The Hunted

65

The birthing room was decorated with primary colors, children’s hands of all shapes and sizes splashed across the walls. It was a comfortable environment, with a couch, chairs, and plenty of room to stretch out and relax with your newborn.

Presley Jane Archer, a seven-pound-five-ounce, pink bundle of delight had just been brought back into the room to see her mother after being examined, scored, and foot printed.

Hector DeSantos stood in the doorway as the baby was reunited with Trish, whose attention was so focused on the newborn that she did not even see him standing there. The nurse smiled at him on the way out, then closed the door behind her.

After Archer had gone down in the streets of Fredericksburg, DeSantos went on a hunt, sniffing out his prey in every way he knew how. But he had come up empty. Anthony Scarponi had gotten away. But DeSantos knew that sooner or later — preferably sooner — he would bring justice to the grave of Brian Archer. Zebra 59, his partner’s dying words, meant that DeSantos’s sole focus would be to track down and settle the score with Archer’s killer.

DeSantos had walked through the hospital corridors, fresh with the knowledge that Trish had given birth to a healthy girl, trying to wipe the anger, the depression, the terror, off his face. He had stopped at a restroom and stood in front of the mirror, attempting to smile, attempting to hide what was in his heart. As he had done so many times in the past in so many dire undercover situations when he needed to, he was actor first, commando second.

Now, as he stood in the doorway, his heart pounded fiercely against his chest, not out of fear, but out of sadness because of what he was about to do. He had to take a mother’s most blissful moment and turn it into a nightmare. But there was no other way. He knew that as the hours passed and Trish did not hear from her husband, she would begin to worry, and then ask questions. And the person she would call would be him.

And that’s the way it should be; that’s the way he and Brian had always wanted it.

He forced a smile across his face and held out the modest bouquet of flowers he had picked up in the hospital gift shop on the way up. Pink and yellow roses with a smatter of baby’s breath. How appropriate. Trish looked over and smiled.

Her face was haggard and her complexion pale. It had no doubt been a difficult labor. But then again, in his limited experience with pregnant women, he had never heard of an easy labor. Only ones less difficult than others.

“Where’s Brian?” Trish asked.

“We were called away and were in the middle of a mission when the page came through,” DeSantos said, maintaining the phony smile. “He wanted so much to be here, you know that.”

Trish smiled. “Of course, he wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

DeSantos felt his stomach seize up on him but he forced himself to hold it in, to choke off the emotions. “So, this is Presley?”

Trish turned the baby around to face DeSantos.

“Say hi to Uncle Hector,” Trish sang.

DeSantos touched the newborn’s soft facial skin with the back of his forefinger and felt a surge of emotion well up in his throat. He fought back tears and summoned the strength to say, “She’s beautiful.”

“I see Brian in her eyes, don’t you?”

DeSantos smiled. “Yup. And her mother’s beautiful face.”

Trish planted a kiss on the baby’s cheek, then said, without looking up, “So when’s Brian coming?”

DeSantos knew the question was going to come; it was just a matter of when. He was going to tell her what he had prepared himself to say in the car, that he was sorry, that Brian had died in the line of duty, that his last thoughts were of mother and daughter, that he, Hector, was to look after them. And that he was going to get the son of a bitch who had killed her husband.

But he knew that as soon as he started to speak, Trish would know. It would click in her mind and that would be it. Brian was dead. That would be all that mattered to her. But to DeSantos… what mattered to him was making sure Anthony Scarponi paid for what he had done.

DeSantos pulled up a chair and set it next to her bedside. “Trish… about Brian.” He looked down, but the tears started to trail down his cheek until he tasted the salt on his lips. He picked his head up, unable to hide it anymore, and saw that she knew.

She shook her head. “God, no, please. No.” A tear ran down her cheek and dripped onto Presley’s knit cap. Trish’s pale face turned beet red and she began to sob, and the baby began to cry, and he leaned over to hug both of them.