Sworn to Protect

“Whoever did this is scum,” Sundance insisted. “Help me catch him before he hurts someone else.”

“I don’t remember,” Iris whispered, shaking her head in a pathetic, scared little rabbit motion that tore at his heart. “I don’t think I want to remember. What if he’s someone I know? What if he’s watching me all the time, waiting to do it again?”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said, fighting to keep the growl from his voice. “We’re going to catch him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that I won’t stop until I do.”

Seeing her so broken, so torn apart mentally, awakened a grizzly bear of rage that made him want to go on a rampage. But he couldn’t do that, not when he needed to keep a calm head in order to catch whoever did this.

“He’s out there. Every time I close my eyes he’s there, watching me. Waiting.”

“I’m here.” No one was going to touch her. He’d make sure of it. He felt pressure against his bicep as she tentatively laid her head against him. “No one is going to touch you.”

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Dear Reader,

Some stories are difficult to write, but the characters burst from your imagination and demand every resource you’ve got because their story is so important. This is what happened with Iris and Sundance. Set on an Indian reservation in Washington State, this story called to my natural Native American heritage. The research was daunting at times, but the end result was wholly gratifying. I hope Iris’s courage and Sundance’s strength buoy you during their tumultuous and, at times, dark journey toward love.

This is the first in my Native Country series. Next up, Mya Jonson and Angelo Tucker, another couple who had an important story to tell and one likely to tug at your heart.

Hearing from readers is a special joy. Please feel free to drop me a line via email through my website at www.kimberlyvanmeter.com or through snail mail at Kimberly Van Meter, P.O. BOX 2210, Oakdale, CA 95361.

Kimberly Van Meter

Sworn to Protect

Kimberly Van Meter

KIMBERLY VAN METER

wrote her first book at sixteen and finally achieved publication in December 2006. She writes for Harlequin Superromance and Harlequin Romantic Suspense.

She and her husband of seventeen years have three children, three cats and always a houseful of friends, family and fun.

There’s a special pride felt by those who share Native

blood. This is dedicated to the scores of people who

honor their Native American ancestry by refusing to

forget who they are and where they come from.

To my great grandmother Ella “Tootsie” Rhoan for

trying to teach me our Native language when I was

young and for coming to my fourth grade class to

show us how to make acorn meal. I was too young to

appreciate what a gift you were giving.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Chapter 1

A parade of pain marched across Iris Beaudoin’s body as she slowly opened her eyes and squinted against the harsh white light. Her best friend, Dr. Mya Jonson, was staring down at her, an expression of fear and worry warring with her need to fix what had been broken.

“Wh-ere am I?” she managed to croak. Her clothes were gone and she was wearing a hospital gown, which meant she was at the urgent care facility, Healthy Living, where she worked with Mya. “M-Mya? What happened?”

“I don’t know, honey, but you were found alongside the road before the Pititchu Bridge. You’ve been beaten pretty bad,” Mya answered, gingerly clutching Iris’s hand. “Do you remember anything?”

Iris swallowed and closed her eyes against the pain radiating from every pore of her body. “Hurts,” she whispered. “I can’t think…”

“Okay, honey, don’t worry. We’re going to get you fixed up and then we’re going to find out who did this to you.”

Iris nodded in a faint movement but even that small action cost her. Mya rubbed her hand and gave it a light squeeze, then said, “I have to do an SAE,” she said, her voice breaking.

SAE…Iris was a nurse and she knew what that meant. Sexual Assault Exam. A tear leaked down her cheek and she nodded again. “Okay,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry, but we have to know,” Mya said. “I’ll make it quick. I promise.”

Iris squeezed her eyes shut and allowed her knees to part even as she fought the shuddering cries that felt trapped in her chest. Someone had assaulted her, that much was apparent, but her brain was fuzzy in the details.

She remembered…being at the bar…dancing…karaoke…and then nothing.

Iris winced as Mya swabbed her insides, quickly, efficiently, yet still Iris wanted to scream at the violation.

Finished, Mya packaged the wet mount for DNA testing and then made quick work of the pelvic exam. Iris was thankful for her friend’s sensitivity but she was nearing hysteria. The blank spots in her memory were frightening her as much as the realization that someone had done this to her.

“We had to take your clothes for evidence,” Mya said in apology. “But I don’t think you’re going to want them back anyway, honey, because they’re pretty messed up.”

“S’ok,” she mumbled, knowing her clothes were the least of her problems at the moment. She watched her best friend fight for composure and waited for Mya to tell her. But she was stalling, bringing a blanket to lay it over her, fussing over her comfort when nothing would’ve made a difference.

She met her friend’s brokenhearted eyes. “The SAE…it showed I was raped.” It was a statement, not a question, and the realization sank into her slowly awakening consciousness like a brick to the bottom of a lake. She’d been raped.

Mya drew a halting breath as she jerked a nod. “There were serious abrasions…consistent with forcible…” She swallowed and a tear escaped Mya’s control. She wiped it away quickly but another followed. “Oh, Iris…”

Iris lifted her chin but it trembled. What was there to say? Both turned at the discreet knock at the door. Sundance Jonson, Mya’s brother and the tribal police officer, walked in, presumably to take her statement. She turned her head, groaning. Not Sundance. She couldn’t let him see her this way. “Not you,” she said, wanting to curl on her side but the pain prevented it. “Someone else.”

“Iris, Sundance is the only officer on the rez, you know that. He’s here to help.”

“Not him,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands. “Go away.”

“Iris…” Mya tried again, her tone distressed, but Iris didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to get off that bed and run, and if she couldn’t run, she wanted to crawl. Iris felt herself folding in, anything to avoid telling Sundance what had happened to her, or rather, what she didn’t know had happened.

Iris and Sundance had history—not romantic—but rather childhood history. Iris and Mya were best friends their entire lives, and so she’d known Sundance, as well. But they’d never been friends. And he’d never seen her as anything more than his little sister’s troublesome sidekick. That would’ve been fine, if she hadn’t awoken one morning with a completely different feeling about Sundance than she’d had before. Suddenly, she saw the man, not the overbearing, control freak that she’d always seen before.

She’d gone to the bar in an attempt to get Sundance off her mind. She didn’t want to see Sundance as anything other than the annoying big brother of her best friend who lived to antagonize her. The fact that she’d begun to see him as a man had disconcerted her to the point of irrationality.

A sob remained trapped in her throat. How had this happened? Her whole life had been tipped on end and it felt as though everything she held dear had fallen to shatter on the floor. How could she bear to look at herself in the mirror ever again? How could anyone else see anything aside from what had happened to her?

“Iris…” The softness of his voice nearly undid her completely. “Tell me who did this so I can bring them to justice,” he urged.

“I don’t know who did this,” she answered, wiping at the tear slipping down her cheek. “I don’t remember.”

“Did you check for drugs?” he murmured to Mya.

“Yes, we’ll do a tox screen with the blood and urine samples but they won’t be ready right away,” Mya answered. “We’ll screen for every known date rape drug. Ketamine, GHB, Rohypnol…if there’s anything in her system we’ll find it.”

Iris closed her eyes, wishing she could block out their voices as they discussed her case. She knew both Mya and Sundance were doing their jobs but she couldn’t handle the routine just yet. “Please go away,” she whispered, meaning both of them. She turned to meet Mya’s questioning gaze. “I just want to be alone for a minute.”

Mya nodded but the worry remained stationed in her eyes. “Okay, honey. Just a few minutes, though. I need to scrape underneath your fingernails still.”

“Right,” Iris managed, but her vision blurred as more tears followed. Then Mya hustled Sundance from the room to give her the privacy she’d asked for.

Her body ached and throbbed while her numbed brain wrestled with one question: Why?

Sundance struggled to remain impartial, to stay cool but inside a white-hot poker of rage punctured his good intentions. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked, his jaw grinding on the words.

“I think so,” Mya answered, wrapping her arms around herself. “What kind of monster does this?” she demanded in a harsh whisper so that her voice didn’t carry to Iris in the trauma room. “There’s not a piece of skin that doesn’t carry some kind of mark. It’s a miracle she’s alive, and honestly, I think that’s what this devil had in mind. When I think of how close she came to…” Mya shuddered. “I just get sick to my stomach.”

Sundance understood his sister’s anguish. Seeing Iris—a woman he’d known his entire life and had most often found irritating, infuriating and intrusive—all tore up caused something inside him to roar like a wounded bear, swiping and snarling at anyone with the misfortune to get too close. And the reaction shocked him.

“I’m going to have to question her,” he said, still processing his own reaction to the situation, trying to put it into perspective. Of course, he was bothered. It was his job to safeguard the tribe, to be the one to protect the people. To think there was someone on the reservation who could do this to one of their own… Sundance didn’t want to believe it. An outsider had to have done this. And he was going to find whoever it was and show him a little justice—American-Indian style.

Mya hesitated, something plainly causing her to temper her tongue, and he furrowed his brow at her expression. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that you and Iris…you haven’t always had the best track record with each other. I don’t know that she’ll open up to you. Maybe I could ask the questions for you.”

“No, I have to ask them. I’m sorry but that’s procedure.” He understood Mya’s motivation and he didn’t fault her for it. His sister had a loving and protective heart, just one of the many reasons he thought the world of her. But he had a job to do. He met Mya’s eyes and gave her the most heartfelt assurance he could offer as he promised to be gentle. “I know we’ve had our differences, but I won’t let that get in the way of doing anything and everything I can to find whoever did this. I promise.”

Mya searched his gaze and found truth. She exhaled and nodded. “I know you’ll do your best for Iris. I trust in you, my brother.”

Sundance gave his sister a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder and then returned to the room where Iris remained curled in as close to a fetal position as her injuries would allow.

Again that swell of rage welled inside him and he had to force it down. “Iris…”

“Sundance, please, just go away,” she pleaded with him, eliciting a wince on his part for Iris had never, in her life, pleaded with anyone. She barreled, she cajoled, she went so far as to manipulate but she never begged. But she was doing it now, with him, and it nearly broke the grip he had on the gates holding everything in check.

“You know I can’t do that. I can’t catch who did this unless you help me.”

When she realized he wasn’t going anywhere she played with the swollen tissue on her bottom lip and stared at the floor. When she finally answered, it was without any emotion. “I don’t know anything. I told you, I can’t remember.”

“Okay, let’s start from what you do remember,” he suggested softly, but she only squeezed her eyes shut and sealed her lips. “C’mon, let’s start from the beginning of the night. You remember that, right?”

“Yes,” she answered, an edge returning to her voice. “But what does that matter? Remembering what I wore and what song I sang for karaoke isn’t going to tell me who managed to drag me from a bar full of people to some secluded place where the guy raped and beat me. So just go away, Sundance. I don’t…want to talk about this anymore.”

That last part came out as a choked whisper and his hands tightened around his pen as she plainly locked him out for reasons he couldn’t really fathom.

“Forget our troubles from the past, Iris. All I want to do is help you. We can do this together.” He tried again, coming at her from a different angle, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Her silence was answer enough.

He swallowed a frustrated breath, not wanting to push, but needing to anyway. He felt rather than saw Mya hovering at the doorway and turned to find her standing there. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Iris,” he told her, giving her fair warning. As he passed Mya in the doorway, he murmured, “Try talking some sense into her, please. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

Mya nodded but her expression was bleak. “I’ll do what I can…she’s so hurt, Sonny. I’ve never seen her so—”

“I know,” he acknowledged grimly. “Me neither.”

Iris may not want his help but she was going to get it anyway.

Someone was going down for what they’d done.

That was a promise.

Chapter 2

Sundance strode into the Healthy Living urgent care facility and went straight to the reception desk. Betty Whitefeather, the ancient front desk receptionist, waved him through and he entered the side door, heading for Mya’s private office. He was in luck, she was sitting there, scribbling some patient notes. When she saw him standing in the doorway, she closed the file and looked at him expectantly. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Has she been in?” he asked, cutting straight to the point. Mya’s fallen expression was all the answer he needed. “She can’t hide in her house for the rest of her life. Someone needs to get her to start living again.”

Mya shifted into protective mode. “It’s only been a few weeks. Cut her some slack. Have any leads surfaced on the case?”

“No,” he admitted grimly, chewing his lip. And he’d given more resources to Iris’s assault than any other case currently on his desk. “Forensics are a slow process. But something is bound to turn up.”

“I hope so,” Mya murmured, but Sundance could tell she was doubtful they’d ever catch the man who’d brutalized Iris. Although she was defensive of her best friend, she said, “I am worried about her. She’s…” Mya hesitated, caught between sharing too much and helping her friend. “She’s not dealing well with everything. I can’t get her to leave the house at all.”

There was something Mya wasn’t saying. Sundance could tell by the way she refused to meet his stare that there was more. Sundance knew he had to see Iris, even if under the guise of investigative work.

“I’m going out there,” he announced, knowing Mya’s reaction would be negative. He wasn’t disappointed. When his sister started to shake her head, saying it wasn’t a good idea, he shut her down firmly. “I need to see if she remembers anything now that some time has passed since the initial shock, and she’s not picking up her phone.”

“She doesn’t want visitors,” Mya said. “She’s not up to it yet. And I don’t think you badgering her about the case is going to help matters. She needs to do this in her own time.”

His tone gentled. “I’m not going to push her too hard. But if too much time passes, we might lose the opportunity to dredge up what she can remember. I want to catch this guy before he does it to someone else. Iris is a fighter. She’s going to get through this,” he promised with true conviction. He’d never known a more stubborn woman than Iris Beaudoin and he couldn’t imagine her allowing anything to take her down for long.

Although Mya nodded, worry still shone in her eyes. “She’s not the same, Sonny. I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. She wiped at the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Sundance hated to see his sister cry. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and she seemed to take comfort in the knowledge that he was there for her. She straightened and nodded, ready to put her faith in him to fix things. “Maybe you can do what I can’t seem to manage. But remember, she’s so fragile right now. Go easy on her.”

Sundance nodded but he made no promises. He’d have to see for himself what was happening with Iris before he knew how to handle the situation.

All he knew at this point was that Iris hadn’t left her home in the three weeks since she left the hospital. Mya brought her supplies, but otherwise she accepted no visitors. For all intents and purposes, she’d locked herself away in her house.

And that definitely wasn’t the Iris Beaudoin he’d known since she and Mya were in kindergarten together and he was in the third grade.

The Iris he knew was fearless, prideful, stubborn, a royal pain in his ass, in-your-face woman who laughed at challenges and never failed to gleefully insert herself into other people’s business without apology.

He couldn’t let that Iris wither and crumple in on herself, and if it took him to rile her up and draw her out, he’d do it. Whether she liked it or not.

Iris heard the sharp rap at her front door and ignored it just as she had whenever someone happened to stop by. She knew Mya was still at the urgent care center but even so, Mya wouldn’t knock because she had a key and would just walk in. So whoever was knocking—insistently and loudly—would eventually go away when they realized Iris wasn’t going to receive them.

The darkened interior of her usually sunny bedroom was her sanctuary and her prison. She’d stripped the gauzy panels of her bedroom windows, replacing them with dark, heavy blankets that blocked any hint of sunshine as well as prevented prying eyes from seeing in. Each time she felt the stirrings of strength to face the outside, she shrank away with fear that he was out there, watching her, laughing. When she slept she fought phantom hands that grabbed and violated. She often woke screaming, soaking in her own panic-driven sweat, stinking of terror and helplessness. So she caught catnaps when her body could no longer fight the exhaustion, but she stopped sleeping through the night to avoid the nightmares. Mya had offered to write her a prescription for something to help her sleep but Iris had balked at the idea. The thought of being unable to rouse herself from her dreams was too much like that night, being unable to help herself as a stranger had raped and beaten her. She shuddered violently and she burrowed deeper into the blankets heaped on her bed. In spite of the summer heat, she couldn’t seem to warm her body. It was as if her internal temperature had been permanently set to deep freeze.

At least the knocking had stopped.

Then she heard the front door opening and she scrambled out of the bed, grabbing the baseball bat she kept by her bedside now. She’d thought of getting a gun but that would require leaving her house and facing people.

It was probably Mya, the logical side of her brain offered, but the logic was drowned out by the panicked part of her that was in complete control right now. Her grip tightened on the neck of the worn wood.

“Iris?” a voice called out, and recognition caused her to stiffen in alarm.

“Sundance?” she answered, her voice scratchy from disuse. “Is that you?” He followed her voice and rounded the corner to the threshold of her bedroom where she still stood in the shadows with a raised baseball bat. He peered into the darkness and then flipped the light switch. She stumbled from the sudden wash of bright light and dropped the bat to crawl to the safety of her bed. “Go away,” she demanded, pulling the covers over her head. “I don’t want any visitors.” Least of all you.

But he didn’t go away. Instead he walked to the window and she heard him taking down her blankets, flooding the room with natural light. She felt the sunshine filling the room and she burrowed deeper into her bedding. She didn’t want sunshine. She wanted darkness and solitude.

“I need to talk to you,” Sundance said, ignoring her wishes. That was just like him, to do what he wanted despite what others said. “About your case,” he added unnecessarily. Why else would he be pestering her? It wasn’t as if he regularly dropped by to visit on a normal day. Normal…the word held no meaning for her now. She couldn’t remember normal any longer. Maybe she was delirious from lack of sleep. Maybe she was eternally cracked in the head because she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think beyond basic needs. And when she said “basic,” she meant the very basics.

The slow but steady tug on the blankets caused her to pull harder but her strength was laughable. Tears welled in her eyes as she felt the blanket slip from her grip. All that covered her was the sheet. Sundance stood in a pile of blankets, his gaze alarmed. She imagined she looked frightening. She didn’t care. She lifted her chin and met his stare. “What do you want?” she asked dully, wishing to hide but he’d made that impossible. “I said go away.”

Sundance had never minced words with her. In all the years she’d known him he’d never held back. To be fair, neither had she. But as he stared at her, his gaze taking in every disgusting detail of her self-imposed retirement from the human race, she saw something different. Uncertainty. She would’ve rather that he started yelling at her or baiting her than what she saw in his eyes right now. The heavy silence battered at the thin, tattered veil of spunk she had left. Curling in a ball, she turned away from him, shame and defeat coating her every thought. Why’d he have to come? Couldn’t he have just left her alone? Had Mya sent him? She couldn’t imagine her best friend would betray her this way but, Great Spirit help her, she didn’t know what else to think.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

She thought of the piece of toast she’d forced down, was it yesterday? Or maybe it was the day before that? She answered, “I’m not hungry.”

“When was the last time you showered?” It’d been a while. She could smell herself and it wasn’t pretty, but there was a small comfort in her own stink. Perhaps if she smelled bad enough no one would come near her. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Never mind. I think I can figure that one out on my own. Come on, it’s time to get up and get moving again,” he announced, the grim tone telling her he wasn’t looking forward to the prospect, either.