I lowered my head until my ear was near her mouth.
“Tell me who did this.”
Her lips trembled.
“Don’t let Dorian know the baby lived.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Baby.
I looked at Mara.
For the first time in all our years, she looked away first.
“What baby?” I asked.
Clara’s eyes closed, then opened again with effort.
“He wasn’t trying to kill me,” she whispered. “He was trying to make you confess.”
The words entered me slowly, like cold water under a locked door.
Behind me, Officer Price shifted.
Mara stepped past him and pulled the curtain closed with a sharp metallic scrape.
“Out,” she told him.
“Doctor, this is an active investigation.”
“And this is a trauma bay. Out.”
He hesitated, but Mara had built her career on making men twice her size obey in operating rooms. He stepped back.
When the curtain settled, I looked at her.
“Clara was pregnant?”
Mara’s face was rigid. “She is pregnant. Sixteen weeks. The fetal heartbeat is present. Weak earlier, stronger now. We are monitoring closely.”
I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose.
Sixteen weeks.
Clara had sat in my kitchen three weeks earlier with her arms crossed over that gray sweater. Not anger, then. Protection. She had been hiding the curve of her body from me.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” I asked.
Mara’s expression softened for one second. “Maybe because she was afraid of what telling you would start.”
Before I could answer, Clara whispered again.
“Blue envelope.”
I bent close. “What?”
“Coat lining,” she breathed. “He wanted it.”
“Who wanted it? Dorian?”
Her eyes squeezed shut. A tear slipped free.
“Not just him.”
Then her breathing changed, slipping deeper into sedation. Mara checked the monitor and adjusted the IV with quick hands.
“She needs rest,” she said.
“I need her clothes.”
“They’re bagged.”
“Where?”
“Evidence cabinet by the nurses’ station.”
I moved for the curtain.
Mara caught my sleeve. “Elias, listen to me. The Vales have influence in every room of this city. If that envelope exists, and if Clara nearly died because of it, you cannot simply demand it in front of everyone.”
“She is my daughter.”
“Yes,” Mara said. “Which is why you need to think like the man I operated beside, not the father who wants to tear down the building.”
I hated that she was right.
I opened the curtain anyway.
Officer Price stood exactly where he had been, but now his phone was in his hand. He ended the call too quickly when he saw me.
“My daughter’s belongings,” I said.
“They’re evidence.”
“Then protect them.”
He swallowed. “They’ll be transferred to the station.”
“By whose order?”
His mouth tightened.
The sliding doors at the ambulance entrance opened before he could answer.
Dorian Vale stepped into the emergency department wearing a charcoal overcoat darkened by rain. He was tall, clean-shaven, and composed in the way men are composed when they have practiced expressions in mirrors. His dark hair was wet at the temples. His face carried grief like an accessory.
Beside him walked his father, Malcolm Vale.
Even retired, Malcolm had the presence of a courtroom. Former district attorney. Foundation chairman. Private adviser to mayors. He had silver hair, a soft voice, and the kind of power that did
