Chapter 287
Chapter 287:
June stepped back, her eyes blazing with cold, absolute fury. A wave of clarifying rage swept through her, burning away the fear in an instant. She looked at Cole’s rabid, possessive face, then at Crawford’s cold, calculating expression, and saw them both with sudden, brutal clarity — two monsters fighting over a prize. The disgust that rose in her chest was so profound it gave her strength.
“Stop it!” June snapped, her voice cutting through the room like a whip.
Both men froze.
“I am not a piece of property for you two to fight over,” she said, her voice trembling with equal measures of rage and exhaustion. She looked at Crawford, then turned and fixed her eyes on Cole. “I am going back to my room. Alone. If either of you follows me, I will call the police p>
After a silent, agonizingly tense one-hour drive back from Providence, June sat on the edge of the massive king-sized bed in her Boston hotel room. The silence pressed in around her, absolute and deafening.
Her hands were shaking. The adrenaline was finally draining from her system, replaced by a deep, bone-crushing exhaustion.
Then a violent, heavy thud rattled the doorframe, followed by frantic, irrational pounding.
Iո𝗌𝘁𝖺𝗻t 𝗮c𝖼е𝘴𝘴 𝗼𝘯
June’s stomach dropped. She crossed to the door and looked through the peephole. Cole was standing in the hallway, his fist raised to strike the wood again. His face was pale and slicked with cold sweat.
“Go away, Cole, or I am calling hotel security right now!” June yelled through the heavy door.
Cole’s fist stopped in mid-air. He forced a ragged breath, desperately searching for a logical tether to keep her from shutting him out entirely.
“I have the encrypted file you dropped in the VIP room,” his voice came through, muffled, impatient, and terribly strained. “You need it for the raid tomorrow. Open the damn door p>
June closed her eyes. It was a perfectly logical excuse. She did need that file.
She unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door two inches.
Cole did not hand her the file. He slammed his heavy boot against the bottom of the door, forcing it wide open, and pushed his massive frame into her room. He turned and locked the deadbolt behind him.
“Get out!” June yelled, her voice rising in panic.
Cole ignored her. He walked to the desk and dropped the file onto the surface. As he reached forward, the movement pulled against the fabric on his back. A sharp, agonizing hiss tore from between his teeth. His entire body locked up, his knees buckling slightly beneath him.
June’s eyes snapped instantly to his back.
The white silk shirt was completely ruined — plastered to his skin by a horrifying mixture of dark red blood and thick yellow plasma. The sickening smell of cooked flesh and the first suggestion of infection fouled the clean air of the hotel room. June’s heart stopped. The sheer, catastrophic severity of the burn registered in her mind with clinical brutality. Third-degree burns covering fifty percent of his back. He would go into hypovolemic shock if he wasn’t treated immediately.
Her hatred for him waged a violent, silent war against her deeply ingrained medical instincts. Then she remembered the boiling soup flying toward her face. She remembered his body shielding hers.