Page 20 of Carter
He didn’t bother with scrubs or disguises. Black jacket, clean jeans, hair slicked back. His eyes swept the room, cold and appraising, until they landed on me.
“So,” he said, voice low and smooth, “this is the nurse who made my crew look like fools.”
Every instinct screamed at me not to flinch. “I didn’t do anything but take care of a patient.”
He laughed—soft, humorless. “And then you opened your pretty mouth to the wrong people. That makes you a liability.”
Elena whimpered. Rosa pressed into my side. I forced my arm around her, keeping her behind me.
The boss crouched in front of me, his cologne sharp, chemical. “Funny thing about liabilities—they can be repurposed. You’ve got skills. Maybe you patch up my people. Maybe you don’t. That depends on how fast your soldier friend shows up.”
Carter. He knew.
I clenched my jaw. “If you hurt these women—”
His hand shot out, gripping my chin, forcing my gaze to his. “You’ll learn something real quick, nurse. You don’t make threats in my house.”
His fingers were iron, his eyes flat as stone. Fear spiked through me, cold and sharp, but beneath it a different fire burned. Because I knew Carter. And if this man thought he held all the power, he hadn’t met what was coming for him.
The boss released me, shoving me back against the wall. “Keep her alive,” he told the scarred man. “But scared. Fear’s the leash.”
The door slammed again, lock grinding home.
I swallowed hard, forcing air into my lungs, forcing my shaking hands to steady as I pulled Rosa closer. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “He doesn’t win. Not this time.”
But inside, my pulse beat one word over and over:Carter. Carter. Carter.
24
Carter
The warehouse rose out of the dark like a scar on the city—rusted siding, chain-link fence, shadows pooling where the lights had burned out long ago.
From the passenger seat, I could see it all: the van parked crooked near the bay doors, a man smoking by the fence, another pacing the loading dock. Predators pretending to be guards.
Harper was inside. I felt it in my bones.
“Two on the perimeter,” River murmured, sighting through his scope. “Movement on the roof.”
“Signals are scrambled,” Aponi added from the back, her laptop alive with fractured feeds. “They know we’re coming.”
Good. Let them.
Faron’s gaze cut to me, sharp as a blade. “Robinson—you don’t break formation.”
I strapped my vest tighter, Glock already warm in my hand. “If she’s in there, nothing keeps me from her.”
“Carter—”
“She’s mine.” The words came out like a growl, low and lethal. “And I’m not leaving without her.”
The silence that followed was short, brutal, broken only by Gideon’s dark chuckle. “Then let’s clear a path.”
We moved.
The fence came down in seconds, cutters snapping steel links. The first guard didn’t even see me before my forearm crushed his windpipe, dropping him like dead weight. I dragged him into the shadows, pulse hammering, vision narrowing to one point: the door.
Every sound sharpened—the creak of a boot on gravel, the hiss of a lighter, the click of River’s suppressed shot taking down the man on the roof.
