‘Bring him straight in here.’ Mike pointed to the available resuscitation area and Beth stepped back as the stretcher moved swiftly towards her. Then she reached to help transfer the patient to the bed.

‘On the count of three,’ Mike directed, holding the patient’s head and neck still by supporting the cervical collar. ‘One…two…three!’

‘We think he was hit at a speed of at least sixty kilometres an hour,’ the paramedic informed Mike. Apparently he was airborne for twenty to thirty metres.’

Maureen handed Beth a pair of shears. ‘See what you can do to get rid of the clothing.’

Beth was aware of more people pressing into the resus area to assist. ‘Tension pneumothorax on the left,’ Mike confirmed tersely. ‘Someone get me a decompression kit, please?’

‘I can do that.’

The calm voice should have eased some of the tension but the shears in Beth’s hands closed with an uncontrolled snap. Her gaze shifted just as emphatically to the speaker and for a split second she actually forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

Luke.

It couldn’t be.

But it was.

Luke Savage.

At Ocean View hospital?

If Beth had tried to think of the last possible place on earth she would expect to see this man again, a smalltown hospital would have been way up on the list. A prison cell might have beaten it to top spot, of course, but not by much.

He hadn’t noticed her. The surgeon was completely focussed on the task of inserting a needle between the victim’s ribs to release air trapped in his chest, which was preventing his lungs from functioning.

‘Pelvis is unstable.’ Mike was doing a survey for other major injuries while Luke was attempting to establish adequate breathing.

The consultant’s statement was enough to start Beth’s hands moving again, her momentary lapse unnoticed. She peeled leather trousers clear of the deformity on the right thigh.

‘Open fracture of the femur,’ she advised.

‘Cover it,’ Mike responded. ‘We can’t deal with that just yet.’

Beth reached for a large gauze dressing and tried to concentrate on squeezing a sachet of saline onto the pad to dampen it, but she simply couldn’t help glancing back towards Luke.

Had Luke recognised her voice as easily as she had recognised his?

Apparently not.

‘Oxygen sats aren’t climbing.’ Luke was staring at the monitor above the bed. ‘We’ll have to intubate.’

‘I’ll get another IV line going,’ Mike said. ‘We need to speed up this fluid resus.’

A new face peered in through the curtain. ‘Luke? They just called to say they’re ready for you in Theatre.’

His glance seemed to bypass Beth effortlessly as she used the damp dressing to cover the gaping wound on their patient’s leg. ‘Thanks. I’ll be up as soon as I can.’

Mike took the cannula Beth was holding out for him. ‘Could you help Sid take Jackal upstairs, please?’

‘Sure.’ The prospect of making an exit was appealing.

Was Luke simply being professional, ignoring her—quite properly—due to the emergency treatment of a patient? It was possible that he had not yet recognised or even noticed her.

It was also quite possible that he just didn’t give a damn.

And why, in God’s name, should that bother her so much anyway?

Beth turned her back on Luke but she wasn’t going to escape quite so easily. The sound of breaking glass made everybody pause.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘We locked the doors when we came in.’ The male ambulance officer had abandoned his paperwork to step closer. ‘Sounds like someone really wants to get in.’

A police officer appeared behind him. ‘ETA for the chopper is only two minutes. We’ve got a bit of a skirmish going on in the car park right now, though.’

The sound of a shotgun being fired was unmistakable.

So was the alarm that sounded on the new patient’s monitor in the tiny silence that followed.

‘He’s in VF,’ Luke warned.

Mike was already reaching for the defibrillator paddles. ‘Everyone stand clear.’

‘I don’t want anyone moving from here until we get some back-up,’ the police officer ordered.

‘Stand clear,’ Mike ordered.

Beth stood clear. In fact, she was quickly penned into the corner of the area, along with the paramedic and Chelsea, and couldn’t escape the awareness of how appalling the situation was.

They watched as Maureen squeezed air into the patient’s lungs and Luke readied himself to do compressions when the initial series of shocks was completed. Mike pressed the paddles into position and pressed the buttons to deliver the second shock and then the third.

Beth closed her eyes for a moment. This was all so bizarre it was almost a joke. Some huge, cosmic joke. And whoever decided which way the winds of fate were going to blow was laughing at her right now.

She had come here to get away from the stress of dealing with violence and was now up to her neck in the most major incident she had ever encountered.

And she had also come to get away from the lingering effect Luke Savage had branded on her life. She had just ended her extremely brief engagement to Brent, for heaven’s sake, because she had recognised that the only qualities he had that were attractive had been the ones that reminded her of Luke.

The prospect of actually crossing paths with Luke Savage had haunted Beth for far longer than the fear of finding herself living Neroli’s nightmare, and coming to a small town like Hereford had seemed like the perfect way to escape that particular ghost.

And here she was, only a few feet away from the man. And it felt like the first time she had seen him all over again. He was just as physically attractive, but it hadn’t been simply his looks that had drawn her so convincingly at that first meeting. It had been his presence. The feeling she’d got that this man would be able to handle any situation he found himself in, no matter what it was. And she could feel that again right now. Luke was just…exactly the same.

It was so bizarre. It went way beyond being a disappointing start to a new beginning. This was gutting. Maybe she should have taken up Neroli’s invitation to go to Australia with her. Melbourne would be a nice place to live and Neroli’s sister was always short of waitresses in that coffee-shop.

The static cleared from the monitor screen after the third shock to show a pattern that settled over several seconds into normal sinus rhythm. The quiet was broken by the steadying beeps of the monitor, loud but muffled shouting from somewhere outside and then the crescendo of an approaching helicopter’s rotors.

Relieved glances were exchanged between staff members and it was only then that Beth’s gaze met that of Luke. The, oh, so familiar dark grey eyes beneath that shaggy mop of black hair widened and Beth realised that he hadn’t been ignoring her.

He couldn’t look this shocked if he had known she was so close.

Her presence was a surprise. And it wasn’t a pleasant one.

It shouldn’t have hurt but it did. Any fantasies she’d ever had of looking into those eyes again and seeing the love that had once been there were crushed in an instant, and Beth could hear echoes of that cosmic laughter.

She wanted nothing more than to get away, and Mike’s repeated instruction to help shift Jackal up to Theatre seemed timely.

It wasn’t until Beth pulled the curtain back and stepped outside the resuscitation area that they realised the move had been premature.

Black-clad, helmeted and armed offender squad members were filing rapidly into the emergency department of Ocean View hospital, but the skirmish that had been taking place outside had also moved in. Somehow one of Jackal’s mates had gained access and was now standing outside Resus 1 with a knife in his hand as a member of an obviously rival gang advanced rapidly towards him.

And Beth had inadvertently stepped right between them.