“You know the drill,” the nurse said once the door had shut behind Thatch.
I numbly slid from the bed and dropped to my knees, clinging to Mallory’s hand like a lifeline as the nurse came up on the other side of the bed with the machine to get the baby’s heartbeat.
“Well, would you look at that?” she murmured, wonder in her voice as she gave a quick glance at Mallory’s monitor. “I’m not one to give false hope—we’re still deep in the woods, but improvement is improvement. Now, let’s see how your baby is doing.”
Letting my eyelids shut again, I pressed my forehead to mine and Mallory’s joined hands as the nurse searched for the baby’s heartbeat, the same way I had every other time, and mentally recalled thewhoosh whoosh whooshI’d memorized over the night and morning.
A sound I was sure I’d hear with perfect clarity for years to come in a haunting, hopeful way.
And then it was there. Thatwhooshingsound that filled my destroyed soul in an inexplicable way and had the corners of my mouth tugging up before I ever looked at the nurse’s little monitor, because I knew.
It was slight. So, so slight.
But I’d been replaying this sound so much throughout these hours that the change in it might as well have been announced over the hospital’s PA system.
Ten beats faster.
I watched as the nurse continued monitoring the baby, waiting to see if the heart rate would fall back to what it’d been since I’d first come in. But it was still steadily beating at the new pace when she finished a minute later.
“Improvement is improvement,” she repeated with a soft smile.
All I could offer her was a jerky nod and a weak smile as I pushed to my feet and climbed back onto the bed, beside my best friend—my wife. Never faltering in my movements, even when the nurse said, “Your next nurse won’t be as lenient as me when she finds you there. If a doctor comes in...” She let the words trail off.
The look I cast her way said enough.
I still didn’t care.
“Had a feeling,” she mumbled to herself as she went about putting everything up and charting Mallory’s numbers. As she started for the door, she called out the same parting as every other time she’d left, “Press that button if you need me.”
She hadn’t even reached the handle before Evans shoved into the room, nearly barreling her over. After taking the briefest second to make sure she was okay, he stalked past her.
“Excuse me, sir?—”
“I’m staying,” Evans said over the nurse as he grabbed for the chair the nurse had pushed out of the way.
“Sir,” the nurse began again, turning and looking between him and me.
“He’s fine,” I assured her, even as I gave Evans a warning look that he ignored.
The nurse looked like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to attempt to kick Evans out, or if she was tired of putting up with us. With a frustrated glare directed at me, as if she was putting all of this on me, she turned and left.
My attention drifted to where Evans was sitting in the chair Thatch had occupied not long before, looking angrier and more agitated than Briggs usually did. “That’s one way to handle the staff here,” I mumbled.
“Thatch updated me on Monroe’s vitals,” Evans said, ignoring me.
I waited to see if he would add anything. When he didn’t, I informed him, “The baby’s heart rate went up too.”
He gave a firm nod. “Good.”
“You don’t look like any of that’s good.”
His bouncing knee abruptly halted as his dark eyes snapped to me, looking so much like Briggs in that moment, it was eerie. “It is, and yet, nothing about any of this isgood. Also”—he gripped at his chest—“I didn’t serve with y’all. I wasn’t on all those missions, killing terrorists and watching my friends die.So, everything that’s happened in the past year? Seeing Monroe like this? It’s hard. And what does it say about me that I didn’t feel a thing when I carried out my end of it?”
“Nothing,” I told him honestly. “You were doing what was necessary to keep people safe—alive. Killing people weighs heavily on you, and you’ll feel that weight later. But there’s a difference between slaughtering innocent people and taking out people who are intent on harming or killing you or the people around you.”
Evans didn’t respond, just let his stare drift back to Mallory. “It tookthis,” he muttered, his chest pitching and eyelids briefly shutting in twisted amusement. “I’ve done everything to keep Wren from herself all these months, because Briggs demanded it, and she’s done everything to get around me.” Aggravation poured from him as he rubbed at his jaw. “Sneaking out and making me drag her back from whatever mistake she was trying to make that night.
“Even when I explained what was going on with this situation—even when I told her why she needed to stay near me—she slipped away, the way she always does,” he continued in thinly-veiled aggravation. “Nearly making me miss that Davis and another guy were already hiding in her apartment, because I was so frustrated with her for once again refusing to listen to me. She watched me kill two men, and still thought I was exaggerating.”
