He didn’t answer right away.When he did, his voice had softened by half a step.“Yeah.”
She picked up her wine glass and set it down again without drinking.“Tell me about the safety drill.Not the operational version.The version where I’m a person, not an asset.”
“You’re both,” he said.“That’s the problem.”
“Explain.”
“Operationally, you’re the highest-priority asset on the floor that day.You’re the one with the documentation, the one Creighton’s already flagged, the one with the most exposure if anything goes wrong.So your extraction protocol is locked in before anyone else’s.You’re the first person Caleb’s team pulls out.You’re the first person on the medivac route if it comes to that.You’re the call I make before I make any other call.”
“And?”
“And that’s the operational reason.The other reason is that I’m in love with you, and I would be making the same call whether you were the highest-priority asset or the lowest.So when I tell you we’re putting you in a position where the team prioritizes your safety above the rest of the operation, the honest answer is that it’s because of the operation.The other honest answer is that it’s because of me.”
Maren held his eyes.
“I’m not a package to be moved, Graham.”
“I know.”
“I’m not that girl.The one in Khost.I’m not under a beam, and I’m not waiting to be carried out, and I’m not going to die forty minutes after you save me.I came into this with my eyes open.I stay in it the same way.”
“I know that too.”The corner of his mouth pulled, not quite a smile.More like the acknowledgment of something he’d accepted and stopped fighting.“It’s what makes you impossible to plan around.Eat.We’ll figure out the rest after.”
She picked up her fork.He picked up his.They ate in a silence that was the opposite of the silence of strangers.
Halfway through the meal she reached across the table and laid her hand over his.He turned his palm up and closed his fingers around hers.
“Eat your dinner,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 16
Graham spread the architectural plans across the dining table in Ronan’s cottage and weighted the corners with coffee mugs.The blueprints were hospital originals from the county records office, and they showed every corridor, every utility chase, every emergency exit in Blossom Springs General.The building had been renovated three times since its original construction.Walls added where none had been planned.Doorways sealed off and rerouted.A loading dock on the south side that didn’t appear on the public floor plans.
“That dock feeds directly into the lower-level corridor,” Ronan said.He stood across the table with his arms folded, studying the layout the way a pilot reads terrain.“If you’re moving a patient without going through the main corridor, that’s your route.”
“Lower corridor runs from the dock north through the basement, past the mechanical rooms, and connects to the freight elevator.The freight elevator opens onto the second floor behind the med-surg supply closet.”
“The floor where the supply numbers don’t match.”
“Same one.”
Ronan looked up.“How’s she holding up?”
Graham kept his eyes on the blueprints.“She’s working the day shift, documenting everything she finds, and building a supply-chain map that’s more detailed than anything Caleb or I pulled in three weeks of recon.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Graham straightened.Ronan had a way of cutting through the operational layer to the question underneath.He had done it in Khost.He was doing it now.
“She’s angry.She’s scared.She’s not letting either one stop her.”
“Sounds like someone I know.”
Graham didn’t take the bait.He pulled the second set of plans — Mitch’s security overlay — and laid it on top of the first.The safety drill was four days out.Monday morning, six-thirty a.m.Active-shooter exercise, full lockdown, coordinated response with the county fire department and EMS.Mitch DeMario would be running perimeter security under a contract Caleb had arranged through the hospital’s existing vendor system.
“Walk me through it,” Ronan said.
