The monitor at the foot of the bed shrieked out a sound that, in all likelihood, had just signed Luke’s death warrant.

“BP is forty over sixty and falling,” he said briskly, focusing on what was in front of him because he couldn’t focus on the alternative without wanting to puke.

He could not die today.

Quinn’s stare snapped to the monitor. “He’s crashing.” The monitor confirmed it a second later, the shriek becoming a telltale beep that signaled a flatline. “Shit! We lost his pulse. Start compressions while I grab the paddles.”

Luke flattened his hands over Jayden’s chest, forcing himself not to react to the give of the poor kid’s ribs, blanking out the thick-liquid ooze of the blood soaking through the QuikClot pads and the sound of bones popping and cracking even though his gag reflex had a stranglehold on his throat. Don’t think. Don’t think, came the words to the rhythm of the compressions. “Come on, Jayden. Come on!”

“You better save him. You gotta save him,” said Baseball Hat from his station at the foot of the bed, although his voice sounded less forceful than full of fear.

“We’re trying.” Quinn lifted the paddles. “Clear!”

“Clear.”

Luke’s hands shot up just as Quinn’s fell into place, determination locked over her face as the portable AED buzzed, then thumped. Jayden’s body jerked beneath the paddles, his back arching off the bloodstained comforter. But before Luke could throw so much as a glance at the monitor for a vitals check, the door flew in hard enough to bang loudly against the wall.

“What the fuck is going on?” Damien’s stare whipped around the room, jumping wildly from Luke to Jayden to Quinn. His dark eyes were wild with about a thousand emotions, but it was the presence of the man behind him in the doorframe wearing no emotions at all that sent a bolt of icy fear through Luke’s chest.

“Your brother is going into hypovolemic shock,” Quinn said, and Damien released a noise of frustration.

“In English, bitch.”

Luke had to move this guy’s attention away from Quinn. Right now. “Jayden has lost more than a fifth of his blood volume,” he said. The only mercy here was that the kid had also lost consciousness. “His heart is working too hard to get what’s left in his body to his organs. His body can’t keep up with the blood loss.”

“Why ain’t you fixin’ him up like you’re supposed to?” Damien paced a few strides to one side of the room before turning abruptly to complete the circuit. “I told you to fix him! Stitch him up!”

The steady beep of the monitor broke past the haze in Luke’s mind, and thank Christ. Jayden had a sinus rhythm. At least the AED had bought them a few minutes to try and control this situation. He and Quinn would not—would not—die today.

“We’re working on your brother,” Luke said, proceeding with a truckload of care. Jayden wasn’t going to live. Far too many minutes had fallen off of his golden hour for him to survive. Hell, with the wound he’d sustained, even if he’d been shot front and center in the ambulance bay at Remington Mem, his odds would’ve been fifty-fifty at best. But Luke could live—no, he fucking would live, and so would Quinn. All he had to do was get Damien and that huge guy back in the other room, and he could figure out a way to disarm their guard and get to the window on the wall behind him. “Look, we just need some more time—”

“What we need is a hospital.”

Quinn’s words sent Luke’s gut into a free fall. “Quinn,” he started, but she shook her head, adamant.

“Look, Damien. Your brother’s wound is significant. He’s lost a lot of blood, and the bullet may have damaged his lung.”

The guy took a step back on the floorboards, his stare full of hair-triggered menace. “You don’t know?”

“No,” she said, before Luke could come up with any sort of buffer or distraction to soften the news. Her voice was low and steady, steeped in the same tone Luke had heard her use a thousand times on the job. The tone that said she meant exactly what was coming out of her mouth.

“I don’t know,” Quinn continued quietly. “I don’t have the equipment to be able to see what’s going on inside his body. Paramedics are trained to stabilize and transfer, not treat long-term. Your brother needs a blood transfusion and trauma surgeon to remove the bullet from his chest, and he needs them both right now. Otherwise he is going to die.”

Damien’s gun was out of his waistband before anyone could move. Luke’s heart ricocheted around his rib cage, a sharp-edged “no” barging out of his mouth. But then the barrel of the gun was against Quinn’s forehead, and even though his mind and body both screamed for him to make a move, Luke knew he couldn’t take the risk.

“You telling me you killed my brother?” Damien bit out, and Quinn released a shaky breath.

“N-no. Right now, he’s alive. See? Look at the monitor.”

Damien jerked his chin toward the machine at the top of the bed, and Luke sent up a wild prayer of gratitude that the fucking thug couldn’t interpret the vitals scrolling across the backlit screen.

“I want to help him, Damien. I want to save his life.” Quinn’s voice wavered, her raised, blood-soaked hands trembling in a way that made Luke want to dismantle every single gang member in the room just for scaring her. “Please. Let us take him to the hospital. We don’t have to say—”

The cold click of the gun’s safety turned her words into a cry and Luke’s pulse into a warzone. “No. You’re gonna fix him like I told you to. I meant what I said before. He dies, you die.”

Luke burned to find a way to knock Damien’s gun from the spot where it was trained hard over Quinn’s forehead. But Baseball Hat was still at the foot of the bed, the double mattress and Jayden’s body between Luke and Damien. God damn it, even reaching the guy was a long shot. Disarming him and getting Quinn out of harm’s way? The odds were probably four trillion to one.

Come on, come on. There has to be a solution. Think!

“I’ll do it,” Luke said, loudly enough to—yes—grab Damien’s attention. “I’ll save your brother’s life. But you have to stop pointing that gun at my partner. I need her to help me work on Jayden.”

Damien hesitated, but didn’t budge. “She said he needs a hospital.”

“And you said no hospitals,” Luke countered. “So we’ll do it your way, okay?”

“She said Jayden’s gonna die anyway.” Damien shifted on his thickly-soled boots, growing more agitated by the nanosecond, and no. No, no, no. “If he does—”

“Damien.” The man standing in the doorway commanded attention with just the one simple word. “Put your piece away.”

A heartbeat passed in tension-drenched silence, during which Luke prayed for the first time in a decade.

But then, miraculously, Damien lowered his gun. Quinn sagged in relief, her breath escaping in a near-soundless gasp, and relief coursed through Luke with so much force that he was sure his knees would forfeit his body weight right then and there.

His relief turned to pure shock when the man crossed his arms over his retaining wall of a chest and said, “Go on and take a walk. Score some H and find a girl on Delmar Street. Get yourself right while these two work on your brother.”

Damien’s brows popped up while his mouth popped open, and he turned toward the bed, where his brother’s breaths were growing more and more labored. “But Jayden…”

“I’ll take care of Jayden. You’re too keyed up.” The man stepped all the way into the room, sparing only the briefest glance at Baseball Hat, who had watched the entire exchange, dumbfounded, from the foot of the bed. “You get D here solid, you hear? Now both of you, go.”

“Ice,” Damien started, and in an instant, every muscle in the man’s gigantic body coiled beneath his black T-shirt and pants.

“I said I’ll take care of it, Damien. Now go.”

Luke’s gut bottomed out at the implication. Damien must’ve made the logic leap right along with him, because after one last lingering look at Jayden, he left the room with Baseball Hat. Ice—whose name was a flawless fit for his cold stare and unyielding demeanor—stepped back to shut the door, closing them in to the confines of the bedroom as he rested his hand on the gun at his hip.

Luke glanced at Quinn, but her eyes were on the portable monitor, her hands working swiftly to apply the last of their QuikClot pads over the small mountain of them already taped to Jayden’s bare and bleeding chest.

“Which one of you is in charge?” Ice asked, measuring them both with an indecipherable look as he stood next to Quinn beside the bed.

Luke recalibrated from his surprise first. “What?”

“It’s a very simple question. I want to know which one of you outranks the other.”

“I do.”

They both spoke the words at the same time. Quinn’s lips parted in obvious surprise, but Luke forced his expression to remain quiet, calm. If Ice was looking for someone to take the blame for the fact that Jayden was dying, let it be him. Quinn had just had a gun shoved against her forehead. Enough was enough.

“I’m the senior paramedic,” Luke said. A second that felt more like a century passed, and finally, Ice shook his head.

“No, you’re not. I’ve seen enough people bleed out to know a dead man when I see one. Apparently, your boss here has, too. She clearly knows more than you. Jayden’s not going to make it through the next five minutes.”

“But—”

Lifting a hand that could probably span a dinner plate, Ice silenced Luke’s argument, pivoting on his boot heels to address Quinn. “Do all you can for him until he dies. After that, we’re taking a ride.”

“You want us to do all we can for him even though you’re going to kill us afterward?” Luke asked. Probably not too smart to get mouthy with a gun-wielding gang leader, but come on. It wasn’t like he had much to lose at this point.

“I will.”

Quinn took an audible breath. Squared her shoulders. Looked Ice right in his cold, dead stare and said, “I will do all that I can for him. No matter what you do to me afterward.”

Ice’s brows lifted almost imperceptibly. “Noble to the end. Interesting.”

Anything Quinn or Luke might’ve said in response was cut off by the abrupt beeping of the monitor, and she cursed under her breath.

“We lost his pulse. Slater, start compressions,” she said, but Luke was already there. For the second time today, he put himself a step outside of his actions—no blood, no ribs folding and cracking under the pressure of his ministrations, no slamming of his own heart as he tried desperately to jump-start his patient’s.

It wasn’t enough.

“Charging to one-fifty. Clear!” Quinn placed the paddles over Jayden’s chest, shocking him once, pausing for a vitals check, then recharging the paddles to do the whole thing again.

Nothing. Damn it!

“Resuming CPR.” She shoved the paddles back into the AED, flattening her hands on Jayden’s sternum, the muscles in her forearms flexing under her exertion. Luke watched the monitor, willing the thing to fork over a blip, just one, that would buy them more time. Tears snuck from the corners of Quinn’s eyes, disguising themselves as sweat. But Luke saw them because he was right here next to her, watching her try like hell to save the life of the man in front of her even though his gang leader was going to bury a bullet in her for her trouble, and Christ, she was the bravest, most beautiful thing Luke had ever seen.

“Charging again to two hundred. Clear.”

They went for three more rounds before Ice stepped in, his eyes on Jayden’s broken, bloodied body. “That’s enough.”

“Wait. Please wait,” Quinn said, despair breaking over her face. “If you just—”

“No.”

Quinn’s chin dropped toward her chest, the tendrils of blond hair that had snapped free from her ponytail sticking to her damp temples. “Please,” she whispered, the barely there sound ripping a hole in Luke’s chest.

“Turn that thing off and pack up your gear,” Ice replied, looking at Luke. “And you. Stay on that side of the bed until we’re ready to go. Unless you want to watch me shoot your girl right here in this room.”

“No.” Luke’s answer spring-boarded out, and he took a breath to try and stamp the emotions out of his voice. “I definitely don’t want that.”

“Good.”

Luke removed the leads from Jayden’s chest while Quinn shut down the portable AED. Her freshly gloved hands shook, and the obvious sign of her fear peppered holes in Luke’s gut. He couldn’t close the space between them to comfort her—not only had Ice been frighteningly clear about him staying on his side of the room, but Luke had spent the last ten years holding everyone at arm’s length. Shutting everyone out. Refusing to let himself form any bonds or care for anyone other than his grandmother and sister. Chances were, he had no clue how to offer Quinn comfort. It was a nasty side effect of self-preservation.

One he would probably die regretting.