Chapter 45
Knight Tactical didn't do subtle entrances.
Not that it took Cory by surprise, after all these years.
The ER room doors hadn't been closed thirty seconds before they exploded open again. But this time, instead of federal agents, Izzy’s team arrived in full chaotic glory.
"You couldn't wait for backup?" Ronan's voice carried across the room.
"Next time someone tries to kill you, call us first." Axel filled the doorway, arms crossed. "That's literally what we're for."
"We were in Denver," Kenji protested, already pulling out his phone to document everything. "Three hours away."
"Should've waited," Axel grumbled.
Maya had somehow acquired both their medical charts. "CO poisoning, various contusions, Cory has a glass laceration on his forehead that required six stitches—"
"It's fine," Cory and Izzy said in unison.
"How are you?" Deke asked Cory.
"Good. How's Izzy?"
"I'm fine," Izzy called out. "How's Cory?"
"Seriously?" Axel stomped between their beds, studying the distance. "This is ridiculous. You two are giving me whiplash."
Without warning, he grabbed the rail of Cory's bed and shoved. “Grab the IVs,” he ordered Kenji, who snagged the rolling stand. The bed rolled across the linoleum with a protesting squeak, closing the six-foot gap until the rails clicked together.
"There." Axel stepped back, satisfied. "Now you can stop the tennis match routine."
"Axel." Izzy protested, but Cory noticed she didn't ask him to move the beds back.
Cory watched with a mixture of amusement and apprehension as Izzy's team surrounded them like a protective wall of tactical gear and terrible jokes.
"So," Kenji announced, pulling up a visitor's chair and straddling it backwards, "I heard you two had a romantic mountain getaway. Candlelight, champagne, almost dying together. Very Nicholas Sparks."
"There was literally a heater trying to kill us," Izzy protested through her oxygen mask.
"Details." Kenji waved dismissively. "Did Fraser cry? Please tell me Fraser cried. I have a bet with Deke."
"Nobody cried," Cory said firmly, though he remembered the moment he'd thought they wouldn't make it, the prayer that had risen unbidden to his lips.
"I bet Izzy cried," Axel speculated from his position by the door. "When she thought she'd miss the pageant."
"I did not." Izzy protested, but the slight crack in her voice gave her away.
"Tactical frustration tears don't count anyway," Kenji argued. "I'm talking about manly tears of—ow."
Maya had smacked him with her tablet while simultaneously photographing the bruise on Izzy's wrist. "Stop making her laugh. Her O2 levels are still recovering."
"Everything's funny when you're oxygen deprived," Izzy wheezed.
Cory watched her, the way laughter transformed her face even through the exhaustion and oxygen mask. When had her joy become something he craved?
Maya moved between them, documenting every visible injury. "Contusion on left wrist. Glass cuts on both palms—Cory, hold still, I need to photograph those stitches. Six sutures on forehead, good closure technique..."
"You sound like a coroner," Deke observed.
"Documentation is critical for the after-action report." Maya snapped another photo of Cory's forehead, the flash making him wince. "And fighting off potential lawsuits."
"Nobody's suing anybody," Cory said, though his cop brain was already cataloging the legal ramifications.
"Maybe we’ll sue Janet Morrison." Axel's voice went dark. "Woman tries to murder our people? She's lucky she's in custody is all I gotta say."
The protective fury in the big man's tone made Cory reassess his earlier wariness. These people had accepted him as one of their own, apparently. When had that happened?
Ronan had been quietly observing, but now he moved closer to Cory's bed, arms crossed in that way that meant incoming interrogation. Cory recognized the look—he'd worn it himself countless times.
"Walk me through the cabin breach. You had two flash-bangs?"
"Standard loadout," Cory confirmed. "Izzy insisted on full tactical gear for the approach."
"Smart. And the decision to detonate inside?"
"That was all Izzy," Cory said immediately, unable to keep the admiration from his voice. "I was still trying to break down the door like an idiot. She recognized we needed deception, not force."
"Classic Fraser," Kenji laughed. "When in doubt, hit it harder."
Heat crept up Cory's neck. Was he really that predictable?
"It was risky," Ronan continued, ignoring the commentary. "Flash-bang in an enclosed space with CO poisoning already affecting cognitive function. Could have disoriented you both into unconsciousness."
"We were about thirty seconds from unconsciousness anyway," Izzy pointed out.
"Plus she knew Janet expected us to come through the door," Cory added, needing them to understand how brilliant she'd been. "The misdirection was brilliant. Make her think we'd died, bring her in to check."
"Except you couldn't hear her coming after the bang," Maya said, looking up from her documentation. "How did you know when to move?"
Cory exchanged glances with Izzy, remembering those terrifying moments of visual-only awareness. The way they'd had to trust each other completely, communicate without words.
"Saw shadows under the door," Izzy said. "Watched the handle turn."
"And then Tom knocked her out with champagne," Kenji added gleefully. "Which is the most romantically tragic thing I've ever heard. Forty years of marriage ended by anniversary bubbly."
"It's not funny," Deke said quietly.
"It's a little funny," Kenji insisted. "In a horrible, Greek tragedy sort of way."
"You're all insane," Maya muttered, but Cory caught her fighting a smile as she continued her photographic assault on their injuries.
"Speaking of Tom," Deke said quietly, "he's upstairs. Psych ward. Complete breakdown when he realized what Janet had done. Keeps saying he should have seen it, should have known."
The room fell silent. Forty years of marriage reduced to attempted murder and psychiatric holds.
Izzy's phone buzzed, mercifully breaking the moment. Her wide grin beneath the oxygen mask said it all.
“She’s home,” Cory said.
Izzy blinked back tears, still staring at her screen. “Wilson just texted.”
Cory's hand found hers across the gap between beds, warm and steady.
"Gracias, Dios," she whispered. "Thank you for keeping her safe. For keeping us all safe. For—"
"Amen," Cory said softly, squeezing her hand.
"Amen," her team echoed, voices unusually gentle.
Bernice returned like an avenging angel of hospital protocol. "Visiting hours ended two hours ago. Out. All of you."
"But—" Axel started.
"OUT." Bernice's glare could have stripped paint. "These two need rest, not a party."
The team filed out with promises to return in the morning, warnings about taking it easy, and Axel muttering about hospital tyranny. The trauma room felt impossibly quiet in their wake.
"Your family's something else," Cory said into the silence.
"They're yours too now," Izzy replied without thinking, then seemed to realize what she'd said. Even through the oxygen mask, he could see her blush.
"I'd like that," he admitted.
They lay in comfortable quiet, hands still linked across the pushed-together beds. The monitors beeped steadily, proof they'd survived what shouldn't have been survivable.
"Thank you," Izzy whispered.
"For what?"
"For having my six. For believing me when the FBI didn't. For—" She paused, seeming to gather courage. "For being exactly who you are. By-the-book when it mattered, rule-breaker when it mattered more."
"Always," he said, meaning it more than he'd ever meant anything. "I'll always have your six, Isabella Reyes."
"And I'll have yours, Cory Fraser."
Their linked hands said everything else. Tomorrow would bring statements and paperwork, and Mountain Angel's restoration. But tonight, they were alive, together, and Chantal would make her pageant.
Sometimes grace looked exactly like that—two beds pushed together in an ER, hands held across the gap, and the promise of always.
Bernice returned one more time to check vitals, took one look at their joined hands, and for the first time all night, she smiled.
"About time," she muttered, adjusting their blankets with maternal efficiency. "Now sleep. Doctor's orders."
His gaze found Izzy again. This woman who'd challenged him from day one, who gave him no quarter, who'd forced him to examine every rule he'd held sacred.
Who'd trusted him with her daughter's safety and her own life.
Who'd made him want things he'd never thought to want—messy kitchens and unicorn sprinkles and a found-family that argued about everything.
Six days ago, he'd been Chief Fraser, perfectly content with his orderly life and pristine procedures. Now he was Cory, who broke rules to save lives, who held hands with a woman during prayer, who wanted nothing more than to see where this path led.
He wanted the whole package—Chantal's gap-toothed grins, Luz's matchmaking, this entire overwhelming team. But mostly he wanted Izzy, fierce and vulnerable, challenging him to be better than he'd ever imagined he could be.
The future stretched ahead, uncertain but full of promise. And for the first time in his carefully planned life, Cory couldn't wait to see what happened next.