Shielded by the Ruthless Military Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Scalpel

The fake doctor holds a scalpel to Leah's throat and walks her to the stairwell, and the colonel takes the fall for her down a flight of concrete steps before telling her to keep quiet about what she saw.

The man in the white coat did not touch the lieutenant.

He turned, took one step toward me, and caught my hair in his left hand.

Something thin and cold pressed under my jaw.

"Nobody move," he said.

His voice was flat and a little bored.

I had held a scalpel a hundred times. I knew exactly how sharp the edge was.

The colonel had not moved at all.

"Put it down," he said.

"Back up, Colonel. Back up to the wall."

"You won't get off this floor."

"Then she dies on this floor."

The ICU tech at the far monitor made a small sound, and the man pulled my head back farther.

"Switch the vent off," he told me. "Slowly. His settings first."

"If I do that, he can't breathe."

"That's the point."

I looked at the lieutenant's face. He was maybe twenty-eight. He had a wedding band on a chain around his neck.

"No," I said.

The blade pressed in.

A thread of warmth ran down into my collar.

"Nurse," the colonel said, in the same level voice. "Look at me."

I looked at him.

His eyes were steady, and he was not looking at the knife. He was looking at the man's feet.

"You're not switching anything off," he said. "You're walking. Do what he says about the door."

The man laughed once.

"Smart. Door. Now."

He steered me backward toward the staff exit at the end of the ward.

It opens onto the back stairwell.

The colonel came with us, three paces away and no closer.

"Stay back, I said."

"You don't have a way out," the colonel said. "I'm showing you the one that's open."

I understood then that he was talking to keep the man's eyes on him and off me.

The stairwell door banged open against my shoulder.

The air in the stairwell was cold, and the rail was painted green.

We were at the top of a full flight, and the man held me over the first step.

"You come down after us and she goes first," he said.

"I hear you."

"There's a car at the dock. Tell your guards to open the gate."

"The gate is open," the colonel lied.

Behind me, I felt the man glance away for half a second to look down the well.

That was the half second.

The hospital's self-defense class had run two hours, and I had laughed through most of it.

I dropped my full weight and tucked my chin down against his forearm.

Then I drove my elbow back into his stomach as hard as I could.

The blade scraped across my collarbone.

I screamed.

The colonel was already moving.

He caught me around the waist with one arm, spun me toward the wall, and stepped between us.

The man swung at him with the scalpel and cut open his sleeve.

Then the man shoved with both hands, and the three of us went off the top step.

I remember the rail going past.

I remember the colonel's arm locking around me and his whole body turning in the air so that mine was above his.

We hit the landing, and the sound of it was horrible.

We hit the next one.

When we stopped, I was lying on top of him with my face against his chest, and the world was gray and ringing.

"Don't move," he said. His voice was strained now.

"You're hurt."

"I said don't move."

Above us, boots came down fast.

The man in the white coat had gone over the rail on the second flight and landed on the stairs below.

He was trying to crawl toward the loading dock door when four soldiers came through it.

They had him flat in seconds.

"Alive," the colonel said.

He had not raised his voice, and every soldier on the stairs heard him.

"Keep him alive. Nobody speaks to him but me."

"Yes, sir."

I tried to sit up, and the colonel's hand closed on my arm.

He was breathing in short, careful sips.

"Ribs?" I said.

"Probably."

"Let me look at you."

"Marsden."

It was the first time he had said my name.

I stopped.

"Your neck is bleeding," he said. "It's shallow. A medic will see to it. Listen to me now."

"I'm listening."

His gray eyes held mine.

"You saw that man's face and his badge. Tell no one what you saw until I say so."

"Not even my friend?"

"Not the charge nurse. Not your friend. Not the doctor who stitches you up."

"Why?"

"Because he didn't walk through two locked doors on his own."

I stared at him.

A medic knelt beside me with a bandage, and the colonel finally let go of my arm.

My phone had slid out of my pocket on the fall and lay face up on the concrete.

The screen showed fourteen missed calls.

Every one was from my mother.

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