by Brook Wilder
She sat, fidgety, in the waiting room. She told Roarke the time and place and he swore up and down he’d be there. At first he offered to drive him over there himself. Then, when something came up, he promised to meet her there on time. She got to the office early, on the off chance that he might be too. He’d been acting disaffected and completely aloof all week but she was hoping that somewhere underneath it all he’d come to his senses. She didn’t need some big romantic gesture, him waiting there with flowers and a teddy bear with a card that said “I’m sorry.” She’d settle for him showing up at all, showing up a little early even.
The doctor’s office was running a little behind, as they always seemed to be, and she was now five minutes past her appointment time. Roarke was nowhere to be seen. The clock on the wall ticked by and she absently watched the daytime television talk show playing on the TV in the corner with a static signal. She couldn’t go to her normal doctor on the other side of town. She had to keep up the guise that Hanna, and all her fake identification material, was the one who was pregnant.
That was running a risk in and of itself, however. If James checked too closely on the expense account and the claims on her fake IDs he might find something she desperately wanted to hide from him. He was going to find out eventually, she’d been thinking of ways to try and talk to him about it. But now she was wondering if she shouldn’t just wait, see which way the wind seemed to be blowing with Roarke, and then claim the baby came from some one night stand she was a little too careless about.
Her stomach twisted at the idea of throwing away her dreams that she had for her future with Roarke and their baby but shecouldn’t wait for him to grow up. She also wasn’t going to expose her baby to danger and Roarke was the epitome of danger. She’d hoped he could leave it all behind after things calmed down. But Isabelle kept poking him with a stick and he kept taking the bait like a moron.
She sighed. It was now ten minutes past the appointment time and Roarke was not there. There were no missed messages on her phone either, begging her forgiveness and telling her that he was on his way. As far as her cursory search on Google told her, there was no traffic to be seen on any of the highways either. She had no excuses to give him and she knew when he showed up that he would have no excuses to offer her, either.
She felt her anger turn into something a little darker as her stomach dropped. She felt like being stood up at prom or like someone had forgotten her birthday. Roarke was making a choice by not being here, obsessed with his need for revenge. It was more important than the life growing inside her that he was partially responsible for.
“Hanna?” called out a nurse and she looked up with a painted on smile. “Right this way.”
They did the usual, took her weight, her height, her blood pressure.
“You’re a new patient here?” the nurse asked, scribbling in that impossible to read handwriting so common in doctor’s offices.
“I am.”
“And how far along are you?”
“Somewhere between six to eight weeks I think.”
She could feel the slight judgement from the nurse for not getting into the doctor sooner and having no visible medical history with an OB/GYN as per Hanna’s background. Falsifying medical history was a little too deep for undercover work and really wasn’t often needed since most people dropped the cover or reported back to the station when they needed to get help. She was the idiot who got pregnant and was still finding ways to keep her ruse up.
“The doctor will be in in a moment,” the nurse said, leaving and putting her chart on the flap on the door, closing it behind her.
She always hated the amount of waiting that was involved in doctor visits. Unless you were bleeding out on the floor, it could be a half hour before the doctor shuffled into the room, wiping lunch from their face, asking you why you were in today like they couldn’t just read it on the damn sheet of paper in front of them.
And the longer the doctor took, the later the appointment went, the less patience she had for Roarke’s absence. Not only was he late, the appointment itself started nearly twenty minutes late. They were now over a half hour past the designated starting time and the doctor still had not come in and there was not so much as a call from Roarke with an explanation. She was glad the nurse took her blood pressure when she did because otherwise she might just break the gauge with how heated she felt her face getting and how quick her pulse got. This couldn’t be good for the baby, but dammit she was going to kill him.
“Ms. Isaacs, how are you?” said a woman who entered the door after a warning knock.
She was an older woman, easily a grandmother, but she dyed her hair a natural enough color that it didn’t give it away too easily. She had kind eyes, the type that wanted to make you cookies and promised amazing Thanksgiving dinners when you needed them. She was a natural gynecologist.
“Hi, good,” she said, trying to get herself under control to make the lie a little more believable.
“So, you think you might be almost two months along?” she asked. “That’s nearly an entire trimester, what kept you from seeing a doctor until now?”
Oh, if this lady only knew. There was such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. She might be able to just unload her sob story onto her like she was a shrink. But that wouldn’t be smart and she wasn’t going to let the hormones win.
“I wasn’t entirely sure I was pregnant,” she lied. “And I wanted to let the father know before I took any next steps.”
She nodded and hummed in agreement, seeming to accept this excuse. She was typing onto a tablet and looking over the notes the nurse scribbled.
“This is just going to be routine. We’ll do an ultrasound just to check things in there, your vitals look good. You’ve got a healthy weight. I’ll give you a diet plan to follow as well to keep everything in check and then we can set an appointment for after the first trimester, sound good?” she asked like Hanna had a choice. “I’d also like the father to be present, if that’s possible.”
Yeah, me too is what Hanna almost said. But she kept her snippy remark in and nodded, making some excuse that he worked during the day but wanted her to call him after the appointment was over.
She pulled up her shirt and the doctor lathered some cold jelly onto her stomach, rubbing it around with her latex gloved hands. Hanna jumped a bit at the sensation and giggled nervously. This was really happening. She was in the middle of an ultrasound, like women in movies and on TV shows who were pregnant. It was real, and there was no coming back from it once she saw the tiny peanut of a life that was hiding within her.
“Alright, let’s get a visual on this little person,” the doctor said as she moved the small detector over her stomach.
The familiar black and white image popped up on the screen. Hanna had no idea what she was looking at. It was all a blob of grayscale colors as the doctor moved the device around expertly, seeming to understand this strange map and know exactly where she was going and what she was looking for.
“Aha,” she said quietly, stopping.
She hit a few buttons and then paused to raise her hand and point to small point on the screen.
“There is your baby,” she said quietly as if speaking too loudly would disturb the dim lights and the aura of the room.
Hanna stared in awe at the tiny pebble of a person on the screen. It was no more than a blob, barely recognizable as a shape that didn’t quite belong until the doctor started pointing out features. She gave in quickly to that clichéd moment when tears formed at the corners of her eyes, looking at her baby for the first time on a screen. There it was.She’d get to meet it soon, hold it in her arms, call it by its name.
And Roarke wasn’t here. He was missing the first moments of his child, he wasn’t getting to see the beauty of the tiny speck of a creature that would one day grow to perhaps be six feet tall, be the president, save the world. He didn’t get to see an entire life flash before his eyes as she was now. He was out chasing ghosts and
beating up random people to make himself feel like he was getting anywhere with this pseudo investigation and game of cat and mouse he was playing with his sister.
“Not bad, right?” the doctor asked, seeing her tears but not seeing the competing reasons for them.
“Incredible,” Hanna breathed out.
She realized then that as long as Roarke continued on this path, intending to do what he was doing now, she could not stay with him. She couldn’t even stay in Texas, this place held too many bad memories and if Roarke wasn’t going to be there to help their child then she needed to get out to a place where this kid had a future that wasn’t with a gun in its hand.
After thanking the doctor, taking the picture and the nutritional information, and checking out with the receptionist, she made a phone call.
“James, it’s me.”
“About time, I was beginning to think you dropped dead on me.”
“I’ve got some intel for you.”
“On Isabelle Withers?”
“On the Pharaohs.”
That gave him pause. It was her original job after all, to get intel on the Pharaohs. Things had exploded when Isabelle went rogue and gotten the Caracals involved but now she had something concrete to give to James as per her original mission.
“They’ve got a storehouse of unregistered weapons,” she said.
“Yeah, we heard rumors about that but there’s not much we can do about it without a warrant,” he said.
“Well this is me giving you an anonymous tip, which is probably cause. They’re being stored in a barn on Locust Road, in the old barn.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
***
Roarke knew he messed up. He’d been fucking up quite a bit with Hanna lately and while he wanted to blame most of it on her hormones, he couldn’t exactly put him missing the first prenatal visit for his own kid on her. This one was all on him.
He and Mouse went out to scout some cashier at a 7/11 who apparently had seen Isabelle a few days back. They shook him up but didn’t get much out of him besides the fact that she bought a Slurpee in the store on Saturday and left. It was useless information and their leads were getting colder and colder and he was sleeping less and less.
Right now he was going on some pieces of burnt toast that Amber forced him to eat and a twenty ounce can of Red Bull. It wasn’t exactly ideal for decision making and he realized, with dread, that he missed the appointment. He had no calls from Hanna, no texts. He knew what that meant. She was going to be pissed. And she had a right to be. Even in his sleepless mind he knew he was going down a bad path. He was supposed to be working on building a home and learning to be a father and instead he was trapped in a human puzzle he couldn’t solve with someone who was so much smarter than him.
He’d fucked up.
He gave Mouse and excuse and headed to the doctor’s office, hoping she might still be around. He was about a half hour past the end of the appointment, based on the office’s schedule. She might still be there. They could be running late. That didn’t make up for the fact that he totally dropped the ball but there might still be something salvageable here.
He saw her car parked in the lot and breathed a sigh of relief. She was still here. He could still find a way to make this at least okay, even if it wasn’t right. He could turn things around.
He hopped off his bike and moved into the building, but the sound of Hanna’s voice off to the side caught his attention. He’d know her voice anywhere.
She was pacing back and forth, in deep in conversation with someone on the other end of the line. He didn’t directly step into her line of sight, sticking close to the wall and watching.
“Yes, isn’t that what you wanted me to do in the first place? I’m finally doing my job,” she said into the phone. “Yes, I’m sure my information is correct. That’s enough to go off of to get guys in there.”
Roarke raised an eyebrow. That was an interesting conversation to have with someone. He watched as she talked some more. She didn’t say anything too revelatory but he was burning with curiosity at who could be on the other of that line and what exactly Hanna was hiding from him.
Chapter 26
Hanna left feeling no better for her conversation with her uncle but there was little to be done at this point. She didn’t expect him to question her. He’d wanted to pin something on Roarke since the beginning and, even with their brief partnership in the failed attempt to lure Isabelle into custody, that sentiment didn’t seem to have changed. Yet, here she was, having to explain herself to him when she practically gift wrapped a giant tip for him.
Her phone still had no calls or messages from Roarke and she tossed it face-down on the passenger seat. She was done waiting for him as well. The men her life seemed to be causing her a lot more harm than anything else these days and she needed a long vacation from it all. Getting out of Texas when this was over, with her child, would be a smart move. She was a good cop, she could find a job at any station in the country. Maybe they’d move somewhere more tropical, like Florida, or actually experience winters up in the northeast. The idea of having the world open to her like that took a bit of the weight off her chest.
As she moved along, however, she noticed the sight in her rearview had not changed for several blocks, despite quite a few turns she made along her way. A black pickup truck was behind her with tinted windows, following at a fairly close pace. She knew drivers in Texas could be assholes, but she wasn’t about to chalk it up to a jerk with something to prove. She knew the town too well for that, she also knew the games Pharaohs liked to play on the roads. They’d booked plenty of them for getting a little too rough, running marked vehicles off the road.
She gave it a few more blocks, taking experimentally loops and turns before she decided this truck was, in fact, following her. She led it out of downtown, to the more rural parts of the town where she could pull off and confront whoever was behind the steering wheel, trying to scare her. It wasn’t exactly smart to go where witnesses were scarce, but she wasn’t about to have it out with a gang member in the middle of the town square.
She pulled over and the truck did the same, parking only inches from her rear bumper. She got out of the car, keeping it unlocked in case she needed to reach for the gun in her back trunk. She stepped across the gravel as the door to the truck opened and out swung Isabelle, hopping down from the truck that was far too big for her, and walking over to Hanna like they were getting together for lunch.
“I don’t think we’ve actually sat down and talked,” Isabelle said.
“I’m not going to consider that a shame.”
Isabelle smiled. “Finally, someone intelligent I can talk to. Roarke and his friends are such meat-heads, I swear it’s impossible to have a conversation with them above a fifth grade reading level.”
If she was trying to get a rise out of Hanna by insulting Roarke, it wasn’t going to work. She was willing to agree with just about any insult someone could throw at him right now, even from Isabelle.
“You came out of a doctor’s office. The OB/GYN,” Isabelle said.
“Yearly checkup,” she said with a shrug. Isabelle seemed to accept it but narrowed her eyes, nonetheless.
“You knew I was following you,” she said.
“Yes. I’m not blind. You should learn to be a bit more subtle.”
“I wanted your attention, so clearly I was doing something right.”
They stood there, facing each other, hands across their chests and each taking something of a power stance as they looked at each other. Isabelle was a child, a dangerous child, but still barely out of her teen years. Psychologically, she was highly likely to make a mistake in the next ten minutes. And she had an advantage. Isabelle didn’t know she was a cop, she didn’t know she was dealing with someone trained in combat. It was more than just gang shootouts and drive-bys. She’d spent years in martial arts training and months in the academy. She trained every week at the station. Isabelle had n
o idea who Laura was and who she was really dealing with. Hanna didn’t intend to let that out until the right moment. It would be her trump card.
“So, what’s so important that you wanted to pretend you were going to run me off the road to talk about?” Hanna asked.
“I’ll get to that in a second,” she said. “First, I’m wondering why you haven’t tried to call my brother or one of his goons. I know they’ve been running themselves all over town following my bread crumb trail.”
“Because that’s the obvious thing to do, and unlike them, I’m not going to play into your hands.”
