Chapter 37
This is great work
Dina
The men outside the room are trying to get to Ekatia and me, but Declan is taking them out with his sniper rifle as I drag the nurse to the bathroom. I help her prop herself up against the wall.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
She stares ahead, clearly in shock.
I can’t see anything wrong with her when I crouch beside her. My head starts pounding again and my arm hurts from when I tore out my IV, but the adrenaline coursing through me makes all the pain bearable.
Besides, I need to function. I need to do this for Declan and Connor and my daughter, who needs a mother, even though she’s fully grown.
I can’t give up yet. Not now, when Sergei is dead. Instantly, the shame of how good it feels to be rid of him makes me feel sorry for him. Ah, we’re complex creatures, I tell you.
“What room number is he in?”
Vacant green eyes stare through me.
I shake her by her shoulders. “What room number?” I shout over the noise. “Ekatia, please.”
She blinks. “That’s not my name.”
Bullets rain inside the hospital room. The window shatters, and shards of glass explode. Barefoot and on my knees, I hug the pregnant nurse in case any glass fragments reach the bathroom. We’re behind a wall, so we’re safe.
Outside, explosive gunfire sounds like a warzone.
I need that room number from her. I wet a towel and press it over the nurse’s cheek while peering outside.
A sleek black helicopter is approaching from a distance.
Sprinklers go off, and sirens in the hospital follow. It’s chaos out here, absolute chaos.
“Look at me.” I try to make eye contact with her again. “You’re going to be okay. Tell me the room number, and I promise you the Crossbow twins will be in your debt. If you need a favor, I’ll make sure they know you helped them. Money? You want money? They’re loaded. What is the room number?”
“Ten twenty-three,” she whispers and breaks into tears.
Poor thing. I hug her some more. “Ten twenty-three?”
“Yes,” she cries harder.
I get up and look around for something to write with.
“Ten twenty-three. Ten twenty-three. Ten two three.” I keep repeating the number because I’m thirty-seven and sometimes I walk into my kitchen with no fucking clue why I’m there until I get back to the bedroom and remember I needed to get a bucket of ice cream for a snack and a movie in bed.
I turn about the bathroom, trying to figure out how I’ll let Declan know where his brother is before the chief of police comes for me. There’s a lipstick in my purse, but I don’t know where my purse is.
Blood trickles from the open vein in my arm and coats my fingers. I step out and use two fingers to write on the wall.
1023
The helicopter hovering near the widow is turned sideways so I can see a man in black tactical gear pointing a rifle at me. When he looks up, I recognize him even though he’s wearing a mask over his mouth and nose. Those eyes are unmistakable.
“He’s in ten two three!” I shout, pointing at the writing on the wall.
Declan shoulders the rifle and picks up a crossbow. From the corner of my eye, I spot the chief of police rushing me. Declan releases the arrow. It flies through the chief’s temple and brain and comes out the other side, nailing him to the wall where I wrote the number down.
The chief’s jaw slackens, blood spilling from his open mouth.
I follow the cable line attached to the arrow.
It leads to Declan’s belt. He jumps from the helicopter and lands in front of me like a real-life Spider-Man.
With a quick nod in my direction as if we’re passing each other on the way to the bathroom, Declan unhooks the line from the arrow that pierced the chief’s head so the cable can retract into his belt.
The chopper hovers by the window. The pilot is a woman with a ponytail. What was her name again? Sada? Seida?
“Your brother is in ten twenty-three,” I say, but I doubt Declan hears me over the roar of the chopper.
He drags me into the bathroom, takes one look at the nurse on the floor, then removes her shoes. “Put those on.”
“I can’t take her sneakers.”
“Put them on,” he repeats. I think it’s kind of psychotic how calm this man is while everyone else is freaking out. My nurse is catatonic. I feel like I’m looking through a fishbowl, as if none of this is happening to me.
For some reason, I’m covered in blood. Drenched. Is it Sergei’s or mine?
Mayhem rains down all around us, and this man goes back into the room and starts to rummage through the drawers.
He comes back to the bathroom with a roll of gauze and wraps my arm.
Then he drops to his knees and lifts one of my feet, then the other so he can make sure I don’t walk barefoot over glass and debris.
While he kneels, making sure I’m taken care of, all I can think about is how this man killed dozens of people to get to me and how he’s on his knees tending to me, all while knowing the police and Ivan’s people are moving in on him. To kill him.
His brother lies helplessly in room 1023, but Declan, who is, by all accounts, just a man I once hit with my car, came to rescue me before he rescued his twin brother. Since I know he loves Connor more than anyone else in the world, I am perplexed.
On the few occasions when I stayed late with a client, I had to beg my ex-husband of fifteen years to take our daughter to soccer practice.
I couldn’t get him to put his laundry into the hamper.
He’d take off his clothes and leave them on the floor in the bathroom for me to pick up. Sergei never grocery shopped. Not once.
Declan Crossbow is a man’s man. The kind who puts his woman first.
“I wish we’d met…” I tell him once he’s standing. Before. I wanted to say before, but back then, I wouldn’t have looked at him because of our age difference. Maybe we did meet at the right time.
Declan pulls the mask off his mouth and kisses me lingeringly. A groan rips out of him when he steps back. “Hold that thought for later,” he says.
He grabs some tape from the nurse, who is still on the floor, and wraps it tightly around the bandage on my arm, then puts a gun in my hand. Its grip is silver, not gold.
“Your nurse is safe here,” he says. “The fight is moving away. When she comes to her senses, we will owe her for opening the blinds. We need to move. Stay close to me. Shoot anybody you want. Let’s go.”
He pulls me out of the bathroom, and the moment we come out, the chopper flies away.
Declan and I walk over the pile of bodies blocking the exit as if we’re the sole survivors of the zombie apocalypse.
In the hallway, medical staff huddle under tables and behind counters, and all the patient rooms are closed. Men in suits and uniforms shoot at us. Declan walks forward, taking them out with a speed and precision I’ve only ever seen in the movies.
Even the way he walks is calculated, controlled, each step measured, every pull of the trigger executing the target.
Meanwhile, he holds my hand like he’s my daddy and pulls me with him. I’m just trying not to trip over the bodies as they hit the floor.
We round the corner.
A bullet grazes his shoulder.
He veers back and plasters himself against the wall. He checks the bleeding wound, then looks at me. “There are guards at Con’s door. But this is the only way in. You’re going to walk behind me.” He pauses. “I mean that in the most respectful way.” He stares at me.
I stare back. I think I love him. I think I fell in love with him. I’m not sure when, but oh, I love him with all my being.
“Dina?”
“Huh?”
“Acknowledge.”
I give him a nod. “Yes, sir. I’m following.”
His eyes lift at the corners. “Let’s go, then.”
Declan grabs the two rifles that are strapped to his thighs.
They’re short and scary looking, with extra rounds of bullets wrapped in cylinders on either side of the barrel.
He holds them like pistols when he comes out from around the corner and releases a barrage of bullets that makes my ears ring.
Since his long legs cover more ground than mine do when he walks in graceful strides, I jog to keep up. But I have to watch where I step so I don’t trip over a corpse. Declan opens the room door. It’s a corner suite like mine, so inside there’s an entryway, like in a hotel room.
“Imagine the nurse lied, and this isn’t his room,” I mumble.
Declan pauses, eyes widening slightly.
“Sorry. I’m sure Connor is here.” Isn’t he?
We walk in.
Connor is cuffed and strapped to the bed with a muzzle over his mouth. Bloodshot, beautiful mismatched eyes blaze with fury. His nostrils flare, his lungs trying to breathe through all the rage.
He shakes. The bed moves. Connor’s talking behind the muzzle. It makes him cough and choke. I rush to him and free his mouth.
“I thought they sedated you,” I say.
“They did.”
Maybe sedatives don’t work on him. Are there people like that? I touch his face, neck, shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Get me the fuck out of this bed.” He coughs, spitting out blood.
Declan uncuffs Connor while I unbuckle the bed straps.
“I’m going to burn this fucking city to the ground!” Declan shouts. He dials someone and presses his phone against his ear. “Set it all on fire. All of it!”
Instinctively, I know he means Rount Maletia. “Wait a minute,” I say. “Not all of it. Not any of it. I live here.” Connor jumps out of the bed. The flimsy hospital gown almost falls off. Declan walks behind Connor and fastens the gown.
“Seriously?” Connor asks his brother. “You could have brought me pants.”
“Nope, you’re walking out of here in a gown. They’re filming, so I hope you’re ready.”
Declan shoves weapons at Connor. Connor takes them and steps toward the door, but winces and wobbles. “My head hurts like hell.”
“Aww,” Declan says. “I feel so bad for you. Not!”
Uh-oh. They’re going to fight. “Excus—” I try to say.
Connor interrupts. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m furious!” Declan shouts at the top of his lungs.
Connor looks his brother up and down. “You’re so scary when you’re mad.”
Declan lifts his middle finger.
“Are you guys really arguing now?” I ask.
They turn to me. “Yes,” they answer.
“Okay, I’ll meet you outside when you’re done. But before I go, rescind the order for the city burn.”
“Fine.” Declan makes the call. “You two happy now?”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me,” Connor says. “I’m with you on burning it.”
“This is the last time you pull this kind of shit, Connor.” Declan pokes his brother’s chest.
“I don’t plan on dying today, so it can’t be the last time.”
“Promise me!” Declan shouts.
“Nope, can’t do.” Connor shakes his head.
I push past the brothers and swing open the door. An army of men in tactical gear stand at the other end of the long hallway we came through. They look like riot police with their helmets and their long body shields. Except, instead of batons, they hold rifles.
Behind me, Connor whistles, “All the bodies hit the floor, huh, Dec?” He walks around me and kicks a few of Ivan’s men who Declan took down on the way to Connor’s room.
“Not a single one left for me?” Connor puts a hand on his hip. “This looks like Ivan. Is it Ivan?” He bends over the body, and his gown opens, flashing me his bottom. I look away.
“Who are those people at the end of the corridor? And why aren’t they trying to kill us?” I ask.
“They’re with us,” Declan says.
“That’s not Ivan,” a man with broad shoulders answers Connor.
Connor walks up to him and puts a pistol against his temple. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Nason. We’re cousins from your mother’s side. This is my brother Menas, and my other brother Theodore. We’re from the Tavala district.”
Connor looks back at Declan, who removes his mask. He throws an arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “So,” he asks me casually, “are we going back to your place?”