Free Worth Dying For by Beverly Barton

daughter is.”
    “She’s in there—” He nodded toward the closed double doors that led to the emergency room’s private cubicles. “Tell the receptionist at the desk over there that you’re Leslie Anne’s mother and they’ll let you go on back.”
    From his dark, Latin good looks, Tessa had halfway expected Dom Shea to speak with a Spanish accent, but his voice was pure Southern drawl. A Texas drawl if she didn’t miss her guess, similar to Dante Moran’s.
    “Where’s Dante…Mr. Moran?” Tessa asked.
    “He’s back there with your daughter,” Dom told her. “Ever since he rescued her, she won’t let him out of her sight.”
    “What do you mean rescued?” Tessa’s heartbeat drummed in her ears. “All Dante said when he called was that she’s all right. Was she in an accident?”
    “Big mouth.” Lucie elbowed Dom in the ribs.
    “Sorry.” He gave Tessa a sympathetic look.
    “What happened to my daughter?”
    “Dante will explain everything.” Lucie glanced around the waiting room. “No use sharing your personal businesswith a bunch of strangers, and in a place like this, you never know who’s eavesdropping.”
    Tessa nodded, then turned and headed toward the receptionist’s desk. The woman behind the glass-enclosed unit, looked up when Tessa approached.
    “Yes, ma’am, may I help you?”
    “My daughter, Leslie Anne Westbrook, was brought in earlier tonight. I’d like to see her, please.”
    “Yes, ma’am. Go right on back. She’s in examining room number three.”
    “Thank you.”
    “We allowed her bodyguard to go back with her,” the receptionist said. “I hope that was all right. She was terribly upset when the nurses asked him to leave, so they thought it best to let him stay with her.”
    “Yes, that’s perfectly all right.”
    Tessa swallowed the tears threatening to choke her. Now was not the time to lose control. She had to be strong. Once beyond the entry doors, she hurried past rooms one and two. Then she saw him. Dante Moran stood outside room number three, his arms crossed over his chest, one foot propped behind the other. The instant he saw her, he came forward, halting when only inches separated them.
    “I want to see her,” Tessa said.
    “You will. In a couple of minutes. The doctor is completing her examination.”
    “What happened to my little girl? And don’t even think about trying to protect me from the truth. Was she in a car wreck?”
    Dante shook his head, then clutched Tessa’s shoulders and said, “Let’s take a walk down the hall.”
    Instinctively trusting him, she went with him down tothe end of the hallway, where they were completely alone. “What is it?” Oh, God, please, please don’t let it be what I’ve feared the most .
    “She wasn’t raped,” Dante said.
    Tessa let out a loud, semihysterical cry.
    Dante put his arm around her shoulders and spoke to her quietly. “The doctor told me that there is no physical evidence of rape, but she went ahead and called for a rape kit and that’s what they’re doing now.” Tessa tensed. Dante stroked her back. “Leslie Anne told me that he didn’t rape her.”
    “Tell me everything. I have to know.”
    “She had checked into the Bama Motel and according to what she’s told me, some man passed himself off as the motel’s assistant manager, got her to change rooms and left her a fruit basket with what we suspect contained a bottle of grape juice that he’d drugged.”
    “He drugged her?”
    Is that what my rapist did? Tessa wondered. Did he drug me first, then kidnap and rape me? A part of her was thankful that she could not remember what had happened, that it would forever be a complete blank in her mind. But another part of her wondered how she had wound up the victim of a monstrous serial killer, whose M.O. included rape and torture.
    “When I burst into the room, the son of a bitch was on top of her.” Dante tightened his hold around Tessa’s shoulders. “They were both naked, and