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“Brooke might have recalled something. She wants to talk to me.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She held up her hand, pressing gently against his chest. “She said she wanted to see me alone. I’ll see what it’s about and text you.”
He looked past her toward the lobby, scanning for any threat. “See you in a few.”
She took the elevator back up to the third floor. As she stepped off, she walked past the nurses’ station toward Bennett’s room. In the distance, she spotted Matt stepping into the hallway. He looked up at her, his expression troubled as he rubbed his eyes. Even from this distance, she could see he had been crying.
Her attention on the boy, she didn’t notice the man in scrubs who quickly came up beside her. In one instant, he bodychecked her into an empty room.
She stumbled and quickly righted herself as she reached for her weapon. But a man’s right hook connected squarely with her jaw and dropped her to her knees.
Pain exploded in her head. When her injured knee hit the tiled floor, more agony rocketed through her body and took her breath away. Rough hands jerked her weapon from its holster and sent it sliding under a bed and out of her reach.
Macy struggled to take several short, quick breaths and draw air into her lungs. He flipped her on her back and buried his knee into her chest. Only then did he wrap his hands around her throat and begin to choke her.
Her attacker wasn’t hiding behind a mask this time. She was looking into Kevin Wyatt’s eyes.
Pure hate exuded from him. He didn’t even look human. “You think you are so smart. You think you are better than me.”
Macy dug her fingers into his hands as he tightened his hold around her neck.
“Who’s the weak one now?” His breath hissed warm against her cheek.
She clawed at his fingers and tried to pry them open. Adrenaline jolted her heart, and it raced faster, burning through the oxygen reserves in her lungs.
“One, two, three . . .”
His eyes darkened with a savage lust as her efforts to break his hold failed. She arched her back and kicked her feet, hoping the noise might catch someone’s attention.
“Six, seven, eight,” he whispered.
There was no breath left to pull into her burning lungs. Her heart rammed into her chest and her head spun out of control. It felt like it had in the ambulance in Texas just before she coded.
She blinked, felt her eyes strain, and imagined capillaries bursting. She’d always feared dying in a hospital but never thought it would be like this. She fought to stay conscious.
The room’s door opened. She shifted her gaze to the sight of worn athletic shoes. Her pulse thumped in her throat. She struggled to scream.
“Nine, ten, eleven,” he said.
A boy’s cry for help echoed in the room as the athletic shoes raced toward her. Someone jumped on Kevin’s back.
“Get off of her! Get off!” For a moment, Kevin’s grip loosened, and she pulled in a breath. She realized her rescuer was Matt.
Kevin knocked the boy off his back with such force he crashed hard against the wall. The boy blinked as he tried to stagger to his feet but then fell backward.
Kevin refocused on Macy and retightened his grip. “You’re going to die now, bitch.”
When Nevada had dropped Macy off at the Kansas City airport last spring, Macy had smiled. She’d looked cocky and self-assured as she had passed through security and vanished around a corner. He’d had a bad feeling that day, but had brushed it off. Weeks later she’d nearly been killed in Texas.
When she had disappeared into the hospital moments ago, the same feeling had tightened in the pit of his stomach.
He had ignored the sensation once, but he wouldn’t do it twice. He jogged toward the elevator and caught it right before the door shut. He checked his watch as the elevator opened at the second floor and a doctor stepped into the car. He was less than two minutes behind her. He punched the third-floor button several times until the doors closed. “Come on. Come on.”
Macy had wanted to prove she was still the agent she’d been. She had never liked receiving help from anyone. He understood that drive. And when Ramsey had called with the idea of sending her to Deep Run, he’d jumped at the chance to give her this case. She was smart and savvy. This case had her written all over it. He also knew the cases she would have to chase would keep her away from him fifty weeks out of the year.
Screw it. He had her back whether she liked it or not.
As the elevator doors opened to the third floor, he heard a young boy’s scream. Drawing his weapon, he moved down the hallway, looking in the open rooms for signs of trouble. When the boy yelled for help a second time, he identified the room and pushed through the door. He barely registered seeing Matt struggling to get up. His focus was on the man strangling an unconscious Macy.
As much as Nevada wanted to shoot him, he knew the bullet could easily pass through and hit Macy. He holstered his weapon and in one fluid movement, slid his arm around the killer’s neck. Nevada placed his other hand behind the man’s head and squeezed until the carotid artery closed. The man fought him, trying to reach back and hit him, but Nevada held steady. The man’s thrashing slowed and then stopped.
Nevada saw Matt’s bloody lip and Macy’s swollen face and bruised neck. “Matt,” he said. “Get a doctor.”
The boy blinked and rose. “Okay.”
Nevada loosened his hold as he reached for his cuffs but as he did, Kevin’s eyes opened and his body tensed. Kevin reached back for Nevada’s gun. Nevada reacted instantly, retightening his grip, compressing with maximum pressure. The sounds of alarms in the hallway and nurses calling for supplies drifted in the distance as Kevin strained to get his gun until, finally, his fingers dropped to his side. Nevada reached for his cuffs, secured Kevin’s now-limp arms behind his back.
He shifted his attention to Macy, who lay curled on the floor. Her face was pale and her lips blue.
“Macy!” he shouted as he rolled her on her back.
She didn’t respond. He pressed fingertips to her red and scratched throat. There was no pulse, and she wasn’t breathing.
“Hold on for me, Macy,” he said. He could not lose her again. He would not.
As two nurses and a doctor burst into the room, Nevada tipped Macy’s head back, cleared her airway, pressed his mouth over hers, and breathed.
Macy was floating in the pool she had swum in with her father when she was five years old. On that clear day, she had ignored her father’s warning to wait, and she had jumped into the ice-cold water. The instant her head had slipped below the surface, she had kicked her legs, but instead of rising to the surface, she had sunk. She had realized then she’d made a terrible mistake. Sunlight had glistened on the water’s surface above her, and all she could do was watch it slip farther away as she had sunk.
Like then, her body was weightless now. The rigidity had dissipated from her muscles. Her knee didn’t ache. She wasn’t worried about being an agent. She felt good. At peace.
She’d been here before.
And just like before, she knew she didn’t belong here, no matter how serene it felt. She wanted to be back in the sunlight. She wanted to feel the sun on her face, the challenges of life’s struggles, and love.
A hand reached into the water, and if she wanted to live, she would have to fight hard to reach it. She thrashed her legs and arms, determined to rise on her own. As she wrestled her limbs upward, the distant sounds of alarms blaring and Nevada shouting her name greeted her.
Nevada. She wanted life. And she wanted Nevada in that life.
“Clear!”
A jolt of electricity rocketed through her body, snapping through sinew and bone and propelling her upward. She kicked harder and felt her fingers skim the edge of the water. Her heart faltered. Beat once. And then stopped.
“Clear!”
Another shock rocketed through her heart. It beat once. Then twice. And then a steady, calm r
hythm. A hand gripped her fingers and pulled her hard, yanking her into the light and the warm sun.
Macy sucked in a breath. Over and over she sucked air into her lungs, until she realized there were no more fingers wrapped around her throat. Her jaw ached and her ribs throbbed, but she was alive.
Nevada gripped her hand as he called her name again. “Macy! Look at me. Look at me.”
Bossy. He sounded so damn bossy.
The defibrillator’s high-pitched sound ramped up again, and she felt someone hovering beside her.
She pried open her eyes and was greeted by the blur of faces hovering over her. Her entire body ached, but she was so happy to be back. She angled her face toward Nevada. When she saw all the worry and relief colliding in his dark eyes, tears burned in her own.
The doctors prodded and poked her. A cold stethoscope pressed against her chest, and someone was thumping the vein in her right arm to start an IV line.
