Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH IN HIS COAT
“You had no right to come here.”
Sloan's voice trembled despite everything she did to steady it.
Caspian glanced toward his men.
“Outside.”
Neither argued.
The clinic door closed behind them.
That frightened Sloan more than their presence had.
Caspian Reed rarely needed to repeat himself.
Dr. Morrison stayed beside Sloan.
“Would you like me to call the police?”
Caspian looked at Sloan rather than the doctor.
“If she says yes, call them.”
That wasn't what Sloan expected.
She had spent six months imagining this moment.
In every version, Caspian demanded, threatened, controlled.
Instead he removed his coat and laid it across a chair as though preparing to stay exactly where she allowed him to stay.
“No police,” Sloan said.
Dr. Morrison hesitated.
“I'll be ten feet away.”
When he left, Caspian finally spoke.
“Twenty-three weeks?”
Sloan stiffened.
“You heard him.”
His face tightened.
“That means you knew before you left Boston.”
“Yes.”
The word landed between them.
Caspian turned toward the window.
For several seconds he said nothing.
When he faced her again, the anger she expected wasn't there.
“You let me believe you'd stopped loving me.”
“I needed you to stop looking.”
“I never stopped.”
Sloan's pulse jumped.
“Then how did you find me?”
Caspian reached slowly into his jacket.
Sloan stepped backward.
His hand stopped immediately.
“It's paper.”
He pulled out a folded photograph.
Not the ultrasound.
A surveillance picture.
Sloan stood outside her Providence apartment carrying groceries.
The photograph had been taken recently.
Cold spread through her.
“You've been watching me?”
“No.”
“Don't lie to me.”
“I received it yesterday.”
He handed it over.
On the back, written in black ink, were six words.
ASK HER WHAT SHE TOOK FROM BOSTON.
Sloan stared.
“I didn't take anything.”
“I know.”
“You can't know that.”
“I searched your apartment after you disappeared.”
Her head snapped up.
“You did what?”
“I thought someone had taken you.”
The anger in his voice finally surfaced.
Not at her.
At the memory.
“I found your phone on the kitchen counter. Half your clothes were gone. Your passport was gone. Your grandmother's necklace was gone. That's when I understood you'd left willingly.”
Sloan unconsciously touched the small silver necklace beneath her sweater.
Her grandmother's only keepsake.
Caspian noticed.
His expression softened.
“I spent three months trying to find you.”
“And the other three?”
“Trying not to.”
That answer hurt more than Sloan wanted it to.
She looked again at the photograph.
“Who sent this?”
“No return address.”
“Then why come personally?”
“Because somebody found you before I did.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
Caspian moved toward the photograph, pointing without touching.
“Look behind you.”
Sloan studied it.
Across the street from her apartment was a parked gray sedan.
Barely visible through its windshield was a man.
She couldn't see his face.
But something hung from the rearview mirror.
A silver rosary.
Sloan's stomach tightened.
“I've seen that car.”
Caspian went completely still.
“Where?”
“Outside work. Twice.”
His expression hardened.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
“Tell who, Caspian? You?”
Before he could answer, Dr. Morrison appeared.
“Sloan, I need to check your blood pressure again before you leave.”
Caspian stepped back immediately.
Sloan followed the doctor into the exam room.
Her hands shook as he wrapped the cuff around her arm.
“You know him well?” Dr. Morrison asked quietly.
“I used to.”
The doctor studied her.
“Whatever happens outside this room, your stress level matters now.”
Sloan nodded.
A minute later, a familiar rhythmic sound filled the room.
Her baby's heartbeat.
Strong.
Fast.
Alive.
Sloan closed her eyes.
Then she realized Caspian was standing in the doorway.
He hadn't entered.
He simply stood there listening.
His face changed.
The most feared man Sloan had ever known looked suddenly defenseless.
“That's him?” he whispered.
Sloan couldn't speak.
Dr. Morrison nodded.
“That's your son.”
Caspian gripped the doorframe.
Something inside Sloan cracked.
This was why she had run.
Not because she believed Caspian incapable of love.
Because she knew exactly how deeply he could love.
And she had feared what that love might turn him into.
Afterward, Sloan found him waiting by reception.
“You can't come home with me.”
“I'm not asking to.”
“Good.”
“I'm putting men outside your building.”
“No.”
“Sloan—”
“No armed guards.”
“Someone has been watching you.”
“And you think surrounding my baby with guns solves that?”
His jaw worked.
Finally he said, “One car. Across the street. No one enters your building.”
“No.”
“One man.”
“No.”
His eyes flashed.
Then he did something she had never seen him do during a security argument.
He surrendered.
“Fine.”
Sloan blinked.
“But you call me if you see the gray car again.”
“I don't have your number.”
For the first time, something almost like humor touched his face.
“You deleted it?”
“I changed phones.”
“Of course you did.”
He wrote a number on the back of a clinic appointment card.
Sloan took it reluctantly.
When she bent to put it into her purse, something slipped from Caspian's coat on the chair.
A photograph.
Older.
Creased.
Sloan picked it up.
It showed Caspian at perhaps twelve years old beside a dark-haired woman holding a baby.
The woman wore a silver rosary around her neck.
The same unusual rosary Sloan had seen hanging inside the gray sedan.
She turned the photograph over.
One sentence was written in faded blue ink.
Caspian, protect your brother when I can't.
Sloan looked up.
“Caspian.”
He saw what she held.
All color left his face.
“My mother wrote that.”
“You have a brother?”
Caspian stared at the photograph.
Then at the rosary in the surveillance picture.
“No,” he said slowly.
May you like
“My brother died twenty-seven years ago.”
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