Page 3 of Carter
Harper’s jaw clenched. “They never page like that unless—”
“Unless someone wants us to panic,” I said. “Or someone’s already inside.”
We moved. Faron pushed out to check the hall. Aponi slid her body between Lindsey and the door like it was muscle memory. I stepped to the curtain edge and lifted it with two fingers.
Two men in maintenance blues strolled past, too synchronized for strangers. Their hands were empty. Their eyes were wrong.
“Left,” I murmured.
Faron didn’t look back. He just vanished into their wake.
The air in the little bay thinned. Harper leaned in close to Lindsey. “Look at me,” she said, voice soft but unshakeable. “You’re safe.”
The girl inhaled in short, panicked snatches, the kind that never reach the bottom of your lungs. Harper matched her—slow, measured breaths until Lindsey synced to hers. It was a small miracle in a place built for big ones.
I watched her do it and felt something shift under my ribs. Not attraction. Not yet. Recognition.
Harper looked up at me. “If I tell you to move her, you move her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, which earned a flash of those green eyes.
“Don’t ma’am me. I’m thirty-two.”
“Then yes, Harper.” I didn’t smile. Not here. But the corner of her mouth twitched anyway.
Faron’s voice crackled low in my earpiece.“Two at the service corridor. One more posted at the ambulance bay. Not maintenance. Waiting.”
Waiting for who,I wanted to ask, but the answer was obvious.
“Harper,” I said, “does this room have a back exit?”
She shook her head. “Only the supply pass-through. But there’s a staff stairwell ten yards east. If we cut through Imaging, we can—”
The curtain ripped open.
The first guy took one step in and froze when he saw me. The second’s gaze skipped over Lindsey and landed hard on Harper, like he’d spotted the linchpin. He smiled.
“Wrong room,” he said.
“Yeah,” I answered, shifting my weight. “It is.”
Everything after that narrowed to slices.
Faron’s shoulder hit the first guy mid-spine from the blind side, and the man folded like a bad chair. The second reached under his jacket, and I was already moving, already closing the space. My hand met his wrist, torqued, pinned. A gun clattered under the bed and Harper kicked it hard enough to send it skidding into the hall.
Lindsey screamed. Harper’s palm was on her shoulder in an instant, holding her in place, steady and soft.
A third man appeared at the doorway, face tattooed, eyes glass-flat. He saw the mess—his mess—tilt toward us and pivoted to run.
“Go,” Faron snapped.
I went.
The corridor blurred—bleach, shoe squeak, a crash cart left crooked against a wall. The third man shoved through the double doors toward the ambulance bay, but I had Idaho legs and a year’s worth of fury riding rifle. I caught him at the hinge, slammed him into the push bar, felt something in his shoulder give.
“You touch kids,” I said, breath hot in my throat, “and you walk in here like you own the place?”
He spat something I didn’t bother to translate and drove his head toward mine. I angled, let him hit my collarbone, and bounced his cheek off the metal frame. The fight went out of him on a hard exhale.
