The sound makes me jump. For a second, I can’t even move. My eyes fix on the screen, half terrified, half hopeful.
Unknown Number.
My first thought is that it could be him. My second is that if it isn’t, I don’t want to know who it is. I hesitate long enough for the phone to nearly stop ringing before I swipe to answer.
“Hello?”
There’s a short pause, then a man’s voice, steady but unfamiliar. “Hello, is this Eve Crawford?”
“Yes,” I say cautiously.
“My name’s Will Harper. I’m a friend of Aaron’s.”
For a moment, everything inside me stills. “Oh. Right. Yes, of course. Hi.”
“I got your number from Jon,” he says carefully. “Jon spoke to Hunter at Morton Hall, and Hunter passed it along to me.”
Something cold twists in my stomach. My mind leaps ahead before I can stop it. “Why? What’s happened? Is Aaron all right?”
There’s a pause—just long enough to confirm what I already know.
“His team was caught in an incident,” Will says, his voice measured but tight. “An IED went off near their convoy.”
I press a hand to my mouth. The room tilts slightly, the edges blurring.
“It took a lot of coordination to get him out,” he goes on quietly. “There was chaos, a lot of negotiation, but we managed to move him across the border into Turkey. That’s why I’m only calling now. I needed to make sure he was safe first.”
My throat feels dry. The words scrape out of me. “Is he… is he okay?”
Will exhales, and that sound alone tells me the answer.
“He’s alive,” he says. “But he’s in a coma. They airlifted him to London yesterday. He’s at St Thomas’.”
For a moment I can’t speak. The words don’t fit in my head—alive and coma colliding until neither makes sense.
“I thought you’d want to know,” he says softly.
I nod, though he can’t see it. “Thank you,” I manage, my voice barely there.
When the call ends, I realise I’m still sitting perfectly still, the phone pressed to my ear, as if moving might make it true. I’m not sure I even breathe.
Then, slowly, I save Will’s number. I type it wrong twice before I manage to get it right. The thought of losing it—of losing that one thin thread of connection to Aaron—is unbearable.
Once it’s saved, I just stare at my contacts list. I scroll aimlessly, like the right name might tell me what to do. Tears sting behind my eyes, my heartbeat loud enough to hear.
Before I can overthink it, I tapJennifer.
The phone rings once, twice. She answers on the third. “Eve?” Her voice is bright, surprised. “Everything okay? You never call.”
Something in me cracks at that.
“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”
There’s a pause. “What’s happened?”
And that’s when it all comes out—the call, the incident, the coma, the hospital. The words trip over each other, uneven and desperate. I try to stay calm, but somewhere in the middle of it my voice breaks, tears streaming over my cheeks.
Jennifer goes quiet, just listening. I can hear her breathing on the other end, steady and present.
