Clara sure as fuck did.
So I hoped.
Hoped that that was enough.
Finn arrived in the middle of the night.
The chief of police didn’t need to abide by visiting hours.
I barely glanced at him as he stood at the other side of the bed. He was silent for a handful of moments, watching Hannah.
“She’ll make it through,” he said to himself, maybe to me.
I didn’t reply.
“I’d put out a BOLO for Waylon’s plates.” Finn sounded tired. He had no idea… “I pulled every string I could so I could track his movements. I’d been driving around town searching for his truck all morning until I saw it at the park.”
His voice was wracked with guilt. A good man wouldn’t pile on him.
I wasn’t a good man.
“And yet he managed to follow her,” I grumbled, my eyes never leaving Hannah’s face. “He still managed to stand in front of Hannah and my daughter. He managed toshoot Hannah in the chestafter she refused to let him have Clara.”
Clara had recounted the story in between sobs, telling me that if she’d gone with the “bad man” Hannah would’ve been okay.
Clara was blaming herself. My daughter. My five-year-old daughter not only witnessed Hannah get shot but blamed herself for it.
“She protected my daughter with her body,” I spoke quietly, staring at the monitors, the one telling me Hannah’s heart was still beating.
“Brother—”
“She used herself as a HUMAN SHIELD for my daughter!” Hannah would’ve jumped at the sound of my yell if she weren’t in an induced fucking coma.
Since learning about her past, what she’d gone through, and punishing myself every day for unknowingly activating triggers, I hadn’t raised my voice with her. Tried to ensure I didn’t do anything that would make loud, sudden movements. Never in my life did I want Hannah to flinch with fear as a result of something I did.
But she didn’t move a muscle. Nothing.
She was as still as death.
I eyed the monitor again.
Her heart was still beating.
I took a steadying breath, clutching Hannah’s small hand in mine to anchor me to that moment. My mind kept ripping me back to the park. My terrified daughter. Hannah. Covered in blood. The life leaving her eyes.
I ran my fingers over her bare skin. Cleaned now. No blood.
“Thank you,” I told Finn quietly. “Even if you didn’t kill him.”
I wished the man who did this was no longer drawing breath. Wished that I could be the one to watch him take his last gulp of air. But I was a father. I had my child and Hannah to protect before I tried to seek vengeance.
“He’s behind bars,” Finn told me. “He’ll stay there. For life.”
I nodded. That’s all I could do. I shouldn’t have been wishing for his death right then. Life in prison was enough.
Hannah’s life was all I wanted.
thirty-two
