Page 64 of Look for Me

Martin’s heart sank to the bottom of the sea. Maybe the words she had spoken weren’t meant for him at all. Maybe they were meant for Flavian.

You never lost me.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Flavian was in surgery for hours, first to get the multiple bullets out of his back, and then to put his broken arm and legs back together. Corinne wondered about the pointlessness of the latter procedures because the surgeons had told her that he would never walk again, thanks to his destroyed spinal cord.

But first, he had to regain consciousness.

Pacing back and forth in the hospital playroom didn’t do her any good, but she didn’t want to leave Dahlia, not after what had happened yesterday.

Corinne’s mind was numb. The entire episode felt surreal to her, as though she hadn’t been there in person. It was a coping mechanism she had perfected over the last four years.

Her feet hurt and she sat down. Her ankles had started to swell as her pregnancy progressed. All this stress wasn’t doing her a bit of good.

But she had to be strong for Dahlia.

Someday she might tell her daughter everything that happened in the first three years of her life. Yet, Corinne had been pushing the memories further and further back into her own forgetfulness to the point that she wondered if she’d remember them clearly when the time came.

Watching Dahlia color with chunky crayons, Corinne began to tear. She prayed that her daughter would be strong growing up, that her life would be easier than hers.

And that she would find God at an early age.

Corinne dared not close her eyes as she prayed for Flavian. She glanced at the clock on the wall, ticking away the pains of her life.

Here she sat alone with her daughter.

Well, not really alone. Outside the playroom, a Miami Dade police officer sat on a chair. Corinne didn’t know whether to feel safer with him there or be alarmed that someone was still after her—according to Agent Tanaka, who had gone hunting for Oscar.

Corinne didn’t believe she was in any danger, but Tanaka was sure that if Flavian didn’t have the diamonds Nikos wanted, then someone else had them. Oscar?

Apparently the smuggled stash was bigger than either Corinne or Tanaka had thought. It had turned out there were more diamonds out there somewhere, beyond what Flavian had traded and what Corinne had handed over to the FBI.

Nikos was dead.

Corinne couldn’t get the picture out of her mind. As soon as she and Tanaka had stormed the room where Nikos was playing house with Dahlia in the toy kitchen, the FBI agent fired two shots into the man’s head. No questions asked.

Later, Tanaka would say that she thought Nikos had nefarious plans for the little girl, still in pajamas.

But Nikos had never touched Dahlia in the years he had visited Flavian and Corinne in their mansion outside Las Vegas. He wasn’t a predator, as far as Corinne knew. He was only using Corinne and her daughter as leverage against Flavian.

Then again, both had ordered the killings of their enemies. They lived by the sword, and now they would die by the sword.

Flavian was still alive, though.

Corinne prayed again.Let me speak with him one more time, Lord. Please.

She heard footsteps and voices. She straightened up.

The surgeon she had spoken to earlier appeared at the door.

Corinne leapt up, and then found herself hobbling toward the doctor. “Is he all right?”

“Mr. Bailey is in a coma in ICU,” the surgeon said.

“May I see him?”

“Soon.”

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