Chapter 3 - The Man at the Clinic
Damian reached Connecticut before sunset.
He knew the doctor's confidentiality rules would not bend simply because Damian Hale walked through the door, so he didn't threaten anyone.
That surprised even him.
Instead, he asked to see the parking-lot footage.
The clinic administrator refused.
Then Lucas called from the hospital.
“Don't do anything stupid.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything you would've done before meeting Isabelle.”
Damian stared at the clinic entrance.
That eliminated most of his instincts.
An hour later, his security team legally obtained footage from a neighboring gas station whose camera covered part of the clinic lot.
Damian watched Isabelle emerge.
She looked tiny beneath an oversized borrowed coat.
A dark sedan pulled beside her.
A man stepped out.
Damian leaned closer.
The man's face turned toward the camera.
Damian swore.
“Who?” his driver asked.
“Daniel Reed.”
Not a lover.
Emma's older brother.
An emergency-room physician Damian had met twice.
The jealousy disappeared instantly, leaving shame behind.
Daniel had apparently driven Isabelle to his sister's house after Emma's car wouldn't start.
Damian had spent twenty minutes imagining betrayal because betrayal was the language he understood best.
He was beginning to understand how deeply that language had poisoned him.
He knew where Emma lived.
He drove there alone.
At 9:10 p.m., Isabelle heard a knock.
Emma looked through the curtain and went rigid.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Isabelle knew before asking.
“Damian?”
Emma nodded.
Isabelle's heart betrayed her with one violent beat.
“Tell him to leave.”
Emma opened the door only far enough to stand in it.
Damian Hale looked nothing like the man newspapers occasionally photographed leaving charity galas.
He hadn't shaved.
His coat was damp.
His eyes looked sleepless.
“Isabelle is here.”
It wasn't a question.
Emma crossed her arms.
“You're very observant for a man who apparently couldn't identify his own wife's innocence.”
“I deserve that.”
“You deserve worse.”
“I know.”
Emma clearly hadn't expected agreement.
Neither had Isabelle, listening from the kitchen.
Damian continued.
“I need five minutes.”
“No.”
“Emma,” Isabelle called.
Her friend turned.
“You don't owe him anything.”
“I know.”
That mattered.
Isabelle stepped into the hallway.
Damian saw her.
Everything rehearsed disappeared from his face.
His eyes dropped involuntarily toward her stomach before returning to hers.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“The baby?”
“Is alive.”
The words hit him visibly.
He swallowed.
“I know the accounts were fabricated.”
Isabelle's expression didn't change.
“I know Roland helped create them. I know the Providence access log was altered. Lucas confirmed Grant's office sent the route.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“You wanted proof. Now you have proof.”
There was no anger in her voice.
That frightened him more.
“I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I should've believed you.”
“Yes.”
“I came to bring you home.”
For the first time, something sharp appeared in her eyes.
“You still don't understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
“You think discovering I was innocent fixes the problem.”
“It doesn't.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you're my wife.”
“No.”
The single word stopped him.
“I was your wife when I stood in front of you and told you the truth.”
Damian's jaw tightened.
“You're still my wife.”
“Legally.”
“Isabelle—”
“You don't get to discover our baby and suddenly remember that marriage means something.”
He had no defense.
She stepped closer.
“I loved you enough to live in your world. I accepted guards outside restaurants. Armored cars. Security codes. Men searching rooms before I entered them. I accepted every piece of fear that came with loving you because you promised one thing.”
Damian remembered.
“If danger ever came,” she whispered, “you said we'd face it together.”
“I remember.”
“No. You remember the words. I remember believing them.”
He looked away.
That hurt because it was true.
She removed her wedding ring.
Damian's eyes fixed on it.
Isabelle placed it in his palm.
His fingers closed automatically.
“Don't.”
“I'm not asking for a divorce tonight.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Taking back the part of me that kept waiting for you to choose me.”
She closed his fingers around the ring.
“You wanted proof before trust. Now you'll need to understand that proof doesn't automatically bring trust back.”
Damian stood there long after the door closed.
At 11:32, his phone vibrated.
Lucas.
“We found Roland.”
“Where?”
“Dead.”
Damian's face hardened.
“How?”
“Car at the bottom of a quarry outside Albany.”
“Accident?”
“No.”
Lucas hesitated.
“Someone shot him first.”
Damian looked toward Emma's darkened house.
Grant was cleaning the board.
And if Grant had framed Isabelle to destroy Damian's marriage, there was a reason.
“Double security around this house,” Damian said.
“Already done.”
“Without Isabelle knowing.”
Lucas sighed.
“You haven't learned much tonight, have you?”
Damian paused.
Then corrected himself.
“Ask her permission.”
That was new.
Inside, Isabelle sat beside the window watching Damian's car disappear.
Emma joined her.
“You still love him.”
Isabelle wiped her cheek.
“That doesn't mean I trust him.”
Meanwhile, forty miles away, a black SUV sat beside an abandoned service road.
Grant Doyle stood beneath an umbrella while two men removed bloodstained plastic from the trunk.
Roland Cole had become a liability.
Isabelle was supposed to have become one too.
Grant checked his phone.
A message waited from an unknown number.
Hale knows the evidence was fabricated.
Grant typed back.
Then move to the second plan.
The reply came almost immediately.
What about the wife?
Grant looked toward the dark highway.
Then smiled.
Don't touch her.
May you like
A second message followed.
Not yet.
