Page 85 of Rescuing Nathaniel

Rocco, Rex, Bubba, Ace, Gumby, and Phantom.

They’d all come for her. Somehow managing to actually beat the odds and find her. It was a miracle for sure. How else could you possibly describe it?

She’d been a dead woman walking and now she was going to live.

For a moment, the pain consuming her body dimmed, and when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, from the side of the bed where the remaining medical personnel had fled when Nathaniel took down the surgeon, not the side where the SEAL team were standing, their weapons pointed at the doctors and nurses, she screamed a warning.

“I think they have a gun!”

Her words added to the pandemonium.

One of the nurses lifted a weapon and began firing.

Only not at the SEALs, not even at Nathaniel, who was beating the surgeon to death with his bare hands from what Ava could see from her position on the bed.

Each bullet she fired was at her colleagues.

After the first one dropped, the others screamed as they looked for an escape. But they were trapped between the nurse with the gun and the SEALs who were also armed. There was nowhere for them to go.

“We won't be taken alive,” the nurse screeched as she managed to shoot three of her colleagues before one of the SEALs—she wasn't sure which because her gaze kept darting between the nurse and Nathaniel—put a bullet between her eyes.

Had the shots been kill shots?

Were they all dead now?

There was no way Nathaniel hadn't already killed the surgeon even if his fists kept slamming into the man’s head over and over again. The nurse was dead, too, these SEALs knew how to eliminate a threat. Three of the other four personnel had been shot, and she had to assume that the nurse also knew what she was doing, and she’d aimed to kill. That still left one alive, one who might be able to give them the intel they needed to end this once and for all.

Until the ring was dismantled, she was never going to be safe.

They could keep coming back for her time and time again.

With the tracking implant somewhere in her body they could find her again. And even if it was removed that didn't mean she was safe. They knew where she lived, probably had contacts everywhere who could track her.

Panic clawed at her chest.

Like an angry cat wanting to tear its way out.

She wanted the tracking implant out.

Now.

Needed it out.

With a pained cry she thrashed on the bed.

Needed to get to that scalpel that the surgeon had dropped. It lay on the mattress so close to her hand. If she could just grab hold of it then she could get free. Once she was free, she could start cutting her skin. Sooner or later, she’d find the tracking device and pry it free.

Had to.

Had to get it out.

Couldn’t stand it being inside her for a single second longer.

Vaguely, she was aware of hands trying to hold her still, of voices trying to calm her down.

But they had the opposite effect.

They only made her panic more.

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