Chapter 28 · The Missing Leading Lady

The monitor made one long, merciless sound.

Maeve stood beneath the fluorescent lights of Saint Orison’s emergency department with Clara’s blood drying beneath her fingernails and her own blood slipping warm beneath the bandage around her ribs. Around her, the ER kept moving because hospitals did not know how to stop. Shoes squeaked over waxed tile.

A phone rang at the triage desk. Someone cried behind Curtain Four. The automatic doors sighed open, admitting a gust of rain and the sour smell of the city after midnight.

Jonah’s bed sat at the center of it all.

The screen above him had gone flat.

“No,” Maeve whispered.

A respiratory therapist leaned over the bed. “Code blue! Get the crash cart!”

The words struck Maeve with the cold precision of a line she had already heard.

Jonah Price: You promised you would save me.

Maeve’s vision stuttered. The hospital blurred into black velvet curtains.