The Proviso (115 page)

Bryce put the heels of his palms to his eyes and
wheeled away. Could it get any worse?

“Can I see her?” he asked when he had calmed himself
as much as possible.

“Not now. She’s in recovery and won’t be awake any
time soon.”

“What about my son?”

“Oh, he’s healthy. He’s a little older than we were
told—” He saw the puzzled look on Bryce’s face. “Paramedics got
that information on the scene. I don’t know who from. Anyway, he’s
maybe two or three weeks shy of full term, and that’s just fine.
Would you like to see him?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Once in the nursery, Bryce approached the bassinet
with dread at what he might find, even though everyone had assured
him that the baby was okay. The boy was tiny and more wrinkled than
he remembered his other children being.

He had a mop of bright orange curls and Bryce
grinned suddenly. If ever he had a shred of doubt that this was his
child, it was gone.
Scot through and through
indeed.

“Would you like to hold him?” the nurse asked
softly. “The doctor gave his okay.”

“Yes, please,” he whispered and the tiny creature
was picked up and placed in his arms. She led Bryce to a rocking
chair and gave him a tiny bottle of formula.

“He’s probably not hungry yet, but—”

Bryce tuned her out. He’d done this four times
already; he was an old hand at it.

He rocked that baby for hours as he waited for
permission to see Giselle. The boy awoke, cried, and Bryce plugged
his mouth with the bottle until he’d taken a few sucks. He looked
into the familiar gunmetal gray eyes all newborns have and wondered
if they’d lighten to Dunham ice or darken to Kenard emerald.

“I love you, kid,” he whispered and held him close
as he fell asleep again, “and I desperately love your mother.”

“Mr. Kenard,” said a nurse softly, leaning over his
shoulder, “your wife’s awake and asking for you. I’ll take the
little one so you can go see her.”

Bryce gave his son back to her carefully, then
dashed down the hallway and asked directions to find her. He found
her room and ran in to see her in the bed, wan, listless, and her
eyes half closed. He felt like he’d been kicked in the gut to see
her like this, the strongest, most fearless woman he’d ever met—the
woman he had to work to take, over and over and over again, the one
who occasionally took him.

But. She was alive and awake, and that was all he
cared about right now. “Giselle,” he breathed and she turned to see
him, her face lighting up.

“Bryce! Have you seen him? Is he okay? They told me
he was, but . . . ”

“He’s fine. He’s wonderful. How are you?”

“I have a headache,” she said, her face making that
very plain, but her body radiated good humor and he needed it now
more than he ever had.

Bryce pulled a chair up to the bedside, leaned in,
and buried his face in her belly. He felt her hands in his hair,
stroking him, caressing him as if he were the child. And he began
to cry, long wracking sobs—for her, for the child, for the family
he’d lost. For himself.

He had almost lost Giselle—again. Permanently.

It was a long while before Bryce could lift his head
and he took her hands and kissed them. “Did they tell you?” he
asked quietly. “You had an emergency hysterectomy.”

She gasped, her eyes wide, and then she grinned.
“Fabulous! I hate having periods with a passion. There’s no such
thing as an elective hysterectomy, you know. Saves me the trouble
of begging someone to do it.”

He had to laugh at that, no matter how shaky it was.
So, she’d been serious when she’d said she wanted no more children.
Trust her to want exactly the opposite of what most any other woman
would want. He’d started to grow bitter again, to feel guilty for
bringing their future childlessness down on their heads, but her
reaction quelled that.

He could not afford to bring more guilt into their
marriage.

“How’s your head now?”

“Still pounding. I want aspirin but they’re being
nasty about that.”

“You lost a lot of blood. They had to transfuse
you.”

“I don’t care. Aspirin’s the only thing that works.”
Giselle placed a hand on his arm and bit her lip, her eyes
sparkling. “Bryce. We made a
baby
.”

He couldn’t help the slow smile that spread across
his face. “Let me go get him for you.”

“Beat you to it,” said a nurse from the doorway as
she wheeled in the acrylic bassinet. “Figured you’d be up to saying
hello to him now.”

Bryce lifted the little burrito out and carefully
laid him in his mother’s arms.

Giselle gasped and breathed, “Wow, look at that
hair! It’s
orange
! I
so
didn’t expect that.”

Bryce laughed. “My dad’s hair was that color.”

She looked at him sharply, wary. “Are you going to
be okay with that?”

Bryce smirked with the pride of a new father and
ruffled the little orange curls with his fingertips. “I’ll be all
right.”

Soon Lilly, Dianne, Eilis, and Sebastian joined them
and the five of them gathered around Giselle and Duncan Elliott
Dunham Kenard to ooh and ahh, because little baby feet are the best
things in the world.

*

6:05 p.m.

When Justice was startled awake by the sound of
Knox’s roars echoing in the storage room, three thoughts occurred
to her at the same time:

He was alive.

He’d found her and the baby.

They had a chance.

Justice and Mercy still lay on the cot and she
watched as Fen and Knox circled each other, slow dancing with
firearms. Her heart thundered and she could barely see through her
tears, her trembling.

“You and your wolf pack have sneered at me for years
for not dirtying my own hands,” Fen hissed. “So here I am, Knox. I
know I’m done, but I’m taking all three of you with me.”

Justice knew why Fen would want to kill her: She’d
done what she’d told him she’d do after he’d threatened Knox. One
scathing email to four of her closest liberal friends and his name
had become hazardous waste nationwide—

—but in spite of her hesitation in bringing a child
into this mess, she had never really believed that anyone would
actually be willing to kill a newborn baby.

With that thought, Justice carefully and painfully
twisted to lay Mercy behind her and lightly pin her between the
wall and her body. She absolutely couldn’t turn over because it was
too painful and too awkward, and because she was afraid she’d drop
the baby. She slowly and carefully, with much pain, drew her knees
up to her chest and folded in on herself to give any bullet that
might come their way more mass to travel through. Mercy would
not
die while she could provide a shield. Justice and Knox
wouldn’t live out the day, but Mercy would never be without love
and family.

She tried to believe that Knox could protect them,
and she kept close the memory of how he had killed Lionel Jones the
day she had interviewed for her job and felt no remorse—how
horrified she’d been, how outraged—

—and here
Justice
was, eighteen months later,
having killed a man in defense of her daughter and husband—and felt
absolutely no remorse.

Justice must have moved, squishing Mercy too
tightly, because she began to wail again and distracted Fen just
enough that Knox was able to close the distance between them and
put his gun to Fen’s temple.

“So here’s how it’s going to be, Fen,” Knox
muttered. “You can walk out of here and stay alive or you can go in
a pine box. Your choice.”

“They’re going first,” Fen snarled as he pointed his
gun at Justice. She closed her eyes so as not to see her own
death.

The nearly simultaneous booms were deafening and
Mercy screamed, held her breath as babies do, then caught another
breath and screamed again. Justice had barely enough time to raise
her head before the FBI broke in—

—more gunshots.

Shouting.

Pounding feet.

Justice glanced at the carnage on the floor. Fen lay
on his back, nearly headless. Knox lay on his stomach close enough
to Fen to touch, bloody and still, his beautiful blue eyes closed,
his gun still held loosely in his hand.

Justice swallowed and closed her eyes tight, then
sobbed when she heard him pronounced dead at the scene.

*

8:34 p.m.

“I’m so pissed at Knox,” Sebastian snarled as he
paced the Den of Iniquity while Eilis lounged nude in bed, nursing
Alex, enjoying the lush sensuality of motherhood. His hands on his
hips while he paced, he continued to rant. “He couldn’t call,
couldn’t show up—what’s that about?”

The phone rang then and Sebastian burst out of the
bedroom to the studio to answer it. Chouteau County prosecutor’s
office. “Knox, you bastard, Giselle’s—”

“Shut the fuck up, Sebastian. It’s Eric.”

Sebastian stopped and found his heart racing
immediately, his anger turning to panic in a microsecond.

“Sit down and listen to me.”

Sebastian sat only after Eric began to speak again.
He fell back against the wall and slid down it helplessly, his soul
dying with every painful word. He wasn’t aware when he dropped the
phone and drew his knees up to his chest to press his face in them
to sob.

“Sebastian, what—?”

He shook his head at the sound of Eilis’s voice
above him, the feel of her hand in his hair, because he couldn’t
form words, couldn’t make his vocal cords move.

“Get dressed,” he whispered, hoarse, when he could
finally speak. “I have to go back to St. Luke’s.”

“Oh, no! Giselle?”

He shook his head. “You have to go to Truman Medical
Center.”

She said nothing for a moment, then, warily,
“Why?”

Sebastian swallowed the bitter pill of shame and
guilt, of the heartbreaking loss of his brother, the pain Knox
always thought he should know.

“Justice needs you,” he finally said. “Take diapers,
clothes for Justice, for the baby. Justice needs . . . well,
everything. She’s lost everything.” He choked. “
We
have lost
everything.”

“Lost everything . . . ” she repeated slowly. “I
don’t und—” Her eyes widened and she released a strangled breath.
“Sebastian, no. Please don’t say—”

“Fen,” he whispered. “Fen did it. Three weeks before
the handoff and he just—” He looked up at her then, his cheeks wet.
Her eyes darkened until they looked haunted and tears spilled over.
Sebastian raised his face to the ceiling, holding his head as if it
were going to explode, and howled.

“KNOX!”

*

11:02 p.m.

Justice carried a sleeping Mercy on her shoulder as
she limped barefoot into the morgue. The painkillers had somewhat
dulled the pain in her feet. Her burns had been treated and the
glass extracted from her soles, but though she hurt, she had work
to do and Knox’s daughter to love and care for.

Mercy had not come out unscathed and guilt rode
Justice hard.

She dreaded this moment. She had been asked to come
identify the bodies, but she stopped short when she saw the
once-beautiful blonde woman already at the window. Her eyes
narrowed. So. This was her mother-in-law.

Trudy Hilliard glanced at Justice but turned back to
the window, its blind now closed. She wept, her face streaked with
tears. Justice felt no sympathy. How could she?

“I hope you’re happy now,” Justice murmured as she
took a place beside her, not looking at her. “You leave a trail of
bitterness and hatred, death and destruction in your wake like slug
tracks, don’t you?”

Trudy stiffened, then gasped, whirling to face
Justice. She was livid, and Justice now knew where Knox had gotten
his hot and quick temper as well as who had given him and Eilis
their golden beauty. “How dare you! Who are you to say such a cruel
thing to me?”

“I’m the mother of your granddaughter, the baby your
husband almost succeeded in killing.”

The woman gasped and stepped back, her attention
drawn to Mercy. “May—may I see her? Please?”

Justice looked at her then and she felt her power
emanate from her, encompassing Trudy. Trudy’s eyes widened just a
bit.

“If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” Justice said
matter-of-factly, satisfied when Trudy took another step backward,
clearly frightened. “Why should I think you’d treat your grandchild
any better than you treated your children?”

Trudy swallowed, then took a step to escape around
Justice, but Justice would have her say. She stepped in front of
her. She was taller than Trudy and the fact that she was barefoot,
had a baby on her left shoulder, and a limp did not in any way
negate the badge she wore on the front pocket of the jeans Eilis
had loaned her, nor the gun in the holster wrapped around her thigh
that the FBI had not seen fit to take away from her, all things
considered.

“Do you know what you have done?” Justice could see
that she wanted to slap her, but was too terrified. “In case you
haven’t actually thought it through, let me remind you.” Justice
coldly, methodically ran down the list of everything that had
happened from the first moment Trudy had seduced Fen.

“And that—” Justice pressed her finger to the morgue
window when she finished her recitation. “—is the end result. Your
husband is dead. Your son is dead, not that you care, but he
despised you; your daughter hates you. You have no more family who
will claim you—your sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews
abandoned you a year ago.

“Your home and everything in it are
mine
. I
sent the sheriff out there a little while ago to padlock it pending
probate. OKH is
mine
. I’ll make sure to acquire everything
else you own, too. Of course, it’s December and it’s cold and all
you have are the clothes on your back and your car and whatever’s
in your purse—which is far more than what you gave Knox when you
kicked him out. I doubt you have a clue how to live on your own,
working, earning money. And don’t even
think
about getting a
lawyer to fight me for any of it because I’ll kick his ass from
here to New York and back. Life as you know it is over. Ain’t karma
a bitch?”