Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sutton
She’d seen Sebastian react now multiple times—pulling her inside the farmhouse, clearing her apartment, getting her to the compound—but she’d never seen him run an operation before.
Those had been improvisations, an operator’s training kicking in when the world went sideways. This was different.
This was Sebastian Whitaker in command mode, standing at the head of the briefing table with a map of St. Patrick’s Hospital spread across the surface, assigning positions like a general deploying troops.
He’d been up since before dawn. She’d woken to find his blanket folded neatly against the wall, the room empty.
She dressed and found Jasper outside her door instead of Sebastian, who told her he was in the conference room planning the hospital visit.
She got coffee and took it there, finding him with Garrett, CB, and Mack.
Mack was cleaning a rifle scope beside an open gun case.
The sight of it made her stomach clench.
Claire was on speaker as Sebastian laid out the groundwork for the visit Sutton had insisted on.
He was doing this for her. Because she’d told him she wanted to see Dom, and instead of outright dismissing it, he’d turned it into a mission.
For a moment, she felt guilty. Worried, even. While her apartment had been searched, no one had materialized to try to harm her. They hadn’t gone after Dom; he’d just had the unfortunate timing of walking in on them.
Yet she couldn’t help thinking she was being an idiot for leaving the compound.
On the other hand, Dom had nobody but her. How could she not go see him? Give him something to hang on to? He had to live. She couldn’t handle it if he didn’t.
And if he did die and she hadn’t gone to see him one last time?
She couldn’t live with that either.
Claire pushed back hard. “Get her to reconsider.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I’m all he’s got. I can’t abandon him. If it was Garrett in the hospital on life support, wouldn’t you insist on going, no matter the risk?”
Claire didn’t respond. Garrett pinched his lips together. They all had people in their life who mattered more than any risk.
Sebastian’s voice was calm, but stripped of the warmth he’d shown her the night before as he spoke to Claire. “We control the environment. Your team takes the perimeter, mine takes the interior. If anyone tries to harm Sutton, we take him.”
The silence on Claire’s end continued to stretch long enough it made Sutton hold her breath. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m visiting my injured friend while I still have him,” Sutton said, all eyes on her as she marched up to stand beside Sebastian. “If it turns out the asshole who killed Ginger is there, good. You can arrest his sorry ass.”
After a long, tense silence, Claire finally agreed. “I’ll get my team up to speed, and we’ll meet you there. We believe the shooter came from D.C. We’ve identified three individuals who arrived at the Missoula airport in the forty-eight hours preceding the Galbraith murder.”
Jasper had taken his normal seat and hit a few keys on his laptop. Three photographs appeared on the screen at the far end of the room. They were driver’s license photos, each one paired with a summary of the man’s background.
“Do any of these seem familiar, Sutton?” Claire asked.
She moved closer to the screen and studied the faces. They were all strangers. Any one of them could have been the figure who’d stepped out of the sedan. “Sorry, I don’t recognize any of them.”
“The first is Karl Denning,” Claire continued.
“Former private security contractor. Some red flags in his employment history, but he has a plausible reason for the trip—his ex-wife lives in Helena. Second is Paul Mattick, a retired bookkeeper. No known ties to Montana, but I suspect it’s just a vacation because of some day trips he has planned and paid for in advance. ”
Claire paused. “The third is the one that concerns me. Grieves Rosen. Former Special Forces with an honorable discharge, currently working the private sector. He has strong ties to several D.C. lobbyists and at least two people at the Department of Defense. I can find no reason for him to be in Montana. No family, no friends, no professional justification. He flew into Missoula three days before Ginger’s murder and hasn’t flown out.
No rental car agreements, no hotel registrations. ”
Next to her, Sebastian studied Rosen’s photo. Square face, close-cropped hair, a jawline that looked like it had been engineered rather than grown. The kind of face that could disappear into a crowd or fill a doorway, depending on what the situation required.
“Jasper, get these photos circulated to everyone on the detail,” Sebastian said. “Hardcopy and digital. Every team member memorizes them before we move.”
Jasper nodded, already typing.
Sebastian turned to the hospital map. His finger traced the layout—entrances, exits, stairwells, elevators, parking structures. “Mack, you’re on the rooftop of the professional building across the street. You’ll have a clear line to the main entrance and the east parking lot.”
Mack nodded once. No questions.
“CB and Jasper, you’re inside with me. Third floor, ICU wing. You blend in—visitors, concerned family, whatever works. Eyes on every person who enters the corridor. Anyone who doesn’t belong, I want to know before they get within fifty feet of Dom’s room.”
CB gave a thumbs up. Jasper looked reluctant but didn’t complain. It was clear he’d rather stay here and play with his computer.
“Claire, your team has the perimeter. Parking lot, main entrance, emergency exits. Radio check every five minutes.”
“Copy,” Claire said.
“Garrett drives. He’ll hold with the vehicle at the rear exit, engine running.
If I call an extraction, he pulls to the door and we’re gone.
” Sebastian met Garrett’s eyes across the table.
Some wordless exchange passed between them—trust, calibration, the shorthand of men who’d done this enough times to skip the conversation.
Then Sebastian turned to Sutton. “You get fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen? Sebastian, he’s on life support. He doesn’t have family. I’m the closest thing he has. I need time to sit with him, talk to him. They say people in comas can hear you, and maybe if he hears my voice—”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“An hour.”
His jaw flexed. She watched him run the calculation—her safety against her need, the tactical risk against the human cost of dragging her away from the bedside of the man who’d given her a second chance.
“Thirty,” he said. “That’s final. And if I suspect the shooter is anywhere near that hospital, I pull you immediately. Even if I have to pick you up and carry you out.”
CB suppressed a grin behind his hand. The rest of the team avoided looking at her.
She nodded. “Thirty. And thank you.”
Sebastian held her gaze for one more second, as if still waiting for the argument. When it didn’t come, he looked mildly surprised before he turned back to the map. “We move in ninety minutes. Gear check in sixty.”
The room cleared. Sutton sat at the table, alone with the three photographs still on the big screen.
Three strangers. One of them might be the man who’d killed Ginger and put Dom in the ICU.
She memorized the faces the way Sebastian had told the team to—Denning, Mattick, Rosen—and felt the chill of knowing that one of these men might want her dead.
She grabbed the notebook she’d stolen from Vivi’s office—the one with the lynx sketch she’d drawn for Sebastian, plus other designs she’d worked on to pass the time. Dom would want to see them. Dom always wanted to see her new work.
Today, even though he couldn’t look at them, she would describe the designs.
Tell him the symbolism. Maybe even admit that tracing the lynx on Sebastian’s inner arm last night had felt…
right. She’d always been tactile, savoring a blank canvas—whether paper or someone’s skin—before she put ink to it.
Penn had been the same way. They needed to connect with the page or the person before their art would flow.
And it seemed she’d finally connected with Sebastian.
The ride to the hospital took forever. Garrett drove with Jasper riding shotgun.
Sebastian sat on one side of her in the back seat, CB on the other.
She hadn’t realized just how big CB was until he dwarfed her.
There was not one extra inch of space, and she scooted closer to Sebastian automatically, her thigh pressing against his. He said nothing.
Once they were there, Dom looked smaller somehow.
That was the first thing that hit her when she walked into the ICU room. Dominic Salazar, who’d filled the doorway of Iron Rose like a wall with a toothpick, who’d hauled fifty-pound boxes of supplies with one hand while reading the newspaper with the other, looked diminished.
The hospital bed engulfed him. Tubes ran from his arms. A ventilator breathed for him with a rhythmic hiss that sounded mechanical and wrong.
The bruising on the left side of his head had gone a deep purple-black, visible above the white bandage. His eyes were closed. His tattoos—the anchors, the eagles, the memorial pieces he’d collected over thirty years—seemed faded against the bleached hospital sheets.
Sutton pulled a chair to the bedside and sat.
Sebastian stood in the threshold of the door, his body angled so he could see both the corridor and Sutton.
His hand rested near his hip, fingers relaxed but ready.
He’d barely spoken since they’d arrived, only doing so to the team, making sure everyone was in place.
He’d walked her in through the rear entrance and guided her through the corridors and elevators with a hand on her lower back.
He positioned her behind him at every corner.
He was a perimeter made of muscle and training, and she was the thing inside it.