Chapter 6 - The Long Night
The rain stopped at two in the morning, leaving the streets of Seattle washed clean, black and reflective beneath the orange sodium vapor streetlights of First Hill.
Avery had been moved an hour earlier.
She lay now in Room 1204 of the Swedish First Hill Medical Center, four miles south of Mercy General. The room was large, private, and quiet, illuminated only by the soft, amber glow of a single brass floor lamp in the corner and the green digital numerals of the blood pressure monitor. Outside the heavy oak door, two King County Sheriff’s deputies in plainclothes sat on wooden chairs, their presence known only by the occasional creak of leather and the low crackle of an encrypted radio.
The sutures on her lip had stopped throbbing, replaced by a dull, tight ache that reminded her every time she swallowed that she was alive.
She lay on her side, her knees drawn up, her left hand resting on the swell of her belly.
The baby was quiet now. Not the terrifying, frozen stillness of the Mercy General hallway, but the deep, rhythmic sleep of a child that had weathered a storm and was resting before the final crossing.
The door opened with a soft, oiled click.
Patrick Harlan walked in, carrying a small cardboard tray with two paper cups of herbal tea and a brown paper bag containing two fresh bran muffins from the all-night bakery across from the courthouse. He had finally taken off his suit jacket, wearing only his white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his grey hair uncombed and standing up slightly at the crown.
He set the tray on the bedside table, pulled the leather armchair close to her pillows, and sat down.
“How is she?” Patrick asked softly.
“She’s sleeping,” Avery whispered. “Dr. Lin said her vitals are perfect. We’re scheduling the induction for six tomorrow morning.”
Patrick nodded slowly, his eyes drifting to the window where the lights of the container ships in the harbor looked like fallen stars scattered across the dark water of the bay.
“It’s done, Avery,” he said.
Avery turned her head on the pillow, looking at her father’s profile—the strong, battered jawline, the deep lines carved into his forehead by thirty years of looking at the worst things human beings could do to one another.
“What happened to Grant?” she asked.
“He’s in the psychiatric observation wing at the county jail,” Patrick said, his voice flat, devoid of satisfaction. “His attorney tried to claim he was incompetent to stand trial due to an acute panic episode. Judge Alvarez laughed him out of the courtroom. Arraignment is set for ten tomorrow morning. Bail is set at five million dollars, cash-only, with a mandatory passport surrender and a domestic violence protective order that covers you, the baby, and any facility within five hundred yards of your residence.”
Avery reached out, taking the paper cup of tea from the tray. The steam rose against her face, warm and smelling of chamomile and dried honey.
“And Brooke?”
“Brooke’s father arrived from California an hour ago,” Patrick said. “He refused to post her bond. He hired an attorney from Perkins Coie to negotiate a plea agreement. She’s pleading guilty to assault in the third degree tomorrow afternoon. She’ll serve eighteen months at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Purdy, followed by three years of supervised probation and five hundred hours of community service at a domestic violence shelter.”
Avery took a slow, small sip of the hot tea. The warmth spread down her throat, easing the tight, icy knot that had occupied the center of her chest for eight months.
“Did you know, Dad?” she asked softly. “Before today? Did you know what they were planning?”
Patrick looked down at his hands, his fingers tracing the rim of his paper cup.
“I knew the money was bad, Avery,” he said, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that always came when he was speaking about things he wished he could forget. “I’ve been watching the Whitmore Foundation’s offshore accounts since last November. When Grant started liquidating his private municipal bonds in January, I knew the firm was bleeding. But I thought... God forgive me, Avery, I thought it was just the usual corporate thievery. I thought he was trying to hide assets before filing for divorce.”
He looked up, his grey eyes shining with a sudden, terrible moisture in the dim amber light of the room.
“I didn't know about Thorne until this morning,” Patrick said, his voice cracking slightly on the physician’s name. “An orderly at Mercy—a boy whose father I kept out of prison ten years ago on a deferred drug charge—called my private cell phone at seven-fifteen. He told me he saw Thorne loading two vials of phenobarbital into his pocket in the surgical pharmacy while Grant Whitmore stood by the door watching the hallway. That was when I called Vance. That was when I knew they weren't trying to divorce you, Avery. They were trying to erase you.”
Avery reached out her hand across the white hospital sheet, her fingers finding her father’s scarred palm.
“You didn't let them, Dad,” she said.
May you like
Patrick Harlan squeezed her fingers, his head bowing until his forehead touched the edge of the mattress. And there, in the quiet sanctuary of the twelfth floor, the District Attorney of King County wept—silently, his broad shoulders shaking with the terrible, accumulated terror of a father who had come within forty-five minutes of losing his daughter to the wolves.
Avery did not pull her hand away. She held him, her eyes fixed on the grey dawn beginning to break over the Cascade Mountains, painting the clouds above Lake Washington in long, pale streaks of lilac and rose.
