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Tom nodded and left the room, but Raven lingered.
I wished she hadn’t. The adrenaline that had been pumping through me all this time writhed in my veins, searching for a way out.
“Are you okay?” Raven asked. It was easy to see the worried quirk of her mouth through the Clearmasks we used in the ER.
I blew out a breath and nodded. I don’t know how long I’d been standing here, staring down at the rubbish bin.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I replied.Just really in need of a good punching bag at the moment.
She smiled—light and easy, like what had happened here with the mad gunman hadn’t affected her. It seemed she really was as unflappable as she looked. Or maybe she was in shock?
The Ice Queen wouldn’t give a damn,my brain taunted me.
So, I stood there with the question frozen on the tip of my tongue.
“Si,I’m fine,” she said as she tossed away her own gloves. Her lips curved up in a knowing grin. “Just in case you were wondering. It wouldn’t be a day at the office if there weren’t crazy jerks with guns popping up left, right, and center.”
“You stayed calm; you did good.” I offered up a modicum of the praise she deserved.
She smiled like there was a secret there somewhere. “It’s no problem,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve been in a tense situation a time or two before.”
Chapter Two
Heidi
I wondered, sometimes, what my parents would think of the choices I’d made in my life thus far. I swear I’d felt them smiling down on me the day I’d graduated from medical school. It was warm, like a ray of sun even on a cloudy day. At other times, I’d felt their disapproval like a cold, faint brush of wind against my shoulders.
As I stared up at the Palatial Towers, one of the ritziest buildings in New York City, I could feel that cool gust.
“Good evening, Doctor Dawson,” the doorman, Emmett, signed right before he opened the door for me. He was in his sixties, but he had a thick mane of silver-gray hair that stuck out in every direction from beneath his uniform cap.
“Good evening, Emmett,” I signed back.
He was generally an excessively chatty man, but he’d learned recently that his two-month-old granddaughter was deaf. The very same day, he’d enrolled in a sign-language course and started reading every book under the sun about supporting a child with a hearing disability. He knew of my own hearing impediment, so of course, I’d become an opportunity for him to practice his budding skill.
He propped the door open with one foot to free up his hands. “Mr. Bianchi isn’t home yet,” he signed with increasing dexterity.
“That’s all right,” I signed back. “I’ll wait for him.”
He nodded. “Have a good night then, Doctor Dawson.”
“You too, Emmett.”
I took the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor and let myself in to the lavish three-bedroom apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt like only yesterday that I’d met Elio Bianchi of Bianchi Industries, but somehow, I’d started to spend most nights here in this souped-up luxury suite.
“It’s closer to the hospital,”Elio had reasoned.
Closer, perhaps, but I missed my renovated nineteenth century flat on the other side of the city. There was barely enough room to move around in it, but it was mine. My own private space.
I dropped my key card back into my purse, set it down on the Fendi Casa entryway table by the door, and headed across the stark white sitting room for the Poggenpohl kitchen on the other side.
But as I reached the doorway to the L-shaped kitchen, I could smell it—the metallic tang of blood, assaulting my nostrils
I rounded the corner into the room and froze.
There was a man in the dining room beyond the kitchen, his back toward me, but it wasn’t Elio.
Elio had a swimmer’s build, sleek but not overly muscled. The man standing in the dining room could have been an MMA fighter, with his broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, expertly displayed in a charcoal gray suit.
