Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vivian’s pulse hammered in her ears, syncing with the steady beep of the monitor beside her bed. The air in the room turned electric—thick with the sound of grunts, the scrape of shoes, and the sharp, rhythmic gasp of men locked in a fight for survival.
She blinked, vision swimming from the painkillers still dulling her system, but the scene sharpened anyway—Blake, pinned against the wall, muscles straining, the tendons in his neck bulging. The man pressed in close, the knife between them catching the low hospital light.
Vivian scanned the room for the gun but didn’t see it in the muted light. The blade inched toward Blake’s chest. The sound of it cutting through fabric tore through her, quiet but unbearable.
Move.
The command came from somewhere deeper than thought.
She shoved the blanket aside, ignoring the screaming protest of her bruised ribs or the dull pounding in her head.
Her bare feet hit the cold tile with a slap that jarred her from head to toe.
Every step made her vision pulse black at the edges, but she didn’t stop.
Blake’s arm trembled. The knife pressed closer.
Her gaze landed on the metal bedpan on the rolling tray. Empty. Heavy.
She grabbed it with both hands.
She stumbled forward and swung, sending her body into a spin she didn’t have the strength to stop.
The bedpan connected with the attacker’s skull, sharp and sickening—a hollow, metallic clang that rattled her bones. The man jerked, eyes wide in shock, and the knife fell from his hand, clattering to the tile.
Vivian fell into the wall, the bedpan slipping from her grasp as if her strength had poured into that one desperate swing. The world tilted, colors bleeding together.
Blake’s voice broke through the chaos—raw, terrified.
“Vivian—hey—stay with me.”
The man staggered sideways, catching himself on the bedrail. Fury flashed through his dazed eyes—cold and focused now, the kind that promised he’d remember her face.
“Vivian—” Blake’s voice came from far away, strained, frantic.
She tried to answer, but her throat locked up.
The man pushed off the rail, blood streaking down his temple. He moved fast—too fast for someone just hit that hard. Blake lunged for him, but the stranger twisted, half stumbling, half sprinting for the door. He shouldered past Blake and vanished into the hall just as chaos broke open.
“Security!” someone shouted.
The alarm blared, the shrill tone drilling through her skull. The machines beside her bed screamed, cords jerking tight as her knees gave out.
Her body folded before she could stop it.
Strong hands caught her before the floor did.
His arms were solid and shaking around her. She’d never seen him shake. Not for anyone.
Blake’s voice broke through the noise. “Vivian—hey—stay with me.”
She blinked up at him, his face pale and sharp-edged in the flashing red of the alarm light. His expression cracked, just for an instant, but she caught it.
Fear. For her.
The realization tightened something deep in her chest.
There was blood on his stomach—she didn’t know whose. His hands trembled where they held her, one braced at her back, the other pressing lightly against her wrist, searching for a pulse she could feel stuttering under his touch.
“I’m fine,” she tried to say, but it came out a whisper, fragile as the air she couldn’t quite catch.
The words barely spilled out. But his thumb brushed her wrist, grounding her with a tenderness she didn’t have the strength to turn away from.
The hallway filled with movement—nurses shouting orders, the slap of shoes on tile, radios crackling with panic. Somewhere, a voice yelled for lockdown.
She wanted to tell them to stop yelling, to breathe, to check the corners, but her vision tunneled again.
Blake swept her up into his arms and lowered her onto the bed, his jaw clenched, eyes locked on the door as if he could will it to stay closed.
“Vivian—look at me.” His voice had gone low, rough, the command layered with something she’d never heard from him before. Fear. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
She didn’t want him coddling her, losing the only lead they had at the moment. She shoved his shoulder. “Move. Get him.”
Blake froze for half a heartbeat, his gaze snapped between her and the open door still swinging on its hinges. The conflict flickered across his face—jaw tight, eyes dark with fury and something she didn’t have time to name.
What was wrong with him? “Go!” She shoved with what little strength she had.
He retrieved his gun and went.
He sprinted into the hallway, his retreating stomps pounding the linoleum floor.
The noise of it hit her chest like an echo of his absence.
Vivian dragged in a shallow breath, forcing her body upright, but the room spun sideways.
The floor pitched under her like a deck in rough water.
She clutched the bedrail, fighting to stay conscious.
From the hallway came shouting—footsteps, the deep bark of Blake’s voice ordering people aside, then the slam of another door somewhere down the corridor.
Vivian blinked hard, trying to keep her vision clear.
She could still smell him—the sharp tang of gun oil, leather, the faint scent of ocean salt that clung to him after every case they’d been on together the last seven years.
She focused on that, on the steady beat of sound and movement that meant he was still alive out there.
Her pulse spiked, uneven. The monitor screamed.
A nurse burst in, eyes wide. “Ma’am, you need to lie back—”
Vivian shook her head, the motion making spots flash white-hot behind her eyes. “He was here,” she said. “He had a knife. Blake’s after him—he’s armed.”
The nurse looked torn between calling security again and checking the IV line now leaking onto the floor. “Please, don’t move.”
Vivian ignored her. She kept her gaze on the door, every muscle coiled with useless adrenaline.
Her body was betraying her—weak, each breath a scrape through glass—but her mind refused to shut down.
She replayed every second she’d seen of the attacker: the gray hoodie, the laurel tattoo on his wrist, the Roman numeral hidden in the ink.
Thirteen.
The number burned in her mind like a brand.
Noise thundered back down the corridor—shouts, doors slamming open, running feet. She tried to push off the bed again, but the nurse’s hand pressed her shoulder back until she fell into the bed.
“Stop, you need to rest.”
Then Blake was back. He hit the doorway with a force that made the frame shudder, chest heaving, eyes burning with rage and frustration.
“He’s gone,” he said, voice rough as gravel.
The words sank into her like a stone.
He scanned the room in a single sweep—her IV torn, the blood smear on the floor, the bedpan lying dented where it had fallen. His gaze came back to her, and something inside him seemed to break and rebuild all at once.
“I told you to stay in bed,” he said, but the bite in his tone didn’t match the worry in his eyes.
She met his stare, chin lifting even though her body trembled. “And I told you to get him.”
For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them. The kind that wasn’t empty but heavy—thick with things neither of them could say while the world spun out just beyond the door.
A pinch, then tape stuck to her arm, and the nurse scurried away as if she knew this was a private conversation, years in the making.
“You’re bleeding.”
Blake exhaled through his nose, slow, like he’d been holding his breath too long. Then, he reached down and tugged his shirt up.
A thin line of red carved across his side, just below the ribs, shallow but angry-looking, the skin around it bruised from the fight. The edge of the cut caught the light, darkening where the blood had started to clot.
Vivian sucked in a breath. “Blake—”
“It’s nothing,” he said, the lie falling too easily off his tongue. “Knife just grazed me.”
She frowned. “That’s not nothing.”
“Compared to what almost happened to you, it’s background noise.”
He pressed the fabric back down and gave a small shrug, but she saw the tension around his eyes, the way his body moved like every motion cost him. The exhaustion was catching up now—visible in the small tremors of his fingers, the glassy edge to his eyes.
He’d stayed because he couldn’t walk away. Because she’d scared him.
She wanted to tell him that she saw it—that she wasn’t made of glass, that she didn’t need saving, that she saw that in his mind, he’d saved her from the bully—but the words tangled with everything else between them. So instead she said, quietly, “You’re bleeding on my floor.”
That finally earned her the faintest ghost of a smile. “Guess we’re both leaving our mark.”
“Get it looked at,” Vivian ordered then closed her eyes to stop the spinning. “And no more pain killers. Don’t need them.”
“But you have bruised ribs and—”
“No more painkillers,” Vivian sighed, trying to ignore the pounding in her head.
“You know, I think he had me. Strange, but I don’t think he wanted to kill me.” Blake shook his head.
“The man had a knife to your gut. I think the plan was to kill you.”
Blake nodded. “And that’s the point. He could have driven that knife in, but he didn’t.”
The silence stretched, neither quite sure what to do with the quiet after the storm. He paced the room with a kind of restless care, as if tending to the details could keep him from thinking about the man who’d nearly killed them both.
Then the alarms stopped, the red lights faded, and reality came rushing back in: nurses shouting orders, a security guard radioing the stairwells, the metallic smell of blood and antiseptic curling through the air.
Vivian sank back against the pillow, the edges of her vision graying. “They won’t stop,” she murmured, the words slurring from exhaustion.
Blake pulled the chair over and sat beside her, his hand steadying hers where it clutched the blanket. “Neither will I.”
The world tilted once, and darkness swept in like the tide.