Still on her knees, Dani crawled to the cabinet and threw open the lower doors, grabbing all the gauze she could find. If she couldn’t stem the bleeding, Jenny wasn’t going to make it.

She was packing the wound when Jenny’s eyes opened and her mouth moved. Dani lowered her ear so that she could hear whatever Jenny was trying to say.

“Pocket,” Jenny barely breathed. “Please.”

Dani reached for Jenny’s top and felt something heavy in the pocket. It was the switchblade that the woman always carried because she feared the neighborhood, especially at night. It wasn’t going to help her now.

Dani had dropped the scrubs and was returning her attention to Jenny’s gunshot wound when she heard it.

A small pop. Like a champagne cork, but softer. Fear had her grabbing for Jenny’s blade, sliding it up the sleeve of her sweater seconds before she heard the footsteps behind her.

She pivoted on her knees, only to look up into the face of Cade Kaiser.

“You look like shit,” she said, because it was the first thing that came to mind.

His skin was an unhealthy gray, and he swayed unsteadily. Even from a few feet away she could smell the putrid odor of infection.

His wounds were going septic. But that wasn’t what held her attention.

That would be the gun in his hand. With a silencer on the end of the barrel.

Oh no. Suddenly her mind processed the pop she’d heard. Oh God.

“Diesel!” she yelled and tried to rush past Kaiser, aiming for the exam room door, but he grabbed her wrist, yanking her to her feet. A moment later the barrel of the gun was pressed to her head.

“He’s dead,” Kaiser said flatly, “and you will be, too, if you don’t open the damn supply closet and get me some medicine.”

Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday, March 19, 6:29 p.m.

Cade blinked hard, fighting to keep his body upright. He leaned into Dani Novak, pushing her toward the exam room door.

“Go. And don’t try anything heroic. I’ve got literally nothing to lose.”

The doctor stumbled, and he jerked her wrist behind her back to keep her from falling. Her hiss of pain was welcome and he latched on to it, using it to fuel each step forward. This woman was responsible for this. For all of this. Her and her goddamn bodyguards.

Her “platoon.” Her friends and family.

He wanted to gut them all, but he’d content himself with her. He’d already taken care of the behemoth who’d charged into the clinic like a rabid bull, shocking him. He’d been expecting the doctor’s younger brother, not a man who looked so much like himself. For a moment he’d stared, thinking the fever was making him delusional.