Page 119 of Anchor
The faint hum of encrypted data feeds rolled across the glass panel in front of her. Claire placed a hand on her belly, an unconscious habit now. Sixteen weeks had given her a small, undeniable curve. The baby had started kicking at night. She hadn’t told anyone yet. Reid didn’t know.
Not because she was keeping it from him. Because he didn’t remember. His mind was still sorting itself out. The memories were fragmented, faces without names, places without order. He remembered her. He knew her name, her face, their life, but not all of it.
The stabbing and beating, Tuck’s extraordinary effort, the story of the antidote, Ann Arbor, even fragments of his time before Ann Arbor were gone or blurry. He never asked why he hurt or what happened. But she could feel it in him, the pressure to catch up, to keep up—he was working like hell to do it.
PT thrice a day. Speech therapy daily. Cognitive work mid-mornings and late afternoons. Sometimes he lost words. Sometimes his body trembled with frustration when he couldn’t get a leg to respond. But he didn’t stop. And that, more than anything, terrified her. That he might push too hard, too fast, just to be the man he thought she needed.
A soft knock pulled her out of the spiral. Kieran stepped into the frame, suit jacket slung over one shoulder, holding his secure tablet. “You watching the gym feed again?”
She raised a brow. “He asked for me?”
Kieran nodded. “Parallel bars today. He's already pissed about the new leg braces.”
Claire closed the file. “I’ll head down.”
Kieran didn’t move. “He knows who you are, Claire.”
She looked away.
“He may not remember everything yet,” Kieran continued gently, “but the way he looks at you hasn’t changed.”
She gave a single nod, swallowing down the knot in her throat. Then she slipped past him toward the elevator.
MONTENEGRO – UNKNOWN LOCATION – VOS’ VILLA – SAME TIME
Eight weeks into the transformation, Vos sat on the villa’s balcony in Montenegro, the sea below black and glassy, cliffs jagged against the fading sky. His face was settled now—no more bruising, no swelling—just the new geometry of him, cut sharper, colder, a man reborn.
Heather watched him without flinching. She didn’t see a stranger; she saw a weapon.
He touched his new jawline, testing its strength, then smiled faintly. “You’ll have to get used to this, Heather. If you can’t, no one else will.”
He looked at the man in the room with them. “What do you think, Scour?”
Scour didn’t answer.
She leaned forward, eyes narrowing with hunger, not fear. “I’ll get used to it,” she said. “The faster I do, the faster we end Ian. Tell me, when is it my turn, Lucien? Because I don’t intend to wait.”
REHAB WING – PHYSICAL THERAPY AREA – 0830 HOURS
The room was too quiet when Claire wasn’t in it. Not silent—machines hummed, wheels squeaked, the clock ticked like it had a grudge, but it was the wrong quiet. Reid shifted his weight against the parallel bars.
Pain flared, a dull, angry heat in his right hip, with a cold pull through his chest that still didn’t trust itself. He hissed through his teeth, fighting the wobble in his stance. “Focus,” he muttered to himself. “Reset. Again.”
The therapist nearby didn’t speak. He hovered, not intervening yet, not unless he fell. He’d done that too many times to count.
He didn’t remember the words she whispered while he was gone. But the look on her face when he woke up, he’d carry that forever. It haunted him and anchored him at the same time.
She was coming soon. He could feel it like a wire in his chest went taut whenever she got close. And every time she walked into the room, he told himself:Remember faster. Heal faster. Be enough.
His arms shook as he took another step. He didn’t stop. She was almost here.
The doors whispered open,and Claire stepped into the rehab room. And there he was. Reid stood between the parallel bars, drenched in effort. His hospital-issue t-shirt clung to his back.His legs shook in the braces. Sweat matted the hair at his temples. But he was standing.
Not strapped into a lift. Not assisted by belts or slings. He was standing on his own legs.
He didn’t see her yet. His head was down, brow furrowed in concentration. His right hand clenched the bar like it owed him something.
The therapist beside him gave her a small nod and stepped back, enough to give them space. Claire didn’t speak. She walked forward quietly until her reflection appeared in the mirror across from him.
