Sinus rhythm. Blood pressure rising. The heart was beating again.
Harper stripped off her bloody gloves and let them drop onto Preston’s back. She looked down at the surgeon, who was clutching his wrist and weeping on the floor.
“He’s alive,” Harper said. “And you, doctor, are relieved of duty.”
Preston scrambled to his knees, his face purple, snot running down his lip. “Relieved of duty? I am the Chief Surgeon! You assaulted me! My father will destroy you! Do you have any idea who I am?”
Harper looked him dead in the eye. Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the hem of her long-sleeve undershirt and pulled it up to her elbow.
The heavy, roped scars of the IED blast. The black dagger of the 160th SOAR.
“I know exactly who you are, Preston,” Harper said softly. “You’re a casualty.”
She turned to David, who was staring at her with his jaw unhinged.
“Call the police,” Harper ordered. “And call General Halloway at the Pentagon. Tell him ‘Ghost’ has been compromised.”
“Gen… General who?” David choked out.
“Just make the call,” Harper said, turning back to stabilize her former Sergeant. “And keep this idiot away from my patient.”
CHAPTER 2
The arrival of the Seattle Police Department was not subtle. Two uniformed officers, their heavy duty-belts clattering against the aluminum doorframes, pushed through the double doors of the ER. They were followed closely by a frantic hospital administrator who looked like he was about to have a stroke.
Dr. Silas Preston was waiting for them.
He was leaning against the nurse’s station, holding a chemical ice pack to his twisted wrist. In the ten minutes it took for the police to arrive, Silas had undergone a miraculous metamorphosis. The whimpering, humiliated man on the floor was gone. In his place was a carefully constructed victim, his eyes wide and pleading, his voice trembling with just the right amount of trauma.
“That’s her,” Silas said, pointing a trembling finger across the room. “That’s the psycho.”
Harper was standing by Trauma Bay 1, watching the cardiac monitor of Master Sergeant Knox. The patient was stable, his chest rising and falling rhythmically thanks to the tube she had inserted. She hadn’t tried to run. She hadn’t tried to hide. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back at parade rest, waiting.
“Officer,” Silas said, his voice dripping with practiced vulnerability. He made sure the ER staff could hear him. “This woman is unstable. She disobeyed a direct medical order, endangered a dying patient’s life, and when I tried to intervene to save him, she physically assaulted me. She nearly broke my surgical hand. I want to press charges immediately.”
The lead officer, a thick-necked veteran named Sergeant Brady, looked at Harper. He frowned. She didn’t look like a threat. She looked small in her oversized scrubs, her face completely impassive, a stark contrast to the dramatic narrative Silas was spinning.
“Ma’am,” Brady approached her, his hand resting near the holster of his Glock. “Step away from the patient.”
Harper turned slowly. “The patient is stable, Sergeant, but he needs immediate transport to the ICU. His vitals are holding, but the pneumothorax needs continuous monitoring. If that tube shifts, he dies.”
“I didn’t ask for a medical opinion,” Brady snapped, heavily influenced by the presence of the Chief Surgeon and the hovering hospital administrator. “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”
Harper complied. She didn’t argue. Arguing with local law enforcement was a waste of calories. She offered her wrists, and the cold steel of the handcuffs clicked shut around her skin. The sound was sharp and final, cutting through the murmurs of the ER staff.
“You can’t do this!”
The voice came from David, the charge nurse. He stepped forward, his hands shaking so violently he dropped his clipboard. Fifty years old, a month behind on his mortgage, and drowning in alimony payments, David had lived his life with his head down. But the injustice of what he was witnessing clawed at his conscience.
“She saved that man’s life!” David pleaded with the officer. “Preston was going to let him die! I was here! I saw the whole thing!”
Silas’s head snapped toward David. His eyes narrowed into venomous slits. The victim mask slipped for a second, revealing the predator beneath.
“David,” Silas barked, his voice dropping an octave. “Unless you want to be looking for a job as a bedpan cleaner at a veterinary clinic in Alaska, I suggest you shut your mouth. This is a police matter now. You are not a doctor. You are not a lawyer. Stand down.”
