The Guardian (Mended Souls Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

his worst. He watched as she leaned forward to check on the dog again, her slim fingers running with practiced care over the animal’s head and back. Her chestnut colored hair had fallen out of its topknot and now lay in wild disarray over her shoulders. She looked chilled. Her nipples were pressed against the white fabric of her blouse and a pink blush suffused her skin. Then again, that could be from his staring. He couldn’t help himself; she was seriously hot in a sexy librarian meets rock star kind of way. Scott stifled the urge to wrap her in his arms and warm her from the inside out.
    “Okay, say for half a minute I decided to take you at your word, tell me who you are then.” He heard the whine of the sirens and swore under his breath. Their time together was quickly running out and this strange encounter would become a lost moment in his hectic life. He had the crazy urge to ask her to run away with him. Just disappear for a while, get to know one another, forget the past few years. Start over. Except that was impossible.
    “Dr. Tracy York, a medical examiner. Your friend’s accident is my case.” She looked him in the eye, hers filled with compassion and he knew she was telling the truth.
    Not a librarian then.
    Reality came rushing back along with a truckload of pain and anger. Lucas was upstairs in a freaking vault, and here he was, making pansy eyes at a woman, the ME, no less. Self-disgust roiled in his gut and curdled his tone. “Fucking rights, it was an accident. That better be exactly what goes into the report too, Lucas deserves to rest in peace.”
    Her brows lowered and her mouth straightened into a tight line, pinching those full lips as though she’d tasted something sour. “Are you telling me to lie?”
    His chin rose and his hand fisted at his side. “I’m telling you to do your job and let an innocent man have the farewell he deserves. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
    She could make an issue out of the open liquor in the car, even though Scott knew without a shred of doubt, Lucas was sober when he got behind that wheel. He’d only had a couple drinks all day.
    The wail of the sirens almost drowned out her words, but the fire in her emerald eyes carried the message clearly. “I don’t lie. For anyone .”
    She would be one of the only women who didn’t then.
    “Is the guard going to know where to find you?” He lifted his voice to be heard, the noise reverberating off the cement walls now.
    “What guard? There is no guard, it’s a keyed entry.”
    Well, shit.
    The man he’d met at the guardhouse must have been the attacker. And he’d let him go.

Chapter 6
    L ucas sat in the cab across from the medical examiner’s office and watched the ambulance screech to a halt at the entrance to the parking garage. Two patrol cars followed close behind. The flashing red and blue lights bounced off the walls as four officers jumped out of their vehicles and hurried forward, guns drawn. They waved the paramedics back until the guardhouse was cleared, then someone lifted the bar and the ambulance nosed its way through.
    “Why didn’t you stop him?”
    The voice in the back jangled his already stretched nerves. He glared at the monk through the rear-view mirror. “You heard the rules as well as I did. No interfering with fate.”
    It had been tough enough to keep quiet when Scott asked him for a ride. He’d messed up when he called his old friend by the childhood nickname, A. Small wonder. No one knew of the names they had once called each other. It was their secret code, forged in the streets of their youth. Scott chose A for allegiance because it was the two of them, a team, against the craptastic world they inhabited. His was the more basic, T, for trustworthy. Yeah, he’d proven that was a wash, hadn’t he?
    “Well, if you’re not going to do anything, let’s get out of here.” The monk leaned forward, his eyes filled with hope. “It’s my turn. I want to see my