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unintelligible in a voice that was achingly familiar. Heat raced through her. Hope.
    He moved his right arm and let out another groan of pain. Then, as though sensing that she was there, he shifted, snaking out his left hand to grab her ankle—not hard, more looping his fingers around her, touching but not restricting her.
    Sara squeaked and would have jerked away, but once again she was frozen in place, paralyzed by the memory of a lover who’d kept a careful distance between them when awake, but in sleep had always wanted some part of him touching some part of her, as though reassuring himself she was still there.
    “Romo?” she whispered. The single word burned her lips and hurt her chest.
    Then he shifted again, this time turning his face toward her, so she saw him in profile against the bloodied carpet.
    Her throat closed on a noise that might’ve been a cross between a scream and a moan if it had made it past the lump jamming her windpipe. As it was, the cry reverberated in her head.
    She knew that profile—the clean planes of his nose and brow; the dark, elegant eyebrows; the angular jaw. If he was awake and smiling—or snarling, for that matter—at her, she would’ve known his square, regular teeth and the glint in his dark green eyes. It was really him, she realized, her chest aching with the force of holding back the sobs.
    Detective Romo Sampson. Internal affairs investigator. Live-in lover-turned-nemesis. And a dead man back from the dead.

Chapter Three
    In that first moment of recognition, Sara’s brain threatened to overload with shock and an awful, undeniable sense of hope. She wanted to scream, wanted to laugh, wanted to shriek, “What the hell is going on here? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why did you let us—let me —think you were dead?”
    Instead, she forced herself to do what she did best—she buried her emotions, smoothing out the roller coaster.
    Clicking over to doctor mode, she shoved her feelings aside, bundling them up along with all the questions that echoed inside her skull. Where had he been for the past four months? What had happened to him? Whose grave had she stood over, dry-eyed but grieving? Whose blood was spattered on his face, arms and hands? It wasn’t all his, that was for sure.
    He couldn’t answer those questions now, though, and might not ever be able to unless she worked fast. Instinct told her he was close to dying a second time.
    Sara’s heart stuttered a little when she cataloged Romo’s injuries and vitals. His breathing was too shallow, the pulse at his throat too slow. And his eyes, when she peeled back his lids, were fixed, the pupils unequal in size, indicating a concussion, or worse.
    Shock, she thought, head injury, and… She checked him over without rolling him, hissing in a breath when she zeroed in on the wet seep of blood beneath the jacket. A gunshot wound.
    The hole was ragged at the edges, indicating that the bullet hadn’t been going full power when it hit him, and the bruise track suggested it had deflected off his shoulder blade and done more damage to his trapezius muscle than his skeleton. The skin around the injury was inflamed and angry, the blood clotted in some places, still seeping in others. She pressed on his back near the wound, digging into the lax muscles on either side of his spine, hoping the bullet had stayed close to the surface, praying it hadn’t fragmented and deflected into vital organs.
    He groaned in obvious pain, but didn’t move. His hand had fallen away from her ankle, as though having made that effort he’d lapsed more deeply unconscious.
    She couldn’t find the bullet, but confirmed that his reflexes were decent in his legs, and, having removed his boots, his feet. Her brain spun. The basic exam didn’t indicate an immediate spine injury, but the bullet could lie near the vital areas, poised to shift and impinge on the critical nerves if she made a wrong move. She needed more information,