Chapter 4
JOSIE
Sleep, it turns out, is not on the menu.
Every time I start to drift off, discomfort pulls me back—the throb of my ribs, the ache in my wrist, the way my head pulses in time with my heartbeat like a bass drum playing inside my skull.
The pain meds help, but they make everything fuzzy and strange, turning the hospital room into a funhouse of shifting shadows and too-bright lights.
It’s after midnight when I finally give up.
I lie there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting the tiny holes in them because I’ve already counted sheep and that hasn’t worked either.
The hospital is quieter now—fewer footsteps in the hallway, fewer beeps and buzzes from the nurses’ station.
Just the steady rhythm of machines and the soft sound of movement from behind the curtain.
My neighbor isn’t asleep either.
I can tell by the quality of her restlessness that she’s also uncomfortable. It’s there in the shift of sheets, the creak of the bed frame, the occasional exhale that sounds more like frustration than relaxation.
“You’re not fooling anyone with the fake sleeping,” I say into the darkness.
“Neither are you.”
“Fair point.” I shift against my pillows, wincing. “Can’t shut my brain off.”
“Join the club.”
I wait to see if she’ll offer anything else. She doesn’t.
“So,” I try again. “What’s keeping you up? Besides the obvious.”
“The obvious?”
“Hospital beds. Fluorescent lights. The existential dread of being trapped in a building that smells like antiseptic and shit-rus.”
A short sound—almost a laugh, quickly suppressed. “Shit-rus?”
“Don’t tell me you think the strong citrus and poop smell is nice.”
She snorts.
“Want to talk about it?” I ask.
“No.”
Well. That’s clear enough.
I should let it go, respect her boundaries and mind my own business. But years of working with victims has given me finely tuned instincts, and every single one of them is screaming that something is very wrong with the woman behind the curtain.
“You know,” I say carefully, “I spent almost a decade putting away men who hurt people. I’ve heard pretty much every story there is. Nothing shocks me anymore.”
“Good for you.” Her voice is cool. Distant.
“Wanna share your story?”
“I don’t have a story.”
“Everyone has a story.”
“Mine’s not interesting.”
“I doubt that.”
The curtain shifts. The woman’s face appears in the gap—sharp-featured, guarded, older than I’ve first assumed. Mid-to-late twenties, maybe. The dark circles under her eyes speak of sleepless nights that occurred long before this hospital stay.
I wonder if she has children.
“What do you want from me?” she asks bluntly. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. In a few hours, we’ll both be out of here and we’ll never see each other again. So why the interrogation?”
“Just trying to make conversation.”
“It feels like an interrogation.”
“Occupational hazard. Sorry.” I hold up my hands—well, one hand; the other is in a cast. “I’ll back off.”
She studies me for a long moment. I let her look, keeping my expression open, non-threatening. Whatever she’s running from, whoever she’s protecting herself against, I’m not it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she finally says. “That’s all that matters.”
“And then what?”
“Then I go.”
“Go where?”
“Away.”
“That’s not a destination.”
She shrugs.
There’s an undercurrent to her words—a thread of desperation she can’t quite hide.
Who are you running from?
“If you need help—” I start.
“I don’t.”
“—there are resources. Shelters, legal aid, people who specialize in—”
“I said I don’t need help.” Her voice goes sharp, a flash of heat breaking through the ice. “I just need to leave. I’ve already wasted too much time laying about here when I could do the same freaking thing at home.”
Wasted. Interesting word choice.
“Look.” Her expression hardens. “I appreciate the concern. Really. But whatever you think is going on with me, you’re wrong. I fell down some stairs. I’m fine. Tomorrow I’ll be gone and this will all be a weird memory for you. So can we just... not?”
She pulls back behind the curtain before I can respond.
I lie there in the darkness, turning the conversation over in my mind. She’s lying—that much is obvious.
Not your problem, Bright. You’ve got your own mess to deal with.
True. But everything about her nags at me.
The nurse comes in a short time later and doses me up with pain meds, silencing the rock concert in my head.
I must have dozed off eventually, because I wake to the sound of footsteps.
The pain meds have worn off enough that my senses are sharper now, and something about the room feels wrong.
I lie still, trying to work it out.
There.
Footsteps. Soft, barely audible over the hum of machines. But I’ve spent years learning to listen for danger, and these footsteps are wrong. Too slow. Too deliberate. Not the brisk squeak of a nurse’s rubber soles or the shuffling uncertainty of a lost visitor.
These footsteps are hunting.
I keep my eyes closed, force my breathing to stay even, even though every instinct I’ve developed during my years in Atlanta screams at me to run. The antiseptic smell of the room sharpens, mixing with the terrifying scent of sweat, leather, the faint metallic tang of blood.
The footsteps stop beside my bed.
The air shifts. A presence looms over me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off a body, hear the controlled inhale and exhale of someone trying to stay quiet. A shadow falls across my closed eyelids, blocking the dim glow of the machines.
Someone is standing over me.
My heart hammers against my broken ribs, each beat sending fire through my chest. I want to move—to open my eyes, to scream, to throw myself off the bed and run.
But my body won’t cooperate. The lingering fog of medication has turned my limbs to concrete, my thoughts to molasses.
I’m trapped inside my own skin, paralyzed by chemicals and fear.
A rustle of fabric. The whisper of an object being drawn from a pocket.
MOVE, JOSIE! MOVE!
I can’t.
The presence leans closer. His breath ghosts across my face, hot and wrong.
This is it. This is how I die.
CRASH.
The presence vanishes. A grunt of pain—male, surprised—a heavy thud that shakes the floor, the clatter of something metallic skittering across linoleum.
My eyes fly open.
My roommate stands over a man in dark clothes, a dented metal bedpan gripped in both hands like a baseball bat. Her hospital gown is askew, her IV ripped out and dripping blood down her forearm, her chest heaving with exertion.
But her eyes are calm. Focused. The eyes of someone who’s been in survival mode so long it has become muscle memory.
The man groans, tries to push himself up. The woman doesn’t hesitate—she swings again, a clean arc that connects with his skull with a sound like a hammer hitting meat.
He goes down and stays down.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe.
She stands there for a moment, staring at the body on the floor. Then she looks at me, and I see the first crack in her composure—a tremor in her hands, a flicker of wild fury behind her eyes.
“He was going to kill you,” she says. Her voice is steady, but barely. “I saw him through the curtain. He walked right past me like I wasn’t even there and he went straight for you. He had a weapon in his hand—”
My heart is slamming against my ribs, and my hands won’t stop shaking. I can still feel the ghost of him above me, the desperate burn in my lungs to scream but knowing the sound was choked in my throat.
I never imagined I’d be the kind of person to freeze in this situation. But I did. I’m alive, because of her.
“You saved my life,” the words are raw and rough, ripping through the lump in my throat.
“I hit him with a bedpan.”
Relief crashes through me—so sudden and overwhelming that for a moment I can’t breathe. This woman. This brave, terrified woman who doesn’t even know me, who could have stayed hidden behind that curtain grabbed a bedpan and she fought for me.
Gratitude doesn’t begin to express the onslaught of emotions I’m feeling toward her right now.
“You saved my life.” I struggle to sit up, ignoring the scream of my ribs. “That man was here to kill me. And you stopped him.”
She looks down at the unconscious figure, at the blood pooling beneath his head, at the weapon still clutched in her white-knuckled grip.
“I’ve never—” She stops. Swallows.
“Come here.”
She doesn’t move.
“Come here.”
Something in my voice must reach her, because she drops the bedpan with a clatter and crosses to my bed on unsteady legs. I grab her hand—the one not dripping blood from the torn IV—and hold on.
“You did what you had to do,” I tell her firmly. “You saw a threat and you neutralized it. Don’t be ashamed. That’s survival.”
“Survival.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Yeah. I’m good at that.”
Before I can respond, the door bursts open.
Stone comes through first, his face a mask of controlled fury. Hawk and Tank flank him, both armed, both scanning the room for threats.
The relief that floods through me is so intense my vision blurs. He’s here.
Stone’s eyes find me, then my roommate, then the man on the floor. His expression cracks—relief and rage warring for dominance.
“Josie.” He’s at my bedside in three strides. “Are you hurt? Did he—”
“I’m fine. She stopped him.”
His gaze swings to the woman, who’s gone very still beside me. She’s watching the three men with the wariness of a wild animal.
“You did this?” Stone asks her.
A short nod. Her hand twitches like she wants to reach for the bedpan again.
“With that?” He nods toward the dented metal on the floor.
Another nod.
Stone looks at the unconscious attacker—easily twice her size—then back at her. I watch him reassess her in real-time, watch the pieces click into place behind his eyes.
I grip my blanket, pulling it around me as a bone cold chill freezes my blood.
“He knocked out the prospect we had on your door,” Hawk says grimly. “Kid didn’t even see him coming.”