“You can’t go in there! The EMTs have to bring him out!” Simon shoved Eric right back. “Stand down, man. He’s alive. Did you hear me? He’s alive!”

Eric’s heart thundered in his chest. His desperate gaze swept the scene. Gawking neighbors. Fresh-faced cops. A terrified Piper.

Piper.

Rick was right beside her. And Julia’s gaze was on the crowd, moving suspiciously from person to person. She’s looking for the perp.

“He got away,” Simon said, voice lower, more controlled. “Ben was conscious when I got to him—Detective Lopez and I were the first on the scene. The guy was trying to drag himself out of his bedroom and go after the perp. Ben said he managed to stab the guy. Hell, Ben still had a death grip on his kitchen steak knife when we burst in his place. From what we could tell, the perp had been gone only moments—”

The EMTs were back. And Ben was on the stretcher.

A gasp slipped from Piper as she hurried toward Ben. “Ben!”

His head turned toward her.

Jesus. Blood stained Ben’s face. Poured from his nose. Definitely broken. And there was one hell of a gash on Ben’s forehead. His shirt had been cut away by the EMTs and Eric could see the bandages on his side.

Ben reached a hand toward Piper. “You…okay?”

The EMTs didn’t slow down. They rushed toward the waiting ambulance.

Eric and Piper ran after him.

The EMTs loaded Ben up in a flash. The siren screamed.

Ben groaned. “Got…away. So…sorry.”

His brother was killing him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“We need to get him to the hospital, right away.” The EMT closest to Ben—a young woman with close-cropped, black hair—threw Eric an impatient glare. “Back up.”

His brother was hurt. He didn’t want Ben going anywhere alone. “That’s my brother.”

“Then get your ass in here,” the other EMT—a balding man with a thin beard and too-pale skin—muttered. “We got room for one.”

Eric wanted to go with his brother. His job was to protect him, always had been. A guy was supposed to look out for his baby brother, wasn’t he? But…fuck, he hadn’t looked out for him. And he’d been keeping secrets. He’d lied to his brother time and again about Piper.

The female EMT demanded, “Hurry!”

Ben shook his head. His wild gaze swept the scene. “Piper? Piper!”

“Go with him,” Eric told her. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She scrambled into the ambulance. Ben reached for her hand. Held tight. And seemed to immediately settle down.

Eric backed away. Someone shut one of the ambulance’s rear doors. One, then the other. He watched the ambulance drive away, and he realized that two of the most important people in his world were in that vehicle.

No, his world was in that ambulance.