She Kissed a Stranger to Escape Her Stalker—Then Discovered the Entire City Feared the Man She Had Just Chosen to Hide Behind.

PART 5

Priya woke in an abandoned warehouse beside the Mississippi River. Rain hammered the metal roof. Her wrists had been tied to a chair, but her blue nursing uniform still contained the small tools she carried through every shift.

Warren Holcombe stood beneath a hanging light. Without photographers and donors surrounding him, he looked older. His polished smile had disappeared.

“Mrs. Ashford,” he said. “I signed the papers that hired you.”

“You signed many papers involving me.”

Something cold entered his eyes. “Your husband stole private recordings.”

“He recorded crimes.”

“He misunderstood complicated financial arrangements.”

“He understood enough to die for them.”

Holcombe stepped closer. “I need to know how many copies exist.”

“I don’t know.”

“Silas Kade has the card.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because powerful men become careless around certain women.”

Priya’s fear sharpened, but it did not control her. She had spent years working in emergency rooms. She understood that panic consumed oxygen and narrowed thought. She concentrated on Holcombe’s breathing, posture, and age.

Behind him stood two hired men. One watched the door. The other held a handgun loosely.

Priya felt inside the pocket of her scrub jacket. Her fingers closed around a prefilled syringe of adenosine that had accidentally remained in her emergency pouch after a chaotic shift. It could briefly interrupt certain abnormal heart rhythms. In a healthy person, the effect would be frightening but short. She would get only one chance.

“Marcus trusted the wrong people,” Holcombe said. “That was his tragedy.”

“No,” Priya replied. “His tragedy was believing I needed to be protected from the truth.”

Holcombe leaned toward her. Priya pulled one hand free from the loosened binding and drove the syringe into his thigh through his pants.

Holcombe shouted. The gunman moved. Priya kicked the chair into his knees. A shot struck the ceiling. Holcombe staggered backward, clutching his chest as his heart rhythm faltered.

At that moment, the warehouse doors burst inward. Silas entered through the rain with Emmett and four armed men. Gunfire erupted near the loading bay. Within seconds, the hired men were down or disarmed.

Silas crossed the warehouse toward Priya. Then he saw Warren Holcombe collapse.

Priya dropped beside the older man. His pulse was dangerously irregular. She began chest compressions.

Silas stopped several feet away, his gun trained on the man he had hated since childhood.

“Priya,” he said.

She kept counting.

“Move away from him.”

“No.”

“He left my mother on a hallway floor.”

“I know.”

“He denied your treatment when you were nine.”

“I know.”

“He had Marcus killed.”

Pressure. Release. Pressure. Release.

“He deserves to die.”

Priya looked up. Rain blew through the broken doorway, soaking her hair and uniform. “I am not saving him because he deserves it.”

“Then stop.”

“I am saving myself.”

Silas’s gun remained steady. Priya continued the compressions.

“If I let him die while I can prevent it, he takes the last thing I own. He turns me into someone who decides which patient is human enough to save.”

“He is not your patient.”

“He is under my hands. That makes him my patient.”

Silas’s face twisted with twenty-three years of pain. Priya looked directly into his amber eyes. “I am not saving him, Silas. I am saving myself from becoming him.”

The warehouse became silent except for the rain and Priya’s counting.

Silas lowered the gun.