The Break(93)

Up and in we go. June is moving erratically, like her limbs are trying to get free from the blankets. I go right to her as the ambulance starts driving again. Harrison runs a hand over his hair. “Leave her alone, Rowan,” he says. “She’s clearly not okay.”

I don’t leave her alone. I put my hand on her arm. “It’s all right, June. We’re all here with you.” June’s trying to lift her arm, but it’s like she doesn’t have control of her limbs. “You got hurt,” I say carefully. “And I know you don’t remember what happened, but we’re going to be with you the whole way. I’m not leaving you, June.”

Finally June gets her hands to cooperate, and in one swift movement she rips off her oxygen mask. Her lips are the same purple-blue shade as the bruises on her neck. A paramedic approaches her carefully, his eyes on the monitors. She tries to speak to me, but her voice is crackling like a scratchy record. I can’t understand her. So I bend closer, Lila still strapped to me, both of us nearly crushed against June. My ear goes closer to June’s lips so I can understand.

“Harrison strangled me,” she whispers. “And then he stabbed Sean and left us for dead.”

A scream rises in my throat like a banshee waiting to be set free.

My fingers start to shake, and I almost lose it right then and there and blow June’s cover, and then Lila’s squirming against me and I think about Gray, and I think about the woman I was before my children were born, and even though I didn’t know love like this, I knew secrets and mysteries and everything people are capable of when they’re pushed beyond their capacity, when they’re desperate. Harrison’s eyes are dark, his skin sallow, his fingers gripping onto the side of June’s makeshift bed. I keep my face very, very still, and then I think of how I would write this scene if I wanted my heroines to stay safe.

I take a breath, feeling my lungs inflate like balloons, and I’m struck with a clear memory of being pregnant with Lila and Gray, when it was so very hard to get a full breath in because they were jammed against my ribs. I remember it perfectly.

“She’s not making any sense,” I say to everyone in the ambulance, using every ounce of control I have to keep my voice neutral. Harrison’s eyes are all over me, trying to read my face, to know what I’m really thinking: his specialty. “I really need to feed Lila,” I say, more confident now, and then I fumble around for my phone, like I need it to check my feeding app, but Harrison arcs toward me and I’m terrified I’m not fooling him. My confidence starts to slip, and my fingers are fumbling as I fire off a text to the detective. Harrison reaches out toward me.

She remembers everything. Harrison did it. Get him out of this ambulance.

I’m about to press send but we fly over a pothole and my phone clatters to the floor.

“Let me get that for you,” Harrison says.

“No,” I say, frantic as the phone slides beneath June’s gurney. I’ve got Lila on me, and Harrison is already bending beneath it. But then Gabe lurches forward and somehow snatches it up. I see him stare down at the screen.

Does he see what I wrote? I can’t read his face. He taps the screen and then pockets the phone.

I feel like I’m going to be sick. “Gabe?” I ask. Did he press send? “Can I have my phone back?” My voice is shaking.

Gabe turns to me. “I’ll hold it for you till the hospital,” he says. His gaze is hard, locked on mine. I can’t argue with him or it’ll come off as too suspicious. “Is that new writing?” he asks me slowly.

We’re quiet for a moment. June’s eyes are closed now.

“Um,” I stall.



“On your phone,” Gabe adds, impatient. “Is it new stuff?” His voice is more gentle now. He pats the top of his daughter’s head, his eyes on me.

“Yes,” I say, my mind racing. “I was about to press send on a message to Dave,” I say, picturing my agent in his Brooklyn apartment, wondering what he would ever say if he knew we were living a scene from one of my novels.

“I think it’s been sent,” Gabe says, holding my gaze. And that’s when I know.

I reach forward and take June’s hand. She squeezes, or tries to, her grip is so weak.

Harrison’s eyes dart between Gabe and me.

The ambulance lurches to a stop and everything goes quiet. Harrison is looking down into his lap, a tiny vein pulsing at his temple, and then we’re zooming forward again.

The air feels deadly.

My baby girl nuzzles her head against me. The lights flash, and it feels like a sign from God. Sirens blare.

“What’s going on?” Harrison asks as the ambulance careens right and pulls over to the side of the highway.

Police lights are everywhere—even though they’re behind us we can see them scattering through the night. And then a cop car pulls in front of us, stopping mere feet from the bumper.

The paramedic places the oxygen mask back on June. But her green eyes open, and they never leave mine.

The back doors of the ambulance swing out to Detective Mulvahey and a squad of police officers, weapons raised.

“Exit the vehicle, Mr. Russell,” Mulvahey says to Harrison. Harrison protests, a slew of curse words. But he does what they say—he gets out, Gabe staring in disbelief as they handcuff him against the truck.