Chapter 8
Eve pulled her arm away.
“Then where?”
His jaw tightened.
“At the hospital.”
Grant, already seated in the back of the cruiser, leaned toward the window.
His smile was gone now.
In its place was satisfaction.
The kind a man wore when he had lost the room but saved the knife.
Eve climbed into the ambulance.
The doors closed.
And for the first time since the club had shattered the glass table, she let her eyes shut.
Not to cry.
To remember.
Because the details mattered.
Grant had wanted signatures.
A custody waiver.
A fake abandonment date.
Sloane had wanted access to Grant’s office.
Her father had arrived with ownership documents already complete.
And someone had made sure Marta’s radio was open.
This was not a rescue.
It was an operation.
And Eve had not been told she was the bait.
At Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, everything smelled like antiseptic, warm blankets, and quiet fear.
Eve lay in a private observation room with two monitors strapped across her belly.
One tracked contractions.
One tracked the baby.
The sound of his heartbeat steadied the room.
Thump-thump-thump.
Her son was fine.
Bruised mother.
Furious grandfather.
Unborn child with perfect rhythm.
That was the only miracle Eve allowed herself.
Charles stood near the window, speaking on his phone in a voice so low even the walls seemed to lean away.
Daniel Ross sat in the corner with a tablet.
A uniformed officer waited outside the door.
Eve watched them all and said nothing.
She had already given a statement.
Clear.
Chronological.
No adjectives.
Grant raised the golf club.
May you like
Grant struck the table.
Grant seized her arm.
