Chapter 4

The tail of the hurricane was still over Rivermarch, and the rain kept coming down outside the window.

Owen's fever climbed and broke and climbed again, and at two in the morning it turned into a febrile seizure.

His whole body was convulsing, his face went blue-gray, his eyes rolled back, and he couldn't even cry.

"Baby! Baby, don't do this to Mommy!"

I lost it completely. My hands went cold. I called 911 like a crazy person and was told that every ambulance in the area was out on hurricane calls and the soonest they could get a unit to me was forty minutes.

For a newborn seizing with a high fever, forty minutes could be the whole story.

Hands shaking, I called Caleb.

This time he picked up.

When he heard what was happening, he was clearly terrified too, and his voice shook. "Lena, don't panic! I'm getting in the car right now. Wrap him in a blanket and meet me on the ground floor!"

Ten minutes later I had my convulsing son bundled tight inside my raincoat and I hauled my ruined leg down the stairs, half falling the whole way.

Caleb's car was already running. I got the passenger door open, and before I could even sit down, the phone on his dash lit up.

Brielle. Again.

Caleb picked it up on the car's Bluetooth without thinking.

"Cale! Help! The ceiling's leaking right into the wiring!"

She was shrieking. "I went to put a bucket under it and I slipped, and I think my leg's broken, I can't move at all! The water's almost to the outlets and they're throwing sparks! I'm going to be electrocuted, please!"

The tendons stood out on the backs of Caleb's hands, and he slammed on the brake.

I stared at him. I grabbed his arm, and the tears finally broke loose, and I begged him like I had nothing left.

"Caleb! They said a seizure can damage his brain, it can kill him! I'm begging you, take our son to the hospital first! Rivermarch Children's is ten minutes from here!"

Brielle's crying got louder and more pitiful through the speakers. "Cale, it's spreading, I'm so scared..."

Caleb looked at the ash-gray, jerking baby in my arms. Then he looked at the phone.

He shut his eyes in pain and fought with himself for a full two seconds.

Then he cut the wheel hard away from the hospital.

"I'm sorry, Lena." He wouldn't look at me. "She could be electrocuted over there! A seizure might pass on its own. Call 911 again, or flag somebody down on the road. I have to go get her."

And then, over the sound of me screaming, he shoved the door open and put me out of the car.

I knelt on the cold concrete and watched him disappear, and my tears dried up on the spot.

I didn't call after him. I used the last strength in my body to carry Owen out to the street, where I went down on my knees in the muddy water and waved at every car that passed.

Across the city, Caleb couldn't get the image out of his head—his brother's widow dead on a wet floor.

He blew through two red lights and drove like the car was going to leave the ground, all the way to Brielle's complex.

The elevators were dead. He climbed eleven flights without stopping, chest heaving, terrified that one more second would mean finding her half gone.

"Brielle! Brielle, I'm here!"

He hit the door gasping and set his shoulder to it, and only then realized it wasn't locked. It was standing ajar.

He shoved it open, and what drifted out through the gap wasn't burning insulation. It was hot oil and garlic.

Caleb froze in the doorway. Through the gap past the entryway he saw something that turned his blood to ice—every light in the place on, not a drop of water on the ceiling, not a spark anywhere.

And Brielle, who thirty minutes ago had a broken leg and seconds to live, was sitting there in a sheet mask with a glass of red wine in her hand, laughing over a bubbling fondue pot with her best friend.

"Oh, relax and eat. See? All I have to do is make something up and bring up dead Aaron and that deathbed line of his, and that idiot pulls his keys out and comes running—doesn't even care that his own kid's headed for the ICU.

"Men are pathetic. The more you tell one of them how loyal and noble he is, the higher he'll put you on a pedestal.

"Caleb's going to be my free handyman and my personal ATM for the rest of his life."