3. Reva #2
Shiloh turns his head. “Nash.”
“I could,” Nash says, still looking at me. “But I won’t. You choose with the truth in front of you.”
I laugh once. It sounds nothing like laughing. “That’s generous.”
“It is the least cruel option left.”
The hallway goes quiet around us. A nurse passes with a tray and pretends very hard not to listen. Somewhere down the corridor, a machine chimes three soft notes. No alarm. Nothing urgent. My body still reacts as if the sound belongs to Cal.
Ever steps closer. “They know you’re here. They know Cal is alive. If you stay in a public waiting room, they can force us to defend too many points. Elevators. Stairs. Staff access. Ambulance bay. Supply corridors. Visitor bathrooms. Every badge becomes a question.”
“You can lock it down.”
“Some of it. I can’t defend all of it.”
That answer frightens me because Ever hates admitting limits.
Deacon speaks from the end of the hall. “Isabel will use him.”
I look at him. His face is still, but something bitter lives underneath it. He knows her better than anyone here. He knows the shape of her cruelty before she has to prove it.
“She will make you choose badly,” he says. “Cal is the bait she already bloodied. She will not waste that.”
The hallway tilts a little. I brace a hand against the wall.
Shiloh moves then. He does not ask. He comes close and wraps his arms around me, firm enough to hold, gentle enough to let me break without making it a spectacle. My face turns into his chest. His shirt smells like smoke, sweat and the clean paper bag from the gift shop.
“I hate this,” I say into him.
His hand slides up the back of my head. “I know.”
“I hate all of you.”
“That’s fair, Yank.”
His voice cracks on the last word. That does worse things to me than if he cried.
I grip his shirt. The rubber bands snap against my wrist when my hand closes too hard. “If I leave, it feels like I’m choosing me over him.”
Nash’s answer comes from close beside us. “You are choosing to make it harder for Isabel to kill you both.”
I pull back enough to look at him.
He does not soften his face. He gives me the truth with all its edges left on because he knows polished lies won’t survive me tonight.
“At least one of us will stay with Cal at all times,” he says. “Inside the hospital or close enough to his door to be useful. He will never be alone. I will have men here, too.”
My throat burns.
“Updates at every shift change,” Ever adds. “Vitals, doctor notes, staff changes, room changes. I’ll know if his chart gets accessed by anyone unusual.”
“The second he can have a controlled visit, you come back,” Nash says. “The second he can be moved safely, I will move him.”
“To where?”
“A facility we control, or a private medical setup if his doctors allow it.”
I look toward the ICU doors. They do not care that I am falling apart in front of them. They stay closed, clean and white, holding Cal on one side and the rest of me on the other.
“Who stays first?” I ask.
Nash answers for the room. “Deacon stays first because he knows La Rosa markers better than any of us. Ever gets us out. Shiloh stays with you. I handle the route and police.”
“Police?”
“They are downstairs, and they want statements. They are not getting yours tonight.”
I should care about that. I shot a man. I can still feel the kick of Cal’s gun in my hands. I can still see the guard’s body hitting stone. The fact should terrify me. It is too far down the list to reach.
“Homer,” I say, because my brain picks the smallest living thing it can bear to think about.
Shiloh’s arms tighten. “Already handled.”
My eyes snap to his. “What does that mean?”
“It means Ever sent people to Blackwood House. Homer is in his carrier with food, litter, and enough offended dignity to power the state of Louisiana.”
A sound leaves me. It is almost a laugh and almost a sob. It hurts either way.
“He hates the carrier.”
“He expressed that.”
“Did he bite someone?”
“Only a little.”
That helps in a way it shouldn’t. My vicious little orange flerkin is alive, furious, and biting people on my behalf. I hold on to that because the rest of the world is blood and closed doors.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Nash glances at Ever, whose gaze skates down the hall, sharp and restless. He lifts one finger to his mouth.
“Shh,” he says. “Not here.”
Cold slides through me. I look at the nurse’s station. At the elevators. At the flowers on the counter, bright and cheerful and wrong. At the woman in scrubs who turns away too quickly when my gaze passes over her.
The hospital is no longer a hospital. It is another house full of doors. This time, I am old enough to understand what waits behind them.
I pull out of Shiloh’s arms. He lets me go, though his hand stays close. Nash watches my face as if the smallest flicker might change the plan. Ever keeps scanning. Deacon stands between Cal’s hallway and anyone who might try to reach it.
“You swear he won’t be alone,” I say.
Nash does not hesitate. “I swear.”
I look at Deacon.
His gray eyes hold mine. “On my life.”
That should not comfort me. It does, and I resent it.
I turn back toward the ICU doors. For a second, I let myself stand there as the girl Cal raised. Not the ghost. Not the target. Just his kid, ugly sweatshirt sleeves over bloody wrists, trying to leave a room without letting it feel like abandonment.
“I’m coming back,” I say, quiet enough that only the men hear me.
Then I make myself walk toward the elevator before I can run the other way.