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his strength, she still wanted him with all her heart, wanted him to live, to be with her, to see if they could make a go of it.
The mother who had held her son through the night when he first had to take a life had died several years ago. The brother had been killed in the line of duty a decade past. She knew they were here, sitting in this room, helping Mac find his way back to her. His living family was right here. Her fingers tightened on him.
She was so tired, but she couldn't close her eyes. Each time she did, she saw it in slow motion, Kiera knocking her on her ass, her head hitting the wall. The struggle to stagger to her feet, her head ringing from the impact. The squeezing panic in her chest, knowing she was going to be too late. She'd thought the terrifying roaring had been in her head, but then Mac had ripped the bench loose by throwing his body to the side and rolled, coming to his feet. That gorgeous mangled broad back shielding her as he charged forward. She'd heard the scream tear from her throat, knew it was not going to stop him. The jerk of his body was the only pause he made, and she saw the bullet punch out of his back, no more than an inch away from his spine, and thud into the wall by her head.
At the time her mind had shut down, refusing to acknowledge it, because she'd needed all her adrenaline to focus on taking down Kiera. But in the helicopter she had seen it replay over and over in her mind, and waves of terror came with every rewind, until she was praying silently over and over for a miracle, praying for the copter to go faster. Praying to go back in time so she could be faster and make it not happen.
There was no worse place to be shot. Dr. Hilaman knew it. Every cop knew it. But she believed in Mac more than in medical science. She believed in his indomitable will, which had resisted her so strongly from the first and yet kept him fused to her, despite his fears of accepting his true nature. Knowing the alternative was unthinkable, she had to believe he would survive.
She knew now that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. At that moment when she had answered Kiera, when her eyes had locked with his, there had been nothing but the truth of their hearts. No time, no shields, nothing but the simple honesty of two lives stripped down to the last breathing moment together.
"Mackenzie." She laid her cheek on his large hand, rubbing against the coarse hair, the rough knuckles. "Wake up. I need you so much."
The tone of the monitor stumbled, made her heart jump three beats. She straightened to glance at the machine. In her peripheral vision, she saw the nurse in her blue scrubs standing in the doorway.
"I think it was just a skip," Violet said. "Damn thing keeps scaring the shit out of me, every time it goes irregular."
"Well, let's see if we can't make it a bit more flat line."
Violet spun.
It was Tamara, not a nurse, standing in the doorway. Kiera's sister, composed as a cold statue, leveled a .38 directly at Mac's chest. Her finger squeezed the trigger.
It was ten feet to the door. There wasn't time for Violet to reach for her ankle piece or do anything but throw her body over Mac's upper torso, curling herself over his chest and head, her own skull an obstacle the bullet would have to shoot through to get to his.
The first bullet ripped through her shirt at the waist, burning her. Violet flinched at the staccato sounds of shots, her heart hammering so loudly against her chest she couldn't tell whether it was her own heart making her jerk, or slugs tearing through her flesh. Mac's hands moved, confused, scrabbling, his subconscious responding to shots the way any conscious cop did, even if he didn't have the physical ability to protect himself. He found her body, gripped, and she held onto him, kept him covered, unable to move even as she heard shouting, running feet, thuds.
"Officer Siemanski! Violet! Violet! Get off him, move off! He's gone flat line."
She heard the horrible whine of the monitor, would have wanted to cease living herself at the sound if her hand hadn't been curled around his throat, feeling his pulse pounding against her fingertips.
"No, the unit's been hit," a nurse called out above the din. "Get a new one in here, stat. Get a cuff on him. Officer, you have to move."
A variety of voices, calling at her from different directions, the hands of the nurse, then Suarez and Connie, prying her tight fingers off him.
Pull it together, Siemanski.
Letting go of Mac was the hardest thing she'd ever done in her life, but she managed it, rolled away, let the doctors and nurses swarm over him.
Falling back to the wall, she assessed the scene. Sergeant Rowe was checking her weapon, returning her service pistol to her shoulder holster. She stood just beyond Tamara's body, which was collapsed in the doorway, a macabre sight with nurses and medical personnel stepping hastily back and forth over her while a doctor checked her vitals, confirming that she was dead. Uniforms hovered just behind him, waiting to lift the corpse out of the way. There'd been no time to wound. The sergeant had taken Tamara straight through the chest cavity, twice, and dropped her. Two Styrofoam cups floated in a pool of brown liquid running across the hospital floor, on a direct course to intercept the trail of blood that leaked from Tamara.
Darla's gaze met Violet's. "Thought you could use some coffee," the sergeant said.
Violet nodded, a jerk of her head. The shock and terror were wearing off, leaving anger. Deep, tear-the-ass-off-the-nearest-fool-willing-to-get-close-enough-to-her anger.
"Why wasn't she being watched?"
Consuela Ramsey, standing at Rowe's side, stiffened at the tone. "Early this morning, a uniform informed her that her sister had been killed. She told him that she was going to their parents' place to break the news. She wasn't a suspect, Officer Siemanski."
"So someone was careless enough to let her know Mac was here? Did they just pull their heads out of their asses yesterday? And how the hell did a woman who was a dead ringer for the woman who put Mac in this bed walk through a hospital of cops without a single fucking one of them noticing?"
"Officer," Rowe said sharply. "They were in--"
"Why didn't anyone recognize that she didn't belong on this floor?" Violet snarled. "What, Charles Manson could throw on blue scrubs and waltz right through the children's ward here?"
She had started low, vicious, her teeth gritting over the words, but when she finished, she was one step below an enraged scream, bringing a momentary stunned silence to the room, the hallway, and likely to everyone on the entire floor. The doctor on call opened his mouth to snap at her, order her to get the hell out, she was sure, but before he could, someone else spoke.
"Singing... Beautiful sound."
