His phone buzzed on the table.
They both looked at it.Caleb reached for it with obvious reluctance, his other hand still resting on her hip.
"Ronan."He answered."Yeah?"
Harper watched his face.Watched the color drain from his cheeks.Watched his hand drop from her hip and his body go still the way it did when he was processing something that required every part of his attention.
"When?"A pause."How bad?"Another pause, longer."We're on our way."
He ended the call.When he looked at her, the man who'd kissed her thirty seconds ago was gone.The operative was back—eyes flat, jaw set, already calculating routes and contingencies.
"Geri Crane.Someone broke into her house tonight.Beat her badly.She's at the hospital.In surgery."
Harper's legs went numb.She lowered herself onto the arm of the couch and pressed her palm flat against the cushion to steady herself.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that Ronan's calling it in.Bad enough that Graham is already at the hospital."
“Who’s Graham?”
“A colleague.”
The kitchen was still warm from dinner.The plates were still in the sink.His mother's recipe, the red pepper flakes, and the conversation about trust.All of it felt very far away now, separated from this moment by the width of a phone call and the sound of his voice going cold.
"I'm coming with you," Harper said.
"Harper—"
"Don't."She grabbed her jacket off the chair."Don't tell me to stay here where it's safe.There is no safe.There never was."
He looked at her for a long moment.Then he nodded.
"Let's go."
They left the cottage together, the taste of him still on her lips, Geri Crane's blood on someone else's hands.
Chapter 15
The hospital parking lot was half-empty at this hour, and Caleb counted the vehicles as he pulled in.Twelve cars, two trucks, an ambulance idling near the emergency entrance with its rear doors open and its cab dark.No sedan.Whoever had been following them had either peeled off on Hospital Road or was parked somewhere he couldn't see, and both possibilities bothered him equally.
He parked near the main entrance, angled so the car faced the exit, and killed the engine.Force of habit.Always face the way out.
Harper had her hand on the door before he'd pulled the key.
"Wait," he said.
"For what?"
"For me to check the entrance first."
She looked at him.The woman who'd kissed him twenty minutes ago was still there—he could see her in the softness around her mouth, the way her eyes held his for a beat longer than necessary.But the journalist had taken over, and the journalist didn't wait for clearance.
"I'll be right behind you," she said, and got out of the car.
He caught up to her at the automatic doors.She didn't slow down.He matched her pace and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that she didn't already know.They were walking into a hospital where a woman had been brought because of them—because of the questions they'd asked, the documents they'd collected, the story they'd built on a kitchen table.Whatever was waiting inside those doors was their responsibility.
The emergency waitingroom was fluorescent-bright and mostly empty.A woman with a sleeping toddler on her lap sat in the corner, her head tipped back against the wall.A man in paint-spattered jeans held a rag against his hand and stared at the muted television.The local news anchor mouthed words nobody was listening to.
