Chapter 9
Delilah Barrinheart
Time doesn’t move normally in the med bay.
It stretches and blurs, measured less by hours and more by interruptions—vitals checks, clipped conversations, the dull ache of healing wounds that itch and burn in equal measure.
Sleep comes in jagged pieces. So do memories.
By the time they start using words like bedrest and discharge pending, I’ve stopped asking what day it is because the answer doesn’t change anything.
The walls are still white. The sheets still smell like bleach.
My ribs still feel like someone took a crowbar to them and then asked me politely not to complain.
Larkin is standing at the foot of my bed when I wake this time, tablet tucked under her arm, posture infuriatingly relaxed. She looks like someone who slept a full eight hours, like someone whose body wasn’t used as leverage, and the unfairness of it makes my jaw tighten before she even speaks.
“Let’s go over it again,” she says calmly. “From the moment you were separated from King.”
I stare past her, eyes unfocused, watching as King swings his legs off the bed across the bay.
He moves stiffly, wincing as he stands, but he’s upright, breathing on his own, already shrugging into a jacket someone must’ve brought him.
Cleared. Finished. Free. The sight of it hits somewhere sore.
Not because I want him stuck here. Because I don’t.
But watching him walk while I’m still pinned to this bed like a bug under glass makes something ugly coil in my chest.
“They took me,” I say, my voice flat, mechanical, like I’m reciting a grocery list. “They questioned me. I didn’t answer.”
Larkin doesn’t look satisfied. She never does. There’s always another angle, another detail, another way to peel the same skin back and call it protocol. “You’ve said Mikhail was present intermittently. Can you narrow down how often?”
I watch as King grins at one of the medics, muttering something that earns him a laugh. My fingers curl into the blanket. “Enough,” I say quietly.
Larkin glances up. “Delilah—”
“No,” I interrupt, sharper now. “I’ve answered this. Over and over. You’re not getting a different story just because you ask it with a different face.”
Her mouth tightens. “This isn’t about you being cooperative. This is about preventing it from happening again.”
I let out a hollow laugh before I can stop myself. It sounds wrong in the room. Thin. Mean. “Then maybe start with the people who let it happen.”
The air shifts. Tension snaps tight, immediate and unmistakable.
Larkin’s eyes harden just as King finally limps toward the exit, pausing long enough to glance back at me.
He gives a small salute with two fingers and mouths don’t get soft, like he’s not walking out while I stay behind.
Something bitter coils deeper in my chest. He disappears past the curtain, and just like that the room feels emptier than it did a second ago.
Jon is leaning against the far wall when King leaves, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
He hasn’t been at my bedside much lately.
He comes and goes, checks charts, speaks to doctors, signs forms, stands in doorways like a man guarding a building instead of a person.
But he doesn’t look at me the way he did that first day.
Whatever wall he rebuilt, it’s solid now, reinforced with steel and silence.
Larkin continues, undeterred. “When you attempted your escape, did you intend to leave King behind from the start?”
My head snaps toward her. “I didn’t leave him.”
“You left the cell.”
“I was coming back.”
“With what support?”
My patience snaps like a wire pulled too tight. “With the same support I’ve always had. Myself.”
“That’s not an answer,” she says coolly.
“That’s the only one you’re getting.”
Jon pushes off the wall then, his boots heavy against the floor as he steps closer. “Delilah,” he says, his tone stern in a way that makes my spine bristle instantly. “Dial it back.”
I turn on him, heat flaring hot and fast. “Or what?”
His jaw tightens. “This isn’t a personal attack. She’s doing her job.”
“And what am I doing?” I fire back. “Because from where I’m sitting, it feels a lot like I’m being punished for surviving.”
“That’s not fair,” Jon says sharply.
“Neither is this,” I snap, gesturing weakly at the IV, the monitors, the endless questions. “King gets discharged, patted on the back like some fucking hero, and I’m still stuck here being dissected like a liability.”
Larkin steps in. “King’s injuries were physical. Yours—”
“Don’t,” I warn, my voice low and dangerous. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
Silence crashes down, thick and suffocating. Jon looks between us, something conflicted flashing across his face before it hardens again.
“You’re not being cleared because you’re not stable,” he says, measured but unyielding. “And until you are, this is how it goes.”
The words land like a slap. I stare at him, really stare, taking in the distance in his eyes, the way he’s already compartmentalized me into something he can manage instead of something he feels. Something breaks quietly in my chest.
“Then stop pretending you care how I feel,” I say, my voice eerily calm. “Because if this is how it goes, you don’t get to act surprised when I stop playing nice.”
Jon’s expression flickers—hurt, anger, something dangerously close to regret—but he doesn’t respond. Larkin clears her throat and makes a note on her tablet, already moving on, already planning the next time she’ll come back and pick at the scab.
As they leave, I sink back against the pillows, exhaustion dragging at my bones. I watch the empty space where King’s bed used to be and wonder how it feels to walk away while someone else keeps asking you to relive the worst moments of your life like they belong to them.
Jon pauses at the curtain, hand hovering like he might say something else, something real. He doesn’t. He leaves instead.
And for the first time since I woke up in this place, I let myself feel it—not the fear, not the pain, but the cold realization that whatever we were before, whatever safety I thought I had with him, is slipping through my fingers.
The room is quiet again, the hum of monitors and the occasional beep from the IV like a metronome marking time I don’t care to keep.
I close my eyes and let my thoughts drift—dangerous, reckless, and intoxicating—and suddenly I’m somewhere else.
Somewhere warmer. Safer. And yet, it still carries the edge of possibility that makes my stomach twist.
I’m at the shooting range, the sun dipping low, painting everything in gold. The scent of gunpowder hangs thick, mingling with pine and the faint tang of sweat. The targets sway lazily downrange in the evening breeze. Jon is beside me, crouched low, voice clipped but steady as he adjusts my stance.
“Elbows in, shoulders down. You’re trying to punch the rifle like a hammer, not guide it.”
I nod, but I can feel the flush creeping up my neck, hot and impossible to hide.
He’s too close, his presence too solid, too infuriatingly…
grounding. My pulse quickens as he leans over, one hand brushing mine as he steadies the barrel, and I catch the way his gaze flicks toward me.
Not at the target, not at the line, but at me.
Like I’m the thing requiring focus. Like I’m the thing throwing him off.
“Why are you really here?” he asks softly, voice low enough that I think it’s only meant for me.
I freeze, the barrel stilling in my hands. “I… I’m learning,” I mutter, the lie tasting bitter even as it leaves my mouth.
He tilts his head, expression hard but eyes soft. “No. That’s not it.”
Something tightens in my chest. My heart hammers in response, but it’s not fear. It’s anticipation. Confusion. The dangerous thrill of maybe, just maybe, the man I’ve always respected—no, looked up to—might see me differently. Might feel something more than responsibility, than duty.
“You’re thinking too much,” I whisper, though the words are almost lost in the hiss of the targets downrange.
Jon’s lips twitch, a ghost of a smile, and I can feel it, feel him, closer than he should be, leaning just a hair toward me. “Maybe,” he admits quietly, voice brushing against me, “or maybe you’re finally noticing.”
My stomach lurches. My breath hitches. Everything—the training, the rules, the invisible boundaries that should never be crossed—blurs.
I want to pull away, but I can’t. I want to look at him, see if it’s real, see if he’s just human, see if there’s something behind those sharp edges of his control that makes him feel the same reckless pull.
I glance up. His eyes meet mine. There’s a tension there, taut and electric, and for a moment, just a heartbeat, I believe it. I believe there’s a line he wants to cross, too, one he’s holding himself back from, just like I am.
And then the warmth fractures. The edges of the memory blur as the darkness creeps back in—the cold, the harsh clang of the cell door, the smell of damp concrete and blood.
The soft brush of sunlight over pine and gunpowder is gone, replaced by a shadowed room, the sharp edge of a Russian accent, and the taste of fear.
I stumble back, heart hammering, hands clutching at my arms as if holding onto myself will make the nightmare less real.
King is slumped against the wall, bruised and bleeding, a mockery of the strength I used to rely on.
My pulse surges, panic bubbling, and for the first time in days, I feel it—the helplessness, the suffocating tension that makes every second stretch out like hours.
“Stay calm,” I whisper to myself, though my voice trembles, though every memory of Jon’s careful, steadying hands feels like a cruel joke now.
His sunlit smile is already fading in my mind, replaced by the cold, calculating eyes of men who know exactly who I am, who I’ve been, and who I mean to someone else.