Chapter 112: Unease

Aaron tapped Niko’s name and brought the phone to his ear. It rang twice, then cut straight to a low, robotic recording stating the line could not be completed.

He tried again. Same result.

A faint, strange tight feeling formed at the base of Aaron’s neck. It wasn’t anger, and it wasn’t impatience. It was a cold, sharp itch under his skin that he had learned to trust over years of staying alive in dangerous places.

He stood up, walking over to the huge window that looked out over the dark, rain-soaked city. The clouds were so low they seemed to scrape the tops of the skyscrapers.

He keyed his radio. "Joe."

"Sir," Joe’s voice came through, slightly distorted by static.

"Where is the secondary security team?"

"They were right behind Miss Kingston’s car on the river route, sir. I haven’t received their ten-o’clock check-in yet. The weather is messing up the radio signals near the bridge."

Aaron’s blue eyes narrowed as he stared out into the grey sheets of rain. "Find them. Now."

At the central courthouse, the long marble hallway outside Courtroom 3B was almost empty. The heavy wooden doors were shut tight.

Kian stood near the front entrance of the building, sheltered under the deep stone archway.

A few paces out, the rain was falling so hard it bounced off the concrete steps like boiling water.

The reporters who had been standing on the lawn earlier were gone, crammed into the lobby or huddled under the glass bus stop across the street.

Kian pulled his silk tie slightly away from his throat. His skin felt hot, but every time the damp wind blew past the stone pillars, a hard chill ran straight down his spine.

He stared down the empty street. No black cars. No security escorts. Nothing except a yellow cab crawling past with its wipers slamming back and forth.

He took out his phone, his thumb scrolling with instinct to Isabella’s number. He wanted to press call, but he knew it was pointless. He swallowed hard, trying to clear a strange, dry lump in his throat.

It’s just traffic, he told himself, closing his eyes for a second. The rain is heavy. The bridge is always backed up when it pours like this. She’s probably sitting in the back of Kazarov’s fancy armored car, complaining about the weather.

He opened his eyes, but the knot in his stomach didn’t loosen. Instead, it tightened until he could barely take a full breath.

He thought about the phone call he had made two hours ago to his contacts at the harbor authority. He had just wanted to mess up Kazarov’s morning.

He had just wanted to drag Aaron away so Isabella would have to walk into that courtroom alone, without her billionaire dog standing right behind her.

Did Aaron pull something? Kian thought, his grey eyes turning dark and sharp. Is Kazarov holding her back on purpose to make me look like an idiot in front of the judge?

"Kian."

Arthur’s voice broke through his thoughts. The lawyer walked out through the heavy glass doors, his face pale and his hands tucked deep into his coat pockets.

"The judge is coming into the courtroom," Arthur said, his voice low and tight. "He isn’t going to wait much longer. If Chernov isn’t here in five minutes, Daniel is going to issue an administrative continuance, or worse, sanction us for delaying."

"She’s coming," Kian said quickly, his voice unnaturally loud in the empty entryway.

Arthur looked at him, his brow furrowing. "Kian, look at you. You’re sweating. What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing is wrong with me!" Kian snapped, turning around to face his lawyer. "She’s never late, Arthur. You know how she is. She gets nervous about things, so she always shows up twenty minutes early. She was early for the first hearing. She was early for the second. She wouldn’t just miss this."

Arthur stared at him for a long, quiet moment. The lawyer’s eyes looked hollow, dark circles bruised beneath them from a night of zero sleep. "Maybe Kazarov kept her away."

"No," Kian whispered, his hand going back to his collar.

He turned back around and walked out from under the stone shelter, standing right at the edge where the rain splattered against the toes of his expensive leather shoes.

A cold shudder ran up his arms, raising the tiny hairs on his skin. He folded his arms tightly across his chest, but the shivering didn’t stop.

"Let’s go back inside," Arthur sighed, turning toward the glass doors. "You’re going to catch pneumonia standing out here."

Kian didn’t move for three seconds. He just stared into the grey wall of water, feeling a dark, sickening dread settling heavy in the pit of his chest.

In the emergency bay of St. Jude’s Hospital, the automatic glass doors slid open with a sharp swoosh.

"Trauma team one! We’ve got a incoming code red!" a nurse yelled, running alongside the rolling stretcher as the paramedics pushed it through the wide doors.

The hallway was a mess of bright fluorescent lights, shouting doctors, and the metallic smell of blood and antiseptic.

Isabella lay flat on the narrow mattress, her face completely covered by an oxygen mask that was fogging up with faint, shallow breaths.

Her skin was a dull, waxy grey. Two IV lines were already taped to her forearms, bags of clear fluid sloshing as the wheels rattled over the tile floor.

"What do we have?!" a chief trauma doctor asked, joining the group as they shoved through the double doors into Bay Two.

"Twenty-four-year-old female, unrestrained passenger in a rollover collision," the paramedic reported, his voice loud over the beep of the portable monitors.

"GCS is six! Severe head laceration, suspected pelvic fracture! Blood pressure sixty over thirty! She went into cardiac arrest twice in the rig, resuscitated both times with CPR!"

"Is she pregnant?" the doctor asked, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves and ripping back the blood-soaked blanket covering her stomach.

"Twelfth week," the paramedic said. "Fetal heart rate was ninety when we picked her up. It dropped to forty three minutes ago. We can’t find it now."

The doctor’s face hardened. He grabbed an ultrasound wand, squirted blue gel onto her lower abdomen, and pressed the plastic head hard against her skin. He looked up at the small black-and-white screen mounted on the wall.

The room went dead silent for two seconds, except for the harsh, rhythmic pump of the mechanical ventilator.