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Chay was laughing.

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The sound was weak, but it was laughter.

“You’d better not give me a hard time, either, Lieutenant,” she said, and she kissed him again, her face wet with tears.

Then she dug into Chay’s pocket, found his phone and dialed 911.

Dio, his face was pale! And blood was seeping through the improvised dressing.

Bianca sank down beside Chay, wrapped her arms around him and pressed one hand, hard, against the tourniquet.

“Do not die on me, Chayton Olivieri,” she said. “Do you hear me? You are not, repeat not to die!”

“Wouldn’t…dare,” he whispered.

She laughed. And cried. He lost consciousness, and she held him until the cops and the medics arrived, and even then, they had a hard time getting her to let go of him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chay needed a blood transfusion and what he laughingly referred to as a lot of fancy stitching, but the doctors all agreed that in a couple of days, he would be fine.

Bianca needed little more than a couple of Band-Aids.

Epstein needed lots more than that.

A wired jaw. Three new teeth. Ten stitches over his eyebrow and, as Declan Sanchez joked, Epstein’s prospects at fatherhood were up for grabs.

It turned out that David Epstein was sick.

Very sick.

And he had been sick for a long, long time.

His mother knew it. Her unwillingness to admit he was sick had been the underlying cause of Marilyn Epstein’s divorce. The “blank spaces” Dec had found in David’s background were the times his mother had taken him out of elementary school, out of middle school, out of high school to have him institutionalized.

Somehow, she saw her son’s mental illness as a negative reflection on her as a psychologist. She was ashamed to acknowledge his sickness and she’d managed to use her influence to suppress his medical records.

All of that came out over the next couple of days, while Chay was in the hospital. He hadn’t wanted to stay there, despite the pleading of Bianca and the doctor, but his CO dropped by and gave him a flat command.

“You don’t leave this place until the doctor says you can leave,” James Blake said.

Bianca, who hadn’t been sure whether or not she liked Chay’s captain, decided she liked him a lot.

David was charged with everything the law could come up with. Assault. Attempted murder. Breaking and entering. Stalking. Sexual harassment. Attempted rape. Some of the charges might not hold. All might be set aside if David pleaded to mental incompetence.

Whatever happened, he’d be locked away for a long, long time.

“And,” Bianca told Annie, who’d sat with her in the hospital that first night, “hopefully, he’ll get the treatment he needs.”

She told Chay the same thing the day she drove him home, and Chay shook his head and kissed her and said that it took one hell of an amazing Tigress to show concern for a man who’d tried to kill her.

Lacey phoned in the middle of the week.

The office was buzzing over what had happened. And Dr. Epstein had stepped down as head of East Side Associates. One of the other doctors was taking over. The entire staff was going to have a reorganization meeting Monday morning.

Could Bianca be there?