Page 32 of Assassin's Mark
We?Why had Levi saidwe? Did he mean him and me,as if the two of us were a team working together to take care of his brother? Last night he couldn’t trust me to sleep beside him without handcuffs, and now we were awe?
If Levi realized what he’d said—or the sheer ridiculousness of the words—he didn’t show it. He seemed oblivious to everything but Eli and his computer, his frantic clicking providing a staccato counterpoint to my footsteps asI paced behind him. “Call the nurse in when you’re ready,” he said. “I’ll make sure she’s the only one at the station. You drive, and she can take care of Remi.”
“How do you know?” Eli asked with a worried glance at his brother.
“I know. Don’t worry about her; just steal an ambulance and go, damn it. I’ll take care of erasing your tracks. No one will know where you end up.”
Eli quit arguing.Finished with his own things, he circled Remi’s bed, gathering what equipment he could put on the narrow spaces on either side of his brother, avoiding the major stuff. No more than a minute passed before he lifted the call button, glanced into the camera, then pressed down firmly.
Levi switched back to his view of the nurse’s station. Though I had no idea how he’d accomplished it, the blondewas the only one at the desk now. She glanced to her right, presumably at the signal from Remi’s room, then stood.
She was tall. It was an incongruous thought, but it hit me all the same. Tall and curvy; her scrubs couldn’t hide that fact. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that allowed me to see her face, all pale skin and innocent eyes. Had my eyes looked like that when Levi found me? Theydidn’t now.
I pushed the thought away and held my breath, the heavy beat of my heart loud in my ears.
Levi clicked off the nurses’ station, splitting the screen between Remi’s room and the view of the hallway just as the nurse came into view. Behind her, at the bend of the corridor, a door opened and a tall, dark man stepped out. Black clothes, black shoes, light skin, but it could barely beseen because the black ball cap he wore obscured his downturned face. Something about his body language, the way he held himself reminded me of someone, something…
A whimper escaped before I could clamp my lips shut. He reminded me of Levi.
I wasn’t the only one to pick up on the threat. Levi’s shoulders went tight, just like my lungs. “Eli, target approaching. She’s got a tagalong.”
Eli hadbeen intimidating standing here in the room with me, almost as intimidating as Levi, but the knowledge that they were killers, dangerous men, had remained in the surreal part of my brain, known but not truly understood. Even on the grainy camera feed, though, I could see the mask drop down, see him go into warrior mode. His expression hardened, his body seeming to expand as tension built. Walkingto stand behind the door, he reached for his belt, removed a knife, and flicked it open, the silver catching the bright hospital lights as he waited.
My lungs burned, protesting my held breath.
The door to Remi’s hospital room opened, its solid surface blocking Eli from view. The nurse entered.
Without warning, Eli’s hand snaked out to grab her wrist. A hard jerk pulled the woman out of theway as her shadow followed her into the room. Eli’s knife flashed as the blade struck the man in the chest.
Eli’s opponent grunted, bowing around the knife, but the penetration was off—the blade didn’t go in like it should. Levi cursed, but I wasn’t sure why. My gaze was glued to the screen as Eli pivoted his blade and slashed across the man’s neck, just missing as his opponent flung himselfbackward. Eli followed, and the fight was on, not just for Eli’s life, but his brother’s. The two men wrestled for the knife, their hands both fisted around the handle, their legs and elbows and heads becoming weapons. I’d never seen a no-holds-barred fight for survival; the brutality shocked me. The fact that both of them managed to avoid the knife? Even more unbelievable.
The nurse didn’t appearto have the same issue. Even as the men toppled onto Remi’s legs, she was rounding the corner of his bed, bending at first one end, then the other. Eli shoved his opponent into the opposite wall, and the woman used the opportunity to shift Remi’s bed into the far corner of the small hospital room. It wasn’t much of a buffer, but she gave him what she could, then climbed up to crouch over herpatient’s legs, drawing something from her pocket.
Eli’s head jerked in her direction, taking in the changes in a single glance. His eyes went dark and dangerous as he gripped his opponent’s arms, shifted to one side, then threw a leg behind the other man’s. Off-balance, the attacker fell back, his head and shoulders landing once more on Remi’s bed. Like a snake striking, the nurse stabbed downquickly, revealing the needle in her hand. Whatever she injected the man with worked immediately—he slid down to the floor next to the bed, not making a sound as Eli kicked him hard in the ribs.
Levi released a pleased grunt. “Get him out of there, brother.”
Eli dragged the now unconscious attacker out of the path of the bed. His mouth formed the wordsI’m trying, asshole, readable despite thelack of sound. Levi chuckled.
The sound was cut off when a red warning box appeared on the computer screen in front of him.
