“How long have you worked there?”
Before she could respond, there was a voice demanding to know where Izzy was.
Parker.
Izzy’s legs slid off the table and she stepped forward as he pushed past the nurse and the resident who were trying to keep him out of the secure patient area.
“Parker!” she shouted, and his head snapped toward her.
“Izzy, myGod.” He took three giant steps and crushed her into his arms. He held her so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. But she only noticed that when she touched him, she finally stopped shaking.
When the paramedics had first brought Izzy in and the intake nurse asked her who they could call as next of kin, Parker’s name had slipped out of her mouth. That was telling, wasn’t it?
Maybe there was a way to stop worrying about what might drive them apart, and to focus on what bound them together.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded against him.
“You’re not hurt?” Parker pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. There were dozens of questions written across his features, and he stared into her eyes as if he were trying to find the answers. Or the truth. Maybe they were even, for once, the same.
This was not how—or where—she had thought her day would end. But somehow, it was exactly where she needed to be. “I’m fine,” Izzy said. She took his hand and flattened it against her belly, smiling. “We’refine.”
Suddenly Izzy’s future no longer seemed impossible. It felt like the stamp of a passport when you reached your own country, and realized that the only reason you’d traveled was to remember the feeling of home.
—
WHEN ONE OF THE JUNIORdetectives brought the word that his older sister Bex was out of surgery, Hugh winged a silent thank-you to a God he had long ago stopped believing in. The part of his brain that had been worrying about her could go back to focusing on Wren, who was still in there with a murderer.
First the two women had been released. Then the nurse and the injured abortion doctor.
Hugh had waited. And waited. And…nothing.
He paced the command center from where he had made the call to give the shooter a few more minutes, in the hope he would make good on his promise to releaseallthe hostages. The question was, had he made a bad decision? A fatal one, for Wren?
Captain Quandt approached once again, blocking Hugh’s path. “Okay, I’m done waiting. He released most of them. Now we’re flushing him out.”
“You can’t do that.”
“The hell I can’t,” Quandt said. “I’m in charge, Lieutenant.”
“Only on paper.” Hugh stepped closer, inches away from him. “There’s still a hostage. Goddard doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. You go in there and we both know how this will end.”
What Hugh didn’t say was that it might still end that way. What if George had agreed to release the hostages, planning all along to go back on his word? What if he wanted to go out in a blaze of bullets, and take Wren with him? Was this going to be his ultimate fuck-you to Hugh?
Quandt met his gaze. “We both know you’re too close to this to be thinking clearly.”
Hugh remained immobile, his arms crossed. “That’s exactly why I don’t want you blasting through that goddamn door.”
The commander narrowed his eyes. “I will give him ten more minutes to release your daughter. And then I will do everything in my power to make sure she is safe…but we’re ending this.”
The minute Quandt walked away, Hugh picked up his cellphone and dialed the clinic number, the same one he had been using for hours now to speak to George. It rang and rang and rang.Pick up,Hugh thought. He had not heard any gunshots, but that didn’t mean Wren was safe.
After eighteen rings, he was about to hang up. Then: “Daddy?” Wren said, and he couldn’t help it, his knees just gave out.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, trying to tamp down the emotion in his voice. He remembered when she was a toddler, and she had fallen. If Hugh looked upset, Wren would burst into tears. If he seemed unfazed, she picked herself up and kept going. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yes.”
