Page 8 of The Final Cut

CHAPTER TWO

EVER

Hospitals are the only buildings in the world I think are absolutely unnecessary in their construction.

There are too many doors. Too many corners. Too much trust being placed in badges, clipboards, soft voices and shoes that don’t make noise on polished floors.

My teeth are on edge from the moment I step through the doors.

The waiting room outside surgery has three exits if I count the hall to the vending machines, four if I count the staff door behind the desk, five if someone is willing to break the window and drop one floor into the landscaped courtyard below. Cameras cover the main corridor, elevator bank and west nurse’s station. The stairwell camera is angled too high. A small woman with a hood up could move under it if she kept her head down.

I know this because I’ve watched the feed six times. I hacked the hospital’s security system from a rigid plastic chair just inside the waiting room. It was absurdly easy. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

If I keep gathering information, I can pretend having it is the same as controlling a tiny piece of the situation.

My left hand shakes.

I shove it into my pocket and pace from the waiting room doors to the vending machines down the hall, then back again. Twenty-two steps one way. Twenty-two steps back. The floor clicks under my shoes. My jaw aches from holding still everywhere except my feet.

In the waiting room behind me, Shiloh sits on the floor in front of Reva.

He could sit in a chair. There are twelve empty ones, only three occupied by strangers pretending they’re not watching the bloodstained girl in the borrowed sweatshirt.

Shiloh ignores all of them and sits cross-legged on the tile. His tux pants are ruined. His sleeves are rolled to the elbows. There’s a bruise forming along his cheekbone from whatever happened between the garden and the ambulance bay—I’m assuming he put down one or more of Isabel’s goons.

He has a coffee in one hand and a paper bag from the gift shop beside his hip. Socks. Sweatpants. A soft gray sweatshirt with the hospital logo over the heart. Toothbrush. Bottled water. Tiny pack of tissues. A comb. Things I didn’t think to get and feel stupid about now.

He tried one joke ten minutes ago.

Something about the sweatshirt being a crime against fashion and therefore personally offensive to him.

Reva stared at the wall.

Shiloh stopped trying after that.

Since then, he’s stayed quiet, close enough that she can reach him, far enough that she doesn’t have to. That’s Shiloh’s gift. He knows where to put himself in a room full of pain.

I know where the exits are.

He knows where Reva is and how to help her.

She sits with her legs folded under her, one shoulder pressed into the corner of the waiting room couch. The sweatshirt swallows her arms. The cuffs are pulled over her fingers, even though I know her hands are cold for another reason. Her hair is still pinned from the masquerade, though half the curls have fallen loose. Gold dust clings to one cheek. Dried blood marks the side of her throat where she must have touched herself without noticing.

Cal’s blood.

I look away before the thought can do anything useful to me.

My phone vibrates. I pull it out fast enough that the woman near the vending machine flinches.

Nash

Status?

I type one-handed.

Ever

Still in surgery. No update. Feeds patched. Police at north entrance and lobby. Hospital security sloppy. Staff shifts changing in forty.