Chương 5
“Can I go with her?”
“One parent can accompany transport upstairs.”
He looked at Lucia.
She looked at Maya.
The answer was evident before anyone spoke.
Maya felt Adrian’s fear return, hidden now beneath embarrassment.
“I can go until she settles,” Maya said.
Ortiz began to object.
The doctor said, “The child’s distress is affecting her breathing. We keep the person who calms her.”
Adrian nodded once.
Maya had expected resistance. The absence of it made her feel worse.
They wheeled Lucia toward the elevator. Maya limped beside the bed in hospital socks Denise had found for her. Adrian followed several paces behind. His men remained near the emergency department under the watch of security and two uniformed officers.
Inside the elevator, Lucia held Maya’s hand and watched her father in the mirrored wall.
“Papa,” she said.
“Yes, little bird.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed with the direct suspicion of a child who had heard adults lie.
“You look mad.”
“I’m scared.”
Adrian said it without looking away from her reflection.
Lucia considered this.
“Me too.”
The elevator rose.
Maya watched Adrian’s face in the mirror. His eyes lowered, briefly, as if accepting a punishment.
The pediatric intensive care unit allowed only two visitors at a time. Rourke argued with the charge nurse. The charge nurse won.
Adrian dismissed his men to the waiting area and entered Lucia’s room alone.
Maya sat beside the bed while nurses placed an IV, adjusted oxygen, and connected monitors. Adrian stood on the opposite side. When Lucia cried during the needle insertion, he reached for her hand, then stopped.
She saw him waiting.
After a moment, she offered him two fingers.
He held them carefully.
Maya leaned back in the chair.
Now that the danger had changed shape, exhaustion descended without mercy. Her skin ached from warming. Her bruised forearm throbbed. She could smell herself beneath the hospital soap Denise had brought—rain, concrete dust, fear, and the sour trace of a night spent holding a feverish child.
Adrian removed his steel watch and placed it on the windowsill before washing his hands at the sink.
The pale band around his wrist made him look briefly less armored.
“You should be examined,” he said.
“I was.”
“You refused bloodwork.”
Maya looked at him. “Your people listen at curtains?”
“The nurse told me.”
“Why?”
“I asked.”
“That usually works for you?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
For some reason, that answer almost made her smile. She was too tired to decide whether she hated him.
Lucia slept for twenty minutes, then woke crying because she could not remember where she was. Maya leaned close until the child recognized her. Adrian waited through it without speaking.
When Lucia slept again, he said quietly, “How much do you need?”
Maya kept her gaze on the monitor.
“For what?”
“To replace your car. Secure housing. Medical care. Anything.”
“You think this is the part where you pay me?”
“I think you have no home and no shoes.”
“One shoe.”
“You left it at the warehouse.”
“You can put it in your lost-and-found empire.”
His fingers tightened around the rail of the bed.
“I’m not insulting you.”
“You’re trying to turn what happened into a transaction.”
“I’m trying to make sure the woman who saved my daughter doesn’t sleep under a bridge tonight.”
“I don’t sleep under bridges.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“That’s not your business.”
“You made my child your business.”
“She was tied up in a van.”
“And you intervened when everyone else kept driving.”
Maya looked at him.
The anger in his voice was not directed at her. It sat deeper, aimed at the absent truck driver, the kidnappers, himself, perhaps the entire city.
“You don’t get to be angry that strangers didn’t protect her,” Maya said. “You’re the one surrounded by armed men. You’re the reason she has armed men around her at all.”
The words landed harder than she intended.
Adrian’s face closed.
Maya expected him to tell her she knew nothing.
Instead he looked down at Lucia’s small hand between the medical tape and sensor wire.
“Yes,” he said.
The answer left no clean place for Maya’s anger to go.
A woman arrived an hour later wearing a charcoal suit, low heels, and the expression of someone who had already solved three emergencies before breakfast. Her name was Camille Hart, and she was Adrian’s attorney.
She spoke privately with him near the window. Maya tried not to listen.
She heard enough.
Police had obtained an emergency order preserving hospital security footage and access logs. Child protective services had been notified because Lucia’s mother was deceased, her father’s custodial environment might have contributed to the abduction, and the circumstances of her disappearance remained unclear. A family court judge would review temporary safety arrangements by afternoon.
Adrian’s voice dropped.
“She stays with me.”
“That may not be your decision today.”
“It is always my decision.”
Camille’s gaze moved toward Lucia. “That sentence is why I am telling you not to speak at the hearing.”
Adrian turned away from her.
Maya liked Camille a little.
Detective Ortiz returned shortly after eight. The city outside the hospital windows had turned gray and ordinary. Commuters filled the avenue below. A man in a fluorescent vest stood beside a coffee cart, arranging paper cups while traffic hissed through wet streets.
Ortiz asked Maya to identify photographs.
The bearded man was the third image. Dennis “Denny” Kroll, forty-two, prior arrests for burglary, assault, and unlawful restraint. He had worked for three private security contractors during the past decade.
“Any connection to Vale Meridian?” Ortiz asked Adrian.
Camille answered. “Not as a direct employee.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Adrian looked at the photo. “One of our subcontractors used his company four years ago.”
“Which subcontractor?”
“Northstar Protective Services.”
Rourke, outside the room, shifted his stance.
Maya noticed.
Ortiz noticed Maya noticing.
May you like
“What about the driver?” the detective asked.
Maya identified a narrow-faced man named Caleb Munn, who had convictions for drug possession and vehicle theft. He had been released from county jail seven months earlier.
