The mother of all Monday mornings began with a 12:30 a.m. overhead page.

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“Dr. Fairfax. Dr. Fairfax to the ER, STAT!”

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Marissa Fairfax swore silently, tying off one last blood vessel before she turned to the assisting surgery resident. “Good timing. Close for me, John.”

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She took the stairs down to the first floor, quickly stripping gloves, cap and bloodied surgical gown as she went. The chief resident met her at the bottom to fill her in on the available details.

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“There’s a gunshot wound to the chest on the way to the ER. Critical condition,” Pete Yerber told her, handing her a fresh pair of gloves.

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“Crazy tonight, and it’s not even a Saturday.” Thin latex snapped against her wrists as she pulled on the gloves.

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“Doing nothing but getting worse, too. It’s raining like hell and,” he paused as thunder sounded in the distance, “I hear there’s a tornado warning.”

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“Wonderful.”

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She met the victim as his gurney came flying through the doors leading to the Surgical Emergency Room, gaining her first impression at virtually a dead run. Spilling details in a rapid spate of words, the paramedic spoke loudly to be heard above the din in the ER. “Blood pressure is eighty over fifty. Heart rate one hundred thirty and respiration is twenty-four per minute. The bullet appears to have entered the chest.”

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Seconds later they reached Trauma Room One. “One, two, three...here we go,” Marissa said as the group of doctors, nurses and techs transferred the patient to the table. Positioning her stethoscope on his chest, she listened briefly. “Breath sounds are diminished on his left side.” Not good, not good at all.

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“Somebody hang some O negative blood. Get an arterial line started and draw blood gases,” she snapped, glancing up at one of her residents. “Put in a central line, too.” The victim was in bad shape, a fact she didn’t have to tell anyone in the trauma room.

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“Oh, good, Gina, you’re here,” she said, spying one of her most promising fourth year residents. “As soon as the lines are in you can put in a chest tube.”

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“Yes, Dr. Fairfax,” she said breathlessly. “Things are crazy tonight or I would’ve been here sooner. Is there a full moon? The ER sure looks like it.”

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“Tornado warning. Same effect.” Marissa took the scalpel the resident handed her. “Hurry up with those lines,” she told the other resident. “We don’t have all night.”

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An intern appeared with the blood Marissa had ordered. “Man, he’s bleeding like hell.”

Marissa threw him a quelling look. “We can see that, Conrad. Don’t state the obvious. And next time don’t stop for coffee.” Grimacing, she admitted silently that he was right. A train wreck if she’d ever seen one.

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The patient thrashed around until Marissa placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “What’s your name?” she asked him in a gentler tone.

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“Frankie.”

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“Okay, Frankie, we need to put a chest tube in so we can drain some of the blood that’s making it hard for you to breathe. It looks scary and it’s going to hurt, but we can’t put you under anesthesia because it affects your breathing. Understand?”

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Since she didn’t have time to worry about it, she took his grunt as a sign of assent. Quickly, she sliced the scalpel through the wall of his chest. Blood poured out in a thin stream.

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“Can’t breathe!” Frankie shouted. “I’m dying!”

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“You’re doing fine, Frankie,” Gina told him. “You can’t talk if you can’t breathe.”

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Marissa spread the opening with the forceps so Gina could plunge the plastic tube into the chest cavity. Frankie screamed, cursed, and screamed again before he lost consciousness. Oh, crap, his blood pressure’s dropping, she thought, glancing at the monitor hooked up to the central and arterial vein lines.

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Gina sutured the tube in and applied a sterile dressing while Marissa silently ran through a list of possible causes for the patient’s loss of consciousness. She didn’t like anything she came up with.

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“Let’s go, people, move it. God, what a mess,” she added under her breath.

Another glance at the monitor gave her the patient’s vital signs. He was tubing, ready to crash at any moment. If she didn’t work quickly she’d lose him. Calmly but rapidly, she continued the diagnosis aloud. “His pressure’s dropping and he’s got a paradoxical pulse—I think he’s developing pericardial tamponade. Probably has a cardiac injury. This one’s an elevator case, people, but before we can take him up to the OR I’ve got to do a pericardiocentesis.”

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Outwardly calm, her stomach twisted with nerves and anticipation. As a trauma surgeon she had many cases where nothing she did could save her patient, and she hated those cases passionately. Failure, even when unavoidable, ate at her guts. This case wouldn’t be one of those—she’d make sure of that.

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“Prep his chest,” she told Gina, waiting impatiently while the resident swabbed it down with Betadine. Rapidly inserting the long needle to his sternum, she watched the red fluid fill the syringe. Immediately she aspirated sixty cc of blood.

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Hot damn, I was right, blood in the pericardial sac.

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Another glance at the monitors showed sudden improvement in his systemic blood pressure. Exhilaration, intense satisfaction spiraled through her as the patient slowly regained consciousness. In the span of minutes, death retreated and life took over. Trauma surgery at its best—and most exciting.

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Betraying none of those feelings, she spoke calmly. “Get him to the elevator, STAT. He’s ready for the OR now.”

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“Am I gonna die?”

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Frightened now that he’d regained consciousness, Frankie’s voice sounded hoarse, faint, and she had to bend over to hear him.

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“No, you’re going to be fine,” she told him. “We’re taking you to the Operating Room right now.”

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He clutched at her sleeve as they wheeled him out of Trauma One. “Wait. Gotta talk. Wait.”

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“We don’t have time. You’re seriously injured, you can talk later.”

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“Now!” Jerking on her sleeve, he yanked her shoulder down so her ear was closer to his mouth. As they rushed to the elevator, he started talking incoherently. “Phoenix ring...I can give...Roth...real estate...money laundering...goes through him...land development...Roth...records...”

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His pain and the amount of noise in the hallway made most of what she heard unintelligible, and she only half-listened to what he said. “Phoenix, Roth knows the Phoenix...Jerome skimming...Let them know...he shot me...Don’t let me die!” Drivel from a critically injured man. “Jerome skimming...from Phoenix.”

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His hand slid down her upper arm, his fingers dug sharply into her forearm while he lifted his other hand and pointed a shaking finger. Gaining sudden strength and coherency, he shouted, “That’s him! Jerome!”

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Following the line of Frankie’s trembling hand, she gazed at the two men approaching. The uniformed cop left no impression. At first glance she might have dismissed the man beside him, too. Medium height, brown hair—physically nondescript—yet he exuded waves of near tangible malice.

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“Bastard! You’ll get yours! You’re dead meat, Jerome!” Frankie screamed. “You didn’t kill me! I’ll live to tell everything, every—”

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In frame by frame, cold-blooded sequence, Marissa saw Jerome’s arm cross his body, his fingers touch the gun at the policeman’s side. Paralyzed, she watched black steel and cold death clear the holster and slash the air, watched fingers squeeze tight on the trigger as the sound of destruction exploded beside her.

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Blood—red, glistening, viscous blood. Death running like a river undammed. Frankie...Oh God, it’s his. No operation would save him now. The bullet had drilled its way through the front of his skull to emerge out the back, blowing open that part of his head.

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Instinctively, she shut her eyes, her usually cast-iron stomach heaving violently at the sight. Body parts and blood gave her no qualms, but naked violence, the slaughter of a human being, burned a horror in her mind. She had watched it happen; she wore his blood and bits of his skin, brains, and bone on her clothes, on her skin. A man whom she had saved from death only minutes before.

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Another shot jerked through sudden silence. Marissa opened her eyes to the cop hitting the floor. Before she could react to that, the gunman was upon her. Arm around her neck, he choked her, holding the gun pointed to her temple.

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“Get back!” he shouted, savagely squeezing her throat He dragged her back into the same trauma room she had so recently vacated. “Anyone comes near me and I swear I’ll shoot the bitch.”

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The gun dropped away from her face. Reacting with a training she hadn’t needed in years, Marissa turned her neck into the crook of his arm and sent an elbow jabbing into his solar plexus.

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Her attempt at self-defense served only to infuriate him. “Wanna die, Blondie?” The muzzle of his gun pressed close, and she felt the metal whisper of death against her temple.

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“No,” she said, forcing the word out in a shaking voice. Oh, God, he was going to kill her.

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“Good. Then you do like I tell you, and if you’re lucky, I’ll let you live.” He removed the gun and forced her to the door with him. “You pigs out there hear me? I want a chopper, on the roof, ten minutes. Don’t give me no shit that you don’t got one, neither.”

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“Let the woman go, Jerome,” someone said. “Let her go, man, it’s not worth it.”

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“Bullshit. Chopper on the roof or the bitch dies.” He laughed, sounding gleeful, held the gun to her temple again and spoke to her. “What did Frankie say to you? What did he tell you?”

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Steel twisted against her skin, nausea twisted her stomach. She forced herself to answer him. “If you’re talking about my patient, he told me that you shot him. That’s all he told me. There wasn’t time for more.”

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Her sigh of relief as the pressure left her temple turned into a cry of pain when his fist crashed into her mouth, snapping her head back.

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“Liar! I heard him. Enough to know he spilled his stinkin’ guts to you. That little loser gave you everything.” Again, he slapped her. “Didn’t he?”

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The copper taste of blood filled her mouth, she felt the skin over her cheekbone split and more blood flow down her face and neck. Staring at him now, she realized he was young—mid-twenties, at most. But his dark eyes were old—and alive with malevolence.

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“Tell me what Frankie spilled and I let you go when we get up to the roof. Don’t tell me, and you be dead,” he snapped his fingers in front of her, “like that. Got it?” He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her back against him.

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“Yes,” she whispered, hating the fear forcing her to obey him. Sweet Lord, she was a dead woman. She couldn’t remember a word the man had said. Then she realized it didn’t matter, she was as good as dead already.

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“Drop the gun, Jerome. Let the doctor go.”

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Deep, husky, baritone. She recognized that voice. Commanding, calm. He stood in the doorway, his large frame taking up most of the space, the gun in his right hand pointed directly at her captor’s head.

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Corelli. Detective Lieutenant Jack Corelli of the Fort Williams Police. An insufferably arrogant pain in her butt since the day she’d come to Texas to head Trauma Surgery at Fort Williams Central Hospital. She could have kissed him. If he got her out of this alive, she just might.

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“Hey, man, shoot me and she’s dead.” Jerome’s arm jerked and tightened, making her gasp with pain. Fetid breath, hot against her cheek. “You can’t do nothin’ to me.”

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A smile flickered across the rough features of Corelli’s face. “Sure I can, Juju. You know me.”

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You idiot, she wanted to say, gratitude deserting her instantly. Don’t bluff him—oh, God, he’s not bluffing, he’s going to shoot—don’t—

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Jerome heaved her into Corelli’s arms. A shot rang out as her captor ran out the door of the trauma room.

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“Son of a bitch!” Corelli threw her aside and leapt through the open doorway.

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“Don’t shoot!” Marissa shouted and dived out after him. There were probably fifty people standing in the corridor. She wasn’t about to stand around like an autopsy waiting to happen while desperate criminals and gung-ho cops played shoot-’em-up in the hospital corridor.

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She was a pace behind him when he slipped. Attempting to stop, she skidded, crashed into his back and both of them went down with Corelli landing on top of her. Two-hundred-plus solid pounds of muscle delivered straight to her diaphragm.

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Corelli struggled to sit, momentarily placing the full balance of his weight upon her. His voice reaching her from a distance. She didn’t quite pass out. “Go after him, Edmonds! Call for backup! Get the bastard before he takes another hostage.”

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“Are you all right?” he asked her, leaning over her to feel her pulse. Marissa managed to shake her head. “What hurts? Have you been shot?”

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You’re the one who killed me, you jerk, she thought, and passed out.