CHAPTER 28
Together
°°°
The sound of the door giving way had barely finished echoing before Lexie was moving, every instruction Ronin had given her about staying back dissolving the instant she heard Tank's name shouted inside the building in a voice that carried real fear underneath its urgency.
She caught herself at the threshold, some last thread of discipline holding her there for the two seconds it took to actually assess the room instead of simply running into it — three men down already, Ortiz's composure visibly cracking as he registered the numbers now working against him, Ronin and Coyote moving with the fast, coordinated efficiency of men executing exactly the plan she'd helped them build.
And Tank, on the ground near the processing tables, blood on his face, trying and failing to push himself upright.
Her heart seized at the sight of him down, some old animal instinct screaming at her to close the distance immediately regardless of danger, and she made herself hold the threshold one second longer, the same clinical discipline that had once let her hold steady over a screaming patient now the only thing standing between her and a mistake that could get them both killed.
Assess first. Act second. The rule had saved lives a hundred times in a clinic.
It would save his now too, if she let it.
"Ortiz." Ronin's voice cut through the chaos, weapon raised, flanked now by enough Saints that the numerical advantage Ortiz had enjoyed four minutes ago had fully, irreversibly reversed.
"This ends now. Your operation's done, your leverage is gone, and you've got maybe ten seconds to decide whether you're walking out of here or being carried. "
Ortiz's eyes moved fast, calculating, the scramble of a man who'd built his confidence on controlling outcomes and had just watched control slip entirely out of his hands. "You don't know what you're stepping into. This operation's got protection you haven't accounted for—"
"We know exactly what we're stepping into.
" Lexie's own voice surprised her, steady and clear even as her heart hammered against her ribs, and she watched Ortiz's attention snap toward her with something like genuine surprise.
"Pharmacy volume across three counties, prescriptions routed through a fake patient roster, product moving out through that loading bay tonight because you knew the walls were closing in.
I know exactly what this is, Ortiz. I've known for months, since before you ever sent a man into my exam room to threaten me. "
Something shifted in Ortiz's face — not quite fear, but the recalculation of a man realizing the woman he'd dismissed as leverage had actually been the architect of his exposure the entire time. "You."
"Me." She held his gaze, refusing to let the fear underneath her composure show. "You made a mistake thinking I was just something to use against Tank. I was never just that. I'm the reason this club knew exactly where to hit you tonight."
Tank, still on the ground, made a sound that was almost a laugh despite the blood and the pain, something fierce and proud breaking through even the haze of injury, and Lexie felt her chest crack open at the sound of it — he was conscious, he was tracking, he was going to be okay, and the relief of that landed with such force she nearly lost the composure she'd been holding together through sheer will.
Ortiz's men, the ones still standing, looked between their boss and the numbers now arrayed against them, and one by one, without needing to be told twice, began raising empty hands.
"Smart," Ronin said, flat, already moving to secure them. "Ortiz. Your call. Ten seconds is up."
Ortiz's composure finally, fully broke, the calculating menace draining into something closer to simple survival instinct, and he raised his hands slowly, the defeat of a man who knew, watching the last of his advantage evaporate, that the operation he'd built was ending tonight regardless of what he chose to do in this room.
Lexie didn't wait for the formal surrender to finish.
She was already moving to Tank, dropping to her knees beside him on concrete that smelled like antiseptic and violence, her hands finding him with the same fast, competent assessment she'd have given any patient — checking his pupils, the cut above his eyebrow, the way he favored his ribs when he tried to shift.
"Hey." Her voice cracked despite every effort to keep it steady, three months of careful professional composure finally, fully giving way to the woman underneath it. "Hey, look at me. Stay with me."
"I'm here." His voice came out rough, blood-thick, but his eyes found hers and held, clear enough that some of the terror gripping her chest loosened by a fraction. "You came."
"Of course I came." She pressed her palm to his cheek, careful of the cut near his temple, and felt him lean into the touch despite everything. "You didn't actually think I'd let you do this alone, did you? After everything?"
"Should've known better." A ghost of his rare half-smile, pained but real. "You don't do anything halfway."
"Neither do you, apparently, given how thoroughly you tried to get yourself killed tonight." Her voice wavered between fury and relief, both fighting for control in equal measure. "You're not doing that again. Ever. I mean it, Tank."
"Wasn't planning on it." He reached up, found her hand where it rested against his face, and held on. "Turns out the math doesn't actually work the way I thought it did. Distance never kept anybody safe. You did. You and Ronin and the whole team, coming after me even though I told you not to."
"I wasn't asking your permission that time either."
"No." Something raw and grateful crossed his face. "No, you weren't. Thank God for that."
Doc arrived within twenty minutes, summoned by a call Ronin had made the second the building was secure, and Lexie stepped back only far enough to let actual medical equipment do what her hands alone couldn't, though she stayed close enough to keep her hand wrapped around Tank's the entire time Doc checked him over — two cracked ribs, a concussion serious enough to warrant real monitoring but not surgery, cuts that would heal into scars that would sit, she suspected, alongside the others he already carried without complaint.
"He got lucky," Doc said quietly, packing up her kit, throwing Lexie a look that held more warmth than the clinical assessment suggested. "Another minute without backup, that luck runs out. You know that, right?"
"I know it." Lexie looked at Tank, who'd finally, grudgingly, allowed himself to be settled against the truck's tailgate while Ronin coordinated the operation's aftermath around them — Ortiz and his remaining men secured, the building's contents being catalogued for whatever came next, the first gray edge of dawn beginning to soften the dark sky above the county line. "He knows it too. I made sure of that."
Ronin approached as Doc finished, his own adrenaline visibly draining into the exhausted satisfaction of a mission completed against considerable odds.
"Ortiz is done. Whatever this operation was, it's finished, and word's going to travel fast that the Saints don't let threats against their own stand unanswered.
" He looked between Tank and Lexie, something warm cutting through his usual easy humor.
"You two want to explain to me later how exactly a nurse ended up directing half our tactical approach tonight, or should I just accept that apparently that's normal now? "
"Get used to it," Tank said, voice still rough, but steadier than it had been ten minutes ago. "She's not going anywhere."
"One more thing." Ronin's voice dropped, more serious.
"Coyote got a call twenty minutes ago. Curtis Banning's debt collectors caught up with him tonight, separate from all this — nothing to do with us, nothing to do with the raid.
Apparently he'd been avoiding payments to more than just Ortiz's people.
He's alive, roughed up, in the hospital two counties over.
Not our doing. Just his own mess finally catching up to him on its own timeline. "
Lexie absorbed that with a complicated stillness, no triumph in it, just the quiet processing of a woman hearing that a man who'd once mattered to her had reaped exactly the harvest his choices had planted, entirely apart from anything she or Tank had done to him. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Doc says he'll live. Broken arm, some bruised ribs of his own, apparently." Ronin's expression held no particular sympathy, though no cruelty either. "Consequences, not coincidence. Nobody made that happen except the choices he made a long time before any of us ever got involved."
"Good," Lexie said, quiet, and felt something settle in her chest that wasn't satisfaction exactly, but wasn't quite grief either — simply the plain acknowledgment that some debts collected themselves, in their own time, without anyone needing to make them happen.
Lexie felt those words settle into her chest with a weight that had nothing to do with the danger finally, fully resolving around them, and everything to do with the certainty in his voice — not relief-fueled promise, not adrenaline talking, but the plain, considered truth of a man who'd almost lost everything tonight and had come out the other side more certain, not less, about what he wanted to keep.
"No," she agreed, quiet, her hand still wrapped tight around his. "I'm not."