“He’s in ten two three!” I shout, pointing at the writing on the wall.
Declan shoulders the rifle and picks up a crossbow. From the corner of my eye, I spot the chief of police rushing me. Declan releases the arrow. It flies through the chief’s temple and brain and comes out the other side, nailing him to the wall where I wrote the number down.
The chief’s jaw slackens, blood spilling from his open mouth.
I follow the cable line attached to the arrow. It leads to Declan’s belt. He jumps from the helicopter and lands in front of me like a real-life Spider-Man. With a quick nod in my direction as if we’re passing each other on the way to the bathroom, Declan unhooks the line from the arrow that pierced the chief’s head so the cable can retract into his belt.
The chopper hovers by the window. The pilot is a woman with a ponytail. What was her name again? Sada? Seida?
“Your brother is in ten twenty-three,” I say, but I doubt Declan hears me over the roar of the chopper.
He drags me into the bathroom, takes one look at the nurse on the floor, then removes her shoes. “Put those on.”
“I can’t take her sneakers.”
“Put them on,” he repeats. I think it’s kind of psychotic how calm this man is while everyone else is freaking out. My nurse is catatonic. I feel like I’m looking through a fishbowl, as if none of this is happening to me.
For some reason, I’m covered in blood. Drenched. Is it Sergei’s or mine?
Mayhem rains down all around us, and this man goes back into the room and starts to rummage through the drawers. Hecomes back to the bathroom with a roll of gauze and wraps my arm. Then he drops to his knees and lifts one of my feet, then the other so he can make sure I don’t walk barefoot over glass and debris.
While he kneels, making sure I’m taken care of, all I can think about is how this man killed dozens of people to get to me and how he’s on his knees tending to me, all while knowing the police and Ivan’s people are moving in on him. To kill him.
His brother lies helplessly in room 1023, but Declan, who is, by all accounts, just a man I once hit with my car, came to rescue me before he rescued his twin brother. Since I know he loves Connor more than anyone else in the world, I am perplexed.
On the few occasions when I stayed late with a client, I had to beg my ex-husband of fifteen years to take our daughter to soccer practice. I couldn’t get him to put his laundry into the hamper. He’d take off his clothes and leave them on the floor in the bathroom for me to pick up. Sergei never grocery shopped. Not once.
Declan Crossbow is a man’s man. The kind who puts his woman first.
“I wish we’d met…” I tell him once he’s standing.Before.I wanted to saybefore, but back then, I wouldn’t have looked at him because of our age difference. Maybe we did meet at the right time.
Declan pulls the mask off his mouth and kisses me lingeringly. A groan rips out of him when he steps back. “Hold that thought for later,” he says.
He grabs some tape from the nurse, who is still on the floor, and wraps it tightly around the bandage on my arm, then puts a gun in my hand. Its grip is silver, not gold.
“Your nurse is safe here,” he says. “The fight is moving away. When she comes to her senses, we will owe her for opening theblinds. We need to move. Stay close to me. Shoot anybody you want. Let’s go.”
He pulls me out of the bathroom, and the moment we come out, the chopper flies away.
Declan and I walk over the pile of bodies blocking the exit as if we’re the sole survivors of the zombie apocalypse.
In the hallway, medical staff huddle under tables and behind counters, and all the patient rooms are closed. Men in suits and uniforms shoot at us. Declan walks forward, taking them out with a speed and precision I’ve only ever seen in the movies.
Even the way he walks is calculated, controlled, each step measured, every pull of the trigger executing the target.
Meanwhile, he holds my hand like he’s my daddy and pulls me with him. I’m just trying not to trip over the bodies as they hit the floor.
We round the corner.
A bullet grazes his shoulder.
He veers back and plasters himself against the wall. He checks the bleeding wound, then looks at me. “There are guards at Con’s door. But this is the only way in. You’re going to walk behind me.” He pauses. “I mean that in the most respectful way.” He stares at me.
I stare back. I think I love him. I think I fell in love with him. I’m not sure when, but oh, I love him with all my being.
“Dina?”
“Huh?”
