Page 14 of Night Shift

“Sam!” a gruff voice said, penetrating the windows of my car. A man staggered toward her, his gait unsteady and predatory. He lunged at Sam, his hand snapping out to clamp onto her arm with brutal force. The roughness of his grip was jarring. His tense muscles and bared teeth made it clear he was furious.

“Let go of me, Mac!” Sam shrieked, her breath visible in the frigid air, mingling with the fog that shrouded the scene in a ghostly veil.

“Help me, goddammit! I know you got money,” Mac growled. His words were slurred, but the threat was unmistakable.

I slipped out of the car, my heart pounding at the sight of Sam’s terror. Their voices grew louder as the intensity of the altercation increased, and I was able to step closer, unnoticed.

“Help you?” she screamed, trying to wrench her arm free. “I moved to Tacoma to escape you, to get as far from Aberdeen and your mess as I could!”

“Escape? You think you can just…leave, as if I never existed?” Mac hissed. “You ruined my life, girl.”

“How did you even find me here?”

“Got my ways,” he sneered, tightening his grip. “You owe me, you little—”

“Owe you?” Sam spat back. “I don’t owe you anything. You ruined everything, not me!”

“Money, Sam! Or meds,” he demanded, his words a guttural growl. The man’s desperation was a raw, ugly wound for the world to see. “Grab some from the hospital. That should be easy enough for a fancy nurse like you.”

Sam’s response was a bitter laugh. “I don’t have any money. And the hospital’s meds are secured. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t!” she shouted, her defiance flaring despite her trembling. “Everything’s locked up tight—just like I wish you were!”

“Give me something, or I swear…” Mac’s threat hung incomplete, but the implication was clear.

The ugliness of the exchange was obviously a prelude to something darker. Mac’s eyes were wild, bloodshot, and calculating—a predator pushed to the brink.

“Help me, or—”

“Or what, Dad?” she cut him off, her voice rising. “You’ll beat me? Stalk me? Haunt me? You’re already nothing more than a ghost of a father—a man I wish I’d never known.”

I crept closer, ready to intervene, but held back, absorbing the complexity of their relationship. Sam’s struggle was written in the tension of her stance, the set of her jaw. She was a warrior standing her ground.

“Don’t sass me, girl,” Mac hissed. “Play tough and see what happens.” Then he jerked her around by the arm.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides, and my muscles were coiled, every sense on high alert.

“Get away from me!” she yelled, her voice breaking.

“Remember, I can take away everything you’ve built.” Mac’s shadow loomed over her as his hand formed a fist.

“Over my dead body,” she muttered to herself, but I heard it—a promise of survival.

“Enough!” I roared, my voice steady but laced with a fury that surprised even me. “Leave her alone.”

They whipped around to face me. Two pairs of eyes, wide with shock, stared at me—one pair clouded by intoxication, the other shimmering with unshed tears. Sam’s gaze held a wordless plea, as though she was silently begging me not to get involved.

“Who the hell are you?” Mac snarled, sizing me up with a disdainful glance.

“None of your fucking business,” I answered, stepping closer to the scumbag that was Sam’s father. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“Stay out of this, Dr. Thorin,” Sam warned, but her voice wavered, her bravado slipping away.

“Can’t do that.” I shook my head and took another step toward them. “Not when someone I—”

I cut myself off before I finished that thought, aware of the line I was teetering on, the boundary between professional concern and personal involvement. But as I looked into Sam’s eyes, I realized that line had been crossed, and there was no going back.

The cold had already seeped into my bones, but the chill that ran down my spine now was different—primal, defensive. Sam’s breath hitched as Mac’s grip tightened around her slender arm, his fingers digging in like the talons of a raptor claiming its prey. The sight triggered something in me, an instinct to protect.

“Hey! Let her go!” I yelled, my heart pounding to the rhythm of my quickening footsteps. The man swung her around, and her face paled in terror.

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