I stepped off a classified military transport and made my way straight to the ICU, where my wife lay with twenty-seven broken b0nes and a fractured skull.

Before I left the hospital, a sudden alarm blared inside Room 402.

Red strobe lights flashed above Rosalie’s door. Medical personnel rushed past me, pushing a crash cart with frantic urgency.

My heart felt like it stopped dead in my chest. "Rosie!"

I lunged forward, but the military neurosurgeon, Lieutenant Colonel Evans, caught my shoulders with surprising strength. "Hold on, Captain! Stand back! Let us work!"

"What happened?!" I roared.

"Her monitors spiked! Intracranial pressure just plummeted!"

I shoved Evans aside and stepped through the doorway. Nurses were adjusting IV lines, checking monitors, preparing a defibrillator. But on the bed, Rosalie wasn't flatlining.

Her chest was heaving.

Beneath the thick white bandages wrapping her fractured skull, her dark eyelashes fluttered. The fingers of her left hand twitched, clawing at the white bedsheet. A ragged, strangled sound pushed past the tube in her throat.

"She’s coming out of the coma!" the head nurse shouted. "Hold the sedatives! Evans, look at the pupil response!"

Dr. Evans hurried to her side, shining a penlight into her eyes. "Pupils reactive! Equal! Suction the airway! Prepare for extubation!"

I moved through the blur of scrubs and medical tubing, ignoring the nurses who tried to back me away. I reached the side of the bed and placed my broad, scarred hand over her trembling fingers.

"Rosalie," I said. My voice was thick, shaking with an emotion I hadn't felt in all my years of war. "Rosie, I’m here. Look at me."

At the sound of my voice, her eyes snapped open.

They were clouded with pain, dilated with drugs, but the moment her gaze found mine, the frantic, terrified thrashing stopped. A single tear broke through the dried blood and swelling on her cheek and rolled down to her jaw.

Her bruised fingers curled around mine with astonishing strength.

"Extubating in three, two, one," Evans commanded, swiftly pulling the breathing tube from her airway.

Rosalie coughed, a dry, agonizing gasp that shook her broken ribs. I leaned over her, supporting her shoulders, pressing my forehead against hers, breathing in the scent of her hair underneath the sterile hospital shampoo.

"I’m home, sweetheart," I whispered. "I’m right here. You’re safe."

Her cracked lips moved. She tried to form words, but her jaw was wired on the right side. She gripped my hand so hard her knuckles clicked.

"A-Alex..." she rasped, barely more than a breath against my cheek.

"Don't talk, baby. Save your strength."

"They... took... the..."

"I have the drive," I told her, kissing her temple. "I went to the house. I opened the safe. The drive is in my pocket. Hannah confessed. I know everything."

A shudder ran through her entire body. Relief washed over her battered face, followed by an expression of pure, desperate warning.

"Alex... mother... she knows... you’re back," Rosalie whispered, each word costing her an ocean of agony. "Brad... he hired... mercenaries. Not just guards. Ex-contractors. They... they’re going to kill the witness... in the hospital."

"Nobody is getting inside this hospital, Rosie," I promised. "I have two squads of Delta boys locking down the perimeter. You’re under federal protection."

"No..." She squeezed my fingers with desperate urgency. "Not... here. The water system. The power... they have... the blueprints. Mother... built the west wing..."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Before I could answer, the fluorescent lights overhead hummed, flickered three times, and went completely black.

The emergency generators didn't kick in.

The life-support monitors emitted a high-pitched dying beep, and the ventilation system died with a low, descending whine.