Chapter 21
Ricardo lay as still as he could and listened. There was activity in the ICU. Activity that didn’t belong here and had driven August out into the fray. But he couldn’t quite nail down what was happening.
Before August had left the room, the morphine haze had been steadily clearing, and a trickle of adrenaline had sharpened Ricardo’s awareness to something closer to normal.
His thoughts were slippery and the room refused to be still; he swore he still felt that semi-weightless, spinning sensation of being raised from the water onto the ship’s deck.
Had he felt that while getting into the helicopter?
Or had they landed on the deck? He couldn’t remember.
He’d been mostly hallucinating by then, so it might’ve all been a dream anyway.
Either way, the wobbly, spinny, not-quite-committed-to-gravity feeling held on. It made him queasy. It also made it hard to lock on to his surroundings.
It made it even harder to lock on to what was happening beyond his room. Right now, he couldn’t hear anything at all. Even the machinery in his room was silent apart from the air coming from an unseen vent.
Where was August?
Where the fuck was NightRaven?
Ricardo thought he heard something, and he strained a little to hear it, realizing a second too late he’d tried to sit up too. Pain ripped through his torso as a wave of nausea crashed over him. He squeezed his eyes shut, which only made the room spin faster.
In his right hand—the one held firmly to his side by uncomfortable bandages—the morphine pump waited.
One gentle press of his thumb, and merciful oblivion wouldn’t be far behind.
The pain, the fear, even the ever-present irritation from where that fucking scorpion had stung him, which the bandage was irritating. It would all just… go away.
Tempting. So fucking tempting.
He had to stay sharp… but did he really?
Because what good was he in a fight? What did it matter if he knew what was happening since he could do fuck all to change it?
At least the morphine might save him from knowing what hit him if NightRaven found him.
And it would stop him from helplessly listening to something terrible happening to August.
Ricardo swallowed past nausea that had nothing to do with drugs or injuries. He’d dragged August out of retirement and into this mess. And now something could happen to him, and there was nothing Ricardo could do.
Beside him under the covers was another path to oblivion.
One much more permanent than the morphine.
He wasn’t sure he could even lift the pistol at this point; he’d managed to tuck it beneath the covers beside his hip so a nurse coming to check on him wouldn’t take it away, and even that exertion had made him break out in a sweat.
Movement beyond his door made Ricardo freeze. He held his breath, staring at the ceiling as he listened.
Footsteps. Quiet ones. Not the sharp, distinct snaps of someone on a mission. Not the lazy scuff of casual motion.
Slow. Methodical. Cautious. Long pauses. Slight backtracks.
More adrenaline trickled into Ricardo’s veins.
That was the movement of someone in a place they knew they didn’t belong.
And it had stopped right outside Ricardo’s door.
There was a near-silent rustle of papers, not unlike when a doctor or nurse checked his chart before entering the room. They’d shuffled through some papers, then the folder would thunk into the plastic holder, and there’d be a quiet tap on the door before they came inside.
The folder thunked back into the holder. There was no tap on the door. It just opened.
Ricardo held his breath.
The door closed again.
“Well, Mr. Torralba.” NightRaven’s voice made Ricardo’s spine prickle and his stomach turn. His footsteps, more deliberate now, came closer. “Looks like you’re at a bit of a disadvantage, aren’t you?”
Ricardo struggled to swallow. Mouth dry, he croaked, “So you can only win a fight against a man in a hospital bed, eh, NightChicken?”
The asshole bristled so hard, Ricardo felt it. If he could’ve laughed without being overwhelmed by white-hot pain, he would have. He was a sitting duck, so he might as well go down with the satisfaction of taking a few chunks out of the guy’s ego.
“I’m not winning a fight against a man in a hospital bed,” came the pointed, pissed-off retort.
NightRaven came closer, entering Ricard’s field of vision.
“I’m finishing what I started down by the lake.
” He quirked his lips as if he were coming up with something profound.
“Putting a dying animal out of its misery, really.”
“You could just leave the fucking room,” Ricardo muttered, “and my misery would drop by half.”
The jackass snorted. “Your reputation for being a dick really is accurate, isn’t it?”
Ricardo shifted his hand around as much as he could with the IV, the scorpion sting, and the morphine pump, and he gave NightRaven the finger.
“Mmhmm. I figured. Anyway, I—”
“Would you just kill me or something?” Ricardo demanded. “Because this has to be… Has to be against the Geneva Conventions.”
In the back of his mind, he heard August huffing sharply and replying, “Rude.”
God, August. He was never going to see his husband again, was he? Was August even alive? Had this asshole…
“Where is August?” He regretted it as soon as he said it, because he knew the fucker would just use it to taunt him.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The question was almost gleeful.
“And no, I’m not going to kill you quite yet, Torralba.
” NightRaven leaned over him, looking right in his eyes, and he smirked down at him as he covered Ricardo’s hand with his.
“First, I want you to hear me killing your husband.” A second too late, Ricardo realized what he was doing, and as the fucker pressed his thumb onto the morphine pump, horror flooded through him faster than the morphine ever would.
Still smirking, NightRaven said, “And now you won’t have the pain to distract you from my handiwork, will you? ”
Elsewhere on the floor, a door opened. Even as the drugs were starting to liquify his thoughts, Ricardo recognized those footsteps, too—the slightly hitched gait of August moving as fast as he could on his damaged feet.
NightRaven must’ve heard it too, because he glanced over his shoulder. Facing Ricardo again, he grinned even bigger. “Perfect timing. You just lay there and enjoy the morphine.” He started to stand. “I’ll go take care of August.”
Ricardo snatched NightRaven’s wrist. The pain blinded him for a split second, but NightRaven also froze, and Ricardo recovered first.
“Don’t… touch… my husband.”
And before NightRaven could react, Ricardo summoned all the strength, pain tolerance, and clarity he had left, shoved the hidden pistol into the fucker’s midsection, and fired.
For seconds that stretched into eternity, Ricardo’s world was nothing but pain. The movement to lift the gun, the recoil—not ideal with broken ribs or seven million stitches and staples.
But then, even as pain and morphine conspired to pull him away from the present, he was aware of two things.
One, NightRaven staggering back, grunting with a satisfying amount of pain as he toppled one of the monitor stands.
Two, the door flying open.
He had a heartbeat to think a nurse was about to become collateral damage. Another heartbeat to realize NightRaven was still moving. Rallying. Ready to fight.
Then—
“Are you okay?” August demanded. “Ricardo, are you—fuck!”
Ricardo couldn’t keep track of what was happening. Morphine was closing in fast. The shouts and chaos were fading.
He didn’t know how badly NightRaven was wounded.
He didn’t know if August was injured at all.
He didn’t know anything except that the two men were fighting…
And there was nothing he could do to help August.