Chapter 3: What She Almost Saw
Gabriel didn't turn around immediately.
He adjusted the stethoscope against Matthew's chest as if he had been mid-examination the entire time.
"Just finishing his vitals," he said.
"His breathing was slightly irregular.
Nothing alarming."
Beatriz didn't move from the doorway.
Her eyes stayed on Matthew's face.
Matthew stared at the ceiling.
He had spent five months perfecting that stare — the empty, glassy distance of a man who understood nothing.
He pulled it back now like a mask, forcing every muscle in his face into stillness.
His pulse hammered in his throat.
He could not let it show.
"You were up here a long time," Beatriz said.
"He needed a full assessment." Gabriel clicked his pen and made a note on his clipboard.
"I also adjusted his positioning.
He's been developing a pressure point on his left shoulder.
If we don't rotate him properly, we're looking at a wound that complicates everything."
A pause.
"Complicates your timeline, you mean," Beatriz said.
Gabriel looked up then.
"I mean it complicates his care.
Which is what I'm here for."
She stepped into the room.
Her heels were quiet on the carpet.
She stopped at the foot of the bed and studied Matthew the way someone studies a piece of furniture they're deciding whether to keep.
"He looks the same as always," she said.
"He is the same," Gabriel said.
"Stable.
Unresponsive to external stimuli."
Matthew kept his eyes on the ceiling.
One centimeter to the left and he would have been looking directly at her.
He did not move one centimeter.
Beatriz reached out and picked up the manila envelope — the one Gabriel had already emptied.
She turned it over in her hands.
Gabriel had resealed it with two of the original cash bundles left inside, enough weight to feel untouched.
"Everything in order?" she asked.
"Everything is in order," Gabriel said.
She set the envelope back down.
"Friday, then."
"Friday," he confirmed.
She looked at Matthew one more time.
Something passed across her face — not guilt, not hesitation.
Something closer to impatience.
Then she walked back out of the room.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Neither man moved for ten full seconds.
Then Gabriel leaned down, his voice barely a breath.
"She didn't see anything.
But Matthew — we are out of time."
Two taps.
"I need you to do something tonight that is going to take everything you have." Gabriel slid the notepad back under Matthew's right hand.
"I need you to write one word.
Just one.
Lucy's name.
Can you do that?"
Matthew's fingers closed around the pen.
His hand shook.
The muscles in his forearm had not been used with intention in five months.
The pen scratched against the paper, slow and jagged.
Gabriel held the notepad steady.
The letters were barely legible.
Uneven.
The L too large, the y trailing off the edge of the line.
But it said Lucy.
Gabriel looked at it for a long moment.
Then he folded the paper carefully and put it in his inside coat pocket, against his chest.
"I'm going to call her tonight," he said.
"I won't tell her everything.
Not yet.
But I'm going to make sure she doesn't sign anything.
I'm going to make sure she comes home."
Matthew tapped once.
Then twice.
Then once again — an irregular pattern, not the code they'd established.
Gabriel frowned, then understood.
Matthew was trying to say something the code didn't cover.
He held the notepad back under Matthew's hand.
It took four minutes.
The letters came out broken, some barely recognizable.
But Gabriel pieced it together word by word.
*Don't tell her about Alvin.
Not yet.
She'll confront him.
He'll warn Beatriz.*
Gabriel read it twice.
He folded that paper and put it with the first one.
"Understood," he said quietly.
"We do this carefully."
He packed his medical kit.
At the door, he paused with his hand on the frame.
"I'll be back Thursday morning with the federal agent assigned to the case.
Her name is Renata Cruz.
She'll come in as a home health aide.
Beatriz won't question it — I'll tell her I recommended additional overnight support given your shoulder."
Matthew stared at the ceiling.
"Matthew." Gabriel's voice was low.
"You've held on for five months.
Hold on two more days."
The door closed.
The room went quiet.
Somewhere downstairs, Matthew heard Beatriz laugh at something on the television.
May you like
Light and easy, like a woman with nothing on her mind.
His fingers curled slowly into a fist against the mattress.
