Page 16 of Intense
She darts around me. I watch the sway of her hips as she heads for the door—like being near me sucks the life out of her.
“Go get some rest before the award ceremony. I’ll see you on the airstrip!” I call out.
She swings the door open.
“Fucking rich boy,” she whispers under her breath.
I pull out my phone when the door slams shut and note this interaction down, chuckling to myself.
She hates failure. But hates needing help even more.
Her constant obsession with independence might just be the thing that breaks her.
Dr. Miller feels a lot. She is quite the opposite of me. I’m numb on the inside. She isn’t. She’s a fucking ball of fire waiting to erupt.
Chapter 6
STEPHANIE
Ipromised myself I’d stop.
That my first kill was my last. Well, at least inside the hospital. My endeavors have continued after hours. In the dead of the night, when only the predators come out to play.
Yet, one phone call, from a distorted male voice, changes everything.
I have my orders, and I don’t have a way out. I’m used to ending lives, for myself. Never under the command of another, especially not from a man. I’m not an assassin. I kill for a good cause, I kill for vengeance, and to save other women from having to go through the pain of what I went through.
I close the door behind me, sucking in a breath as I look at the sleeping man. It’s like I’ve stepped back in time.
Except, for all I know, this man could be innocent? Doubtful, seeing as I’m being enlisted to kill him by god knows who.
Men like this, men who end up as my targets, rarely are.
But I suppose I’ll never really know.
And in the end, it won’t matter.
Dr. Quinn just saved his life yesterday.
And Dr. Quinn will be taking his life. That’s how my blackmailer has assured me it will appear. The CCTV will be wiped. The systems have been hacked.
Right now, Dr. Quinn is standing here, not me. Or that’s what the police will believe. I am merely a ghost.
I cross the room in measured steps, my gloved fingers brushing the IV line threaded into the back of his hand.
He shifts in his sleep, a tiny groan escaping his slack mouth. My heartbeat doesn’t even quicken. This part of me—this precise, clinical part—has always been terrifyingly steady.
I draw the syringe from my pocket. It’s not filled with any poison, but it’s just as deadly.
I pause at the bedside, scanning the readouts. No one would question me if they saw me checking his vitals.
I press a button on the cardiac monitor, bringing up the settings menu. My gloved finger hovers just long enough to confirm that the alarms are active, then I toggle them off.The screen freezes. No more beeping. No more witnesses.
The silence feels enormous. Ominious.
I detach the pulse oximeter from his finger and tuck it under the folded blanket near his hip. No alarms to announce the moment his oxygen drops to nothing.
He shifts against the sheets, eyelids fluttering. A faint, bewildered sound in his throat. He’s waking just enough to know something’s happening.
