Timur didn’t protest, nor did he break stride. He just followed Alonzo, ignoring all commands. Alonzo was fairly certain he wouldn’t respond to Alonzo ordering him to stay in the waiting room either. Timur believed in taking security seriously. Now that someone had put out a hit on his brother, Timur wasn’t taking any chances.

“I want to know the moment Mitya is out of surgery and I can talk to the doctor,” Alonzo addressed Gorya. “Make certain the doctor doesn’t leave without talking to me.”

“You got it.”

The doctor pulled open the door to the recovery room. Alonzo could see Evangeline lying very still beneath a thin sheet. She looked pale, her long lashes lying on her white skin like two dark crescents. Her dark hair was pulled back and braided, but like he had come to expect, wild tendrils had escaped and fell around her face and across the pillow.

Machines measured her heartbeat and blood pressure. There was a bandage high on her temple on her left side, one wrapped around her arm, and her left leg had a thick bandage covering the wound. IVs dripped into her arm and a male nurse stood by her bed, bent over her, a needle in one hand and the IV line in the other.

“What are you doing?” the doctor demanded, her voice total authority.

Alonzo shoved the woman out of the way and Timur shouldered him aside simultaneously. The nurse spun and fired his gun rapidly, first at them and then turned it on Evangeline. Alonzo went down on top of the doctor, his body covering hers, his gun out. He shot the nurse four times, each bullet precise, hitting him in the right eye, the throat, the heart and the middle of his forehead. Timur also fired, hitting the man as he went down. Gorya faced the hallway, looking for an accomplice.

“You all right?” Alonzo asked grimly, rolling smoothly to his feet and dragging the doctor up with him. At her nod, he indicated Evangeline. “Check her. Make certain he didn’t inject her or the line with anything.”

The sound of running footsteps heralded the arrival of security guards and the undercover policemen. Crispin Phillips was in the lead, his gun out, his gaze on Alonzo and the doctor checking Evangeline. Brice was behind him. Reeve Hawkins flanked him, his weapon drawn as well. All three undercover cops wore their badges around their necks in plain sight.

Timur spun, a smooth, fluid move that put him between the police and Alonzo. Crispin and one of the security guards seemed to collide, both tripped on the raised curved tile just outside the door. Both weapons went off.

One bullet hit the side of Evangeline’s hospital bed, the other buried itself in the mattress perilously close to her body. Sevastyan and Gorya were on them in seconds, stripping the weapons from their hands and sending them skittering across the floor.