“Look at it this way. You’ve been on the island for less than a day and have already made new friends.” Doc Lela, which was what everyone in the clinic called her, checked his bandage as she talked. “That’s a good sign.”

She’d missed an obvious bad sign when it came to his dangerous island welcoming committee, but Connor let it slide. “There are probably easier ways to meet people than being attacked.”

She smiled as she worked. “No kidding.”

Ben laughed. “Welcome to Whitaker.”

One good thing was that it had to go up from here . . . At least, Connor hoped that was true.

Chapter 3

Maddie Rhine couldn’t stop shaking. She sat at her kitchen table and opened and closed her hand as she looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows to the water in the distance. It had been more than twelve hours and the fine tremor running through her fingers refused to stop. She was starting to think it never would.

She’d been terrified and in hiding for most of the last two years. Never getting a decent night of sleep. Watching over her shoulder and wrapping herself in loneliness to avoid more pain. When the killings happened on Whitaker a few months back she seriously considered running again, but the stark desperation to finally build a new life kept her rooted here.

Still, exhaustion tugged at her. She didn’t have the strength to do this alone. Not anymore.

She looked at the letter resting on her table. The one she’d barely touched, except to open the envelope. She’d been trained in this. She knew not to handle the paper too much.

I found you, bitch.

Nothing subtle about that message or the angry, scribbling scrawl.

The knock at the door made her jump. Warm tea spilled over her hand. A second later that familiar racing sensation revved up inside her. The need to bolt, or at least hunt for a weapon and hunker down . . . and wait.

“Maddie?”

Ben’s voice reached her through the door.

This was Ben. Safe, dependable Ben. With that cute face, he turned heads all over the island. Attractive on any scale. Tall, dark, and handsome, but to her, brotherly with a background in ass-kicking, which was exactly how she preferred the men she knew. At a distance and lethal, protective without smothering.

The one time he’d asked her out, she’d panicked. She wanted him near her as her last line of defense. Ever since her life had blown up, the idea of dating, of trusting another person on any sort of intimate level, left her cold and shaking. She stayed away and totally out of the dating pool because it was easier, safer.