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He considered his answer for a long moment. “The living room. I tried to get to Grace and one of them pulled a knife.”

There had been so much blood in the kitchen, and Hanna felt a wash of uncomfortable gratitude once again that Frankie had been all right. It was followed immediately by white-hot guilt, and the mantra that had been chasing itself through her mind all morning.

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

She wasn’t prone to self-flagellation. It was self-indulgent and not particularly useful, and when a person spent their entire life surrounded by a culture of law enforcement and the hanging sword of violence and crime, they quickly learned that there were always going to be matters outside of their control.

But this? This was within her control. Because someone in Hanna’s own department was feeding information to the wrong people, and it had not only gotten Grace kidnapped, it had almost gotten Frankie killed in the process.

“What about the fourth man?” she asked, shoving those dark thoughts deep, deep down, until they no longer rang in her ears.

Frankie looked at her quizzically. “The fourth man?”

Hanna gave him as gentle a smile as she could manage. The nurses had informed her that in addition to his stab wound, Frankie had been struck over the head with a heavy object, which could—and apparently did—result in short-term memory complications.

“You said there were four men in the house, Deputy.”

Realization dawned in Frankie’s eyes. “Yes. Four. The last one, he was at the front door, I think.” His voice rose at the end, as if he was asking her a question. “It all happened so fast…”

“I know.” Hanna released a long, shuddering breath. “If you remember anything else, you just tell me, okay.”

Frankie’s eyes darkened, his own haunting thoughts like storm clouds crossing his face. “Sheriff.”

“Yes?”

“Just…just make sure to find Gracie, okay? Make sure she’s all right?”

Hanna remembered then that Grace Iverson had been a friend of Frankie’s from school, older than her deputy but not by much. She was too young to have had the weight of the world foisted upon her shoulders, trapped between frying pan and fire.

And she put her faith in me.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes,” Hanna promised. And she meant it, the words dark and heavy on her tongue. Not for the first time, she wished her father was still alive, still on the other end of a call to guide her through the obstacle courses of the job that she’d never learned about in training.

But he was long gone now, and Hanna was still there. The best she could do was try to parse out whatever advice he might have given her and hope it would be enough.

“Sheriff, thank you for coming.”

Hanna looked up to see Frankie’s mother, Carmella, and two sisters, Diana and Nicole, walking through the door to the hospital room, and her chest tightened. If Frankie had died because of someone on her team, they would be the ones that suffered.

“Of course, ma’am.” She nodded to his mother. “He seems to be in good spirits.”

Carmella gave Hanna a wan smile. “He always says he has to make you proud. You’re his inspiration.”

Hanna felt like she was chewing glass, the shards cutting her gums and getting caught in the soft flesh at the back of her throat. “He’s an important part of our team and we’re all so happy he’s going to be all right.”

She stood then, pushing back from the bed with one final glance at Frankie. It was clear the medications were catching up with him, as his eyes drooped and he began to mumble under his breath. Hanna gently brushed Carmella’s arm. “I leave him in good hands.” She held the woman’s gaze. “You call me if you need anything at all.”

Carmella managed a weak smile and went to sit at her son’s side, and Hanna slipped out of the hospital room door.

Chapter Five

The hospital hallway was busy, despite the early hour. A nurse quickly wheeled a patient into the room next to Frankie’s and announcements broke overhead, codes and calls, all of it running together until Hanna felt the beeping and chirping and grieving inside her own head, echoing louder and louder.

She needed to breathe, but it felt impossible when the air tasted like sterilizing soap and artificial lemon and latex gloves, and she couldn’t look anywhere without seeing panic and fear.

It had been a long time since she’d had a panic attack—hardly the ideal condition for a sheriff. But too much had happened too quickly, Grace and Frankie and Ash and Niccolo, and she suddenly felt it all at once, the sense of being under a wave as it got bigger and bigger before her, knowing there was no way to escape its crushing weight, hoping she’d be able to hold her breath for long enough to survive it, but expecting broken bones and the gritty taste of sand between her teeth.

She forced her feet to move down the hall, hoping to reach the exit before the wave crashed, but making it only to an empty hospital room before she was sliding to the floor, forcing her head between her legs, and struggling to take in deep breathes.