Quinn knew all the signs of a panic attack. Difficulty breathing. Rapid heart rate. Feeling weak, faint, or even dizzy. A sense of terror, impending doom. Death. She’d talked countless patients, or sometimes their family members, through the symptoms. Coached them to take slow, deep breaths. Helped them lie down, clear their minds, and in some cases, when it was medically appropriate, brought them juice or water to keep them hydrated.

Turned out she’d been full of shit for the last five years, because nothing—not one fucking thing—was going to make the feeling in her bones so much as budge.

She’d tried as hard as she could to save Jayden. He’d died under her supervision. And now she and Slater were going to die, too.

Quinn’s heart fluttered so quickly in her chest, she was sure it would catapult right past her ribs and onto the floor of the Escalade where she was currently lying for the second time today. And since she was also wedged half beside, half on top of Slater again, surely that meant he could feel her racing heartbeat and shaky breaths by default.

Oh God. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want Slater to die. Not like this. Not today.

Please, Daddy, Quinn prayed. Please watch over me.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she slid into her thoughts, settling on a memory as sharp and clear as if it had happened yesterday rather than seven years ago.

Quinn tucked the thin hospital blanket over her father’s body, taking care not to tangle the half dozen tubes and wires and ports running under the sleeves of his green and white printed gown.

“There. All set,” she said, although, like the blanket, the words were more for her own comfort than her father’s. The potent cocktail of meds being used to manage his end-stage Parkinson’s kept him so sedated, chances were high he wouldn’t know she was here, let alone that she’d tucked him in. But Quinn had taken care of her father since he’d been diagnosed on her first day of eighth grade. Now that she was in her second year of pre-med at Remington University, she wasn’t about to dial back.

Even if he did sleep through most of her visits now.

Settling in the rose-colored hospital recliner beside her father’s bed, she reached for the anatomy textbook in her backpack. But the sound of his voice, thick and scratchy from non-use, snared every last bit of her attention.

“H-h-how’s m-my girl?”

Quinn’s heart tightened at the endearment he’d always used for her, even back before her mother had died. “Hey, Daddy. You feeling okay?”

He’d been having hallucinations lately, according to the nursing staff. Her research confirmed that they were, in fact, very common for Stage Five patients. Not that it made Quinn want to care for him any less.

“T-t-t-t-tired,” he said, his head sinking back into the pillow. “It w-will be t-time. S-s-soon.”

Tears sprang into Quinn’s eyes. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him. Not now. Not ever. But he was awake and lucid, and she knew the truth. She might not get another chance.

“Are you hurting?” she asked softly, relief spilling through her when he shook his head.

“N-no.”

Biting her lip, she scooped up his hand, letting her tears fall because she had no other choice. He was her father, her only family. He’d always cared for her, even when she’d needed to care for him. “Will you watch over me from heaven once you go?”

For a moment, he said nothing, just looking at her with those dark blue eyes she’d come by so honestly, and Quinn thought he’d slipped back into a medicine-induced haze. But then he smiled and slowly said, “M-my girl. It w-will be the f-first thing I do…”

The Escalade hit a pothole, jarring her back to reality. She was on the floor of an SUV with no idea what was around her or where she was headed, and in less than thirty minutes, she would be dead. Ice was going to shoot her. Quinn knew exactly what would happen, how her body would fight the blood loss, how her organs would shut down anyway. She knew it would hurt badly enough for her to pray for death. She knew someone would find her, that someone from Seventeen—probably Captain Bridges—would have to ID her body. Bury her next to her father.

Please, Daddy. Don’t watch over me. I don’t want you to see this.

Quinn’s lungs constricted, her heart beating even faster in her chest, and oh God, oh God ohGodohGod, she couldn’t breathe.

The feel of Slater’s hand on her back broke through the panic. He didn’t say anything—not that he really could with Ice a few feet away in the driver’s seat. But he also didn’t do anything trite, like rub little circles or, even worse, pat her like a fragile flower. Instead, he just wrapped his arm around her waist, flattening his palm between her shoulder blades in the same spot where Damien had shoved his gun, and all of a sudden, there was air.

Slater splayed his fingers wider, each fingertip pressing in that firm, quiet way of his. His chest rose and fell against hers, his left side flush with her right. Somehow, Quinn inhaled again, matching the rhythm of his breaths.

They would be her last ones. Slater’s too, and—

“Easy.”

Like the touch, his whisper was calm, steady. Shifting just slightly, he wrapped his other arm around her rib cage, his mouth coming to rest just shy of her temple.

“There. Breathe.”

For a minute—or maybe it was an hour or a month or just a tiny nanosecond—Quinn did. She placed her hand on Slater’s shoulder and breathed in the smell of him, part antiseptic wipes and laundry detergent and things she could identify, part something heady and masculine that seemed to belong only to him. In that pocket of time, lying there next to Slater, she was able to breathe. To move oxygen to her lungs. To keep the panic on the outer edges, away from her body and brain.

And then the Escalade slowed to a stop.

“Get out,” Ice said a few seconds later, the rear passenger door opening wide to let in the harsh glare of sunlight. He held his gun at hip level, concealed and yet pointed at her in a way that said he wouldn’t hesitate or miss if she didn’t do what he’d told her, and Quinn had no choice but to push herself up from the floor of the SUV.

Keeping her right by his side, Ice pressed the gun against her belly, ordering Slater out next. Quinn blinked, a tendril of surprise uncurling in her chest as she looked around and registered her surroundings. The empty street. The boarded up convenience store. The dilapidated warehouse.

“We’re back where we started?” she asked, and Ice frowned.

“Walk.”

He gestured toward the back of the Escalade with his gun, and after a short trip to reclaim their equipment, he herded them to the ambulance, which was still tucked in the alley where they’d left it.

“Put everything away. Slowly.”

“No one else has to die today,” Slater said. He kept his hands raised and his eyes slightly lowered, continuing in a quiet voice as he returned the portable monitor to the ambo’s storage compartment, then followed it with his first-in bag. “We won’t tell anybody what happened here.”

Ice didn’t hesitate. “I know you won’t. Give me your cell phones and driver’s licenses. One at a time.”

He turned the gun toward Quinn, stepping in close enough for her to feel the cold, calculated evil rolling off him in waves. Her hands obeyed out of sheer survival instinct, fumbling for the latch on the drawer in the storage compartment where she always stashed her wallet and her iPhone. Slater followed suit, handing over his license and cell phone, and Ice lifted his chin at the warehouse.

“Walk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn caught sight of Slater’s expression. Most of the time, he had a crazy-good poker face, except for those rare occasions when she’d caught him smiling. But right now, the fear in his ice-blue eyes was unmistakable, and oh God. Oh God, they really weren’t going to live through this.

“Breathe.”

Slater started to walk, his boots in motion over the parched gravel before she could be entirely certain he’d loosened the whisper. But her neurons auto-piloted all the requisite messages to her legs, and she fell into step next to Slater, with Ice directly behind.

“Over here,” Ice said, jerking the gun to the center of the dusty and dingy space. Quinn’s heart slammed with every footstep. Her pulse grew even more erratic when Ice yanked two bright red strips of cloth out of his pants pocket, holding one out to Slater and dropping it into the small space between them.

“Gag her.” When Slater hesitated, he tacked on, “Unless you want me to shoot her in the leg while you think about it.”

“No,” Slater said, all plea. He bent to pick up the cloth, gently brushing her hair away from her face as he stepped closer. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay,” Quinn whispered. God, she hated the look on his face almost as much as the cloth going around her mouth. But then Ice made her use the other cloth to gag Slater in return, and yeah, it was official. She hated that most of all.

Of course, Ice kept the hits coming. “Zip ties next,” he said, a set of thick, figure-eight-shaped restraints clattering to the floor at Quinn’s feet. “Put those on your partner. Hands behind his back, not in front. And make them tight, or I’ll make you sorry.”

She knelt for the zip tie, unable to do anything else. Slipping the black plastic over Slater’s wrists, she paused to brush a brief touch over his fingers before snapping the closure on the restraints snugly.

Ice motioned her over with a jerk of his chin. “Your turn. Nice and slow, or I’ll shoot your partner here in the kneecaps just to watch him bleed.”

For a second, Quinn was certain she would choke on the double shot of anxiety/adrenaline building beneath the cloth in her mouth. But unlike Damien, Ice didn’t carry himself with sloppy bravado; for him, the gun in his hand wasn’t just something to shove around as a scare tactic or inflate his power. He meant every word.

With no choices left, she covered the half dozen steps of concrete flooring, stopping less than an arm’s length from where Ice stood. He turned her easily with his palm on her shoulder. Somewhere, in the back passages of her brain, Quinn was surprised he didn’t manhandle her, didn’t yank her hands together or fasten the zip ties so tightly they’d cut into her skin. Then again, she supposed he didn’t have to.

The gun in his hand was the only fear tactic he really needed.

“Both of you together. Kneeling,” Ice said, and now, Quinn’s panic did surge. Her heart thundered in her eardrums, her breath turning to wet cement in her lungs and tears spilling down her cheeks as she stumbled toward Slater, her knees not so much obeying as simply giving out.

Ice took a few steps forward, parking his imposing, muscle-bound frame right in their line of sight. “You know this feeling you have right now? This fear of dying?”

A frustrated sound welled up from her throat. Why couldn’t he just get on with it, for Chrissake? Not that Quinn wanted to die, because God, she didn’t. But kneeling here, next to Slater on this filthy warehouse floor, just contemplating it? That was worse than dying.

“I want you to remember this feeling. I know who you are, Quinn Copeland and Luke Slater.” Ice held up their driver’s licenses, rattled off their addresses. “I know where you live. I know who your friends are.” He flipped to Quinn’s screen saver, where her own smiling face was surrounded by Parker and Shae and everyone else at Seventeen.

Ice didn’t stop there. “I know who your families are.” A photo of a black woman who Quinn guessed was in her late sixties flashed over the screen of Slater’s phone, followed by one of a much younger girl bearing a strong family resemblance, and Slater went bowstring tight at Quinn’s side. “I know everything there is to know about you. If either one of you so much as tells one person anything that happened today, I will make every single person you care about feel what you’re feeling right now, and then I’ll make you watch while I blow their fucking brains all over the floor. Am I making myself clear?”

Fresh tears burned in Quinn’s eyes, and she nodded even though confusion clouded her brain. Of course she’d understood Ice’s words. For God’s sake, they’d be scorched in her mind forever. But why would he threaten them like this if…

“Good,” he said, pinning them each with a stare full of promise. “Because I don’t ever bluff. You tell anyone what happened today, and dying slowly will be the least of what scares you.”

Without another word, he turned on his boot heels and walked out of the warehouse.