Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
Mike stepped out of the elevator carrying two bottles of water and a wrapped sandwich the nurse insisted he grab. He walked toward the surgical wing, already planning how to coax Shannon into eating at least half. He turned the corner. There was no one there.
Maybe she went to the bathroom.
BANG!
“HELP!”
That was Shannon.
Mike dropped everything in his hands and ran.
He reached the OR doors just as two orderlies pushed past him with a gurney.
Blood smeared the floor and wall tiles. Hunt stood braced against the wall, one hand on his side.
Roe stood at the sink, covered in blood, barking instructions at a trembling resident who looked ready to faint.
And inside—Shannon.
She stood beside the operating table, arms locked out, firearm in one hand, the barrel pointed straight down.
Mike scanned the room. Dante was under the lights, his chest and abdomen open, the retractors still in place. The monitors beeped loudly.
A body lay on the floor, blood pooling from its head.
As Mike stepped through the door, Roe took up position at the table, his left shoulder wrapped with a bulky dressing, barking for suction and more clamps. A nurse placed a mask on Shannon, who seemed not to notice him.
Mike moved on instinct and muscle memory, stepping forward to help. He caught Hunt just as he nearly crumpled. Blood covered Hunt’s scrubs. Blood on the floor. Too much blood. He lifted Hunt to the stretcher.
“Mike, I need—”
“You need to be taken care of.”
A second body was slumped on the tile. A surgical sheet thrown over it was already soaked red.
Mike’s throat clenched hard as he made eye contact with Shannon standing ten feet away, staring at nothing.
He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her like the rest of the room didn’t exist. He held the back of her head against his chest, feeling the rapid hitch of her breathing.
“You’re okay,” he whispered against her hair.
“You did exactly what needed to be done.”
She didn’t cry. Her breath stayed shallow, one hand still curled tightly in the sheet on Dante’s stretcher. Behind them, Dr. Roe shouted for clearance at the OR doors, his voice snapping commands as they wheeled Hunt out.
Mike didn’t move, not until Shannon drew a slower breath. Then another. He pulled back just enough to look in her eyes. “You with me?”
She gave a small nod. Hollow, but steady.
“Good girl,” he said softly. “Stay right here.”
He turned as the lockdown alert triggered overhead steel barriers sealing the main exits of the surgical floor. Alarms echoed from the stairwells. Within sixty seconds, Bravo Team burst through the west corridor.
Sean Paulsen led the stack—armor on, sidearm drawn but lowered, scanning sharp. Bone, Rocket, Red Canal, Friend—all present, their entry fast and clean.
Mike raised his hand sharply. “Bravo, hold perimeter and contain this floor. We’ve had a breach, and this man didn’t walk in on his own. Lock every exit. That includes delivery bays, basement morgue access, laundry tunnels. Nobody leaves this building. I want every inch of this place checked.”
Sean nodded, already directing his team outward. Friend moved to sweep the hallway. Red Canal checked behind anesthesia carts and mobile units. Bone stayed near the elevator junction. Rocket covered the surgical wing’s rear access.
Mike stepped past the body by the door and caught up with the stretcher holding Hunt, who was fighting consciousness.
“How bad?” Mike asked one of the medical center’s doctors.
“He took a through-and-through to his right side. Bleeding is controlled. We’re taking him to CT scan to see if the bullet hit anything vital and then to the OR.”
Hunt grabbed Mike’s arm. “Check in with Roe. Then take a breath. You did your job.”
Mike stood again, jaw clenched. “Hunt, worry about yourself. Listen to the doctor. I’ll call Selma and let her know.”
Sean returned, stepping close enough to speak low. “We’ll stay until Dante is out of surgery. Then we’ll reconfigure to the ICU.”
Mike nodded, that knot in his throat burning again. He looked through the glass at his daughter, her eyes tracking between the gurney with Dante and the bank of monitors.
There was a lot to say. But not yet.
OR
Inside the operating room, Roe’s voice remained steady even though his face had paled. “Keep the norepinephrine running. Increase fluids. Do not disconnect the ventilator until I say.”
The younger surgeon worked at double speed as Roe leaned over Dante. “He’s losing pressure from the internal bleed. Roe, move left. I have exposure.” He exhaled loudly.
Roe gritted through the pain in his shoulder and adjusted his position. A nurse helped him change out of his gown, and, despite the injury, his hands remained steady as stone.
“Clamp now,” he said.
The clamp snapped shut. Dante’s blood pressure climbed a fraction.
“Good. Let’s close his chest and irrigate his entire abdominal cavity after we liberate him from the remnants of this abscess and its siblings,” Roe said. “I want them cultured.” He dropped a white blob into a basin.
The team worked together in a synchronized rhythm, wounded surgeon and others, none willing to step away until the bleeding stopped from a small ruptured vein in Dante’s liver.
Roe managed to stay on his feet as two medical center surgeons irrigated the abdomen and double-checked the chest.
“Close now,” Roe ordered then finally leaned back, sweat on his brow. “Prepare him for post-operative ICU stabilization. Move with care. He can’t tolerate another shock.”
Even on the verge of collapse, he stayed until Dante was safely placed on the rolling ICU bed.
As the team maneuvered Dante out of the OR, Shannon stepped aside, but the moment he passed her, her legs betrayed her. She pressed her hand against the wall to steady herself. Her breathing had gone shallow. Heat washed over her face, then cold. Her vision wavered.
Mike, waiting outside the OR, caught her elbow just as her knees dipped. “Breathe,” he said gently. “Just breathe.”
She nodded, but the tremor in her hands worsened. She had executed a clean, controlled shot at close range without hesitation. It saved Dante’s life. It saved everyone in the OR.
Now the shock arrived, slow but crushing.
Ford appeared on her other side, having sprinted from the command room when he heard the alert. He slid a steadying hand onto her forearm. “You did what any of us would have done,” he said, voice low. “You saved him.”
Shannon tried to answer but could only shake her head. She watched the gurney roll toward the ICU, her pulse still thundering. “I’m alright. Just… just take care of him. Please.”
Ford nodded. “We will.”
The ICU team prepared a full isolation bay for Dante. Warmed blankets waited beneath the overhead lights. A dialysis machine hummed on standby. His lab values were already being entered into the chart by a flurry of nurses.
When they wheeled him in, the room fell into organized motion. Monitors were reconnected. The ventilator hissed softly. Lines were secured. A nurse adjusted the warming unit around his feet.
Roe leaned against the wall briefly, catching his breath. He looked dangerously pale, but he managed a faint nod at Shannon as she stepped quietly into the doorway. “He’s stable. Not well. Not safe. But stable.”
Shannon’s boots hit the tile hard. She caught Roe’s arm before he could wave her off. “What are you doing here?” she snapped. “You need help.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Her arm was already around his waist, taking his weight. “You’re bleeding through your dressing.”
She turned and shouted, “Help! Roe’s been shot. He’s bleeding!”
Nurses looked up. A trauma tech pushed off the counter, jogging toward them with a chair.
“I’m walking,” Roe muttered, his stodgy British accent still intact.
“You’re not,” she said. “Sit. Don’t argue.”
As Roe was lowered into the chair, Shannon looked back toward Dante’s ICU bay.
“Where’s Hunt?” she demanded. “Is he being treated?”
One of the nurses flinched at her tone, mid-IV line into Roe.
“Still in the OR,” someone offered. “He’s stable, but—”
“Stable?” she cut in. “Dr. Roe is standing here bleeding while everyone pretends he’s a trauma surgeon and not a gunshot victim. Is that true for Dr. Montgomery?”
No one answered.
“Get someone down there to check on Dr. Montgomery now,” she said. “If he collapses because no one moved, I’ll know exactly who to blame.”
She turned back in time to see a nurse adjusting Dante’s position in the bed. The ventilator hissed. A line beeped in a slow, steady rhythm. As soon as Roe was wheeled out, Shannon stepped back to Dante’s bedside.
The ICU quieted as midnight settled over the hospital. The machines kept their steady cadence, each mechanical breath from the ventilator rising and falling in a rhythm that had become the center of Shannon’s world.
She sat in a reclining chair beside Dante, her knees drawn close, a blanket around her shoulders that one of the nurses had tucked there without a word.
She lifted his hand in hers. His skin was no longer heated by fever.
The room was dim enough that the monitors cast a soft glow across his face, illuminating the bruises along his temple and buried in the stubble on his jaw.
Every few minutes, she looked up, watching the numbers on the screens. Every few minutes, fear rose in her chest. Every few minutes, she forced it back down.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she whispered. “Not now. Not after everything.”
THE SECURITY WING
In a conference alcove three floors down, Ford stood with Mike and Ian with a tablet under one arm and a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked like a man holding himself together by force.
Mike leaned forward. “You looked into Krueger’s travel?”
Ford nodded. “He used a mercenary wing that operates on the West African corridor. Someone paid for the flight—someone powerful. The documents were scrubbed so fast the digital trace was almost perfect.”
“Almost?” Ian asked.
Ford lowered the coffee to the table and showed them the tablet.
“Krueger could not have traveled with the third nuke without someone clearing space at Ramstein. That means military clearance. Bureaucracy. Somebody with stars or stripes or clearance-level immunity. I wish his dad hadn’t died months ago. I’d swear it was him.”
Mike rubbed his temple. “You think this is bigger than a rogue asset.”
Ford’s eyes hardened. “Someone funded Krueger, protected him, and ensured he got into Germany. And they have his mission to finish.”
Ian leaned back in the chair, absorbing every word. “We need to prepare for the possibility that someone else is coming.”
Ford nodded. “I want security tightened around the entire hospital. Dante is still vulnerable.”
Mike exhaled. “Shannon will not sleep until he’s safe.”
Ford looked down, his voice low. “Neither will I.”
ICU
Despite the repaired bullet wound, Hunt moved through the ICU with steady, disciplined resolve. His left side was bandaged, and his breath caught every few steps. He walked holding on to an IV pole that held fluid and antibiotics. He refused all pain medication other than acetaminophen.
A nurse tried to steer him toward a chair. “Dr. Montgomery, you shouldn’t be up. You just had surgery. You need to rest.”
Hunt shook his head and continued toward Dante’s room. “I will rest when my patient stabilizes.”
He stopped outside Bay 2, watching through the glass. Dante lay surrounded by a web of technology. Shannon sat beside him in absolute stillness, her hand over his.
Hunt stepped inside after checking the chart. “He’s responding to the interventions. Not quickly, but enough to keep us encouraged.”
Shannon nodded. “You need to rest. He fought all the way from Africa. He can fight through this—and you have to too.”
Hunt’s face softened. “He held on for the chance to stay here with you.”
She looked at Dante again, her expression tightening. “I need him to wake up.”
“He will,” Hunt promised. “Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But he will.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, steady but respectful. “If you need anything, I’m steps away.” Then he left the room without a sound.
As the night stretched long, the adrenaline of the OR confrontation began to drain from her body. Her hands still shook occasionally, the way they did after combat flights. Her breath hitched now and then when a memory flashed too vividly.
Krueger’s smile.
The gun pressed to Dante’s head.
The moment she pulled the trigger.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Dante’s arm. Her whisper was barely audible. “I thought I lost you. I thought he’d take you from me.”
Her shoulders trembled once. Only once. She swallowed the rest of the fear.
A soft knock came at the door. Sam had arrived in Germany. He stood quietly in the doorway, eyes flicking between her and Dante. He pulled a chair beside her and sat down. “Dad’s getting us something to eat and drink. He wants you to rest.”
“I’m not leaving him,” she insisted.
Sam didn’t argue. “Then I’ll stay too. But you can still eat and drink something.”
Together they sat in silence, watching the steady rise and fall of Dante’s chest.
It was nearly dawn when the slightest flicker of movement drew her out of her half sleep. She straightened instantly, eyes wide. Dante’s fingers curled. Just barely. But enough.
She squeezed his hand gently. “Dante,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
His eyelids struggled. His face tightened with the effort of surfacing from sedation. The ventilator hissed quietly with each breath.
She leaned closer, tears pricking but refusing to fall. “It’s okay. Don’t rush. Just try.”
Another small movement. His brow furrowed. His lips parted slightly around the oxygen tubing.
Sam stood up from his chair. “I’ll get the doctor.”
Dante’s thumb brushed weakly against the inside of her palm. It was small. It was faint.
But it was him.
She bowed her head over his hand, her breath shaking, her heart full to breaking. “You came back to me. I knew you would.”