Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
The ceiling above her was too bright. Not glaring, but white, steady, unnatural. It hummed with power like a thing that had never known rest. The bed beneath her was soft and still. The air felt too clean.
She blinked. Her mouth was dry. Her arms ached. Her heart… didn’t know what to do.
She turned her head. And there he was.
Tuck Hanlon was sitting just to her right, in a chair pulled close to the bed, still as a statue except for the way his fingers laced and unlaced slowly.
He was dressed in clean black scrubs. His black HOKA shoes looked like they hadn’t moved in hours.
His face was worn out, stubble sharp along his jaw, eyes darker than usual. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept.
“Tuck,” she croaked.
His head lifted, and his eyes met hers. And for a moment, just a second, the worry in them dropped away. “You’re awake.” His voice was low and soft at the edges. He pressed some damp rolled gauze to her dry lips.
Claire tried to sit up.
“Nope,” he said quickly, reaching to keep her shoulders down. “Don’t do that. You need to stay still a little longer.”
Her fingers fisted the blanket. “Where is he?”
Tuck didn’t need her to explain who. “ICU. Still with us. It’s bad. But he’s hangin’ on.”
Claire shut her eyes for a second. Just to breathe. Just to stay clear in her own head. “What happened?” she asked. “After I… after I dropped?”
Tuck leaned back a little. “You scared the hell outta all of us.” He continued, slower now, “You had a good rest. You slept for a day. We ran some tests.” His Texas drawl slipped in, faint but unmistakable. “Your body was runnin’ on fumes. Dehydration, exhaustion, stress, shock.”
Claire exhaled. “That’s all?”
Tuck hesitated, then he shook his head once. “No, darlin’,” he said gently. “That ain’t all.”
She looked at him. “The tests, before…?”
“You’re pregnant, Claire.”
Time stopped.
“You’re eight weeks along.”
She didn’t move. Her hands, still wrapped in the blanket, twitched once. Her eyes searched his face like he might be lying. But Tuck Hanlon didn’t lie.
Eight weeks. She hadn’t thought about it until he checked on her in the executive suite. Hadn’t even guessed. She had barely eaten and barely slept. She couldn’t remember the last time she even counted days. She felt the pressure in her chest before she even knew what it was. Her breath caught.
Reid. Reid in the ICU. Unconscious. His life tied to machines. And now this.
A life inside her. Unprotected. Unknown. Unprepared for this world.
She shook her head once, twice. “I… I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t even know. I’m not...”
“I know,” Tuck cut her off gently. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” her voice cracked. “He might not… He might not come back.”
Tuck’s hand came over hers. Warm. Still. Unshakable. “We’re not givin’ up on him. Not now.”
Claire didn’t cry, but the terror settled in deep. This time, she had more than herself to lose. She gripped the gauze Tuck handed her too tightly and looked down at the blanket drawn over her legs. It didn’t feel like part of her. None of this did.
She sat in the silence for a moment longer. “You knew.”
Tuck’s eyes lifted to hers. He didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“You ran the test before Reid was hurt,” she said.
“I did.”
Claire’s breath hitched. “But you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t see the result until Reid was out of surgery,” Tuck said.
Her mouth twitched sadly. “I found the file when I was trying to find the breach. I didn’t open it. I think I already knew.”
She looked away, eyes burning again. “There were so many things I meant to tell him. I thought I had more time.”
Tuck didn’t speak. He just let her have the space.
Claire’s hands flexed beneath the blanket. “I need to see him.”
Tuck hesitated.
“Please.” Her voice cracked, but her gaze didn’t. “I won’t touch him. I just… I need to be there.”
He nodded slowly. “Alright.”
Claire started to shift, pushing herself upright.
Tuck reached out to steady her, firm but careful. “Easy. Let me help. Foley’ll lose his mind if I let you faint again.”
She gave the barest breath of a laugh. “You’ll catch me.”
Tuck smiled faintly. “Every damn time.”
ICU ROOM 12 – 1347 HOURS
The ventilator hissed, paused, then hissed again. Perfect rhythm. Perfect pressure.
But it wasn’t a breath.
Reid Hanlon lay motionless beneath two layers of sterile blankets, skin pale under the overhead lights.
Tubes traced from his swollen arms, chest, and skull.
A drainage line curled from the burr site behind his left ear and another from behind his right.
The brain swelling was under control. The pressure line was flat.
A bag filled with scant red-brown urine hung by a hook near the bottom of the bed.
His heartbeat rolled in steady blips across the monitor. Stable. Steady.
Pete Walter stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed, chart resting on a bedside table. He hadn’t looked at it in ten minutes. He just watched Reid. The last time he saw him like this—flat, unconscious, skin white as cotton—was when he was twenty-four years old.
Tuck had called in the middle of the night.
Said it was a wreck. Said Reid was alive but shattered.
Pete was in the ER when the chopper landed.
And he stayed. Every hour. Through the surgery—because Tuck wasn’t just a teammate or a Chase asset.
This was Tuck’s nephew. This was the kid he’d helped raise.
He looked at Reid now and felt the same mix of rage and fear he had back then, like the world had no right to come this close to taking him.
“You weren’t supposed to land on my table again, kid,” Pete muttered.
“You were supposed to outgrow all this. Smarter than all of us. Better shot, cleaner instincts. Hell, you were supposed to be bulletproof by now.”
The monitor beeped again. Steady. Stronger than it was ten hours ago.
Pete exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “You think this is easier for Tuck the second time around?” he asked the room. “You think watching you break open on that table again didn’t crack something in him?”
No response. Just the steady whoosh of machine-breathed air.
Pete stepped closer. “You were eleven when your dad died,” he said. “You remember that? You probably do. You curled up in Tuck’s bed for weeks. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t eat unless your mom made it.”
He swallowed. “You’re still that kid to me. I don’t care how many field stripes you’ve earned. You’ve got more bravery than most men I know, but you’re still that quiet, sharp-eyed kid who learned how to pack a go bag before he could drive.”
A long silence stretched across the room.
Pete didn’t expect an answer, but part of him still hoped for one. He shifted as he heard wheels approaching in the hall.
Pete gave one last look at Reid then reached out, smoothed the blanket again, and stepped back. “You hang on, Hanlon,” he said. “You’ve got someone coming to see you.”
The room was cold, not by temperature but by the way Reid lay beneath too many wires and sterile blankets, his body unnaturally still. His face looked smaller somehow. Younger. Like something had drained out of him and not come back yet.
The machines kept ticking like they knew what life sounded like. But they didn’t.
Claire didn’t speak for a long time. She just watched him. Breathed him in, even though he smelled like disinfectant and adhesive and blood that had long dried.
She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out something small and heavy. His compass. The brass was worn smooth along the edges, dull now, the chain thin and knotted near the clasp. She rubbed her thumb across the casing, slow and steady.
“Tuck gave this to you when you were nine,” she said quietly. “You told me once.”
Tuck didn’t respond. He stood just behind her, silent, letting her talk.
“You carried it everywhere, slept with it.” Her voice wavered. “Your dad died two years later. You told me you didn’t stop carrying the compass that day. You carried it in Africa when you almost lost your leg. And later when your mom died.”
She teared up. “You told me it was in your pocket the day I was shot. And Apex found it in your pocket, when… He couldn’t salvage the pouch because it was soaked in your blood.”
She ran her thumb over the top again. The initials were still carved there. G.H. for his grandfather Gabriel. T.H. for Tuck and R.H. for Reid. She didn’t open it yet.
She looked at him, at the face that could argue a strategy out of nothing and talk a child off a ledge with the same damn voice. “You never told me who you grieved for. Not really. Not your dad. Not your mom. Not the things they left behind. You just… kept moving.”
Claire leaned forward, heart aching. Her fingers tightened around the compass. “I’m not moving without you.” She opened the lid with a soft snap. The needle spun wildly once, then slowed and pointed north.
“I’m right here,” she whispered. “You find your way back. You follow this, and you’ll find me.”
The ventilator hissed beside her. Steady and unchanged. But something about the air felt different now, as if somewhere, he was listening.