Chapter 3

Watching her tear off through the barrier, I knew it wasn't only our marriage that had ended tonight.

My child, I'm sorry. Your father couldn't bring you into this world the happy way you deserved.

I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and pulled myself together to report it to the company.

"Hello, this is the Cedar Tower checkpoint. Sharon Rodriguez, one of our materials couriers, has rammed a refrigerated truck through the barrier. She's carrying two bodies and heading toward the city. You have to stop her, before it leaks classified R&D material!"

The company went quiet when they took my call. It took a few rounds of questions before they understood, and then they moved fast, mobilizing people at the next checkpoint to intercept her.

To make sure the materials still reached their destination, I took another refrigerated truck and headed for the materials warehouse myself. I was determined to get them where they needed to go before the day was out.

The whole drive I had the pedal down, racing, my head a tangle of thoughts I couldn't even name.

Rain hammered against the windshield, blurring my vision over and over.

Like the tears that wouldn't stop running somewhere inside me, bitter enough that I couldn't speak.

Two hours later I finally reached the warehouse at the last checkpoint.

But the warehouse manager told me Sharon had already collected all the materials.

We pulled the security footage and traced her route in a hurry, and found that she'd stopped once along the way.

So that was it. Just so she could take the refrigerated truck to finish her run, she'd signed out the materials and dumped them in some unattended warehouse with no refrigeration at all.

Then she'd loaded the two bodies onto the truck and driven flat out to my checkpoint.

She thought I'd wave her through, that I'd help her hide the whole thing. She'd even prepared her leverage on me in advance, already planning to use the baby to force my hand.

Every insane thing she'd done, she'd done for George.

She threw the whole company's hard-won research work to the wind, and threw her weight around because she was pregnant on top of it.

I honestly didn't know whether she'd lost her mind.

I forced down the rage and the collapse inside me, loaded the materials back onto the truck, and kept escorting them.

I worked for more than six hours. It was already dark by the time I could stop and catch my breath.

At least it wasn't too late.

The materials were fed into the research process after all, and no serious damage was done.

Thank God for that.

I'd barely started to breathe when the phone in my pocket started buzzing without stopping.

It was Sharon.

She'd already sent me a flood of messages and called again and again, voice notes stacking up one on top of another, thirty seconds each. I didn't want to hear any of it.

I knew she'd been stopped at the next checkpoint, that the bodies had been seized and never made it to George. She'd panicked.

I hung up on her a few times. She just kept calling.

In the end I picked up by accident.

On the other end she was sobbing, breaking down, begging me for help.

"Preston, Preston... come save me, my stomach hurts so much. Preston, something's wrong with the baby, I'm bleeding."

She cried her way through it, then rounded on me and started cursing.

"Was it you? Did you report me to the company and get me stopped? Why would you do this? Do you have any idea how upset George is? He cried! I've never seen him cry, and this time he cried."

"Heh."

I let out a scoff, feeling only that my tears were salty and coppery like blood.

"Then go comfort him. George needs your comfort more than anyone right now. You can do what you always did, spend the night at his place, keep him company."