Page 164 of Say Yes to the Death

“Nice to meet you,” she managed to say. She stuck her hand out. Tanya ignored it and brought Alice in for one of her signature bone-crushing hugs. Alice went rigid under her grasp.

“Alice, so lovely to finally meet you.” Tanya pulled back and held onto Alice’s hand with both of hers. “You have the most marvelous energy. So much light in your aura.”

Alice frowned. “Thank you.” She withdrew her hand and turned to Luke. She took hold of his arm and steered him to the other side of the waiting room. They sat down to talk in hushed whispers for several minutes. Claire sat again, leaving a chair between her and Tanya. It was a very strange morning.

At that moment, a fatigued-looking surgeon stepped into the room.

“Mrs. Hartley?”

Tanya nodded, and the doctor walked over and sat down next to the family. “Your husband lost quite a bit of blood, but he’s going to be fine. The bullet missed his brachial artery by a millimeter. He was extremely lucky. He’s awake and in recovery now. You can see him if you like.”

Tanya immediately threw herself at the doctor, bursting into tears. Luke came over and took Claire’s hand.

“Do you want to see him?” he whispered.

How could she face him after she chose Luke over him? But she had to. Blood was blood. “I guess I should thank him for taking a bullet for me.”

The family followed the doctor back to recovery, where Jack was the only patient. He was sitting up, and he looked paler than usual, but otherwise unfazed. The newspaper on his lap was open to the sports section. For the first time since he had returned to Claire’s life, he wasn’t wearing a three-piece suit. He was probably already planning to ask the staff if they had a more formal hospital gown available.

Luke and Claire stood back as Brianna and Tanya fussed over him. Alice hovered in the hallway.

“What is this, bullet wound number three? Are you trying to meet some kind of quota at work or something?” Brianna asked, nudging him in the unaffected arm. She slapped a pair of fuzzy socks and a book with a picture of a cowboy on the hospital bed. Jack smiled at her and squeezed her hand.

Tanya draped herself over Jack like a blanket and let out an indiscernible stream of cries and half-pronounced syllables. The pockets of her muumuu rattled and clacked with what was probably more crystals.

“Here—this—” Tanya finally removed herself from her husband long enough to pull out a vial of some kind of essential oil.

“Mom,” Brianna said kindly, holding her mom’s wrist, “let’s hold off on the alternative medicine until Dad leaves the hospital, okay? You know what the doctors said last time. Now what groceries do you need for the house? I’m putting an order in.”

“Well, your dad really likes this vegan cereal,” Tanya began tearfully, finally climbing off the hospital bed and following her daughter out of the room.

Brianna winked at Claire as they left. It was like a ray of sunshine had just gone behind a cloud. The awkwardness crept back in.

Claire took a step closer. Even with hours to prepare, she didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry you thought I didn’t believe you about ESA.” Jack folded his newspaper and rolled it into a tight tube. “I hoped that if you saw an officially sanctioned government agency dismissing them as a threat, you would stop investigating them. For the record, my superiors really didn’t believe me when I explained what you overheard.”

Claire frowned. “And so you let me believe that I had no choice but to save Wendy on my own.”

He nodded. “In hindsight, not the best choice. I had local law enforcement go to her apartment early yesterday morning, but she was already gone.”

“Yeah, because we preemptively kidnapped her,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let an innocent person be tortured and murdered. Not another one. Not even Wendy.”

He unfurled the newspaper and spread it over his lap. “Well, because someone sent a text from her phone and posted to her social media, they didn’t believe she was in danger and weren’t willing to dispatch officers to the event. But I was there the whole time, staked out in the woods, even though it wasn’t an officially sanctioned mission.”

It sure would have been helpful if he would have brought a couple of agent friends so the mayor of West Haven didn’t have to karate chop a twenty-year-old in the Adam’s apple.

This conversation was going nowhere. She sighed. “Thank you, Jack. For saving my life. I’m sorry you got shot by a weird, angry misogynist.”

He shrugged, then winced. “All in a day’s work. You called me Dad, by the way.”

Damn it. A slip of the tongue.

Jack smiled. “It was nice.”

“Well, we should go,” Claire said, turning to Luke. She grabbed his hand and tugged, but he anchored her to the spot.

“Claire,” Jack continued. “Before you go. I know I haven’t been a great dad. I haven’t been a dad, period. But I’d like to. If you’re open to it. Even if it’s just dinner once a month. I want to know my daughter.”

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