“ICU. Room 404,” she said quietly. Then she hesitated. “Her family is here.”
My jaw tightened.
Tessa’s family was money dressed up as respectability. Her father, Victor Hale, owned half the commercial land in the county and influenced the officials who regulated the rest. He wore power the way some men wore cologne. Too much of it, and everyone around him was expected to pretend it smelled pleasant.
Then there were the sons. Seven of them. Dominic, Evan, Felix, Grant, Ian, Kyle, and Mason. Big voices, expensive watches, permanent smirks. They moved through life like consequences were for other people.
They never forgave Tessa for marrying me.
I turned the corner toward ICU and saw them clustered outside her room like guards protecting a vault.
Victor sat on a bench, legs crossed, checking the time on a gold watch. Dominic leaned against the wall with arms folded. Kyle laughed at something on a phone screen. Grant sipped coffee. Not one of them looked like men keeping vigil beside a woman they loved.
They looked irritated.
Victor rose first. “Well,” he said, smoothing his jacket. “The soldier returns.”
“Where is she?”
Dominic stepped in front of me and planted a hand on my chest. He spent a lot of time in gyms but none in hard places. I could tell by the softness in his eyes.
“Take it easy, Rambo. She’s not in condition for visitors.”
I looked down at his hand, then back at him.
“Move it.”
Something in my face convinced him. He stepped aside.
I pushed through the ICU door and heard the ventilator before I saw the bed. Mechanical breathing filled the room in cold, measured intervals. A machine doing what pain had interrupted.
Then I saw her.
If her chart had not said Tessa Hunter, I would not have known.
Her face was swollen beyond recognition, mottled purple and black. One eye was sealed shut. Her jaw was wired. Her left temple disappeared beneath gauze where surgeons had shaved away hair to stitch a deep wound. Both wrists were bandaged. One hand sat in a cast. Bruises bloomed along her collarbone and throat in ugly shades.
I had seen bomb victims in worse shape physically.
None of them had broken me like that sight did.
I moved to the bed and touched the only clear patch of skin I could find near her shoulder.
“Tessa,” I whispered. “I’m here now.”
The machine answered for her.
The doctor entered a moment later, older man, tired eyes, posture of someone who had delivered too much bad news in one lifetime. He glanced toward the hallway before speaking.
“Thirty-one fractures,” he said softly. “Blunt force trauma. Repeated strikes.”
The room narrowed around those words.
“Will she live?”
He paused long enough for honesty to show through professionalism.
“She’s alive now.”
Then he left.
I stood there counting breaths from a machine because if I started counting fractures, I might have torn the building apart.
Detective Miller came in a minute later. Mid-forties. Cheap suit. Sweat gathering near the collar despite the cold room. He held a notepad but didn’t look eager to use it.
“Mr. Hunter, I’m sorry.”
“Who did this?”
“We believe it was a burglary gone wrong.”
I turned slowly.
“A burglary.”
“Yes. Forced entry at the rear door. Intruder likely panicked when she confronted him.”
I stared at him, then gently lifted Tessa’s uncast arm. I had spent enough time around violence to read bodies better than most investigators read reports.
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