Through the window, he saw an ambulance barrel down the road. Its screaming siren hurt his ears, and it barely seemed to come to a full stop before a man and woman jumped from the back of the vehicle and raced toward the gallery. He turned his head and watched them. Watched in silence as the siren kept screaming and the lights kept flashing.

Moments later, they were back. Dante was on the stretcher. The female EMT was pounding on his chest as she ran with him and then helped load the guy in the ambulance.

Doors slammed.

The ambulance roared away.

Alive or dead?

Did it matter? Mark had done his job. His gaze slid to the right. Piper was staring at him. She’d been watching him the whole time. Once more, he tried to smile, but he couldn’t.

Chapter Eighteen

Piper paced the hospital’s emergency room waiting area, the gleaming tile bright beneath her feet. The waiting room was packed—something she found crazy for two AM. To the right, a woman held a bloody cloth over a gash in her arm. An older man coughed hard into his fist as a nurse steered him to the back, and a young boy held his right arm carefully to his chest, tears trickling down his cheeks. There were plenty of other people there, hunched over as they filled out intake forms, and there were nervous relatives waiting in the lobby as they worried about—

Layla shoved open the doors to the OR. She marched toward Piper and Eric, and Piper could easily see the blood on the woman’s shirt. As Layla approached, Piper found herself holding her breath.

Layla gave a hard shake of her head. “He didn’t make it. Died on the table.”

A woman to the right flinched. The little boy cried harder.

Piper grabbed Layla’s arm and steered her away from the kid—and the people who were listening too intently. Eric was right beside them. Tension rolled off his body.

“I had questions for him,” Layla snapped. Her frustration was palpable. “I wanted to talk to the guy. He wasn’t supposed to get the easy way out.”

Death was easy? Since when?

They huddled in the corridor, and as the bright overhead light fell on Layla’s face, Piper could see the strain the other woman felt. It was obvious in her eyes and in the faint lines around her lips.

“What’s going to happen to Mark?” Piper asked quietly.

Layla sighed. “He’s being held at the station. I have plenty of questions for him, too. Like, why the hell did guy run into the gallery instead of calling the police?”

“He called me,” Eric replied quietly. “I told him to stand the fuck down, but I guess with his history, with his sister, he couldn’t just sit back.”

Piper frowned at Eric.