Chapter 43
Cormac
During a team exercise, Mercer is flirting with Scarlett again while I pretend to look at a tox report for another student. I’m really watching another man lean against my wife.
Scarlett smiles politely, sitting up straight, but I see her knee bouncing under the table. Her little betrayal of annoyance is readable. She’s being polite. She can’t drool on me during class.
She sees me, and she reads my jealousy with a victorious smile. Little menace.
I’m about to call time on the breakout exercise when a scream slices through the room.
“Help!” A yell comes from the faculty hallway. “Someone is attacking Professor Alderton!”
“Lockdown!” My voice cracks like a gunshot.
The class erupts. Chairs roll back, banging into the row behind them. Students surge toward the door.
“In the closet. Now!” I yell.
Students scramble to the middle row and start filing into the supply closet that doubles as a student safe room.
“Voss, guard door one. Mercer, door two,” I bark. “Phones on silent. Do not move until campus security clears the floor.”
Voss bolts, but Mercer fumbles the second door. Scarlett is already helping a girl trembling in the front row.
Our eyes meet as she’s heading into the closet. Good. That’s where she’s supposed to be.
Safe.
Every protocol says I should stay in that room. But I’m not just a teacher. I’m a doctor. And these aren’t five-year-olds. They’re adults. They don’t need me to calm them down. I turn toward the hallway to see what I can do.
“Cormac—” Scarlett’s voice stops me in my tracks.
“Stay here, Scarlett,” I snap without looking back.
“Hell. No.” Her footsteps down the lecture hall steps raise my hackles.
Facing her rushing toward me, I hold up my hand. “Oh no, you don’t.”
Her wild eyes are locked on mine. “You’re not going out there alone.”
“I’m just going to see what’s happened to him.” I grip her arm to force her back to the closet.
“And then turn away?” She breaks the hold and puts her hair up in one of those ponytails. “Never worked the ED in a rough neighborhood, have you? Doctors need someone at their backs. That’s me for you. Let’s go.”
Every instinct says to get her as far from danger as possible. And she’s right. Cascadia wasn’t in a dangerous neighborhood, but I understand tactical positioning. Two men always go on a mission. One man alone is an easy target.
I grab her hand. “Come on,” I mutter.
Once the closet is sealed, I turn back to Mercer and Voss. “Do not open those doors for anyone but security.”
Then I break every rule in the book and breach the lockdown with my wife.
Holding her hand, we slip out the side exit. The hallway is chaos. Students running every which way.
“Get off this floor and into a classroom! Now!” I roar.
They scatter past me and up the stairs.
Scarlett stays close to me, clasping my belt from behind. I’m fucking pissed that I’m not armed. I should have kept a knife on me.
We round the corner and hear a rough thud from inside Alderton’s office.
Slowly, I peek inside. Lamps overturned. Papers swept off his desk.
In the far corner, Alderton lies on the floor, his chest rising shallowly, shirt soaked red.
“Oh my God.” Scarlett pushes past me and drops to her knees beside him without hesitation.
I should pull her away, but we’re medics. Like me, she has an ingrained need to help. I don’t have to advise. She knows what to do. But I have to keep her safe, so I stand in front of her as a guard.
Scarlett’s already pressing her hands to Alderton’s abdomen, applying pressure.
“Checking his airway.” She’s pure triage instinct.
Christ, it does something to me watching her work.
Phone in hand to call 911, I see the attacker in the opposite corner of the office, squatting on the floor.
He’s barely more than a kid. First year, probably.
A bloodied knife dangles from his trembling hand.
When his eyes focus, and he sees me, something snaps.
He moves to stand, the blade up in attack mode.
“Knife!” I bark and spring toward the kid, putting a wall between him and Alderton, who’s being treated by my wife. “Drop it.”
The kid looks conflicted. “I didn’t mean it. He’s gonna fail me. My father will kill me.”
“Cormac!” Scarlett cries. “He’s not breathing. I need help.”
Hearing Scarlett’s voice, the kid freaks out and swings the knife.
I lurch into action, clamping the kid’s wrist, twisting hard until the knife clatters to the ground. I bring my knee up, using it as a weapon to dislocate his shoulder. It won’t kill this kid, but it will incapacitate him.
“Ahh,” he screams, and drops to the floor, cradling his useless limb.
“You’re done,” I tell him quietly with my foot on his neck. “It’s over.”
“Cormac!” Scarlett calls.
I look back, and she’s elbow-deep in blood. My heart punches against my ribs.
“Severe arterial bleed,” she says, sweat dotting her hairline. “He needs transport. Now.”
“What the hell?” Voss says from the doorway. “Campus security emptied out the classroom. Mercer went with them.”
“Find campus EMS!” I snap. “Tell them there was a stabbing, a professor down, level one trauma.”
“Stay with me, professor,” Scarlett whispers. “Stay with me.”
Boots slap and thunder down the hall, someone yelling “Clear” and passing empty offices.
“In here!” I shout.
Campus police rush in first with guns drawn, then EMS barrels in behind them.
I lift my foot off the attacker’s neck as the cops take over and cuff him. “Dislocated left shoulder.”
With him secured, I drop down next to my wife.
A handheld gurney is brought in. But Scarlett doesn’t stop working until EMS physically moves her aside to put Alderton onto the stretcher.
“Stable,” one of the EMS says. “I have a line going. Mercy is standing by. Let’s go.”
And then they’re gone.
Scarlett watches them leave. Her hands are stained red to her elbows. She’s shaking. But she’s steady.
My little warrior. I go to her and want to pull her into me, but I honestly don’t want blood all over me. “Hands up. Let’s get you scrubbed out.”
But when I turn her toward the bathroom, a shadow fills the doorway.
Dean Ford stands there with the face of a man about to lose control. “Scarlett?”
For a split second, she beams with pride. “Dad!”
That’s when Ford’s expression breaks and crushes the moment. “What the hell is going on?” he growls. “What did you think you were doing?”
She flinches. “Saving a man’s life.”
I’m already stepping in front of her before I register moving.
“She did save him,” I say, low and sharp.
“She kept Alderton breathing until EMS arrived. Campus security wasn’t around, and no other professor came to our aid.
The kid out there, cuffed and being led away by the police, had a knife and was still in the room.
I couldn’t treat Alderton, and deal with him, and keep Scarlett safe.
Should I have made your daughter wrestle a knife from the attacker?
I followed scene safety protocol. Scarlett knew how to treat Alderton, and I let her. ”
“She shouldn’t have been in here in the first place!” Ford grills me with a brutal glare. “All students are supposed to be locked down.”
My chest tightens… He’s right. She should have been in the closet like the other students I sent to wait. Wait for rescue. But she insisted on being by my side.
I’m not sure who would get into more trouble for breaking protocol. I’m thinking it’s me. Or he could reprimand his daughter to make a point that she is not above the law here at Hamilton.
“Scarlett, come with me,” Dean Ford barks. “Right now.”
“She needs to decompress. You know trauma protocol,” I fight her father anyway. “You taught it.”
Ford fixes an icy glare on me. “She needs to decompress because you made her handle a trauma!”
Scarlett swallows, face pale, all her glory stripped away. That does it. Fury lights my veins.
“You have no idea what she’s capable of,” I bite out. “She kept a professor alive. I wouldn’t ask any other MS-3 to do what she did.”
Ford points at us both. “In my office. Now.”
Scarlett’s breathing quickens. “Yes, Dad.”
I take her hand, slick with blood, but I squeeze it anyway.
She looks up at me, startled. “My hand is bloody,” she whispers.
“And now, so is mine, baby.”
I pull her next to me as Ford storms ahead, and we walk together into the lion’s den.