He tries to stand anyway.
His knees wobble under him, and for a moment it looks like he might collapse back onto the mattress.
The intruder catches him by the arm before he can fall.
Seth shakes him off and forces himself upright again. Every movement looks stiff and wrong, his body fighting him with every step as he strips off the blood-stained hospital shirt and pulls the scrubs over his bandaged torso.
Seth steps into the scrub pants, bracing one hand against the bed as another spike of pain shoots through his ribs. When he finishes changing, he looks down at the floor.
His boots are gone.
All that waits there are the thin gray hospital slippers.
Seth stares at them with visible irritation before stepping into them anyway.
The intruder looks down at Seth’s feet and huffs out a quiet laugh.
Seth shoots him a glare.
“They took her,” Seth says. “We have to get her back.”
The intruder studies him for a moment. Seth can barely stand without bracing himself against the bed, sweat already gathering along his hairline.
“You can barely stand.”
“I don’t care,” Seth snaps. “We’re finding Brooke.”
The intruder lets out a slow breath that sounds halfway between annoyance and reluctant amusement.
“Alright, let’s go before the entire Bureau realizes their agents are dead.”
He slides Seth’s arm over his shoulders and hauls him upright with practiced ease. Seth forces his legs to cooperate, the hospital slippers dragging against the floor for a moment before he manages to move.
They head for the door.
Two more armed agents round the corner at the far end of the hallway.
They stop the moment they see them.
Their eyes move past Seth first, then shift behind him. Both men spot the bodies in the hospital room and the blood spreading across the floor just beyond the doorway. The recognition hits their faces all at once. Hands drop toward their holsters.
The intruder doesn't hesitate.
He raises the pistol and fires twice in quick succession.
The first bullet strikes the nearer agent high in the chest, snapping his body backward into the wall. The second shot hits the other man a fraction of a second later, punching through his throat and blowing blood across the pale hallway tiles.
Both men collapse almost immediately. One slides down the wall, leaving a thick smear of red behind him. The other drops straight to the floor, his weapon clattering uselessly from his hand.
Seth barely glances at the bodies.
He steps over one of them without slowing.
They turn the corner toward the stairwell. That is when the nurse steps out of a side room.
She stops cold. Her gaze drops to the blood streaking the tile. Then to the agents sprawled across it. Then to the gun in the intruder’s hand. Her mouth parts. In her hands is a clear plastic belongings bag.
Inside it, coiled at the bottom, is the necklace. The vial catches the light.
