Chapter 55 Wyatt
Wyatt
The sky is almost aggressively blue when we pull into the hospital parking lot—LA after a storm, scrubbed clean, like the night’s violence never happened.
Tatiana disappeared just as cleanly. One moment she was zip-tying an assassin in the rain; the next she was gone, slipping away before anyone thought to ask where she was going. No goodbye, no forwarding address. Just gone with the clouds.
Inside, the surgical waiting room smells like industrial cleaner and stale coffee.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Arturo is pacing by the window when we arrive, Rafael sitting rigid in a chair against the far wall.
They’ve been here longer than us. The helicopter took thirty minutes while we spent over an hour navigating canyon routes that weren’t washed out.
Arturo looks up when we enter. His face is gray, exhaustion carved into every line, but his eyes are sharp. They soften slightly when they land on Nina, then harden again as they move to Chris and me. Taking our measure. Deciding how much to trust us with his partner’s life hanging in the balance.
“Any word?” Nina asks.
“Nothing yet.” His voice is hoarse. “They said it could be several more hours.”
We settle in to wait. Chris takes a chair near the door, angled so he can see both exits.
I sit beside him. Nina crosses to where Arturo has resumed his pacing and touches his arm, murmuring something I can’t hear.
Whatever she says, his shoulders drop half an inch.
He stops pacing. She guides him to a chair and sits beside him, her hand resting on his forearm—grounding him the way she grounds all of us.
I watch her work. There’s no performance in it, no calculation. Just Nina, doing what she does: seeing someone in pain and refusing to let them carry it alone.
Rafael is in a chair against the far wall, elbows on his knees, staring at his clasped hands. Someone put butterfly bandages on the gash at his temple, but dried blood still crusts the edge of his hairline.
The minutes crawl by. An hour. Two.
At some point, Arturo rises from the chair Nina guided him to and crosses to sit beside Rafael. The younger man tenses, but doesn’t move away.
“Your mother,” Arturo says quietly. “How is Selena?”
Rafael’s jaw tightens. “She’s well. Building her empire.”
“She always was ambitious.” Arturo’s voice goes wistful. “Lola used to say her little sister would own half of Mexico someday.”
Selena. Lola’s sister. The pieces start clicking into place—Prieto Resorts in Cancún, tangential to the Amador Cartel but never quite connected. The family always looked clean. Now I’m wondering how much of that was intentional.
“Did you know?” Rafael asks. His voice is low, controlled. “About me. All this time.”
Arturo doesn’t answer immediately. His jaw works, and I can see him weighing his words.
“This isn’t the place,” he says finally. “When we know he’s going to be okay—when we’re not sitting in a hospital waiting to find out if he lives or dies—we’ll talk. All of us. But not here.”
Rafael holds his gaze for a beat, then nods once. Goes back to studying his hands. His posture has shifted. Less rigid, maybe. Like he’s found an unexpected ally in this room full of strangers.
Arturo squeezes Rafael’s shoulder once, but he can’t sit still. His knee starts bouncing, then his fingers tap against his thigh. After a few minutes he pushes to his feet again and starts pacing by the window, the restless movement of a man who needs somewhere to put his fear.
The waiting continues.
The surgeon finds us just before noon.
She’s a tired-looking woman in her fifties, scrub cap still on, reading glasses pushed up over the edge of her cap. She scans the room: Arturo frozen mid-pace, Rafael half out of his chair, the rest of us rising to our feet.
“Family of Vicente Amador?”
“I’m his partner.” Arturo’s voice is rough. “How is he?”
“He’s out of surgery. Stable.” She consults her tablet. “The bullet missed his heart, but there was significant blood loss and some damage to the surrounding tissue. We’ve repaired what we could. He’s being moved to recovery now.”
Arturo’s shoulders drop. Rafael sinks back into his chair, one hand pressed to his mouth.
“Prognosis?” I ask.
“Cautiously optimistic. The next twenty-four hours will tell us more, but barring complications, I expect a full recovery. Several weeks of healing, physical therapy, restricted activity.” She glances at Arturo. “He’s a lucky man. One inch lower and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Lucky. That’s one word for it.
“When can we see him?” Arturo asks.
“He’ll be in recovery for the next few hours, then we’ll move him to the ICU for observation. Once he’s settled there, immediate family can visit. I’ll have someone come get you.” Her eyes move to Rafael. “You’re family?”
“His son.”
She nods and makes a note on her tablet. “I’ll make sure you’re both on the list. The rest of you are welcome to wait in the ICU family area—it’s more comfortable.”
She moves on to her next crisis. The weight that’s been pressing on my chest since the helicopter lifted off eases slightly.
Chris still hasn’t said anything. He’s been silent since we left the safe house, locked somewhere inside his own head.
“Hey.” I touch his shoulder. “You hear that? He’s going to make it.”
Chris nods once, a mechanical movement. His eyes are somewhere else—maybe in that study, watching Vicente’s chest bloom red. Maybe further back than that.
“Let’s go find the ICU waiting area,” Nina says quietly. “We can figure out the rest from there.”
The ICU family waiting area is marginally better than surgical.
Newer chairs, softer lighting, a coffee machine that actually works.
Lucia’s already here, having arrived separately to coordinate with hospital security and agency personnel.
She gives us a brief nod when we enter, then goes back to her phone.
A nurse comes for Arturo and Rafael a few hours later. “He’s been moved to the ICU,” she says. “He’s awake. Groggy, but asking for you.”
Arturo is through the door before she finishes speaking. Rafael follows more slowly, uncertainty in every step. If Vicente was unconscious for the helicopter ride, this will be the first time his father actually sees him.
The door closes behind them. We settle in to wait again.
I’m halfway through a cup of bad coffee when the elevator opens and Callie steps out.
She looks tired. She probably had a long night at work herself, given what the storm did to the roads. But she’s here. Mason’s behind her, a duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Oh, honey.” Callie crosses to Nina first, pulling her into a hug. “You sounded awful on the phone. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Nina sinks into the embrace for a moment—really sinks, her whole body going soft in a way it hasn’t since before the shooting. I watch her shoulders tremble once before she pulls it together and steps back. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Of course I did. Mason was going to pack you all matching cargo shorts.” She shoots her husband a look. “I intervened.”
Mason shrugs, unrepentant, and hands over the duffel. Inside: sweats for me and Chris, yoga pants and a soft sweater for Nina, toiletries, protein bars, phone chargers. All practical. All exactly what we need.
“Thank you.” Nina’s voice cracks on the second word. She clears her throat, tries again. “Really.”
“There’s a bathroom down the hall. Go clean up, all three of you.” Callie’s tone softens. “I’ll be here when you get back. And I can check in with the nurses, see if there’s any update on his status.”
“Callie—”
“Go. You smell like a storm drain and you look worse.”
She heads toward the nurses’ station to ask about updates. Mason watches her go with something like resignation.
“She’s been like this the whole drive up,” he says. “Couldn’t talk her out of coming.”
“Would you have tried?” I ask.
“No.” He studies my face for a moment. “You okay?”
It’s a loaded question. I don’t have a simple answer.
“Getting there.”
He nods, accepting that.
Chris and I wash up at adjacent sinks, scrubbing dried mud and worse off our hands with paper towels and hospital soap.
“He apologized,” Chris says quietly. “Vicente. Right before the window blew.”
I know. I was there. But I don’t say that—Chris needs to process this out loud, and I know how to listen.
“I didn’t even know I needed to hear it.” He shakes his head. “And now I don’t know what to do with it.”
I turn off the faucet, grab a paper towel.
“You buried it. That’s what men do. We’re conditioned to shove it down and keep moving, tell ourselves we’re fine, we’re past it.
And then something cracks the lid and all that shit comes flooding back, and we don’t have the tools to deal with it because we were never supposed to need them. ”
Chris glances at me. “That something Nina told you?”
“No. I started out in social work, actually. Right out of college. Worked with homeless veterans for a few years before I went into law enforcement.” I toss the paper towel in the trash.
“Saw it all the time. Men who’d buried so much they didn’t even know what they were carrying anymore.
My stepdad was the same way—career Army, two tours in Desert Storm, never talked about any of it. ”
Chris is looking at me differently now. Reassessing. “I always assumed you were ex-military.”
“Just adjacent to it. Grew up on bases, but I never enlisted.” I shrug. “Figured I could do more good from the outside.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “We don’t really do this, do we? Talk about the shit that matters.”
“No. We don’t.”
“Maybe we should.”
“Maybe.”