Page 35 of Shadow Secrets
His jaw flexed. She watched him run the calculation—her safety against her need, the tactical risk against the human cost of dragging her away from the bedside of the man who’d given her a second chance.
“Thirty,” he said. “That’s final. And if I suspect the shooter is anywhere near that hospital, I pull you immediately. Even if I have to pick you up and carry you out.”
CB suppressed a grin behind his hand. The rest of the team avoided looking at her.
She nodded. “Thirty. And thank you.”
Sebastian held her gaze for one more second, as if still waiting for the argument. When it didn’t come, he looked mildly surprised before he turned back to the map. “We move in ninety minutes. Gear check in sixty.”
The room cleared. Sutton sat at the table, alone with the three photographs still on the big screen. Three strangers. One of them might be the man who’d killed Ginger and put Dom in the ICU. She memorized the faces the way Sebastian had told the team to—Denning, Mattick, Rosen—and felt the chill of knowing that one of these men might want her dead.
She grabbed the notebook she’d stolen from Vivi’s office—the one with the lynx sketch she’d drawn for Sebastian, plus other designs she’d worked on to pass the time. Dom would want to see them. Dom always wanted to see her new work.
Today, even though he couldn’t look at them, she would describe the designs. Tell him the symbolism. Maybe even admit that tracing the lynx on Sebastian’s inner arm last night had felt…right. She’d always been tactile, savoring a blank canvas—whether paper or someone’s skin—before she put ink to it. Penn had been the same way. They needed to connect with the page or the person before their art would flow.
And it seemed she’d finally connected with Sebastian.
The ride to the hospital took forever. Garrett drove with Jasper riding shotgun. Sebastian sat on one side of her in the back seat, CB on the other. She hadn’t realized just how big CB was until he dwarfed her. There was not one extra inch of space, and she scooted closer to Sebastian automatically, her thigh pressing against his. He said nothing.
Once they were there, Dom looked smaller somehow.
That was the first thing that hit her when she walked into the ICU room. Dominic Salazar, who’d filled the doorway of Iron Rose like a wall with a toothpick, who’d hauled fifty-pound boxes of supplies with one hand while reading the newspaper with the other, looked diminished.
The hospital bed engulfed him. Tubes ran from his arms. A ventilator breathed for him with a rhythmic hiss that sounded mechanical and wrong.
The bruising on the left side of his head had gone a deep purple-black, visible above the white bandage. His eyes were closed. His tattoos—the anchors, the eagles, the memorial pieces he’d collected over thirty years—seemed faded against the bleached hospital sheets.
Sutton pulled a chair to the bedside and sat.
Sebastian stood in the threshold of the door, his body angled so he could see both the corridor and Sutton.
His hand rested near his hip, fingers relaxed but ready. He’d barely spoken since they’d arrived, only doing so to the team, making sure everyone was in place. He’d walked her in through the rear entrance and guided her through the corridors and elevators with a hand on her lower back. He positioned her behind him at every corner. He was a perimeter made of muscle and training, and she was the thing inside it.
CB had split off when they reached the floor, disappearing into a waiting area with a magazine and a cup of vending machine coffee. He’d looked for all the world like a worried husband or son waiting on news. The disguise was almost comical—a man built like a grizzly bear trying to look unassuming—but somehow it worked.
Jasper had positioned himself near the nurses’ station, fiddling with his phone to blend in.
Outside, Claire’s team covered the perimeter. Mack was on the rooftop across the street with his scope. Garrett idled in the SUV at the rear exit.
She was surrounded by protection. Three operators, an FBI team, a sniper. And yet the reason she felt safe—actually safe, not just secure—had nothing to do with any of them.
It was Sebastian.
She trusted him. The realization should have terrified her. It did terrify her. Two days ago, she’d told him to get out of her shop. She’d looked at him and seen only the man who’d killed her brother.
Now she was sitting in a hospital room because he’d moved heaven, earth, and Claire Dawson to get her here. The thing keeping the panic at bay wasn’t the guns or the tactical planning. It was the knowledge that Sebastian Whitaker was standing six feet away and he would not let anything happen to her.
She turned to Dom. “Hey, old man.” Her voice came out rough. She cleared her throat. “I’ve been working on some new stuff. You’re going to give me your honest opinion when you wake up, okay? None of that ‘it’s fine, kid’ crap you pull when you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”
The ventilator hissed. The heart monitor beeped. Dom didn’t stir.
She opened the sketchbook and held it up. “This one’s a lynx. It’s for—” She glanced at the doorway. Sebastian was watching the corridor, not her. “It’s a commission. First one in a while that I’m actually excited about. The client is…” She searched for the word, lowered her voice. “Complicated.”
She flipped to another page and a dragon she’d sketched during the long afternoon at the compound, coiled around a tower, wings spread. “This one’s just for me. You always said the best work comes when you’re drawing for yourself, remember? Just like Penn. Client work pays the rent. Personal work pays the soul. I rolled my eyes when he said it, but he was right. You and Penn. Both of you were right.”
She lowered the sketchbook. Looked at Dom’s face—the bruising, the slack muscles, the unnatural stillness. Her throat tightened.
Sebastian shifted so he was more outside the door than in the room.
