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“Pictures!” she called out. “But make it quick, please.”

As photographs were taken, she thought, Boy, the Cardiology Department is going to go nuts over this. She’d never seen anything like it before—although the hole torn in the right ventricle was totally familiar. She’d known a lot of them.

“Suture,” she said.

Jacques slapped a pair of grips into her palm, the stainless-steel instrument carrying a curved needle with a black thread clipped onto the end. With her left hand, Jane reached in behind the heart, plugged the back end of the hole with her finger, and stitched the front impact site closed. Next move was to lift the heart out of its pericardial sac and do the same underneath.

Total elapsed time was under six minutes. Then she released the spreader, put the rib cage back where it was supposed to be and used stainless-steel wire to close the two halves of the sternum together. Just as she was about to staple him from his diaphragm to his collarbone, the anesthesiologist spoke up and machines started to beep.

“BP is sixty over forty and falling.”

Jane called out the heart-failure protocol and leaned down to the patient. “Don’t even think about it,” she snapped. “You die on me and I’m going to be really ticked off.”

From out of nowhere, and against all medical rationale, the man’s eyes blinked open and focused on her.

Jane jerked back. Good God…his irises held the colorless splendor of diamonds, shining so bright they reminded her of the winter moon on a cloudless night. And for the first time in her life, she was stunned into immobility. With their locked stares, it was as if they were linked body-to-body, twisted and intertwined, indivisible—

“He’s V-fibbing again,” the anesthesiologist barked.

Jane snapped back to attention.

“You stay with me,” she ordered the patient. “You hear me? You stay with me.”

She could have sworn the guy nodded at her before his lids shut. And she got back to work saving his life.

“You so need to lighten up about that potato-launcher incident,” Butch said.

Phury rolled his eyes and eased back in the banquette. “You broke my window.”

“Of course we did. V and I were aiming for it.”

“Twice.”

“Thus proving that he and I are outstanding marksmen.”

“Next time can you please pick someone else’s…” Phury frowned and lowered the martini from his lips. For no apparent reason, his instincts were suddenly alive, all lit up and ringing like a slot machine. He glanced around the VIP section, looking for some flavor of trouble. “Hey, cop, do you—”

“Something’s not right,” Butch said as he rubbed the center of his chest, then took his thick gold cross out from under his shirt. “What the hell is doing?”

“I don’t know.” Phury ran his stare through the crowd again. Man, it was as if a foul odor had sneaked into the room, coloring the air with something that made your nose want a new job description. And yet there was nothing wrong.

Phury took out his phone and dialed his twin. When Zsadist got on the line, the first thing the brother asked was whether Phury was okay.

“I’m fine, Z, but you’re feeling it, too, huh?”

Across the table, Butch put his cell up to his ear. “Baby? You all right? You okay? Yeah, I don’t know…. Wrath wants to talk to me? Yeah, sure, put him on…. Hey, big man. Yeah. Phury and me. Yeah. No. Rhage is with you? Good. Yeah, I’m calling Vishous next.”

After the cop hung up, he punched a couple of keys and the phone went back to his ear. Butch’s brows came down. “V? Call me. As soon as you get this.”

He ended the call just as Phury got off with Z.

The two of them sat back. Phury fiddled with his drink. Butch played with his cross.

“Maybe he went to his penthouse to work on a female,” Butch said.

“He told me he was going to do that first thing tonight.”

“Okay. So maybe he’s in the middle of a fight.”

“Yeah. He’ll call us right back.”

Although all of the Brotherhood’s phones had GPS chips in them, V’s didn’t work if the phone was on him, so calling back to the