Chapter 6 #3
The words climbed the staircase and struck me across the face.
I gripped the railing to keep from swaying.
Not rational. They had brought the diagnosis with them.
They did not even need a doctor. A woman who had survived betrayal and the river automatically became a conveniently insane woman if she intended to say what men did not want to hear.
"Are you her doctor?" Graham asked.
"No, but..."
"Then don't diagnose her. You have the face of an assistant, not the Almighty, although perhaps your employer has confused your settings."
One of the plainclothes men grimaced almost imperceptibly. The uniformed man stiffened.
"We have to insist."
"Insist from outside the gate."
"You are obstructing a search."
"I am preventing an unlawful search of a private residence. Wording matters, Chief."
As I listened, I suddenly understood: Graham was not hiding me like an object.
He was holding a boundary. Between me and them.
Between the living woman upstairs and the machine already grinding my name into meat for the news.
It was so unfamiliar that it hurt almost physically.
They were not arguing over me as property.
They were arguing for my right not to be seized while I was weak.
I raised a hand to my throat because tears were lodged there again, angry, hot, wrong.
Kyle suddenly looked up and saw me.
For one second, his face turned white as a sheet of paper just pulled from a fire.
He did not speak at first. He simply stared.
Our gazes met across the height of the staircase, across the night on the deck, across his silence in the lifeboat.
I could see him remembering: my hands on the gunwale, the little box on the deck, Adrian's order, the word no.
He opened his mouth. I pressed one finger to my lips. Not pleading. Commanding.
Kyle swallowed.
And looked away.
He said nothing.
Perhaps not out of honor. Out of fear. Guilt.
Calculation. But he remained silent. For the first time in the past twenty-four hours, someone from Adrian's world did not betray me immediately.
The deputy chief argued with Graham for several more minutes, then the men left empty-handed.
Kyle was the last to go. He looked back when he reached the door, but I had already stepped into the shadows. The door closed. The foyer fell silent.
"Come down, since you've been eavesdropping anyway," Graham said without turning.
I froze. Andrew gave a quiet snort downstairs.
"Do you have cameras?"
"I have experience. People who survive catastrophes rarely lie still when the police come looking for them."
I descended slowly, holding the railing.
Graham watched me without pity but with careful attention.
On the last step, my legs trembled. Andrew started toward me, but Graham raised one hand, stopping him.
I made it to the chair against the wall by myself and sat down.
Or nearly collapsed, but I pretended it had been a choice.
"You shouldn't have gotten up," Graham said.
"I shouldn't have gotten married. Getting up is insignificant by comparison."
Andrew coughed to hide a smile. Graham looked at me as if, for the first time, he saw not only a drenched victim but something far more inconvenient.
"Your assistant saw you."
"He isn't mine. He's Adrian's."
"All the more reason."
"He kept quiet."
"For now."
I nodded.
"Then we don't have much time."
"We?"
I met his eyes.
"You asked whether I wanted to hide or come out in a way that would make them regret what they did. I've thought about it."
"And?"
"I'll hide only as long as my baby needs me to. And then..."
I faltered because the fury was immense, while words were still human and could not contain it. Graham waited. He did not push. He did not prompt me. And that was precisely why I finished.
"Then I'll take back everything they bought with my silence."
The foyer was quiet. Beyond the windows, the wet day was turning gray.
Far away, near the gates, the cars carrying Adrian's people were pulling off the estate.
Through the trees, the river gleamed like a cold blade, the same blade they had used yesterday to try to cut me away from life.
Graham Lawson rested his hands on the arms of his wheelchair and leaned slightly forward.
"Then we'll begin with your name," he said. "You are no longer Lana Mercer."
My breath caught.
He said it calmly, almost casually, but something inside me shuddered so violently that it felt as though someone had removed a chain from my neck, one I had long ago stopped noticing.
Mercer. A name once given to me like a crown, only for me to discover it was a collar with an engraving.
I ran my palm over my belly and, for the first time all morning, felt not only fear but a strange, fragile point of support.
"Then who am I?" I asked.
Graham looked straight at me.
"The woman they failed to drown."
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, the darkness behind my eyelids held no water.
I saw fire.