Page 81 of Deacon

Deacon looked from him to Priest, apparently incapable of leaving a charged moment alone. “Come meet your nephew, dumbass.” The man stepped closer, and Deacon transferred Little Jax into his arms with surprising care. The second the baby settled against him, he exhaled a breath that sounded almost painful. “He’s tiny.”

Blue watched him for a moment, then looked at me. I nodded once. “His middle name is Ace,” she said softly.

His head came up. “What?”

“Jackson Ace Adams.” Blue smiled at him. “You saved us.”

For one unguarded second, Priest’s brother had no words at all.

A woman appeared behind him before the silence could stretch much longer. Her expression darkened the instant she saw who was holding the baby.

“You.”

He kept his eyes on Jackson as a slow smile appeared. “Hello, Agent Miranda.”

“Not my name,” she snapped, entering with the exhausted fury of someone who had already argued with him too many times. “And you were explicitly told to go back to Fallen Harbor.”

He glanced toward Priest. “Counterpoint, there’s a baby. Don’t I look good with a baby in my arms?”

Blue started laughing hard enough to clutch the bed rail.

Priest shook his head as he passed the woman. “Good luck. You’re still gonna need it.”

Her glare suggested she knew exactly how much.

The room stayed warm a little longer. Jackson eventually went back to Blue, Evan continued talking to him like they had private business to discuss, and the Saints lingered around their newest family member. Ledger stayed farther back, grief hollowing his face, but he had come. For that day, showing up was enough.

Eventually the nurse reclaimed her room and cleared most of us out.

I stayed close to Blue, listening to Jackson’s tiny sleepy sounds and watching Priest keep some part of himself touching either his woman or his son. Grief still waited in the hallway, along with questions none of us were ready to answer.

Inside the room, life had won something back.

22

Lila

Administration released Evan and me before I committed a felony by exactly one condescending sentence. The meeting kept replaying in polished phrases meant to make our panic sound like misconduct: concern for protocol, broken chain of command, failure to return to our posts during lockdown, emotional fitness under review. Every carefully neutral expression across that table had made me want to say something increasingly unemployable.

Beside me, Evan threw both hands up. “I would like it noted for the record that if a pregnant emergency physician is abducted off hospital property and my response is apparently still not emotionally professional enough for management, then perhaps management can kiss my entire ass.” A nurse passing with a clipboard gave him a startled look, and Evan flashed her a bright smile. “Not you, sweetie. You seem lovely.” She immediately picked up her pace.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and kept moving. My temples pounded, my shoulders felt bolted into place, Evan caught up with me, outrage still tight in every line of him. “I’m sorry, but no. We were supposed to hear that Blue was taken from the parking lot, smile politely, and stay downstairs charting? Is that what they wanted? Should I have color-coded my panic for them?”

The elevator still hadn’t arrived, and my nerves were too raw for him to keep going without cracking something loose. “Stop before you make me laugh.”

He didn’t smile. The meeting had left him just as angry as it had me. “I’m not trying to make you laugh. I’m trying to make myself less likely to key a hospital administrator’s car.”

I pressed the call button again, mostly because my hands needed somewhere to put the frustration. “That is not helping.”

“It’s helping me.” The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth was the only sign he was teasing.

The elevator doors closed, and some of the brittle tension holding me upright finally gave way. I stared at our reflections in the doors. “I hate that they’re not completely wrong.”

Evan’s face twisted. “I refuse to participate in that sentence.”

“We didn’t return to our posts. We stayed in Deacon’s room.”

“Yes, because we were worried about Blue and wanted to be where we’d hear something first, like human beings with souls.”