The Billionaire's Rescue novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Heartbeat

At the ER Halley hears her baby's heartbeat, gives the police a statement, and refuses Lance's mother's check; then her landlord says she has no apartment.

The baby's heartbeat filled the little ER room.

"One forty-eight," the doctor said. "That's strong."

I cried so hard the paper sheet under me crackled.

She told me the rest while I wiped my face.

A bruised hip, a swollen shoulder, a scrape down my forearm, and six hours on a monitor.

No bleeding.

"She was lucky," the doctor said, and then she looked at Torben Rask, who had not left the doorway. "So was she."

He didn't answer.

He stood there in his shirtsleeves with his jacket still draped over my knees.

When the doctor left, he pulled a plastic chair to the foot of the bed and sat in it.

"You don't have to stay," I said.

"I know."

"I'm not going to sue you for finding me."

"Good," he said. "I'd lose."

I laughed, and it hurt my ribs, and he almost smiled.

A police officer came in at one in the morning with a tablet.

She was young and tired and polite, and she asked her questions in order.

"Did you fall, ma'am?"

"I was pushed."

"By whom?"

"Lance Stroud. The father of my baby."

I said it straight.

She typed it without blinking.

"I saw it," Torben said. "I'll sign a statement. There's a camera above the stairwell door, facing the landing. I looked for it before I called."

The officer glanced up at him for the first time.

"Sir, that hotel will say the footage is private."

"Then you'll ask for it," he said. "With a warrant."

She wrote that down too.

Agnes got there at one-thirty, still in her hospital cardigan, with her glasses swinging on their cord.

She had taken a cab from the other side of the city on a night aide's pay.

She stopped in the door and her whole face folded.

"Halley."

"I'm okay, Ma. We're okay."

She crossed the room in three steps and held my head against her chest, and she smelled like hand sanitizer and the lavender lotion she'd used my whole life.

Over my hair she looked at Torben.

"And who are you?"

"He found me, Ma. He's the one who called the ambulance."

"Torben Rask," he said, and stood up. "I was in the stairwell."

Agnes studied him.

"All right," she said. "Thank you. Sit down, you're blocking the light."

He sat.

I watched his mouth twitch again.

At two-ten the door opened without a knock.

A woman in a camel coat came in, with an iron-grey bob and pearls the size of grapes.

A man in a dark suit followed her with a leather folder.

She did not look at the monitor or at my arm.

"You're the girl," she said.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Lance's mother."

Her voice was as smooth as the ice sculpture had looked.

"My attorney has prepared something generous. You were intoxicated and trespassing in a private stairwell. These things happen. I'm told you're carrying a child, and I'd like it to have a good start."

The lawyer opened the folder and laid a check on my blanket.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Under it was a stapled agreement, several pages thick, with a yellow flag where I was supposed to sign.

Agnes took a step forward.

Torben put out one hand without looking at her, and she stopped, which I had never seen anyone make Agnes do.

"I haven't had a drink since January," I said.

"That's not what the report will say."

"The report says what I told the officer."

I looked at the check, and I thought of the first one, the fifty thousand, torn on the landing.

I picked this one up and held it by the corner.

"Your son shoved me down a flight of stairs with both hands," I said. "I've got a bruise the size of a plate, and there's a camera on that landing. Take this back."

"You'll regret this."

"Probably. Sign it yourself if you want it signed."

The lawyer cleared his throat.

Lance's mother held out her hand for the check and I put it in her palm.

At the door she turned, and for one second something crossed her face that wasn't anger.

She looked at me.

Then she left.

Agnes breathed out, long and shaking.

"Well," she said. "That's the worst woman I've ever met, and I work with doctors."

The officer finished the report at three.

She gave me a card with a case number and a hotline, and she said detectives would call in the morning.

I sat there holding that card.

Then my phone buzzed on the tray.

It was my landlord, who never texted before nine.

"Per the leaseholder, G. Stroud, your lease is terminated effective tonight. Your belongings are in the hallway. Please collect them by noon."

I read it twice.

Lance had put the lease in his own name in June, because he liked paying for things.

Agnes read it over my shoulder.

"You come home with me," she said.

"Ma, you live on the fourth floor."

"So I'll carry you."

"The doctor said no stairs for two weeks."

I heard the end of my own sentence as I said it.

Torben had been listening without pretending not to.

He stood up, and picked his jacket off my knees, and looked at Agnes first and then me.

"I have a house on a lake with a ground-floor wing and a lock on the inside of the door," he said. "The lock's on your side."

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