone. Hadn’t she heard someone among the witnesses mention a dark sedan with tinted windows? She couldn’t see the front to tell whether there was any damage.

She glanced around for a security officer as she started to approach the sedan to take a better look.

The car sped away. She couldn’t make out the license plate but she didn’t see any damage. An overactive imagination, she thought. Someone had probably been dropped off.

Still, a chill ran through her. She’d heard a bystander at the accident scene tell police that it had looked as if someone had deliberately run down the victim.

Hal was waiting for her at the nurse’s desk. He shook his head at the question she knew was in her eyes. “He’s not good. They want to try to find family,” he added in a matter-of-fact voice that belied the feeling in his eyes. It was one reason she liked him so much. He cared. He hadn’t burned out yet.

She handed the billfold to the nurse. “I found his wallet in the ambulance. His name is Mark Cable.”

No. Someone would mourn him. Someone named Mitch Edwards. Someone he’d tried so hard to reach.

“Let’s go,” she said to Hal. He was all business now, and he took the wheel. She turned back to her immediate problem. The envelope felt like an anvil in her pocket. Why hadn’t she told Hal about it? Or the hospital staff?

But deep inside, she knew why. She hoped with all her heart Mark Cable would survive, and she could return the envelope to him.

She realized then she was emotionally committed. She would protect the letter for him. If he didn’t survive, if she hadn’t been able to save Mark Cable, she would find Mitch Edwards for him and make good her promise to him.

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