Page 318 of Wicked Brutal

“I’m here.”

“I don’t want our baby to die.”

His face crumples. “No.”

“I can’t lose our baby too.”

“You won’t.”

“I can’t. I can’t lose anybody else.”

He cups my face. “You have me.”

My vision darkens. “Ryan!”

“I’m right here.”

“Don’t let go.”

“Never.” I squeeze Mom’s hand. Or I think I do. “All three.”

Then everything goes black.

Ican find things. People. Money. Accounts. Properties. Companies that technically don’t exist, owned by other companies that technically don’t exist. Give me a name and enough time, and I’ll find every secret attached to it.

I found men who’d spent decades making sure nobody could. I found girls they thought everyone had forgotten. I found payments buried under shell companies and favors disguised as gifts. I found enough pieces to help Arthur build something federal agents could finally touch.

I know how to dig. I know how to plan. I know how to take a problem apart until I understand every piece of it.

I don’t know how to make an ultrasound tech tell me whether our baby is alive.

“Do you see them?” The tech doesn’t answer. Her eyes stay on the screen. The wand moves slowly over Ally’s stomach. Click. Pause. Move. Click. I hate every second of it. “Is there a heartbeat?”

“Ryan.” Ally’s voice is barely a whisper.

I look at her. She’s staring at the ceiling. Not the monitor. She hasn’t looked at the monitor once.

The hospital gown makes her look smaller somehow. Her face is pale beneath the bruising the girls covered with makeup this morning — most of it came off when they cleaned her up, leaving the ugly color underneath. Her split lip is swollen again. There are fingerprints on both arms. Victor’s over Roman’s. New bruises over old ones. I can’t look at them. I can’t stop looking at them.

Her legs are clean now. The blood is gone. Hers. Jane’s. Both. I don’t know. They took her uniform. Bagged it. Evidence. Her mother’s blood and her own soaked into the same skirt, and somebody put it in a plastic bag and wrote a number on it. My jeans weren’t important enough to take, so I’m still wearing them. There’s dried blood across my knees. I don’t know whose that is either.

Mom sits on the other side of the bed, holding Ally’s hand between both of hers. Darla stands near the foot of it. Nobody’s made her sit down. I don’t think anyone could.

The tech moves the wand again. Click. Measure. Nothing. “Can you please tell us if there’s a heartbeat?”

Her expression barely changes. “I need to complete the ultrasound.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Ryan,” Ally whispers.

I don’t look away from the tech. “Is our baby alive?”

“I need to finish the scan.”

“She watched her mother die less than two hours ago.”

“Ryan.” Mom this time.