The 3 AM fog is a wet wool blanket over the Manhattan hospital loading dock. Nadia leans against the cold brick, her lungs burning from sixteen hours of trauma rotations. The silver angel pendant at her throat is an icy weight against her collarbone. Every muscle in her neck is a knotted cord. She just wants the subway and four hours of dreamless sleep.
A pair of headlights cuts through the grey haze, blinding and sudden. They aren't the yellowed beams of an ambulance or the flickering light of a delivery truck. These are LED blades, sharp and expensive. They move with a predatory slow-motion crawl that makes the hair on her arms stand up.
He waited six years. The thought is a needle in her chest. She doesn't run; she is a surgeon, and she knows when a bleed is too deep to stop. The engine is a low, rhythmic growl that vibrates in the pavement beneath her thin surgical clogs. Headlights cut through the loading dock's fog, the heavy black grill of an SUV slowing to a stop just inches from her boots.
