Chapter 3 - THE BOY IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
By the time Rafe's convoy reached St. Anne's Children's Hospital, Boston rain had turned the streets into black glass.
Mave sat beside him in the back seat despite every doctor at County Memorial telling her not to leave.
Her right arm was immobilized against her torso. Her skin had gone pale beneath the streetlights. Every pothole made pain flash across her face.
She never complained.
Rafe found that more unsettling than screaming would have been.
“You're going back to County Memorial after you see him.”
“No.”
“That wasn't a question.”
“Then stop pretending it was.”
Rafe looked at her.
Mave stared straight ahead.
“You always this difficult?”
“Only when strangers try to reorganize my life.”
“I don't think we're strangers anymore.”
“We know each other's names.”
“You saved my sister.”
“And now apparently my dead mother knew your mother and my manager has been snooping through my brother's hospital records. That doesn't make us friends. It makes today terrible.”
From the front passenger seat, Nico coughed suspiciously.
Rafe glared at the back of his head.
Nico stared firmly through the windshield.
When the SUV stopped, Mave reached for the door.
Rafe caught her wrist gently.
“What?”
“You're going to let someone help you walk.”
“I can walk.”
“You can barely breathe.”
“My brother is upstairs.”
“And he'll still be upstairs if you take thirty seconds to get there without collapsing.”
She looked ready to argue.
Then her expression changed.
The fight simply drained out of her.
“Fine.”
Rafe got out first.
Reporters were already gathering near the emergency entrance.
Someone had leaked the Salt Line attack.
Camera flashes erupted.
“Mr. Colazo!”
“Was your sister targeted?”
“Is there a gang war?”
“Who is the waitress?”
Rafe stepped between the cameras and Mave instinctively.
Nico's men formed a wall around them.
Mave kept her head down.
Inside the hospital, a pediatric cardiologist met them near the elevators.
Dr. Evelyn Park looked no older than forty, with tired eyes and the controlled urgency of someone who did not waste words.
“Mave.”
“How bad?”
“He's stable right now.”
“Right now?”
“He had ventricular tachycardia.”
Mave gripped the railing inside the elevator.
“We knew that could happen.”
“We did.”
“The medication?”
“Not enough anymore.”
The elevator doors opened.
Finn's room was halfway down the corridor.
Mave forgot Rafe was beside her.
She forgot the pain.
She forgot everything.
She walked faster.
Finn Donovan looked too small beneath white hospital blankets.
A cartoon astronaut sticker covered one monitor lead. His dark hair stuck up along one side where he had been sleeping. Beside him rested the blue bear from the photograph.
One black button eye.
Frayed ear.
Rafe stopped in the doorway.
He had not seen that toy in twenty-five years.
Yet there it was.
Finn woke.
“Mave?”
She crossed to him.
“Hey, bug.”
“You look awful.”
She laughed once.
Then covered it with a grimace.
“You should see the other guy.”
Finn's eyes moved toward the sling.
“What happened?”
“Work accident.”
“Mave.”
“Fine. Restaurant accident.”
“Mave.”
She leaned close.
“Someone tried to hurt a girl. I got in the way.”
Finn stared at her.
“You did the superhero thing again.”
“I do not have a superhero thing.”
“You carried Mrs. DeMarco down three flights when her kitchen caught fire.”
“That was different.”
“You jumped in the harbor when that dog fell off the dock.”
“The dog couldn't swim.”
“Dogs can swim.”
“That one clearly hadn't read the manual.”
Finn smiled.
Rafe watched the exchange with a strange pressure building behind his ribs.
Lucia arrived several minutes later.
She had insisted on coming.
When Finn saw her, he immediately understood.
“You're the girl?”
Lucia blinked.
“What girl?”
“The one my sister broke herself saving.”
Mave sighed.
“Finn.”
“What?”
Lucia stepped closer.
“Yeah. I'm the girl.”
Finn considered her seriously.
“You owe her.”
Lucia swallowed.
“I know.”
“Like, a lot.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
Mave touched his hair.
“Stop extorting my friends.”
Rafe's eyes flicked toward her.
Friends.
Mave caught it.
“Temporary word choice.”
Finn noticed Rafe.
His eyes widened.
“Who are you?”
“Rafe.”
“Just Rafe?”
“For now.”
Finn pointed weakly toward the bear.
“You're staring at Blue.”
Rafe looked at it.
“That's his name?”
“Original, right?”
“Very.”
“My sister named him when she was four.”
Mave frowned.
“I was creative.”
“No. You weren't.”
Finn pulled the bear closer.
“Our mom gave him to her.”
Rafe walked nearer.
“Can I see him?”
Mave stiffened.
Finn shrugged and held the bear out.
Rafe took it carefully.
The fur beneath his thumb felt exactly as he remembered.
He turned it over.
There.
Beneath the left paw was a line of crude red stitching.
Rafe had made that repair himself when he was ten.
Gabriel had cried after the family dog tore the seam.
Rafe had stolen a needle from the kitchen and stitched it badly.
His mother laughed when she saw it.
Then praised him anyway.
“This was Gabriel's.”
Mave watched him.
“You're sure?”
“I sewed that.”
Finn leaned forward.
“You can sew?”
Lucia snorted.
Rafe ignored her.
“Badly.”
He handed the bear back.
“Your mother gave it to Mave?”
Finn nodded.
Mave's eyes remained on Rafe.
“She said someone gave it to her before I was born.”
“Did she say who?”
“No.”
Dr. Park touched Mave's arm.
“Can we talk?”
Mave followed her into the hallway.
Rafe stayed in the room until he saw the doctor's expression.
Then he stepped outside.
Dr. Park opened Finn's chart.
“We need to move forward with surgery.”
Mave nodded.
“I know.”
“The issue is his insurance authorization.”
“I appealed.”
“I know.”
“The loan didn't go through.”
“I know.”
Dr. Park lowered her voice.
“I can keep him stable while we work through financial assistance, but I can't promise how long.”
“How much?”
Rafe already knew he would pay before Mave asked.
Dr. Park glanced at him.
“This is private.”
“He can stay.”
Mave sounded defeated when she said it.
The doctor gave the figure.
Mave closed her eyes.
It was more money than she could make in five years.
Rafe spoke immediately.
“Schedule it.”
Mave's eyes snapped open.
“No.”
Dr. Park looked between them.
Rafe continued.
“Whatever deposit is required will be transferred tonight.”
“No.”
“Mave.”
“I said no.”
“Your brother needs surgery.”
“I know what he needs.”
“Then stop making this about pride.”
Her face hardened.
“You don't get to call it pride.”
“What would you call it?”
“Experience.”
She stepped closer despite the sling.
“I've spent my whole life watching people accept help because they had no choice, then spend ten years paying for it in ways nobody explained upfront.”
“This doesn't cost you anything.”
“Everything costs something.”
“Not this.”
“You expect me to believe the most feared man in Boston hands strangers hundreds of thousands of dollars and asks for nothing?”
Rafe held her stare.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because your mother saved mine.
Because you saved Lucia.
Because I watched you wake from a concussion and ask about everyone except yourself.
Because I haven't been able to stop thinking about your face on that restaurant floor.
He said none of those things.
“Because Finn is nine.”
Mave looked away.
Rafe softened his voice.
“If you want to hate me afterward, hate me.”
“I don't hate you.”
“Good.”
“I don't trust you.”
“That makes two of us.”
She looked back.
Before either could speak again, Nico approached quickly.
“Rafe.”
Something in his tone changed the air.
“What?”
“We found Moss.”
“Where?”
“South Boston warehouse.”
“Alive?”
Nico hesitated.
“Barely.”
Mave went still.
“He was beaten?”
“Worse.”
Rafe's jaw tightened.
“Can he talk?”
“He gave one sentence before the ambulance took him.”
“What sentence?”
Nico looked directly at Mave.
“He said, ‘Tell the Donovan girl her mother should have stayed dead.'”
All color left Mave's face.
Rafe caught her elbow.
She pulled away.
“My mother is dead.”
Nico said nothing.
“Mave—”
“She died eleven years ago.”
“I know what the records say.”
“What does that mean?”
Nico glanced at Rafe.
Rafe nodded.
Nico took out his phone.
“While looking into the hospital access, we found something else.”
He opened a scanned document.
A death certificate.
Kathleen Donovan.
Age thirty-eight.
Cause of death: complications following an automobile collision.
Then Nico swiped to another document.
“This came from a private medical database tied to a clinic in Montreal.”
The second record showed a patient admitted seven months after Kathleen Donovan's supposed death.
Different surname.
Same birth date.
Same fingerprints.
Mave stared.
“No.”
Lucia stepped into the hallway behind them.
Rafe barely noticed.
Nico continued.
“The woman stayed there for six weeks.”
“What name?”
Mave whispered the question.
“Kate Doran.”
Mave's hand began shaking.
“Where did she go?”
“We don't know.”
“Then it means nothing.”
“The clinic photo does.”
Nico turned the phone.
A grainy intake photograph filled the screen.
Older.
Bruised.
Hair cut short.
But unmistakable.
Mave's knees nearly buckled.
“Mom.”
Rafe grabbed her before she hit the wall.
Mave stared at the image like it might disappear if she blinked.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
Apparently not.
Rafe did not say it.
He didn't need to.
Nico's phone vibrated.
He answered.
Listened.
His expression changed.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Lock the floor down.”
Rafe straightened.
“What happened?”
Nico ended the call.
“Moss just died.”
Mave pressed her good hand to her mouth.
“Before he died,” Nico said, “he wrote something on the inside of the ambulance window.”
“What?”
Nico looked at Rafe.
“Two words.”
He showed them the photograph paramedics had sent.
Written in blood across the glass:
BLUE BEAR.
Rafe turned toward Finn's room.
Inside, Finn was asleep again.
The battered toy rested beneath his arm.
And suddenly Rafe understood that the bear had not survived twenty-five years by accident.
Someone had kept it.
Someone had hidden it.
Someone had killed to find it.
Rafe crossed the doorway in three strides and reached for the toy.
Finn woke, confused.
“What are you doing?”
Rafe turned the bear over.
He felt along the seams.
Nothing.
Then his fingers reached the poorly stitched left paw.
Something hard clicked beneath the stuffing.
Mave heard it too.
“What is that?”
Rafe looked at her.
Then he ripped open the seam he had sewn when he was ten.
A tiny brass key fell onto the hospital blanket.
Finn stared at it.
Mave stopped breathing.
And tied around the key was a faded paper tag.
On it, in Kathleen Donovan's handwriting, was a single sentence.
May you like
If Rafe ever finds this, tell him his father was murdered by the wrong man.
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