Page 77 of Duty Preserved

There was a long pause and an audible exhale from the other end of the line.

“He’s gone.”

“What? What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean nobody’s seen him since we touched down. He steered clear of all the chaos on board. When we landed, he got off the plane and he left. The hospital hasn’t seen him. I haven’t seen him. He’s just gone.”

I looked at Donovan. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised, the same confusion on his face that I could feel on mine.

Daniel had disappeared while Alyson was in surgery fighting for her life. He didn’t ask about her. Didn’t stay to see how she was. He just left.

“Okay,” I said, because there was nothing else.

Cole’s breath came through the speaker, heavier now. The call was costing him. He was a patient too after all. He probably needed rest.

“I’ll check on her again when I can. If anything changes, I’ll find a phone.”

“Thank you, Cole. I appreciate your calling.”

“Cole. Rest and do what the doctors tell you, brother. Let me know if there’s anything we can do,” Donovan added.

“Will do. Take care of yourself.” A pause. “Both of you.”

The line went dead, and the quiet rushed in.

I stood from the stool, and my legs buckled. Donovan was beside me before I’d finished crumpling. His hand closed around my arm, and he kept me upright while the rest of me caught up.

“She’s alive,” I said.

“She’s alive.”

I said it again, quieter, testing the weight of it. Then the other parts started arriving.

“But she’s not coming back here.”

Donovan didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. His hand moved from my arm to my back and stayed there.

“All the work we were doing here. The research, the animals she was tracking.” I was talking into his chest because I’d ended up against it without deciding to. “It just stops for her. She doesn’t even get to choose.”

“I know.”

“She’s the one who made this place feel like home. Before the work did, before the animals did—she’s always been the one constant thing.” I paused and took a deep breath. “Even when we first met Alyson decided I was her person and I never got a vote.” My forehead found his collarbone. “I don’t know what this place is without her in it.”

He didn’t answer that either. He just held on.

“And Daniel.” I pulled back enough to look at him. “He walked off the plane? She’s in a hospital with her face torn open, and the man she’d been with for over a year just disappeared?”

Donovan’s expression didn’t change.

“How do you do that?” My voice came out unsteady. “How do you just leave someone?”

“I don’t know.”

“She would never have done that to him. If it had been Daniel in that hospital, Alyson would have slept on the floor beside his bed. She would have been the first face he saw every single time he opened his eyes. She would have stayed.”

My voice cracked on the last word. Donovan’s hand pressed harder against my back.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”