Chapter 24
Blood spread through the salt water like red ink, and Tori’s heart seized as Blade’s eyes rolled back. His body went completely limp, sinking deeper into the surf.
No. No, no, no.
She lunged forward as waves crashed around them. Her hands found his shoulders, pulling him up and into her lap before the next wave could wash over his face. His head lolled against her, dead weight, and panic clawed up her throat.
“Blade! Blade!”
His chest barely moved. Blood poured from the knife wounds, mixing with salt water and sand. Too much blood. Way too much.
This was her fault. Her stalker. Her brother. Her nightmare that had reached out and destroyed the one person who’d never left her side.
She pressed both hands against the worst wound on his chest, trying to stem the bleeding. “Jesus, please. Please don’t take him. I can’t—” Her voice cracked. “Blade, you have to stay with me. You hear me? You don’t get to leave.”
His eyelids fluttered. A weak cough sent salt water spraying across her face and arms, but she’d never been so grateful to be soaked. He was breathing. Fighting.
“That’s it. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.”
The chest wound looked horrific at first glance.
Torn fabric, blood everywhere. But as she examined it closer, her medical training kicked in.
The knife had hit muscle, not nerves. Not organs.
Deep enough to bleed like crazy, but not deep enough to kill.
The bicep wound was worse, still bleeding freely, but manageable.
Her free hand fumbled for her phone. “I’m calling 911. Just hang on—”
“No.” His voice came out as barely a whisper. His hand splashed the water, trying to catch her wrist. “Can’t trust.”
She hesitated. Of course. The dispatcher would route the call to the closest unit. A Millie Beach patrol car. Barclay’s people.
If Barclay was dirty—and everything pointed to exactly that—then calling his department was handing them both to the enemy.
“What about this crime scene?” She gestured at the bloody sand around them.
“What crime scene?” Blade’s mouth quirked up in a ghost of his usual grin. “Tide’s coming in. Washed away.” His eyes found hers, more focused now. “Get me upstairs before he comes back.”
The vulnerability of their position crashed over her. They were sitting ducks on an empty beach, Blade bleeding and defenseless, her Glock the only thing standing between them and a killer who could return any second.
“Can you walk?” She shifted position, getting her feet under her.
“You planning to carry me?” Despite the pain etched across his face, that teasing note crept into his voice. “I’m six-four, Crew.”
“Shut up and lean on me.”
She got her shoulder under his good arm and hauled him upright. He swayed, gritting his teeth, but stayed on his feet. Together they slogged through the sand toward the condo building, leaving a trail of blood and salt water behind them.
The lobby’s pristine travertine floor became a danger zone as they dripped their way to the elevator. Tori jabbed the button repeatedly, her eyes scanning the entrance for any sign of movement.
In the elevator, Blade sagged against the wall, his breathing shallow but steady. “Did you see his face?” she asked.
“He was wearing a mask, and it happened too fast.” Blade’s jaw tightened. “Good fighter, though. Knew what he was doing.”
The elevator dinged as they reached his floor. Tori got him inside and steered him straight to his bathroom, where he collapsed onto the closed toilet seat.
“Don’t move.” She sprinted to the guest room, grabbed her medical kit from her bag, and raced back.
“Doc Crew making house calls.” He managed another weak smile.
“Haven’t done this since my residency.” She hopped onto the bathroom counter and opened the medical kit, then snapped on latex gloves and assessed the wounds again. “Good news. I don’t think you need real stitches. Medical adhesive should hold you together.”
“Should?”
“Trust me.”
“Always do.”
The shoulder wound sealed cleanly under the medical adhesive, but the bicep cut fought her. It was deeper than she’d hoped, and the edges kept wanting to pull apart as Blade’s arm moved.
“Hold still.” She pressed gauze against the bleeding. “This one’s tricky.”
“How tricky?”
“You’ll live.” The adhesive caught, drawing the torn muscle back together. “But no MMA for a while.”
“There goes my weekend plans.”
She braced Blade’s arm against her thigh to keep the muscle from twitching, then pinched the ragged edges of the cut on his bicep together. The second strip caught and held, the skin closing neat as a seam. Her fingertips pressed hard to test the seal, then reached for the next one.
He’d taken this cut for her.
The fact shoved against her focus, but she slammed it back. Instead, she locked in on the burn of antiseptic clogging her nose and the rip of adhesive tearing free from the package under her fingers. Strip to wound, seal the edges, move to the next. Nothing else stayed in frame.
Blade tipped his chin, mouth quirking even as sweat ran along his temple. “You’re the only woman I know who hauls a trauma kit everywhere she goes.”
“Probably the only one who needs to.” Tori positioned the strip and pressed it into place. “And I wouldn’t need one if I had a best friend who wasn’t too stubborn to call EMS when someone tries to gut him like a fish.”
Blade’s lips twitched. “Says the woman who told me it was ‘just a scratch’ when that stalker put a knife to her throat and sliced her arm.”
“Touché.”
He winced as she smoothed the edges of another strip. “How’s your arm, by the way?”
“Better than yours. At least mine still works.” Her gaze snagged on his. His eyes were puffed, rimmed red, matching the crooked mess of his nose. He grinned anyway, like he hadn’t been half beaten. Tomorrow his body would remind him they weren’t teenagers taking hits on the mat anymore.
“Looks worse than it is,” he said. “Though I have to say, for someone who works for FDLE, your marksmanship needs work. You completely missed your target.”
“Who says I missed?” She reached for the final Steri-Strip. “Some of that blood might be his. Hard to tell in the dark.”
“Fair point. Should be a blood trail if you actually hit him.”
“I wouldn’t have had to shoot him at all if you’d been able to take him down properly.” She took her time peeling the backing, drawing out the moment before the final strip sealed his wound.
Blade’s chuckle rumbled through his chest. “I was unarmed against a knife in the dark after a long run. Think I held my own pretty well.”
“Sure. If your definition of ‘holding your own’ includes getting carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
The antiseptic’s clean scent mixed with the brine of the ocean still clinging to his skin beneath the coppery tang of drying blood.
His breathing had steadied, no longer the harsh, shallow gasps that had punctuated the first few minutes of her work.
The only sounds now were her controlled exhales and the whisper of medical tape against skin.
Tori placed the final Steri-Strip and smoothed the edges. Her knuckle brushed against the warm, uninjured skin of his shoulder.
Electric.
Her clinical detachment evaporated like morning mist. She wasn’t seeing Blade the patient sitting on the bathroom stool. This was Blade. Shirtless. Wounded. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body despite the air conditioning’s steady breeze.
His jaw flexed as he dragged air through clenched teeth. A lock of dark hair slipped loose and dangled across his forehead, careless, like the rest of him lived in fight mode and had no time for mirrors.
Those blue eyes locked on her. Pinning. Steady. She forgot the rhythm of her own lungs.
He took that knife because of her. Went down hard in the surf because of her. Willing to die—because of her.
Her thumb continued to caress the Steri-Strip. Checking her work, though it wasn’t about the wound anymore. The skin under her touch radiated heat. Alive, stubbornly alive, when earlier she’d thought she’d lose him to the dark.
Her gaze locked with his again, and his blue eyes sent heat climbing up her neck.
“I guess you’re all set,” she said.
He didn’t move. Neither did she. The air barely seemed to either.
Warmth surged up her throat, flushed her ears, and she didn’t dare breathe. Her lips parted. She tilted her face toward his. The space between them disappeared to nothing.
She jerked backward, the spell broken as abruptly as snapping fingers.
No. Not like this. Not with blood under her fingernails and adrenaline still crackling through her veins.
Words first. Understanding first. They’d been running from a stalker, chasing down a killer.
They hadn’t even had time to figure out what this even meant.
She hopped off the counter, putting three feet of bathroom tile between them. Not nearly enough distance.
“You may want to wear a sling on that side for a while.” Her voice came out too bright. “Might heal faster.”
She cranked the faucet handle and let cold water rush over her hands. The soap dispenser required two pumps. Then three. The scrubbing gave her something to focus on besides the way Blade’s eyes had held hers.
The doorbell’s sharp chime shot through the moment like a rocket. Both of them flinched.
His hand reached for his hip, searching for a weapon that wasn’t there. He winced, palm pressing against the bandaged bicep.
“Stay here.” Blade shoved upright, shoulders tight, moving stiffly as he headed for the door.
Tori stayed rooted at the sink, soap sliding off her fingertips and dripping in tiny constellations onto the basin.
Better she kept her mouth shut. No blurting out words that would only tangle things between them.
Blade was her friend. Her partner. Nothing else.
No matter how her heart insisted otherwise.
From the living room came the scrape of his tired voice. Another layered over it, female, precise in upbeat rhythm.
Harlee.