The cold glass of the cell phone pressed against my ear felt like a physical lifeline thrown into a freezing, violent ocean. I gripped it so tightly my knuckles ached, my bloody thumb leaving a dark, smeared print across the back of the protective case. The torrential November rain hammered against the windshield of the stolen SUV, a deafening assault that mirrored the absolute chaos tearing my mind apart.
"Helena?"
The name tore out of my throat, wet, broken, and humiliatingly small.
Helena Martins didn't ask how I was. She didn’t offer a soft, pitying greeting. She possessed the sharp, uncompromising instincts of a woman who had spent twenty years running the busiest trauma ward in the city. She dealt with gunshot wounds, shattered femurs, and flatlining patients with a terrifying, ic
