جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 470

TommasoI blinked. The world was black around me.“—twelve ccs of—”“—son of a—”Voices swam in and out of focus. I blinked again. The blackness receded just a little. Night sky above me. No stars, like I was in the city. The fronds of a palm tree leaned into the edge of my vision. Details filtered back in. Cairo. Zahur. I drew in a gasping breathing and choked on the thick scent of diesel in the air.“Doc, he’s—”The world dimmed again. I swam through a nothing space, almost a dream, but it didn’t have any shape. The blackness threatened to swallow me. I fought, not like the man I thought I was when I last opened my eyes, but like the boy I used to be. Kicking, scratching, fighting dirty. No holds barred.When the world grew bright once more, Carp leaned over me. Oh, shit, I was in the middle of a raid. I needed to get up.My legs didn’t react when I moved them. Tied down, then.“Hey, Tommaso, there you are,” Carp said.More pieces clicked into place. The woman with the knife. Killia

KillianI shot one of Zahur’s men and ducked behind an overturned couch. Either Zahur was even more paranoid than we’d thought, or he was scared of Paige. Four men had been patrolling the hall outside the door to the fucking suite, and there were at least half a dozen behind the door when I’d stormed in. I’d dropped several but lost a few in the suite. Fuck being a crow; I needed something far more dangerous to get to Paige in time. I reloaded my gun and lunged up from behind the couch to sprint for the one open door I’d spotted earlier.Bullets rattled through the hotel room. One of them caught me in the vest like a punch to the fucking chest, and I dropped. My breath wheezed in and out of me. Sera would be furious when she saw the bruise. I grabbed a bloodstained throw pillow off the floor and tossed it up over the couch. More gunfire. But this time, I listened. The windows reverberated. One of them shattered. The quick click of the trigger releasing came from the far corner of the

CoraI squeezed Allie’s hands and sucked in my first breaths of free air in a year. Someone in the back row cried softly. I wasn’t going to let my guard down enough for tears, but fuck, I could relate. In the end, we’d found thirty-three women in the fucking rabbit warren of that house, and I still didn’t know if that was all of them. Thirty-three. And I only knew four of their names.God, and Allie had immediately started telling all of them I was an undercover cop. An ex-undercover, I corrected, but nobody had listened, so they all flocked around me. I glanced at the front seat where an older man drove us as smoothly as he could manage through the streets, headed for the airport. He’d said his name was Stan, and he had a decent energy about him. Fuck if that didn’t make me feel so much worse.I’d stabbed the guy who led everyone here to rescue us. Nobody would give me a straight answer, especially not that guy who introduced himself as fucking Carp, but I saw how the doctors hovered

TommasoRhythmic Arabic bounced off the walls of my brain. Everything hurt, my chest worst of all. The last thing I truly remembered was the monster dragging me down, but somewhere in my mind, I knew I’d been hearing rushed, frantic Arabic for some time.I opened my eyes. Bright, white light poured in, and I shut them again with a groan. Someone said something with a cadence that sounded like I should be able to understand it. I peeked one eye open, barely made out the face of someone with long hair, and realized I still couldn’t make sense of anything. The monster opened its arms for me, welcoming me down, and I dipped into darkness once more.The next thing I heard was beeping. Infrequent, but constant. Remembering the blare of light last time, I eased one eye the slightest bit open. Brilliant white, but I could just make out a few details. Angular lines on the white, like ceiling tiles.“Thank you,” a woman said next to me. “I can keep an eye on him.”Not a woman. Paige. My heart l

TommasoThe doctor I vaguely remembered from the haze on Zahur’s lawn, Dr. Awad, checked the bandages on my shoulder, then my ribs.“Your healing is progressing nicely,” she said.I offered her a half-smile. “Nicely enough you’ll spring me from this joint?”She chuckled. “I suppose.”“Ha!” I started to punch the air in celebration, but Paige’s hold on my hand kept me anchored. A good thing, too. I’d probably have torn something and gotten another week inside. As nice as the hospital was—and it really was, rivaling some of the more prestigious places I’d seen in Philly—I was more than ready to get out of here. Hospital food could only sustain a man for so long.Dr. Awad smiled indulgently. “That is, with a few conditions.”I groaned and slumped back against my pillow. “What?”She pulled out a sheet of paper covered in, thankfully, English. Paige took it before I could and studied the contents.Dr. Awad addressed her instructions to Paige. “We’re sending you home with two medications, a