Page 76 of Hunted in the Silence

He cleared his throat. "I'm here." He looked at Brynn across the kitchen. She was watching him, trying to read his face. He didn't look away. "Thank you for calling."

"Of course." A pause. "How are you?"

He had no idea how to answer that. "I'll let you know. Give me an hour."

He set the phone down. Brynn didn't wait to ask. "What happened?"

"Devlin died last night."

She went still, but not with shock. More like she wasn't sure how to feel about it yet. Her hand flattened on the counter. Her eyes stayed steady.

"How?"

"Heart attack."

She nodded once and looked out the window. The bare yard. The fence Cole had repainted in September. The garden bed, done for the season, that would come back in spring.

He waited, ready for whatever her response would be.

"I thought I'd feel more," she said finally. "I thought there'd be something bigger. Relief or closure or—" She stopped. "It just feels quiet."

"Quiet is okay."

She looked at him. "Is it enough? He's just gone. No dramatic ending, no reckoning. A man who died in a prison cell of a heart attack."

"He died in a prison cell," Cole said, "because of the work we did. Because of everything you built, every piece of evidence, every girl who was brave enough to testify. That's not a small ending."

She stared at him for a long moment. Then her hand went back to her belly and something in her shoulders released, a tension so old she'd probably stopped noticing it was there.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay."

He crossed the kitchen and put his arms around her. She leaned into him, forehead against his jaw, one hand still on her belly between them. The quiet Olivia's call had made was still in the room, but it was different now. Not empty. Just still.

After a while she said, "I want to call Ruth Marsh. And Caitlin's coordinator." She lifted her head. "And I want to go to the center today. Not to work. Just to be there. Is that strange?"

"No," he said. "That makes sense."

***

Brynn called Ruth from the car outside the center while Cole sat behind the wheel and looked at the building. The new sign was up, the center's name and hours in clean block letters. The storefront next door was fully integrated now, the connecting door open during business hours, the children's area visible through the front window.

He caught her side of the call. Short sentences, mostly listening. "Yes. I know." Then, "She's doing well. I spoke to her coordinator last week." A pause. "I'm glad too, Ruth."

She ended the call and sat with the phone in her lap.

"Ruth cried," she said.

"How was that?"

"Good." She looked at the center. "She said she'd been afraid to hope it would actually be over. That it would just keep going somehow." There was a pause he knew not to fill. "I told her it was over."

"Is it? For you?"

She didn't answer right away. "The work isn't over. The work doesn't end." Her hand went to her belly. "But this part. The part where he's in it. That's over."

She got out of the car, and he followed her inside. Emma Reyes greeted them from the front desk. Through the open door to the expanded space, a session was in progress.

Brynn stopped in the middle of the main room and just took it in.