Page 117 of Unlocked

He didn't get up.

Archer stood over him for half a second and then turned.

Tatum was on the ground.

She was on the ground and she wasn't moving, and the world, which had been operating at its usual pace up until that moment, did something it had never done before in Archer's experience. It stopped.

He crossed to her in three steps and crouched down and got his hands on her face, relieved to find she was breathing, she was breathing, but her eyes were wrong, half-open and unfocused, and there was blood at the back of her head where it must have connected with the concrete edge of the curb when she fell.

"Tatum." His voice came out differently than he'd ever heard it. His normally frigid tone had careened out of control. "Tatum! Look at me!"

Her eyes moved toward his face. Slowly. With visible effort.

"There you are," he said. "Stay with me. Look at me."

"Archer." Her voice was barely there. A thread of sound. "I was trying to get to the stairwell."

"I know," he said. "I know you were."

"Did you get him?"

"Yes."

She made a sound that might have been relief or might have been something else. Her eyes were trying to close. He kept one hand on her face, tilting it gently toward him, and with the other, he reached for his phone.

"Don't go to sleep," he said. "Tatum! Stay with me."

"I'm tired," she said.

"I know. I need you to stay awake for a few more minutes."

He dialed. Not Ryker. Not the Society's medical center. He dialed 911 and gave the address and the nature of the injury, and stayed on long enough to confirm they were coming and then dropped the phone beside him and put both hands back on her.

She was looking at him. The effort cost her something, but she was doing it anyway, which was so completely her that it hit him somewhere he didn't have a name for.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hey," he said.

"You came."

"Of course I came."

"I didn't think—" She stopped. Her eyes went somewhere else for a moment and then came back. "I found something. In my mother's office. Thistledew…” her voice petered out.

"Okay.” He filed it away in the part of his mind that was still operating and focused on her face. "We'll deal with it. You don't have to think about it right now."

"You have to know before—" She stopped again.

"Before what?"

She looked at him. Her eyes were clearer for a moment than they'd been since he crouched down, and the clarity of them did something to him that he was going to carry for the rest of his life, regardless of how long or short that turned out to be.

"I love you," she said. Simply. Without preamble or qualification. The way she said everything when she was being really honest, which was the way she was when she was too tired to be anything else.

The garage was quiet around them. The ventilation system hummed somewhere above. Josh was on the ground eight feet away, not moving, and none of that mattered.

"I love you," Archer said. He said it the way he said things he meant completely, without decoration. "I should have said it sooner. I'm sorry I didn't."