Chapter 160

Chapter 160:

She had no business being there — the doctor’s warnings were a dull, distant hum beneath the need to see this through. She leaned heavily on Kegan, her face an ashen gray against the dark wool of his coat. Every breath she drew was a visible effort.

They stopped dead.

The scene arranged itself before her like something from a novel she had never wanted to read. Hilliard — the hero — carrying the damsel. His face etched with concern, his focus entirely on the woman in his arms. He laid Charla gently onto a long wooden bench near the entrance, checked her pulse, and loosened the collar of her dress with practiced care.

Cailin stared. The image burned itself into her retinas, settling over the memory of him pulling her from the ocean like a second exposure on the same photograph.

“He’s saving her again,” Cailin whispered. The words were barely audible, but they carried the weight of five years compressed into a single breath.

Hilliard looked up. He saw them.

“Cailin!” Relief crossed his face immediately, then gave way to confusion. “What are you doing here? You should be in bed.” He glanced down at Charla, then back up. “She collapsed. Her heart — the stress p>

“Her heart is black, Hilliard,” Cailin said. Her voice didn’t rise. It was flat and utterly still. “And you are blind p>

Ch𝘪𝗻𝘦𝘴e ո𝗼𝗏𝘦𝗅𝗌 𝗍𝗋𝗮𝘯𝗌𝗅atе𝖽 𝘰ո

Sirens cut through the air outside. Two paramedics pushed through the doors with a stretcher, moving past Cailin and Kegan without breaking stride.

Hilliard stood. His hands were trembling. A thin scratch traced his cheek where Charla’s nail had caught him during her fall, bleeding slightly. He stepped toward Cailin.

“I promised Ashely I would find the truth. I mean to keep that promise,” he said. “But I cannot let her die on the floor of a police station p>

Kegan moved in front of Cailin — not aggressively, not with a shove this time. He simply existed in the space between them, immovable.

“Go with your mistress, Holloway,” Kegan said. “We are here to file charges. You do what you do best p>

Hilliard’s jaw tightened. He looked at the stretcher where the paramedics were lifting Charla. Her hand reached out blindly, fingers searching.

“Hilliard,” she moaned, barely audible. “Don’t leave me p>

He looked at Cailin.

Cailin turned her back on him. She walked toward the desk sergeant, her weight resting against Kegan’s arm.

A sound came from Hilliard’s throat — low, involuntary, somewhere between frustration and pain. But his rigid, unyielding sense of duty made the decision for him, as it always had.

He turned and followed the stretcher out through the doors.

Cailin watched his reflection move across the bulletproof glass of the station window. She watched him climb into the back of the ambulance. She watched the doors close.

She didn’t turn around.

The waiting room of the pediatric ward was painted in cheerful yellows and blues — a cruel contrast to the mood of its occupants.

Cailin sat in a vinyl chair, exhausted. She had given her statement. She had filed the charges. But it all felt like shouting into a void.

“Where is Hilliard?” Aron asked. He didn’t look up from his tablet, his fingers flying across the screen.