Chapter 2

Gabriella's breath caught. Her knuckles went white on the blanket, her eyes cutting to the door.

Jillian didn't wait for the scream. She straightened, turned, and walked out.

Byron and Don stood shoulder to shoulder in the hall, jaws locked like two dogs over a bone.

Jillian reached inside her coat, pulled out a folded document, and slapped it onto the tray of a passing medical cart. It hit with a flat metal clang.

"That's my declaration of severance," she said, loud enough to carry down the corridor. "As of right now I have no legal, financial, or blood tie to the Foster family. What happens to you, or to your company, is not my problem."

"You ungrateful little bitch!" Byron started forward.

Jillian didn't turn around. She walked past the nursing station at the same pace and left the shouting behind her in the cold hospital air.

Outside, she raised a hand at the curb. A yellow cab pulled over within seconds.

She got in. "Knowles Estate. Top of the canyon."

The driver looked at her in the mirror, then put the car in gear.

Forty minutes of winding road later, they reached ten-foot stone walls and a pair of wrought-iron gates. Guards in black tac gear checked the cab through the glass, ran her name against a list on a tablet, and waved them through.

Jillian stepped out onto the courtyard with her duffel in one hand.

The house in front of her was limestone and dark slate, built like a fortress that had learned to wear money.

Arthur Bates, the head butler, waited on the steps under the portico with two maids behind him, both stone-faced. His gold-rimmed glasses caught the light as he looked her worn coat up and down.

"Miss Cantrell," he said, flat. "Mr. Knowles is in the top-floor medical suite. Follow me. Don't touch anything on the way."

Jillian walked past him without answering. In the marble foyer she swept the vaulted ceiling, counted four thermal cameras, noted the blind spot by the service stairs.

Arthur took her to a private elevator. Neither of them spoke on the way up.

The doors opened onto a wall of reinforced glass. Arthur punched eight digits into the keypad. The door hissed back.

Filtered air and ozone. Monitors humming around a wide medical bed in the middle of the room.

Aris Knowles lay on it. The comatose billionaire she'd married that night.

Even on a ventilator, even with his skin gone pale as the sheets, the man looked dangerous. Sharp cheekbones, a jaw under dark stubble, shoulders too broad for the hospital frame.

"Your quarters are on the third floor," Arthur said. "The elevator will take you down. For now, you stay here. Don't touch his life support. Staff monitor every lead."

He backed out and pulled the door shut. The lock went home with a heavy motorized thud.

Jillian waited until his footsteps were gone.

She dropped the duffel on a leather chair and walked to the bed. Her eyes went to the collar of his gown, to the faint jagged line of an old scar above his collarbone. Through-and-through. Clean exit.

Desert sand. Tracer fire. Heat you could taste.

She shut it down before it went any further and let her fingers hover over the scar.

"Long time no see, Commander."

From her coat she took a flat matte-black case and flipped the latch. Twelve micro-electrodes inside, each one lit with a faint blue diode.

She snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves.

She palpated the back of his neck, found the deep cranial paths, the nerve bundles gone quiet after the trauma. Her fingers were quick and sure.

Needle up. Aim at the vagus junction.

A sharp click out in the corridor. Fast, heavy footsteps.

"Is the country girl in there already?" A woman's voice, shrill, used to getting answers.

Jillian's wrist flicked. The needles were gone up her sleeve. In the same motion she dropped to her knees beside the bed, buried her face in the sheet, and let her shoulders shake.

The door swung open.

Denisse Knowles, his stepmother, came in on four-inch heels, diamonds rattling on her wrist. She looked down at the shaking girl on the floor with open disgust.

"Save the tears for the funeral," she said. "You won't have to pretend much longer anyway."

Jillian lifted her head slowly. Eyes rimmed red, face drained, her whole body shaking like a scared kid. "I—I just wanted to pray for him."

Denisse waved a hand at the nurse behind her. "Check the vitals. Make sure this bad-luck charm hasn't pulled anything early. We need him declared dead on our schedule, not hers."

The nurse tapped the console. "Stable, Mrs. Knowles. No activity above baseline coma."

"Good." Denisse looked back down at Jillian. "Stay down there where you belong. Cause trouble before the board meets tomorrow and I'll have security throw you off the cliff."

She clicked away down the hall. The nurse followed. The door hissed shut and locked.

The shaking stopped.

Jillian stood up and rolled her sleeve back. The long micro-electrode came out between her fingers.

No hesitation. She drove it into the base of his skull, turned it a millimeter to find the dormant cluster, and hit the current.

The heart monitor screamed.

The flat green line on the EEG jumped. Aris's body seized, back arching off the mattress as the charge dragged his nervous system out of the dark.

Sweat ran down Jillian's temple. Her hands didn't move. She pushed the frequency up, thumb locked on the trigger.

"Wake up," she said. "Wake up."

The alarm climbed until it filled the room.

Then the red error light flipped to green.

The seizure stopped. The ventilator cut out on a ragged, real breath pulled into his lungs.

Aris Knowles opened his eyes.

Jillian pulled the electrode free, palmed it, and leaned down until her face was inches from his.

"Welcome back to the living, husband."