Chapter 4

The Man on the Operating Table Is the One I Failed to Kill Four Months Ago

By the time Tamsin reached the New York Heart Centre, Corin Dacre was bleeding again.

Emmett's message remained on her private phone as she crossed the service car park. The bullet shifted. I need you now. A temporary access code followed, along with a warning that Dacre security controlled every public entrance.

Tamsin pulled a baseball cap lower over her face and entered through the service wing.

"You are walking into a hospital full of armed men who are searching for Dawn," Keir said through her earpiece. "Please tell me you see the problem."

"I see several. Most of them are carrying guns."

The code opened a private lift. As the doors closed, pressure gathered behind Tamsin's right eye. It was not yet the pain that could put her on the floor, but it was close enough to make her reach for the tablets in her pocket.

"You can still leave," Keir said.

"And let Emmett remove a bullet he doesn't understand? No."

A nurse waited on the surgical floor with folded scrubs and a mask. She asked no questions. Everyone Emmett chose for the operation knew the underground medic called Dawn, but none of them knew the name Tamsin Penrose.

In the changing room, Tamsin swallowed one tablet and studied her pale reflection. She was not doing this because she cared about Corin. Emmett was her friend, and if the casing broke inside Corin's chest, the blame would follow him for years. Tamsin also knew that kind of ammunition better than anyone in the building.

She had treated its wounds in conflict zones.

Four months ago, she had fired one of those bullets herself.

That was the only reason she tied the mask behind her head and entered the operating room. At least, it was the reason she chose to believe.

The machines greeted her with a fast warning beat. Corin lay beneath the white lights, stripped of the dark suit and quiet command that followed him everywhere. Blood spread across the cloth near Emmett's hands.

For one sharp second, Tamsin saw the warehouse on the Adriatic coast. Rain hammered the broken windows. Gunfire filled the lower floor. A dark-haired man turned near the loading doors at the exact moment she pulled the trigger.

A monitor gave a harder alarm, and the memory vanished. Corin was no longer a shadow behind a weapon. He was a patient losing blood on Emmett's table.

"The round shifted when I freed the tissue around it," Emmett said. His hands never stopped moving. "The base is caught near the back wall."

Tamsin studied the magnified image above the table. A thin seam ran around the bullet's base. Pulled from the wrong angle, the casing could crack and leave sharp pieces beside Corin's heart.

"I can mend his heart, but I cannot guarantee this bullet will not split on removal," Emmett said.

"Do not touch the base. Let me stabilise it."

He moved aside just enough for her to work. The rest of the team followed her instructions, changing the suction angle and passing her a smaller clamp. Once her hands entered the narrow space beside Corin's heart, everything else fell away. The pain in her head remained, but her fingers stayed calm.

"Pressure is dropping," the anaesthetist warned.

"Hold him there," Tamsin said. "Emmett, close the fresh tear. I'll stop the round from moving."

They worked around each other while the monitor counted every second. Emmett repaired the damaged tissue, and Tamsin kept the bullet steady. Sweat gathered beneath her cap.

Then the casing shifted under the clamp.

"Dawn?" Emmett asked.

"Keep working. I have it."

Somewhere beneath the anaesthetic, Corin heard her voice. He could not open his eyes, yet that low, controlled tone pulled at a memory buried beneath rain and smoke. He had heard it before, close to pain and gunfire.

His heart stumbled on the monitor.

"He's reacting," the anaesthetist said.

"Increase the dose," Emmett replied.

The darkness dragged Corin under again, but the woman's voice followed him.

Tamsin adjusted the clamp and waited for the next heartbeat. When it lifted the casing, she turned her wrist and drew the bullet free in one slow movement.

Blood followed it.

Emmett pressed into the opening at once. While he repaired the damage, Tamsin held the bullet beneath the light to make sure it had come out whole. A line of tiny numbers showed through the blood on its base.

Her breath stopped.

She knew that batch marking. Lev bought the ammunition for Ternion before the Adriatic job, and Tamsin loaded it into her own weapon. Four months ago, this bullet left her gun and buried itself beside a man's heart.

Minutes after she fired, a helicopter answered with a strike that tore open the warehouse. The floor vanished beneath her feet. Metal entered her skull, smoke filled her lungs and Lev dragged her from the wreckage.

The man who ordered that strike had never possessed a name in her mind. Until now.

Tamsin looked down at Corin. "So it was you."

Emmett's eyes lifted. "Dawn?"

For two heartbeats, she did nothing. Corin's pressure was still falling, and his chest lay open beneath her hands. One small pause would be enough. No one would question his death during an operation this dangerous.

Then she pictured Kit standing beside the dishonest claw machine with his crooked-eared wolf. She saw him at the dinner table while Corin separated his peas from his potatoes. That morning, he had asked his uncle a question no one could answer.

Will you come back?

"Keep going," Tamsin said. "First, keep him alive."

She placed the bullet in Emmett's tray and returned her hands to the wound. The next forty minutes passed in quiet orders and careful movements. Slowly, the numbers on the monitors stopped falling, and Corin's heart found a steadier rhythm.

He was alive.

Tamsin left before anyone could remove her mask. She changed in a side room and took the private corridor toward the lift. Near the family waiting room, she stopped.

Kit sat on a chair with his stuffed wolf pressed against his chest. His nanny was beside him, but he did not lean against her. Tears moved silently down his face while he watched the operating doors.

Tamsin had seen families waiting outside trauma rooms before. Usually, she could close a door inside herself and keep walking. This time, the frightened child knew her name.

The hostile target from four months ago was no longer only a man behind a gun. He was the person Kit searched for when the world frightened him. Saving Corin did not erase the bombing or excuse what either of them had done. It only made the truth harder to separate into victims and enemies.

She walked away before Kit could look up.

Tamsin reached her car, locked the doors and pulled off her mask. White light burst across her vision before she could start the engine. The pain in her skull folded her over the steering wheel.

Her fingers found the medicine on the second try. She swallowed a tablet dry and called Keir.

"Tell me you're out," he said.

"I'm out."

"And Dacre?"

Tamsin rested her burning forehead against the wheel. "Alive. The bullet carried a Ternion batch mark. Mine."

Keir said nothing for so long that she checked the call. When his voice finally came through, every trace of humour was gone.

"So you shot him four months ago, he bombed the building you were in, and now you just helped pull that bullet out of him?"