Page 103 of Boardroom Ties
“What will I do?” I ask.
“You will wear something pretty and stay where I can see you.” He catches my hand and kisses the inside of my wrist. “More importantly, you do not pick up a gun, or a knife. You do not pick up so much as a cocktail fork with intent. Am I clear?”
“No cutlery. Got it.”
“I’m serious, Cass.”
“I know you are.” I nuzzle my forehead into the warm hollow of his throat. “I won’t go rogue. I promise. I’m done improvising.”
He’s silent for a moment. Then, to himself, he whispers, “One more week. We can do one more week.”
I nod against him. “For your father,” I whisper.
“For our baby,” he whispers back.
“For our baby,” I agree. “And for us.”
We make love twice more before I fall asleep. The next thing I know, I’m being pulled up out of something black and dreamless by a strange cacophony.
Voices. Boots. A radio crackling below the window.
“Mat.” I shake his shoulder. “Mat, something’s happening.”
He’s awake between one breath and the next. His hand finds my wrist in the dark and squeezes once—Stay—then he’s up and at the window, lifting the heavy curtain an inch with one knuckle.
The light that comes through paints his bare chest in candy-cane stripes. Red, blue, red, blue.
“Ambulance,” he reports. “Two of them. And a fire truck.”
I’m out of bed and across the room before he can tell me not to, dragging the duvet around me like a toga. I press up against his side and peer down through the gap in the curtain.
The circular drive is a mess of lights. Two ambulances, like he said, plus a fire engine angled across the gravel, and now, a sheriff’s SUV with the door flying open and deputies pouring out. Silhouettes move to and fro, turning the snow beneath their boots to gray slush.
And in the middle of it all, two gurneys.
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
Susan is in the first. I’d recognize that wheat-blond chignon anywhere, even half-undone, with an oxygen mask over the bottom of her face. They’re rolling her toward the nearerambulance. A paramedic is jogging alongside, squeezing a bag attached to the mask to flood her lungs with oxygen.
Behind her, on the second gurney, is Bill.
He isn’t moving at all.
“Mat—”
“I see it.” His voice is very, very flat.
I’m turning, hunting for clothes, any clothes. The first thing I find is Matvei’s discarded shirt, which I shove my arms into. He’s stepping into his pants without a word, then handing me my own from the floor. I drag them on under the shirt, hopping on one foot, then the other.
In the hallway, the animal knockers glare out at me from every door as we run past.
A porter is at the foot of the main staircase with a walkie-talkie pressed to his collar, his face pale. He startles when he sees us coming and holds up both hands like he’s trying to slow traffic.
“Mr. Satyrin. Mrs. Snyder. Please, just— If you could just stay?—”
“What happened?” Matvei barks.
The porter swallows. “There was a— a gas leak. In the Oglethorpes’ suite.”
