“Not if he found a way up here.” Hank opened the front door and shouted back to Prancer. “I’m looking forward to introducing you to my friend Master Sergeant Tyler North.”

Antonia felt a tightness in her chest. Her arm ached, but she didn’t mind that so much. “Hank, I’ve put you in a terrible position.”

“I put myself here. You didn’t. I did what I had to do. No regrets. No second-guessing.” He slung an arm over her shoulder, careful to avoid her injury. “Well, Doc, looks as if you’re going to have to ride in a helicopter after all.”

She managed a laugh. “For once, I don’t mind. It beats staying out here in a hurricane.” But that was bravado—she didn’t like helicopters. “The police aren’t going to like it that a senate candidate was knifed.”

“Hell, I don’t like it. They won’t like having an E.R. doctor shot, either.”

The helicopter landed on a relatively dry spot near the cottage, and within minutes, Hank was proved right. Compact, green-eyed, tawny-haired Tyler North, a lion of a man, jumped out. He had somehow wormed his way onto the rescue flight. Now he was their link between disaster and the helicopter.

Hank swore under his breath. “Damn. I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

Tyler grinned at him. “Never. Dr. Winter? You need a litter?”

“I can walk.”

But, actually, she couldn’t. He saw that before she did. So did Hank. They strapped her into a litter and got her on board the helicopter, another crewman waiting with Robert Prancer. Then they got him on board.

Mercifully, Antonia, who didn’t like helicopters, passed out for the short ride back to the mainland.

* * *

Tyler disappeared before Hope hit.

“Marry Antonia, will you?” he told Hank. “It’ll take Gus’s mind off killing me.”

“Carine—”

“She’ll be fine. She won’t want to get in the way of her sister’s happiness. Trust her.”

“Is she here?”

“She’s here. Gus, too.”

Hank had known his friend wouldn’t stick around. He knew, too, that Ty hadn’t found his way to Cape Cod to earn Hank’s undying gratitude—he’d done it because that was what he did, because it was Antonia, and it was Carine. Ty was gone before she made her way to Antonia. Gus was at her side, fifty years old, rangy, totally pissed off.

Antonia ignored all of them and got access to a proper medical bag so she could sew up her own arm, informing everyone who tried to dissuade her that she did this sort of thing for a living.

Stubborn. Hard-bitten. Independent. Hank grinned. For all his faults, Tyler North did know the Winter family of Cold Ridge, New Hampshire.