27. Evie
Evie
Gabriel’s eyes lose me.
One second they are fixed on my face—one blue, one green, terrified but there. The next, they’re empty.
“Gabe?” His body goes slack beneath my hands. “No.”
I press my fingers to the side of his throat. Nothing.
I move them, searching again because I must be wrong. Because a pulse cannot simply disappear beneath my fingertips. Because his chest was rising a second ago.
“Ethan.”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
Ethan is beside me instantly. His fingers replace mine at Gabriel’s neck. His face changes. “Cardiac arrest.”
My world shatters into before and after.
“Start compressions,” somebody says.
Maybe Ethan. Maybe me.
I put both hands over Gabriel’s chest.
Ethan catches my wrists. “I’ve got him.”
“I can do it.”
“I know. Move to his head and keep talking to him.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“You’re not leaving. Move.”
His voice cuts through the panic. I scramble around Gabriel’s shoulder and cup his face in both hands while Ethan locks his palms over Gabriel’s sternum.
The first compression drives Gabriel’s body into the ground. The second jerks his shoulders.
“Come on,” Ethan says through clenched teeth.
He counts. Fast. Precise.
My mind refuses the sight of it. Gabriel flat on his back in the dirt. His face too still. Ethan’s hands forcing his heart to do what it has forgotten.
“I’m here,” I tell him. My voice shakes so badly the words break apart. “I’m right here. You hear me?”
The helicopter lands hard behind us.
Rotor wash tears across the field, flattening the grass and whipping my hair into my eyes. The pilot’s door opens before the blades have slowed, and Jacob jumps out.
He runs toward us. I have never seen the old man move that fast.
“What happened?”
“Taser,” Ethan says without breaking rhythm. “He arrested.”
Jacob looks down at his son and freezes. Recognition hits him first. Then terror. Then something older.
Then he drops to his knees. “Let me.”
Ethan looks up. “I’m trained.”
“So am I.” Jacob’s voice leaves no room for argument.
Ethan shifts aside, already reaching for the medical kit one of the veterans has thrown down beside us.
Jacob stacks both hands over Gabriel’s chest. Then he begins. Hard. Fast. His whole body behind every compression.
“Come on,” he says. Push. “Come on, son.” Push.
The word tears through me.
Son.
Jacob says it like it has been waiting thirty years to come out.
“Don’t you do this.” Push. “Not now.” Push. “Not before I get the chance to tell you how sorry I am.”
His voice breaks. Tears run unchecked down his face, but his hands never stop.
I bend over Gabriel and press my forehead to his. “You promised.”
Jacob keeps his rhythm.
My tears fall onto Gabriel’s face. “You put your hand on our daughter and promised you’d always choose me. Choose us. Stay. Please.”
Ethan tears open the defibrillator pads and presses them to Gabriel’s chest.
“Clear.”
Jacob lifts his hands.
The shock jerks Gabriel’s body off the ground.
Nothing.
The machine begins analyzing again.
No pulse.
Jacob goes straight back to compressions. “Come on, son.” His voice is wrecked now. “Come back to me.”
Federal sirens rise beyond the ridge. Men shout orders across the runway. Somewhere behind us, Alexander’s plane engine cuts out. I hear weapons hitting the ground. I hear someone yelling for Falcon to stop resisting.
None of it means anything.
The whole world is Gabriel’s still face. Jacob’s hands. Ethan watching the monitor. Our daughter moving beneath my ribs as though she knows something is wrong.
I take Gabriel’s hand and press it against my stomach. “Feel her,” I beg him. “She’s here. We’re both here.”
The monitor chirps.
Ethan looks at it.
“Clear.”
Jacob pulls back again.
Another shock.
Gabriel’s body arches.
For one endless second, nothing changes.
Then the monitor gives a single beat.
Another. Uneven. Fragile.
But there.
Ethan’s hand goes to Gabriel’s throat. “I’ve got a pulse.”
The words don’t make sense.
I stare at him. “What?”
“I’ve got a pulse.”
Jacob’s hands remain suspended over Gabriel’s chest. He looks afraid to touch him. Afraid the beat might vanish if he moves.
Gabriel drags in a ragged breath. The sound is awful. And the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
His eyelids flutter.
“Gabe?”
One blue eye opens. Then the green. Unfocused at first. Rolling. Searching.
The first face he finds is Jacob’s.
The two of them stare at each other.
Father and son.
Thirty years of looking away ending here in the dirt, with Jacob’s hands still shaking over the heart he forced back into rhythm.
“Dad,” Gabriel rasps.
Jacob makes a sound that breaks me clean through. He bows over him, one hand going to the side of Gabriel’s face. “I’m here. I’m right here, son.”
Then Gabriel’s eyes move. Find me.
“There you are,” I whisper.
His mouth shifts weakly. “Still here.”
I laugh and sob at the same time. “You absolute idiot.”
His fingers twitch against my stomach. Our daughter moves beneath his palm.
His eyes close briefly. “There’s my girl. Both my girls.”
Then the paramedics reach us, and the field fills with efficient hands, oxygen, equipment, and orders.
But Gabriel’s pulse is beating.
Jacob brought him back.
The world tried to take him, but he stayed.
The paramedics move us back.
I hate them for it. I know they need space. I know every hand on Gabriel is trained and necessary. I know standing over them will not help.
I still hate every inch they put between us.
“Ma’am, I need you to step back.”
“I’m his—” The word catches. Girlfriend sounds too small. Partner sounds clinical. Family is the truth, but I don’t know whether it is enough for strangers with uniforms and rules.
Jacob straightens beside me as the paramedics work. “She’s his fiancée.”
I turn toward him. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes remain fixed on Gabriel while the paramedics cut away what’s left of his shirt and secure an oxygen mask over his face.
“His fiancée,” Jacob repeats. “And she’s carrying his child.”
The paramedic nods. “She can ride with us if she stays clear while we work.”
“I will.” I would agree to anything.
They fit a collar around Gabriel’s neck and slide a board beneath him. He groans when they lift him. The sound tears through me.
His eyes open briefly. “Evie.”
“I’m here.” I push past the edge of the medical kit until I can catch his hand.
One of the paramedics starts to object, then sees his fingers close weakly around mine and lets me stay.
Gabriel’s gaze is unfocused behind the oxygen mask. “Baby?”
“She’s okay.” I don’t know that. Not for certain. But she’s moving. A small, restless pressure beneath my ribs. I hold on to that. “We’re both okay.”
His eyes close again.
“Gabriel?”
“He’s conscious,” the paramedic says. “Let him rest.”
Rest.
As though he has fallen asleep. As though his heart didn’t stop beneath my hands.
They lift the stretcher. Jacob walks beside it. One hand rests on the metal rail, his knuckles streaked with Gabriel’s blood and dirt. His face has gone gray beneath his tan.
“Dad.”
Daniel’s voice cuts through the noise.
Jacob stops.
For the first time, I look beyond Gabriel. The runway is full of people. Federal vehicles crowd the eastern end. Men in dark jackets move between Alexander’s contractors, taking weapons and forcing them to their knees.
Wire has Falcon facedown beside the utility truck, one knee between his shoulder blades. Falcon isn’t fighting anymore. His head is turned toward us. Toward Gabriel. His face is empty.
I look away.
Alexander stands near the plane with his hands visible at his sides. He’s still composed. Of course he is.
Two federal agents flank him while another speaks into a radio. His coat is dusty now. One cuff is torn. It is the most disordered I’ve ever seen him.
He looks across the field and finds me. Even with Gabriel on a stretcher between us, even with armed officers surrounding him, Alexander looks at me as though this remains a private disagreement he expects to resolve.
“Evangeline!”
I stop walking.
The paramedics continue toward the ambulance with Gabriel. His fingers slip from mine. Panic hits instantly.
“Evie,” Ethan says. “Go with him.”
Alexander takes one step forward.
An agent blocks him.
“You cannot keep me from my daughter!” he shouts, his words carrying across the field.
I turn fully toward him. For years, some part of me has still been sixteen, standing in a hotel lobby waiting for him to become the father I needed.
That girl is gone. She has Gabriel waiting in an ambulance. A daughter beneath her heart. A home beyond the ridge.
“My name is Evie Gale.”
His expression does not change, but I see the blow land.
“You are making an emotional decision.”
“No.” I look at the handcuffs an agent is fastening around his wrists. “I made the decision ten years ago. You just never accepted it.”
“I was protecting you.”
“You had me abducted.”
“I removed you from a dangerous situation.”
“You created the dangerous situation.”
His jaw tightens.
Behind me, the ambulance doors open. I hear one of the paramedics call for more oxygen. Every part of me turns toward the sound.
Alexander sees it.
“You think he can give you permanence?” he demands. “A man whose heart may fail before your child knows him?”
Jacob moves before anyone else.
Daniel catches his arm. “Dad.”
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
Jacob’s eyes are fixed on Alexander with a hatred so deep it frightens me.
Alexander watches him calmly. “That is the reality none of you wishes to discuss.”
I walk toward my father. Not close enough for him to reach me, but close enough that he has to look directly at me. “Gabriel’s heart stopped because of what you did.”
“I did not order that man to use a weapon.”
“You put every person on this field in motion.”
His eyes flick toward Falcon—on his knees beside the utility truck—already separating himself from the consequences. Already deciding which employee, contractor, or subsidiary will absorb the blame.
He looks back at me. “I will answer any legitimate questions through counsel.”
“There it is.”
His eyes return to mine.
“The thing you’ve always given me instead of love.”
His brow shifts faintly. “What?”
“An answer that protects you.”
For once, he has nothing ready.
I don’t wait for him to find it. “You wanted to know whether Gabriel can give me permanence?”
I glance back at the ambulance. Jacob stands near the open doors, one hand braced against the frame. Daniel beside him. Ethan already inside with Gabriel, arguing with a paramedic about rhythm strips.
My family.
“He came for me,” I say. “Knowing his heart might fail, he came anyway.”
Alexander’s mouth hardens.
“He nearly died.”
“Yes.” The word hurts so much I almost cannot breathe. “But he has given me more love in a few weeks than you managed in my entire life.”
An agent takes Alexander by the arm. He resists—not physically, never enough to look undignified—but with the slight stiffening of a man unused to being directed.
“This is not over, Evangeline.”
I feel nothing when he says Evangeline. Not anymore.
I close the distance between us in three steps. “For you, maybe. For me, it ended a long time ago.”
I punch my father in the face.
It isn’t elegant. My fist connects with his cheekbone, and the shock of it travels all the way up my arm to my shoulder. My hand explodes with pain—I’ve never hit anyone in my life, and bone is harder than I expected. I might have broken something. I don’t care.
Alexander’s head snaps sideways. For one unguarded second—the first I have ever seen—he simply stares at me. No script. No composure. Just a man who didn’t see that coming.
One of the agents grabs my arm.
“Leave her,” another says quietly.
Alexander straightens and touches his cheekbone with two fingers, then looks at them as though checking for blood.
Good.
I turn away and run toward the ambulance.
Jacob catches the door before the paramedic can close it. His hands are still shaking. “Go.”
I put one foot on the step, then look back at him. “You brought him back.”
Pain moves through his face. “We all did.”
“No.” I hold his gaze. “You called him son, and you brought him back.”
Jacob looks into the ambulance at Gabriel. His mouth works once before any sound comes. “Tell him I’m coming.”
“I will.”
“And tell him—” He stops. Thirty years of silence crowd into the space between us.
“I’ll tell him you love him,” I say softly. “And when you get to the hospital, you can tell him yourself.”
Jacob’s eyes close. When they open again, they’re wet. “Yeah.”
I climb inside. The doors close on the runway, the plane, and Alexander Voss in handcuffs.
Gabriel lies strapped to the stretcher beneath harsh white light. Wires cross his bare chest. Oxygen fogs faintly inside the mask with each breath.
Alive.
I take the seat beside him and wrap both hands around his.
His eyes open as the ambulance begins to move. “Dad?”
“He’s coming.”
Gabriel searches my face. “He stayed?”
I press his hand against my cheek. “He ran toward you.”
His expression eases. Then his fingers move, weak but deliberate, until they rest against the curve of my stomach. “Our girl?”
“She’s right here.”
The siren rises. The pasture disappears behind us.
Gabriel’s eyes close, but his hand remains over our daughter.
This time, I can feel his pulse against my palm. Fragile and uneven, but still fighting.