Fear. For her.
The realization tightened something deep in her chest.
There was blood on his stomach—she didn’t know whose. His hands trembled where they held her, one braced at her back, the other pressing lightly against her wrist, searching for a pulse she could feel stuttering under his touch.
“I’m fine,” she tried to say, but it came out a whisper, fragile as the air she couldn’t quite catch.
The words barely spilled out. But his thumb brushed her wrist, grounding her with a tenderness she didn’t have the strength to turn away from.
The hallway filled with movement—nurses shouting orders, the slap of shoes on tile, radios crackling with panic. Somewhere, a voice yelled for lockdown.
She wanted to tell them to stop yelling, to breathe, to check the corners, but her vision tunneled again.
Blake swept her up into his arms and lowered her onto the bed, his jaw clenched, eyes locked on the door as if he could will it to stay closed.
“Vivian—look at me.” His voice had gone low, rough, the command layered with something she’d never heard from him before. Fear. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
She didn’t want him coddling her, losing the only lead they had at the moment. She shoved his shoulder. “Move. Get him.”
Blake froze for half a heartbeat, his gaze snapped between her and the open door still swinging on its hinges. The conflict flickered across his face—jaw tight, eyes dark with fury and something she didn’t have time to name.
What was wrong with him? “Go!” She shoved with what little strength she had.
He retrieved his gun and went.
He sprinted into the hallway, his retreating stomps pounding the linoleum floor. The noise of it hit her chest like an echo of his absence. Vivian dragged in a shallow breath, forcing her body upright, but the room spun sideways. The floor pitched under her like a deck in rough water. She clutched the bedrail, fighting to stay conscious.
From the hallway came shouting—footsteps, the deep bark of Blake’s voice ordering people aside, then the slam of another door somewhere down the corridor.
Vivian blinked hard, trying to keep her vision clear. She could still smell him—the sharp tang of gun oil, leather, the faint scent of ocean salt that clung to him after every case they’d been on together the last seven years. She focused on that, on the steady beat of sound and movement that meant he was still alive out there.
Her pulse spiked, uneven. The monitor screamed.
A nurse burst in, eyes wide. “Ma’am, you need to lie back?—”
Vivian shook her head, the motion making spots flash white-hot behind her eyes. “He was here,” she said. “He had a knife. Blake’s after him—he’s armed.”
The nurse looked torn between calling security again and checking the IV line now leaking onto the floor. “Please, don’t move.”
Vivian ignored her. She kept her gaze on the door, every muscle coiled with useless adrenaline. Her body was betraying her—weak, each breath a scrape through glass—but her mind refused to shut down. She replayed every second she’d seen of the attacker: the gray hoodie, the laurel tattoo on his wrist, the Roman numeral hidden in the ink.
Thirteen.
The number burned in her mind like a brand.
Noise thundered back down the corridor—shouts, doors slamming open, running feet. She tried to push off the bed again, but the nurse’s hand pressed her shoulder back until she fell into the bed.
“Stop, you need to rest.”
Then Blake was back. He hit the doorway with a force that made the frame shudder, chest heaving, eyes burning with rage and frustration.
“He’s gone,” he said, voice rough as gravel.
The words sank into her like a stone.
He scanned the room in a single sweep—her IV torn, the blood smear on the floor, the bedpan lying dented where it had fallen. His gaze came back to her, and something inside him seemed to break and rebuild all at once.
“I told you to stay in bed,” he said, but the bite in his tone didn’t match the worry in his eyes.
