Page 72 of Business vs. Pleasure

“I’m so sorry, that’s all the Spanish I’m good for tonight,” he apologized. “Is English all right?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you so much.” He leaned against the desk. “I just wanted to check and see if everything is all right. I heard there was some sort of disturbance?”

She nodded and began to speak. He nodded when needed as he covertly watched the feeds. Nothing yet. He’d have to draw this out. Luckily, August had been raised to excel at small-talk.

They got through a discussion of the traffic (horrendous), her boyfriend (a mama’s boy but she loved him, what could she do?), and the weirdest thing she’d ever seen on a shift (an abuela insisting her grandson’s room was haunted and dragging a priest all the way up here to cleanse it with prayer and holy water) when one of the screens shifted. The elevator was occupied now… with one person, who from top-down looked like a skinny man with a bad haircut.

Welp. “You should hide,” August said as he straightened up and grabbed the sleek black oxygen tank holder to the side of the desk. Lightweight, pointy, and easy to swing…good enough.

She frowned at him. “That’s just Luis, it’s time for a shift change.”

There’s no shift change during an emergency. “Seriously,” he said. “Hide. If I were you, I’d lock myself in the pharmacy.” On second thought, he’d take that stapler—oh, and the scissors, too. They were the old-school kind with the thick blades and hefty black handles, better than nothing. He tucked one in each pocket, made sure the tie on his pants was secure, then started walking again.

“Señor Morrison…” She stared uncertainly as he took up position by the elevator, tank holder in hand. “You need to go back to your husband, sir.”

“I will in a minute!” The door dinged in arrival. August raised his arm a fraction of an inch higher, right about where he anticipated NightRaven’s chest would be.

“Don’t hurt Luis!” She began to run around the desk as the elevator doors opened. August didn’t hesitate, just swung as hard as he could the moment the person inside stepped through.

NightRaven only managed to get two shots off before August’s blow knocked the gun out of his hand and sent it skittering to the side. Unfortunately, his target wrested the tank holder away before August could withdraw it for another hit. The nurse shrieked and ran, which—finally. Now he could focus on the task at hand—killing this fucker before he found Ricardo.

August narrowly dodged a strike from a short, ceramic blade a second later. Mind on the moment! NightRaven didn’t speak, just attacked, his blows short and economical, the kind of thing that made it harder to defend than if he was attacking with full-fledged swings. He forced August to back up until his rear foot touched an IV pole, which he was able to spin, grab, and swing like a baseball bat before his opponent could change his range. He blocked, but August still managed to tag his head badly enough that he started to bleed from a cut behind his ear.

“Why are you so much goddamn trouble?” NightRaven hissed, dabbing at the blood with his free hand for a second.

Ricardo would like to know too. He pressed his advantage, driving NightRaven back by jabbing the IV pole at his face as he reached for the scissors. He swung the pole low, aiming for a groin shot, and as NightRaven bowed himself back to avoid it August swung the scissors down icepick style, straight at the back of the man’s skull.

The assassin dropped to the floor and swept his leg out, catching August overbalanced and hitting the top of his left foot even as the scissors bit into his shoulder, which he managed to wrench out of August’s grip as the pain from the kick hit. Fuck, it felt like his swollen flesh had been ripped right off the fragile bones it was meant to protect.

His distraction meant that he didn’t clock the second knife until it was too late to avoid it. NightRaven brought the other blade, a scalpel he’d stolen from somewhere, up in a hip-to-shoulder arc on the left side, and it cut through August’s scrub top like it wasn’t even there. He jerked over against the wall, ducked the next strike, then took a kick to the chest that sent him stumbling back into the elevator.

NightRaven reached inside, smashed the button for the roof, and then⁠—

He closed the doors.

The elevator began to rise.

Oh, fuck.

Ricardo.

CHAPTER 21

Ricardo lay as still as he could and listened. There was activity in the ICU. Activity that didn’t belong here and had driven August out into the fray. But he couldn’t quite nail down what was happening.

Before August had left the room, the morphine haze had been steadily clearing, and a trickle of adrenaline had sharpened Ricardo’s awareness to something closer to normal. His thoughts were slippery and the room refused to be still; he swore he still felt that semi-weightless, spinning sensation of being raised from the water onto the ship’s deck. Had he felt that while getting into the helicopter? Or had they landed on the deck? He couldn’t remember. He’d been mostly hallucinating by then, so it might’ve all been a dream anyway.

Either way, the wobbly, spinny, not-quite-committed-to-gravity feeling held on. It made him queasy. It also made it hard to lock on to his surroundings.

It made it even harder to lock on to what was happening beyond his room. Right now, he couldn’t hear anything at all. Even the machinery in his room was silent apart from the air coming from an unseen vent.

Where was August?

Where the fuck was NightRaven?

Ricardo thought he heard something, and he strained a little to hear it, realizing a second too late he’d tried to sit up too. Pain ripped through his torso as a wave of nausea crashed over him. He squeezed his eyes shut, which only made the room spin faster.