Page 85 of Fatal Pattern

In the elevator, Blade sagged against the wall, his breathing shallow but steady. “Did you see his face?” she asked.

“He was wearing a mask, and it happened too fast.” Blade’s jaw tightened. “Good fighter, though. Knew what he was doing.”

The elevator dinged as they reached his floor. Tori got him inside and steered him straight to his bathroom, where he collapsed onto the closed toilet seat.

“Don’t move.” She sprinted to the guest room, grabbed her medical kit from her bag, and raced back.

“Doc Crew making house calls.” He managed another weak smile.

“Haven’t done this since my residency.” She hopped onto the bathroom counter and opened the medical kit, then snapped on latex gloves and assessed the wounds again. “Good news. I don’t think you need real stitches. Medical adhesive should hold you together.”

“Should?”

“Trust me.”

“Always do.”

The shoulder wound sealed cleanly under the medical adhesive, but the bicep cut fought her. It was deeper than she’d hoped, and the edges kept wanting to pull apart as Blade’s arm moved.

“Hold still.” She pressed gauze against the bleeding. “This one’s tricky.”

“How tricky?”

“You’ll live.” The adhesive caught, drawing the torn muscle back together. “But no MMA for a while.”

“There goes my weekend plans.”

She braced Blade’s arm against her thigh to keep the muscle from twitching, then pinched the ragged edges of the cut on his bicep together. The second strip caught and held, the skin closing neat as a seam. Her fingertips pressed hard to test the seal, then reached for the next one.

He’d taken this cut for her.

The fact shoved against her focus, but she slammed it back. Instead, she locked in on the burn of antiseptic clogging her nose and the rip of adhesive tearing free from the package under her fingers. Strip to wound, seal the edges, move to the next. Nothing else stayed in frame.

Blade tipped his chin, mouth quirking even as sweat ran along his temple. “You’re the only woman I know who hauls a trauma kit everywhere she goes.”

“Probably the only one who needs to.” Tori positioned the strip and pressed it into place. “And I wouldn’t need one if I had a best friend who wasn’t too stubborn to call EMS when someone tries to gut him like a fish.”

Blade’s lips twitched. “Says the woman who told me it was ‘just a scratch’ when that stalker put a knife to her throat and sliced her arm.”

“Touché.”

He winced as she smoothed the edges of another strip. “How’s your arm, by the way?”

“Better than yours. At least mine still works.” Her gaze snagged on his. His eyes were puffed, rimmed red, matching the crooked mess of his nose. He grinned anyway, like he hadn’t been half beaten. Tomorrow his body would remind him they weren’t teenagers taking hits on the mat anymore.

“Looks worse than it is,” he said. “Though I have to say, for someone who works for FDLE, your marksmanship needs work. You completely missed your target.”

“Who says I missed?” She reached for the final Steri-Strip. “Some of that blood might be his. Hard to tell in the dark.”

“Fair point. Should be a blood trail if you actually hit him.”

“I wouldn’t have had to shoot him at all if you’d been able to take him down properly.” She took her time peeling the backing, drawing out the moment before the final strip sealed his wound.

Blade’s chuckle rumbled through his chest. “I was unarmed against a knife in the dark after a long run. Think I held my own pretty well.”

“Sure. If your definition of ‘holding your own’ includes getting carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

The antiseptic’s clean scent mixed with the brine of the ocean still clinging to his skin beneath the coppery tang of drying blood. His breathing had steadied, no longer the harsh, shallow gasps that had punctuated the first few minutes of her work. The only sounds now were her controlled exhales and the whisper of medical tape against skin.