Stay With Me

Damian reached Shelby first.

Clara stopped behind him, unable for a moment to understand the shape beneath the torn coat.

Then she saw the bandaged ruin of her cousin's right arm.

"Call an ambulance."

Her voice sounded small.

Vince was already on the phone. Owen knelt beside Shelby and pressed a folded cloth where blood had soaked through the wrapping.

Someone had abandoned her outside the gate and driven away.

Clara bent toward her.

"Shelby. Can you hear me?"

Her cousin's eyelids moved. No answer came.

Damian caught Clara before she sank onto the wet stones.

"Let them work."

She clutched his sleeve.

"Help her."

"We are."

The ambulance crew took over. Clara watched them lift the stretcher, heard questions about what had happened, and realized nobody had an answer yet.

Then Owen's phone rang.

He looked at the screen and handed it to Damian.

"Pike."

***

Gordon thought he had hurt Damian's wife.

The confusion had begun with wedding photographs taken without the bride. Shelby had been seen at the hotel, near his car, carrying his things. A rumor she had encouraged became a fact in the mouths of people who hadn't bothered to check.

Gordon hadn't checked either.

He had wanted to make Damian come to a meeting. Now he was threatening to make the next message worse.

There were men at the river, he said.

Martin. Dylan. Two hotel employees who had tried to stop his people forcing their way into the service basement.

The old machines had gone too, stripped out before the police collection team arrived.

Vince swore when he heard.

"He broke through the loading entrance."

Damian ended the call.

His face had gone very still.

"Where?"

"The boats," Vince said.

He looked toward the gate.

Clara knew that look.

"No."

He turned back to her.

"Go to Westbridge with Owen. I'll come when this is done."

She tightened her hand around his sleeve.

"What does done mean?"

"I need to get them back."

"You need to tell Nathan."

"I will."

"Now."

Vince shifted beside them.

Damian glanced at him, and Clara caught Damian's wrist before the two men could exchange another decision over her head.

"You promised."

His expression changed.

"I know."

"Then tell me what you were about to do."

For a moment she thought he would say nothing.

Then he looked down at their joined hands.

"Take men. Go there. Make him give them back."

She closed her eyes.

"And if he didn't?"

No answer.

She opened her eyes again.

"I'm not asking you to leave anybody there. I'm asking you not to disappear into that part of your life and expect me to wait at the end of it."

"He's hurt your cousin."

"I know."

"He has our people."

"I know that too."

Her voice shook.

"There are other people whose job it is to go in there. Use them. Let them help you."

He looked toward the open gate, then back at her face.

She had never seen him fight himself so visibly.

At last he held out his phone.

"Call Nathan."

***

Nathan arrived with officers and enough questions to slow everyone down.

Clara welcomed every one of them.

Where were the hostages last seen? What had Gordon said? Were weapons involved? Who knew the boat layout?

Damian answered.

Before the officers spread out to make their calls, Clara asked for a minute alone with Damian.

He followed her into the studio.

Their bags stood in the hall beyond the open door, ready for a life that had seemed so close that morning.

"I wanted to leave all this behind," she said.

"So did I."

"You looked relieved when he gave you a reason to go there."

Damian's face tightened.

She waited instead of softening the question for him.

At last he said, "I know what to do when somebody threatens me. Or I think I do. It's easier than standing here and admitting I can't keep every bad thing away from you."

She took his hand.

"You don't have to keep everything away. You have to stay here with me while we work out what to do."

He looked toward the bags.

"I wanted you to have a quiet life."

"I want a life you're in. That's the part you keep forgetting when you send me somewhere safe."

He bowed his head until his forehead touched hers.

For a few seconds neither spoke.

Then he drew back and opened the studio door wider.

"Nathan needs the rest of it."

She nodded.

They went out together.

He handed over the recordings Owen had made and told Nathan about the men held beneath the hotel. Nathan's expression hardened at that part.

"We'll deal with your arrangements afterward."

"Fine."

Clara stood beside him as they talked. He didn't ask her to leave the room.

That mattered almost as much as the answers.

The officers collected the weapons Vince's men had started bringing to the courtyard. Vince looked as though he might complain, saw Clara watching him, and shut his mouth.

Nathan studied a map of the river access.

Gordon had lookouts. Marked police cars would send him toward the small boats tied beneath the restaurant vessel.

Damian knew the approaches. Nathan knew what resources he could bring.

They worked out the route together.

Owen wrote down the contact numbers and gave Clara a copy. She checked her phone battery while Nathan explained who would stay with her.

It was a small, practical thing, having a number she could call and somebody required to answer it. She put the paper in her coat pocket instead of telling herself she would remember.

Damian watched her do it.

"I'll keep mine on," he said.

"Good."

She looked at him until he understood that good meant more to her than a hundred promises made without a way to reach him.

Clara listened until she understood where Damian intended to be.

"And me?"

"With Owen," Damian said.

"I'm coming as far as the staging area."

"Clara."

"You don't have to like it. You do have to tell me where you'll be."

Nathan looked up.

"She stays behind the cordon. In a vehicle with an officer. No exceptions."

Damian held her gaze.

Then he nodded.

***

Before they left, he brought her a black weatherproof jacket.

She put it on without arguing.

He tried to add sunglasses.

She looked at the overcast sky.

"Do you want everyone to remember the suspicious woman wearing sunglasses in December?"

Vince made a choking sound.

Damian lowered his hand.

"Fine. No glasses."

It was the first time anyone had nearly laughed since the van arrived.

He bent and pressed his mouth against her forehead.

"Stay where Nathan tells you."

"Come back where you tell me."

He looked at her for a long second.

"All right."

***

The river smelled of cold mud and old fuel.

They changed vehicles before the last turning, using the hotel's ordinary cars under Nathan's direction. Officers moved into position farther along the bank.

Clara sat in the rear with an officer beside her. She could see Damian through the windshield of the car ahead, his shoulders filling the front passenger seat.

At the first checkpoint, two men came toward the vehicle.

Vince got out.

He didn't smile. He didn't shout this time either.

He simply pointed toward Damian and said something that made the men look at each other.

One lifted a radio.

A reply crackled through it.

The barrier moved.

Clara watched the cars pass between the reeds.

A four-story vessel stood against the bank, painted red and blue, its restaurant sign bright above a narrow gangway. Music drifted from the lower deck.

It looked so ordinary that she hated it.

Damian's car stopped.

He got out and turned once, searching the vehicles behind him.

Clara lifted her hand against the glass.

He saw her.

Then he went toward the boat.