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  “She’s still exhibiting acute symptoms of trauma. But the brain has a way of protecting itself. She wouldn’t be asking if she couldn’t process the information. There might even be a part of her subconscious that already knows her friend is dead. They were both in the building.”

  I don’t like this guy. He’s too squishy, even for a doctor. “We don’t know if her friend was in the building. It would be highly unusual for her to be there at that hour.”

  “The way she’s been asking about her—” He tips his head. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she knows more than we do.”

  Some things are counterintuitive, especially when it involves the brain. I realize that. I just don’t know about telling her tonight. But I don’t want to lie if it will make things worse in the long run. I don’t know what the right answer is here. This guy is a psychiatrist wannabe, and I don’t entirely trust his judgment. “Is there a psychiatrist around I can talk to?”

  “There’s one on call for emergencies we can’t handle. But this isn’t an emergency. And in the ER, especially in trauma, we deal with this kind of thing all the time. I realize it’s difficult to be the one to break the news to her.”

  Difficult to break the news? I’d do anything if I believed it was the right thing for her. I want to grab the condescending prick by the throat and give him my rendition of difficult to break the news to her. “I’ve got the balls to tell her. I just want some assurance that it won’t make the situation worse for her.”

  “I’ve been doing this for more than a dozen years. If she asks, someone needs to tell her. It can be you, or someone else. But she should have her questions answered truthfully. That’s my best advice.” He’s matter-of-fact, like we’re talking about which shelf the bandages are kept on. When I take a step closer, he takes two steps back.

  “Is there anything else I should know before I see her?”

  He shakes his head. “Not really. We gave her meds to help with the agitation. They might make her a bit foggy. Be prepared to repeat the details of whatever you tell her after the meds wear off. But medicated or not, she might not remember anything you tell her, or she might just remember what her psyche allows.” He shrugs. “Everyone’s different.”

  I have good instincts and my gut rarely steers me wrong, but I’m not foolish enough to disregard a professional opinion. At least not until I’ve fully considered it. I turn to Antoine. “What do you think about telling her tonight?”

  Antoine shakes his head and shrugs. “I think we should listen to the doctor.”

  I’m still not convinced.

  * * *

  Gabrielle’s eyes are closed when I get to the room. From the doorway, there’s a faint smell of smoke that I’m not sure will ever disappear completely from my subconscious. She has oxygen and an IV, and they have her hooked up to all kinds of monitors, but otherwise, she looks like herself. Smaller, more vulnerable, and exhausted, but she looks like Gabrielle. Every fiber of my being, every single one, is grateful for that.

  “I’ll be right outside the door,” Antoine says, as I walk into the room.

  I nod at the nurse drying her hands on a paper towel. “She’s a champ,” the nurse says, checking the oxygen, before giving us some privacy.

  Gabrielle’s eyelashes flutter as I approach the bed. I lay my hand on her arm. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s cool. Surprisingly cool. “How are you, darlin’?”

  She pulls the mask away from her mouth. “Have you heard ‘bout Georgie? Saw her car. She was there. Couldn’t get into the office. The doorknob—it was so hot.” Her voice is still hoarse, and wobbly. I hear the fear in every syllable she pushes out between small gasps of air. I see it in her eyes.

  “First, put this back on.” I adjust the mask so it’s covering her mouth and nose, again. “You need the oxygen to help you breathe.”

  I pull up a chair beside the bed, and take her hand in mine. It feels tiny, and weaker than it ever has. I feel tiny, too. The last time I felt this way was when I told Chase that Zack had been moved. My father didn’t have the decency to give us any warning. To let us say goodbye to him. It’s not exactly the same, but the sorrow ricocheting off my chest walls is familiar, and I want to run. Maybe even cry. I never give myself the luxury of tears, and even if I wanted to indulge, I’m not sure I know how to cry anymore.

  There is one thing I am sure about. I’m not a coward. And I’ll be damned if she hears about Georgina from someone else.

  “Georgie?” she pleads in a voice muffled by the mask.

  I nod and swallow a lump that’s nearly big enough to obstruct my airway.

  She pulls the mask away again. “She here? Did they bring her here? Is the baby okay? Can I see her?”

  “Save your voice. And your energy.” I adjust the mask and brush back some hair that’s stuck to her forehead. “I don’t know anything about Georgina, or the baby.” My chest is tight, and I suck in a mouthful of air. It doesn’t help. “But the firefighters found a pregnant woman inside the hotel. They couldn’t save her. We won’t know who the woman is until later today. Maybe tomorrow.” I know it’s wrong. I just know that telling her tonight is wrong. As I form each word, a voice inside my head screams stop! But I don’t.

  Her eyes ping around the room. They have a panicked look to them, as though she doesn’t understand what I said, but she knows it’s bad.

  She yanks off the mask. “In the office.” Her eyes beg me to say no, but it’s not really a question. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe she already knows.

  “I think so.”

  “Georgie and the baby . . . are dead?” Her voice is eerily calm, and she says each word as though she’s testing her memory.

  This feels like an out-of-body experience, as though I’m watching the heartbreaking scene unfold from across the room. “We don’t know.”

  The words are barely out of my mouth when she begins to shriek. A long, loud, mournful wail. I freeze, while an army of hospital staff rush into the room.

  “What happened?” a nurse asks me.

  “I told her that her friend died in the fire.” The nurse glares at me like I’m a monster. Maybe I am.

  A vein in my neck begins to throb. I’m raging inside. And so sorry. So damn sorry.

  “You’ll need to wait outside.” She dismisses me in a brusque tone, pointing toward the door. I take one more look at Gabrielle before I leave. She’s hysterical. It’s my fault. All my fault.

  I stand right outside her room and listen to the wails as they become whimpers, and then fade to silence. Each heart-wrenching cry takes a piece of my soul. Antoine stands beside me, all six-feet three of him, listening to Gabrielle’s pain, and swiping away an occasional tear. That’s what the living do in these circumstances. They cry. They feel sorrow and empathy. They feel it deeply and acutely. Their tears bear witness to their pain.

  Not me. I’m dead inside. Not just numb. Dead. I can’t remember the last time I felt alive.

  3

  Julian

  I’m sitting in a nondescript chair in a drab hospital room, waiting on discharge papers that are taking longer than expected to be finalized. Gabrielle’s perched on the edge of the bed, anxious to leave. Occasionally she asks about the fire, but mostly she’s lost somewhere deep inside herself.

  “Is there anything left? Anything at all?” she asks in a small voice, her fingers fiddling with the cotton tie on the hospital gown. Even as she asks, there’s not a shred of hope anywhere in her face.

  I spoke with the fire chief this morning. Aside from the contents of the fire-proof safe, and a few odds and ends, there’s nothing left. But I don’t tell her. “Hard to know. They’ll have a better idea in a day or two when it’s safe to go through the premises.” Comb through the rubble is more like it, but I don’t tell her that either.

  “Any more news about—have you spoken with Georgie or Wade?” Her voice is still raw, like her throat hurts, but it has a hollow characteristic about it today.

  I sha
ke my head.

  “Georgie and the baby.” She forms each syllable carefully, her bare feet dangling off the bed. She looks like a young girl. No make-up, and a head full of unruly corkscrews she would normally curse if she caught sight of them in the mirror. “They might have died in the fire,” she says to no one in particular. “We should find out.”

  They did die in the fire. There was a high likelihood that the pregnant woman was Georgie, so they knew immediately where to look for dental records. The FBI identified the remains before sunrise. But I don’t say that. I nod and validate her feelings, exactly like the psychiatrist taught me to do at four-thirty this morning. After I flew into a rage, grabbed the ER doctor by the throat, and demanded they page a psychiatrist. “They might have.”

  “I think they did.” Gabrielle leans across the bed and begins picking imaginary lint off a pair of leggings Lally brought by the hospital this morning for her to wear home.

  “You might be right.”

  “They’re together. Georgie would have wanted that. Now she doesn’t have to worry, because she can take care of the baby. Georgie will be a wonderful mother.”

  I’m sure I’m supposed to respond in some way, but I have no idea what to say. Gabrielle is scaring the shit out of me. Her affect is off—way off. She seems to be teetering on the thin line between sanity and insanity. I know from talking with the psychiatrist that it’s not exactly what’s happening, but that’s how it makes me feel.

  The psychiatrist warned me to expect this kind of behavior from her while she processes everything that’s happened and tries to come to grips with it. He told me she might bob and weave, in ways that would seem irrational, even downright crazy. And that she would likely experience survivor’s guilt. “She might punish herself by pushing people who care about her away, or by denying herself creature comforts. It will be painful for those who love her,” he patiently explained. “But it’s all part of the healing process, and she needs to work through it in order to move forward with her life.

  But what if she tips too far, and can’t right herself? What if she decides living in an alternate reality is preferable to the pain of the real world? What if she doesn’t come back to me?

  I push those thoughts back, far, far back into my mind, because I can’t bear to think about losing her in that way. Losing her in any way would be unbearable, but nothing would be crueler than her body beside me, in all its wonder and beauty, but her mind somewhere else, somewhere faraway where I can’t reach. Somewhere I will never reach.

  Like Zack.

  It would be hell on earth.

  4

  Julian

  I send Lally to be with Gabrielle’s parents in Houston for a couple days, otherwise they’ll be on the first flight back to Charleston. Her mother has come so far, the treatment is working so well, I don’t want any of it jeopardized. Lally’s torn about leaving, but I persuade her to go, to assure them Gabrielle is fine. Some news is better delivered in person. Gabrielle hasn’t mentioned her parents even once since the fire. That alone tells me she’s not anywhere near herself.

  When we get to Sweetgrass, Gabrielle is so out of it she doesn’t complain about being carried or ask where I’m taking her. The discharge process and the ride home did her in. I take her directly upstairs to my bedroom. It never occurs to me to put her into one of the guest rooms.

  We have an additional nurse in the house for a few days, and she helps me settle Gabrielle into my bed. The second nurse might be overkill, but I don’t want to take any chances. I haven’t slept all night, and I’m running on fumes. No chances. Not with Zack or Gabrielle.

  After she’s asleep, I take a long hot shower. I’m exhausted, but still too wound up to sleep, so I go downstairs to my study to answer some emails. I must have nodded off at my desk for a minute, because I wake up to my assistant Patrick and Smith arguing outside the door.

  Before I can get up, Smith barges in and slaps a set of keys and his security credentials on my desk. “I’m done.”

  I’m wide awake now. “What the fuck?”

  “I can’t operate this way, JD.” He hammers an index finger into my grandfather’s desk. Each strike accentuates a clearly annunciated word. “I don’t operate this way. There’s a dead woman, and there could have been dozens more, some of which are my people, and others who I’m entrusted to protect.”

  He’s right, but I don’t concede the point. Admitting it would be akin to surrender, and I need him on my team. I also won’t beg. For one thing, it’s not in my nature to beg, and for another, it would not persuade Smith to stay. He’d see right through the bullshit. “So that’s it? Things didn’t go well so you pull your tail between your legs and run. I don’t blame you for what happened last night.”

  “Don’t blame me? Well that’s mighty big of you. Thank you so much.” Smith’s face is bright red. It matches his bloodshot eyes. He doesn’t appear to have slept any more than I did last night. “You know who’s fault this is, JD?” he roars. “It’s your fucking fault.”

  That’s something we can agree on. I sit back in my chair. “Go on. Say it. Clearly there’s a lot you need to get off your chest.”

  His hands are splayed on the desk, his torso craning forward. “I’ve been in charge of security for you and your brothers for almost three years. You are unscathed. All of you. Not a hair out of fucking place. But the minute Gabrielle Duval came onto the scene, you decided you were in charge of her safety. You knew how to best protect her. Constantly ordering me around about how she was to be handled, as though I hadn’t protected military brass and a whole host of high-level targets. And you know what? Some of it might have been dumb luck, but I never lost anyone on my watch. Not a single fucking person. Not until last night.”

  He lifts a paperweight off my desk and slams it down with such force the antique lamp rattles. “Not until you, with your Harvard MBA, and your soft hands, decided you know security better than me. And now look—no, it’s not your fault because you didn’t light the goddamn match. But I should have told you to go fuck yourself the first time you informed me that no one lays a finger on Gabrielle, as though my security force routinely roughs up women.”

  He pauses, and wipes his mouth with back of his hand.

  “Are you done?” I ask in a tone that has just enough calm to push him off the edge. He might as well get it all out so I know what I’m dealing with.

  “No! No, I’m not done, you fucking prick!” he barks. “I’m just getting started. That woman has been under your skin for years. I bet every time you fuck your fist, or anything else, you see her face when you get off. It’s been like that for as long as I’ve known you.”

  “Watch it.” It’s a warning, delivered low and rough.

  “That’s just it, JD. I say shit like that to you all the time and you laugh it off. You never laugh off anything when it comes to her. Every single thing is a huge fucking deal when it comes to her. That’s why you can’t be in charge of her protection. Not just because you don’t know the first thing about protecting a target, but because she’s under your skin, and she has been for years. I don’t need a damn Ph.D. to figure it out.”

  I’m pissed. Pissed because he’s being an asshole. Pissed because he’s right. “We’re friends,” I argue. “We’ve been friends for a long time. But making security decisions for me doesn’t seem to pose a problem for you.”

  “Because I’m trained. I know how to separate the two. And you don’t make my dick hard.”

  I stand up and lean across the desk until I’m inches from his face. “Not one more fucking word about my dick and Gabrielle. You might be better trained than me, but you talk about her like that again, and I’ll do plenty of damage before you take me out.”

  My blood is boiling. I recognize it and pull back. Jesus. I’m losing it. “I trust you with my brothers’ lives, and the lives of everyone who works for me. There’s no one I trust more than you.”

  “But you don’t trust me with her life?”

/>   I rub my jaw, and peer at him. “It’s not that simple, Smith.”

  “Why? Why isn’t it that simple?” He parks his ass in the chair across from me. “You tell me why, right now, or I’m out of here.”

  I study him for a few seconds. He’s bluffing. But I can’t take the chance. I’m in a corner, with choices that suck. I can tell him everything, which drags him into the middle of my shitstorm, or he’ll leave. I can’t afford for him to go. There’s no one better at what he does. And he’s the only real friend I have. Fuck it.

  I get up and go over to a small cabinet across the room. I pull a bottle of Pappy’s and two glasses from the shelf. Then I motion toward the room that acts as my inner sanctum. A room outfitted with foil insulation, no windows and just one way in and out. It’s not much bigger than a walk-in closet in a debutant’s bedroom. My grandfather used it to take proprietary calls, and hold meetings where classified information would be discussed. The pharmaceutical industry has always been notorious for its spies. Smith upgraded the security features in the little room when he outfitted the cottage out back that he and his team use as an office.

  I turn off my cell phone and drop it on the desk. Smith does the same and follows me into the secure space.

  I pour us each a couple fingers of bourbon while he watches me. “What’s going on, JD?”

  I hand him a glass, but he shakes me off. “I didn’t get any sleep last night and I have a feeling I’m going to want a clear head.”

  I put it down in front of him. “You’ll need it before I’m done.”

  I slide into a chair across from him, elbows propped on the table, my hands clasped near my lips, racking my brain. How do I begin? Where do I begin?