The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(88)

I wanted Noah. What would I trade for him?

Who would I trade for him, was the question I needed to be asking.

“The people we care about are always worth more to us than the people we don’t. No matter what anyone pretends.”

They’d been Noah’s words once. But they were mine now. Who wouldn’t I trade for him? I would not trade my family. Never them.

But there were other people. The world was full of them. How many would have to be punished so I could reward? What was Noah’s life worth?

His father, David, needed to be punished for what he’d done, no question. But a million of him wouldn’t equal one Noah. He was worthless. Less than.

But not all people were worthless. I looked around me, at the men and women who filled the room, rushing into danger in the hope of saving someone’s life. They were good people. Brave. Selfless. Heroes, really.

Would I trade one of them to have Noah back?

Would I trade all of them to have him back?

I was stripped of all illusions, about this and myself. I knew without thinking that the answer was yes.





65


I KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN next. As the police approached, the woman said, “Are you holding anything that could hurt me?”

Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. I shook my head as she reached for my hands and cuffed me.

“What happened here?”

I didn’t respond. How could I?

Besides, I had the right to remain silent, so that was what I did.

The paramedics had arrived, and they were setting up gurneys, checking the bodies, as if there were any point.

The female officer tilted her head and asked. “Are you all right?”

The question was almost funny. I shook my head.

“I think she’s in shock,” she said to an EMT. “Do a quick check, and we’ll take her to the hospital.”

“We’ve got another one here,” a voice said. I followed the source of it and saw Jamie, flanked by two cops.

“I told them,” he said loudly, too loudly, as he passed. “About your crazy ex.”

Clever boy.

“Your ex-boyfriend?” the female officer asked me. “Which one?”

I looked at Jude.

“This your boyfriend?” She tipped her head at Noah, at his body, as he was being lifted onto a gurney without urgency. I nodded numbly, dumbly. They were going to take him away. I didn’t know how I would bear it.

“I think I know what happened here,” the female officer said in a low voice to another, who had joined her. “We’ll track down the parents once we get to the hospital.” She put her hand on my elbow as they began to wheel Noah’s body away. My limbs felt like lead. I couldn’t move. I could barely see. My vision blurred with tears. I blinked furiously, but they just kept coming.

The female officer tugged me in the direction of the exit just as one of the paramedics lifted a sheet to cover Noah’s face. I saw him blink.

Face covered, wheels squeaking. Noah was almost gone when I finally managed to say, “Wait.”

No one heard me the first time, so the second time I screamed it.

The action stopped. The paramedic who had done the face covering must have seen something in my expression, though, because he looked at me and then back down at Noah, and then lifted the sheet.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. “He’s breathing.”

A second ago, the air had been dead, practically silent, but now it buzzed with frenzy. Paramedics swarmed around Noah, blocking him from view. I caught a glimpse of an oxygen mask being placed over his face as I was pulled away from him by more than one pair of hands. I watched his eyes open, and beneath the clear mask I thought I caught a hint of that half smile that I loved and missed so much.

I’d seen a lot of things since all of this had started though. And not all of them had been real.

But as Noah passed me, he slipped his hand off the gurney. His skin brushed mine. Electrified it.

He was alive. He was real.





66


A MACHINE BEEPED TO THE left of noah’s hospital bed as another on his right hissed. I could see them, hear them, as I was escorted past his open door. Two police officers flanked it, and when they noticed me trying to peer in, one of them moved to close it. Detective Howard—that was the female officer’s name—led me to a makeshift interrogation room. Number 1213, I noticed.

“The doctor says your boyfriend is recovering remarkably well. Astonishingly well,” she added. “That chest wound of his—it looked pretty bad, like his aorta might’ve been punctured, even. The paramedics thought he was dead. . . . They don’t usually make mistakes like that.”

She stared, waiting for me to speak, but what could I say? That I wanted him alive, so he lived?

What a crazy thing to think.

“Your friend—Jamal, right?—told me what happened to you. He gave us your parents’ number, and we’ve called your mother and left a voice mail. Hopefully she’ll be here soon.”

Not likely.

“But I’d like to hear what happened from you, in your own words, before she gets here, if you can tell me.”

I could, but I wouldn’t. I was a lawyer’s daughter, after all. I tilted my head forward, veiling my face with my hair. I was a psychologist’s daughter too. I knew what I needed to do.