I don’t care about the bleeding. I don’t care about passing out again. I don’t care about the charges they’re stacking on me.
Brooke is out there, and I’m wasting time strapped to a bed in an ambulance.
I need to get out. I need to get to her. I need to kill every single person standing between us.
The thought settles in my head with complete clarity. I will burn through anyone who tries to keep me from her. I will tear apart every agent, every guard, every piece of shit between me and the woman they took.
If this ambulance somehow gets me to a hospital alive, I’m not staying there. Not for one second longer than it takes to stand up and walk out.
The medics keep talking over me. My vision blurs again, but I hold on to one thing with everything I have left.
Brooke needs me.
And I’m coming for her.
My eyes snap open.
Cold fluorescent light floods my vision, and the sterile hum of machines fills the room. Plastic tubing tugs at my arm, and a monitor beside the bed marks time with slow, uneven beeps. The air smells like antiseptic and dried blood.
I lie flat on my back in a hospital bed, my chest wrapped tight, my shoulder burning deep beneath the bandages. Oxygen feeds into my nose, and an IV line runs into my arm.
I try to move, and something pulls hard at my wrist.
A restraint.
Someone shifts near the bed.
A nurse leans into view, her expression changing the moment she realizes I’m awake. “Mr. Kincaid. You’re conscious.”
Her voice stays calm. She checks the monitor, makes a note on the chart, then carefully lifts the edge of the bandage near my shoulder.
“You were very lucky,” she says. “The bullet passed close to your subclavian artery. A couple of centimeters difference, and you wouldn’t have survived.”
I say nothing.
“You lost a significant amount of blood,” she continues. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”
Still nothing.
She studies my face for a moment, then nods as if she expected silence. She lowers the bandage and steps back.
I look down at myself. Bandages wrap my chest. Lines snake across my skin. My shoulder throbs with a deep, pulsing pain.
Something is wrong.
My hand goes to my neck.
Nothing.
The necklace is gone.
The room tilts.
No. No. No.
Panic surges hot and fast. I pull against the cuff and try to sit up, and pain tears through my side hard enough to steal my breath. The IV rips partway out of my arm, blood welling immediately.
“Where is it?” I rasp. My voice sounds shredded. “Where is my necklace?”
