Page 3 of The Final Cut

“Reva, I need you to let us package him.”

“No.”

Her gaze sharpens. “You did good. Now move.”

My chest turns hollow and hot. “I am not moving.”

Cal makes a sound. Barely anything. A breath scraped through blood.

Every bit of training I have ever had fractures against the sight of him. I know the right answer. I know I’m in the way. I know family members hovering over a patient make the scene harder, messier, slower. I have been the person silently begging someone to back up so I could save the body under my hands.

Knowing all of that doesn’t help.

This is Cal.

This is the man who taught me how to drive with one hand on the wheel and one hand ready to smack mine away from the radio. The man who sat through school plays he had no interest in and clapped too loud anyway. The man who let me scream into couch cushions after nightmares and never once asked me to make my grief easier, prettier for him.

This is my father in every way that matters, and they want me to take my hands off him.

“No,” I say again.

Nash’s hand closes around my upper arm.

I jerk away so hard my shoulder burns. “Don’t.”

He releases me immediately. “Little wolf.”

“Do not.”

His face changes at whatever he hears in my voice. He shifts back, but he does not leave. Around us, the terrace has become a scene he is trying to own. Men move at the edges. Security. Medics. A woman in a torn silver mask is crying near the doors until Shiloh appears and guides her away with one hand at her elbow and murder in his eyes.

Shiloh’s here.

His tux jacket is gone, his shirt untucked, curls damp with sweat. He sees me, and all the practiced ease drains out of his face. For one second he looks younger. Terrified. Then his gaze drops to Cal, to my bloody hands, to the gun on the stone, and he pulls himself back together hard enough that I can almost hear it.

Ever is behind him, moving like a man trying not to run because running would mean he’s lost control. His eyes sweep the terrace, fast and merciless. Dead guard. Cal. Nash. Me. Deacon. The medic bag. The broken planter. The open doors. The cameras I know he’s already thinking about. The device in my hair. The bracelet on my wrist.

His gaze catches mine. I want to tell him I’m fine, but I can’t make the lie fit in my mouth.

“The signal was cut near the chapel,” Ever says to Nash, voice clipped. He keeps his eyes moving. “I had partial audio from Reva until the interference hit. Two men took Delia east. Service stairs or back hall.”

“Find the camera gaps,” Nash says. “Now.”

“I’m on it.”

Shiloh steps closer, careful, like I am a bomb he knows he needs to tiptoe around. “Sweetheart.”

“Don’t sweetheart me.” My voice breaks on the last word, which ruins the whole thing.

His throat moves. “Okay.”

The paramedics shift Cal. I lunge with the pressure, refusing to lose contact. “Watch his side. Watch his side. He’s still bleeding.”

“We see it,” the female medic says. “Reva, I need your hands off.”

“No. No, I can’t.”

The male paramedic reaches for my wrist.