Page 10 of The Final Cut

My hand starts shaking again, and I curl it into a fist inside my pocket.

“Ever.”

Shiloh’s voice pulls me back, quiet. Careful.

I stop near the doorway.

Reva hasn’t moved, but Shiloh is looking at her hands. The sweatshirt cuffs have slipped back. Her fingers are bare, scraped, clean on the surface from the sink in the ambulance bay, but not clean enough. Blood is still dark beneath her nails.

He looks up at me, and I know what he is asking without words.

I cross to the sink alcove near the waiting room restroom and pull paper towels from the dispenser. Too rough. I get more anyway, wet them with warm water, then take the travel pack of wipes from Shiloh’s gift-shop bag.

When I kneel beside him, Reva’s gaze shifts to me. She looks emptied out. That scares me more than the blood did.

“Hands,” I say.

She blinks once.

Shiloh wraps his fingers loosely around her wrist. “Sweetheart, let him.”

For a moment I think she will refuse because refusing is proof she is still in there. Then she extends one hand.

I take it with the kind of care I use on broken electronics and live wires. Her fingers are stiff. Cold. Dried blood sits under three nails and along the crescent of her thumb. I clean slowly, one nail at a time, keeping my pressure gentle.

She watches my hands instead of my face.

“I should’ve been faster,” she says.

The paper towel stills. Shiloh’s expression changes, pain flashing clean across it before he hides it badly.

“You kept him alive until the ambulance got there,” I say.

Her mouth tightens. “Maybe.”

“There is no maybe.”

She pulls in a shallow breath. “I’m tired of people telling me what I did right while everyone keeps bleeding.”

I don’t have an answer that deserves, so I keep cleaning her hand.

The waiting room doors open, and Deacon steps in from the hall. He has changed shirts. Black again. I do not know where he found one. Knowing Deacon, he had three stashed within walking distance in case the night required one.

His eyes go to Reva first. Then her hands. Then me kneeling at her feet.

Something moves across his face and disappears before most people would notice it. I notice everything right now because the alternative is noticing the surgery doors too much.

“No change,” I tell him.

He nods once. “Nash is keeping the police downstairs.”

“Delia?”

“Gone from the property before lockdown finished.”

Reva’s fingers twitch in mine.

I finish cleaning her thumb. “Routes?”