Chapter 17 Harper
Harper
The shift had been long but ordinary—broken bones, stitches, too many flu cases. By the time I walked out of the hospital, the night air felt heavy with salt from the ocean, the parking lot buzzing under dim yellow lights.
I tightened my jacket and fished for my keys. Carter had texted earlier—Safe detail. Counting days. I’d smiled like an idiot at my phone, already imagining him storming into my apartment once his assignment ended.
The thought carried me right up until I heard footsteps behind me.
Fast. Purposeful.
I turned, heartbeat spiking. A man in scrubs—too clean, too new—was closing the distance. His eyes weren’t tired like staff. They were flat. Wrong.
“Can I help you?” I asked, voice sharper than I felt.
He didn’t answer. Another shadow peeled out from between two cars. Then another.
Shit.
I spun, sprinting toward the hospital doors, but a van screeched across the exit, cutting me off. A hand clamped around my arm, rough and unyielding. I slammed my elbow back into ribs, heard a grunt, but the second one was already there, a rag pressed over my face.
Chemical sting. Sweet, choking.
I kicked, thrashed, tried to scream, but the sound stuck halfway. The world blurred—lights bleeding into shadows, the ocean roar turning distant.
“Easy,” one of them muttered, as if I were cargo, not a person. “The boss wants her alive.”
Alive.
The word spun in my head as the darkness closed in. Carter’s name was the last thing I thought before the world dropped out.