“You’re not.” He glanced toward the OR doors, then back at her. The worry had carved deep lines into his face. “I’ll be gone ten minutes. Food, water, and I’m requesting someone from Chase staff to stay with you. If anything changes, someone in that room will come straight out to get you. I promise.”
She absorbed the words with difficulty, but the heaviness in her limbs finally made her nod. “Okay,” she whispered. “Just hurry.”
Mike squeezed her hand. “I’ll be right back.” He stood, glanced toward the OR doors once more, then jogged down the corridor toward the elevators.
Shannon watched him disappear around the corner. The hallway empty without him. She rose from the chair and began pacing slowly. A nurse passed by with a chart, offered a sympathetic smile, and kept moving.
Shannon stopped directly across from the OR doors. “Hold on,” she whispered to Dante. “Come back to me.”
Silence answered her for barely a breath before she froze at an odd noise. She tilted her head, listening harder. The blood rushing in her ears made it difficult to hear. For a moment, she wondered if it was equipment. A tray. A clamp.
Then athwipof a suppressed shot sounded. She recognized it. She did not think. She acted.
Her boots hit the tile, her breaths sharp and uneven. She covered the three steps to the OR doors in a second. Her hand closed around the bar and shoved.
The doors flew open. And she stepped into a nightmare.
The inner door was ajar. A nurse lay across the threshold in a motionless, awkward-looking heap. Roe knelt beside spilled instruments, blood streaking down his surgical gown from a wound in his shoulder. Hunt sat against a set of cabinets, one hand pressed to his own bleeding side, his teeth gritted with pain. The anesthesiologist hid behind a cart, shaking and useless.
And in the center of the room, Dante lay anesthetized beneath the surgical lights, his chest and abdomen open, retractors holding the incision apart as machines beeped frantically.
Daniel Krueger stood at the head of the table holding a pistol against Dante’s temple. He smiled when he saw her. “Well. The pilot arrives.”
Shannon’s hand rested inside her jacket against the cold steel of the firearm her dad gave her. She pulled it out and pointed it at Krueger’s head. She gripped it with both hands, her arms locked, and her jaw clenched. “Step away from him.”
Krueger tilted his head, amused. “You should have stayed in the hallway. This is not a place for you.”
Shannon advanced, slow and steady. “Move away from him now.”
Krueger shifted the gun to Dante’s carotid. “One twitch and he bleeds out before the doctors can find another clamp.”
Shannon stepped closer to him.
“Do you believe you’re fierce now,” Krueger asked, “because you flew a mission or two in Africa?”
She said nothing and did not blink.
Krueger laughed again. “You’re a pilot playing soldier, like your daddy. And you came to Germany for a grand romance.”
Shannon’s voice was quiet but iron-strong. “I came here for him. He would have come here for me—something a man like you could never understand.” She took another step. “It’s about who I am when he’s bleeding on the table in front of me. And you’re clouded by vengeance.”
Krueger hesitated.
Shannon fired. The sound cracked like thunder.
His head flipped back. The bullet struck him through the right eye. He dropped instantly, the gun slipping from his fingers and skittering across the tile.
Shannon rushed to Dante’s side, her hand landing gently on his shoulder outside the drapes. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. Someone help us!”
Roe surged back into motion, barking orders, blood dripping from his wounded arm. At Shannon’s cry, nurses and other surgical staff poured through the doorway. The anesthesiologist unfroze. More hands joined the table. Hunt struggled to rise, failed and tried again to help despite his own wounded side.
The signs on the monitors stabilized by a fraction. But it was enough.
Shannon stayed in place beside Dante, refusing to move an inch. She killed for him. She killed for them. And she would do it again.
FORTY-EIGHT
HALLWAY OUTSIDE OR 3
