Page 15 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Twelve

Keir

There’s a voice—a woman’s—that reaches me before the words do. Muffled, warped by distance and the sterile hush of the hallway. But it’s hers. Simone.

Or, as she calls herself, Dr. Moreau.

The title doesn’t sit right. It lands foreign on my tongue and in my soul.

It’s too formal, too distant. That’s not how I remember her.

Not the cadence of her voice. Not the exact shade of her eyes when she hovered over me.

Not the press of her fingers against my wrist—right here, where I can still feel the ghost of her touch.

What is Simone to me?

Her voice carries again, louder this time. Not angry—controlled. I’d call it controlled fury. If that’s even a thing.

But that doesn’t matter as much as fundamental question pressing into my skull like a dull drill: why do I remember her?

Am I imagining things? Obsessing over a stranger who isn’t one? The truth moves in fragments, all jagged edges and broken glass. I remember her in pieces. In how my insides knot when she enters the room. In the crease of her mouth when she’s holding something back. Words. Regret. Guilt.

I tune in the way you do when the room dims before a storm. That suspended breath the world takes right before it all goes to hell.

“. . . just fucking admit it,” a man growls. His voice cuts through the door like a jagged blade.

Familiar.

Too familiar.

It’s not in a comforting way—more like muscle memory after an old injury. I don’t know how I recognize it, only that I do. Like my body flinches before my mind catches up.

“You’re just a fucking mole,” he accuses. “And not a noble doctor.”

Malerick. That’s his name. I just know it. I’ve no fucking idea where I know him from, but I know his name and his voice. Somehow, I feel like his voice is the last I heard before I lost everything.

But then, something twists deep in my gut, and my breath falters, caught between panic and something I can’t name.

A mole?

Is that what she is?

I believed she was the one who brought me back. The one who sat by my bed, whispering my name when everything else had gone dark. The voice that carved out a lifeline when I had nothing to hold on to.

Now, it sounds like a lie.

A silence follows. Long enough for me to count heartbeats.

Then another voice breaks through—colder. Commanding. “Enough.”

“Fucking Crait Quantum Shield and their damn secrets,” the voice that I recognize but is not as familiar snaps. “Gil got everyone spinning in circles while he pulls strings nobody sees.”

Crait what? Who’s Gil?

The words don’t mean anything to me, but they strike with impact anyway. Like I should know what they mean. Like I did once, before my mind went blank and the world got wiped clean.

The voices buzz in my skull, a low-grade hum of betrayal and half-truths. I want to shut them out. But I can’t. They’re chiseling something loose, tearing at the corners of my memory.

“She didn’t deny working with the Syndicate,” Malerick snarls.

“Because she can’t.”

My fingers curl into fists, knuckles white against the blanket. What Syndicate? What the hell are they accusing her of?

All I know—all I think I know—is that . . . I forgot everything. Did someone try to kill me? Somehow, that sounds true. It seems like the woman who put me back together might be the reason I was broken in the first place.

The thought leaves me gutted.

My leg is braced, the pain throbbing under the pressure like a warning. My head spins with a dull hum. I’m not strong enough to move, to confront, to demand answers. All I have is my ears and the pieces of myself they’re stitching together.

Her voice comes again, closer now. Clearer.

“I’m a doctor. I patch up criminals. I keep agents alive. I monitor threats no one else sees.”

It doesn’t sound like a confession.

It sounds like a resignation.

Like someone tired of justifying what they’ve done.

My pulse trips.

Am I the threat?

Is that what I’ve been this whole time—something she’s monitoring? Not saving, not helping. Just . . . studying. Watching. Making sure I don’t remember too much too fast.

My stomach rolls.

“At least confirm it’s Keir.”

The name lands hard in my chest.

Keir.

Everything inside me locks up at once, like someone yanked the oxygen straight out of the room. My body goes still, and my brain scrambles to catch up.

Is that me?

“I’m supposed to keep him away from you,” Simone says, her voice threading through the static in my head. “Hidden until they figure out why he was zipped up and left for dead in the trunk of a car.”

Left for dead?

The words hit harder than anything else she could have said.

The walls around me start to blur—too white, too clean, sterile in a way that makes my skin crawl. The knowledge that I almost didn’t make it because . . . fuck. The truth clings to the back of my throat, mixing with the sour churn of something uglier rising inside me.

I stare at the ceiling like it might give me something to hold onto. A sign. A memory. A reason. Anything. Why are they trying to kill me? Who?

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Once more, slower this time, like that might help.

Keir.

The name pulses under my skin now, a beat I can’t silence. It doesn’t feel foreign. It doesn’t belong to someone else. It fits, sliding into the hollow space inside me as if it’s always been there, just waiting to be called back to life.

My jaw locks tightly. Every muscle fights the mechanical rhythm of the oxygen tube strapped to my face. Machines beep in a frantic pattern beside me, like they’re struggling to keep up with the way my body wants to fight.

I’m Keir.

And Simone isn’t just a doctor trying to save a stranger.

She knows me.

She knows exactly what I’ve lost—even if I don’t remember it yet.

My intuition tells me that she’s the girl from the church. The one by the lake. The voice that dragged me back from the edge.

And she lied.

She fucking lied.

Or maybe . . . maybe she didn’t.

Maybe she hid the truth so I wouldn’t destroy myself with it. Maybe she was protecting something—me, even. But from what?

From who?

Pain ricochets through my leg, sudden and brutal, tearing a gasp from my lungs. But that’s not what undoes me—it’s the way confusion floods in, thick and suffocating.

Then the door clicks open.

She steps inside.

Simone.

She looks as if she hasn’t slept in days. Not just tired—haunted. That mouth is set in the same tight line she wears when she’s barely holding herself together. It’s as if she’s seconds away from breaking.

She doesn’t know I heard her.

Doesn’t realize I remember now. Not everything but a lot.

Behind her, the hospital staff wheels in equipment, unhooking me from the monitors. As if I’m just another name on a clipboard, not the person she used to know me as before.

But this isn’t just another day.

And I’m not just a patient.

I wait, watching her. Waiting for the moment when she meets my eyes.

Wondering if the truth will show up in hers.

Wondering if I’ll still see the girl from the lake—or the stranger who . . . what is her end game? I’m not sure where she’s taking me, but I’ll figure out a way to escape before she’s the one who ends me.

I don’t know if I’ll see the girl who once begged me to stay because, in my heart, I know she did. Or who am I supposed to be dealing with during our final destination?