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Houser looked like hell. Tubes and wires snaked from an array of machines to his body. His face was bruised and swollen. Hands swollen and busted up as well. Evidently, he’d put up a fight before going down.
“Ouch,” she offered with a flinch.
He attempted to smile but only managed a wince. “Could’ve been worse. I thought I was a goner for a minute.”
Finley moved to his bedside. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” she confessed. “I should’ve stuck with my initial strategy.”
“You did the right thing, O’Sullivan,” he said, his voice taut. “You can’t—you shouldn’t take on something like this alone. You carried that load all by yourself for too long as it was.”
“You might be one of the few who sees it that way.” The chief hadn’t spoken to her. The Judge had stared at her without saying a word.
“I heard about Quinn,” he said. “He’s gonna be all right, isn’t he?”
“We think so.” She drew in a big breath. “I should get back there and see if there’s an update. I just wanted to see for myself that you’re hanging in there.”
“I’ll survive.” He made a sound that wasn’t a laugh but tried valiantly to reach that level. “The bastard got his, which always makes the pain a little easier to bear.”
Finley summoned a smile for him. “I’ll check in on you again tomorrow.”
She paused at the door and wiggled her fingers at him. He lifted his hand and gave her a salute.
Every ounce of resolve she possessed was required to restrain her emotions as she walked away.
Finley boarded the elevator once more and headed back to the waiting room on the OR floor. If luck was on her side, the Judge and the chief would be gone by now. Her poor father. Finley felt guilty for wishing her mother away, which inevitably meant less time with her father.
If Matt was okay, she could deal with anything else.
Jack, the Judge, and Finley’s father were seated in the waiting room. For the first time in her life Finley looked at the three and wondered how they could be in this room together with all the secrets and pain that stood between them.
Who was she kidding? She was as guilty as any of them.
She’d understood when she decided to work with Jack that she would be on a different side of the aisle in the courtroom. Sometimes she was certain she could do the most good there.
Other times, like now, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe all the good in her was gone.
Her chest squeezed. She no longer knew this person she had become. As much as she loved Jack, even he had crossed certain lines because of her that he never would have crossed before.
They all stared at her now. Maybe because she’d been standing there for about thirty or so seconds without speaking, her gaze fixed on them in the same way theirs were fixed on her now.
She uttered the only thing she could manage: “Any news?”
“He’s in recovery,” her father said.
“The surgery went well,” Jack followed up. “The ruptured spleen has been repaired. He has a grade-three concussion but no skull fractures or other injuries to the brain.”
“Good.” Finley’s legs felt stiff as she made the short journey to the collection of chairs. Then her legs gave out, and she folded into the seat.
She was next to Jack. Her father and the Judge were seated directly across from them, maybe three feet away. Her chest felt tight again.
“Are you all right?”
The question came from the Judge. How was it, Finley wondered, that the Judge’s tone was always the same? Always. Perfectly modulated with no hint of emotion. Finley, on the other hand, wanted to scream with indignation. She wanted to rant at the injustice of it all.
And just like that, all those years of expensive education vanished.
There was no reason in any of this. There damned sure wasn’t any justice.
And no, she wasn’t all right. But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that Matt was in recovery from life-threatening injuries. Houser was a few floors away after having been beaten, shot, and left for dead, but he, too, would survive.
