Page 10 of Midnight’s Captive (Stroke of Midnight #2)
Ash showed up to visit Hope after hours. He’d made it through his cybersecurity shift—it looked like he would be doing double duty while working for Portia—and all he wanted was to see his baby sister. A visit would ground him. Remind him why he was taking all these risks.
Apparently, Portia had kept her word. They frowned a little and reminded him about visiting hours, but no one stopped him when he walked down the hallway that led to Hope’s room.
He stopped outside her door and took a deep breath. He loved his sister, but every visit was so damn painful. The girl in his memories was vibrant and alive. The girl in the hospital bed... was not. Five years in a coma hadn’t been kind.
Mentally preparing himself to see her took longer each visit. Gluing the pieces of his heart back together after each visit was harder and harder.
Ash had decided a long time ago to keep things cheerful for her—not that he always succeeded. The doctors had told him that she could hear everything he said. If she could hear him, he didn’t want to be sad or angry.
He pasted on a smile and pushed open the door. The door closed quietly behind him and he dragged a chair to the side of her bed. The beeps of the machinery surrounding her provided the soundtrack to these visits. A melody as comforting as it was painful.
His heart ached seeing his little sister so still. She’d been a lively eighteen the night that everything had gone to hell. Lack of movement and the hospital’s carefully controlled nutrition had removed her curves, turning her thin and bony, her muscles slack with disuse.
Ash pressed the knuckles against his eyes, preventing the tears from escaping. He wanted his sister back. Back from the Tremaines. Back from the living nightmare of this coma.
He gently took Hope’s too-thin hand.
“Hi, Hope. I miss you.” He leaned close. Every visit began the same way: letting her know he was here, telling her that he loved her. After that, it was pretty much whatever was on his mind.
“A lot’s happened since I last saw you.” He’d kept her up to date with what had happened at Tremaine Corporation, careful to omit his role.
“I met Portia Tremaine,” he said. “She’s as terrifying as she looks on screen. She wants my help to catch whoever helped her father’s assistant try to bring the company down. But she won’t give me access to my port, which sucks.”
It was a struggle to keep his conversations light and high-level, but Ash suspected that the company recorded his visits. He would, in their place. Telling Hope about his role in the bombing would be idiotic.
“I met a girl.”
Holy. Shit.
He hadn’t intended to tell Hope about meeting the new Jack, but it felt right.
“A woman, really. She’s pretty amazing, and I don’t even know her name.”
It had always been easy to talk to Hope. Now was no different. “She owns her own business and is well-respected in her field.” And feared, but he didn’t want to make it easy for the Tremaine Corporation to identify her.
“She’s hot, too.” He blushed admitting that to his sister. “And a badass.”
Ash looked down to where he held her hand. His thumb rubbed gently over the delicate bones of her fingers.
“It’s complicated, though. And probably not the right time to start something—I don’t even know if she’s interested.” He laughed. “Things just feel...” he paused, searching for the right word. “Unsettled.”
Yeah, that worked. He’d been unsettled ever since Portia had summoned him to her office. Change was coming and he had no idea whether he would survive it or not.
“I don’t know if anything will happen between us.” He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “I’d like to explore whatever it is that draws me to her.”
A nurse cracked open the door and poked her head in. He sat up and nodded. He hated this part.
“They gave me the signal, Hope. I have to go.”
He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her hand. Her skin was so translucent that he could see her veins. If she hadn’t been hooked up to all the machinery, he’d have thought she was dead, she was that pale and still.
His heart broke again. “I’ll see you soon,” he whispered.
If not sooner.
Ash gently laid her hand back on the bed and tucked the blanket around it. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest for a few seconds longer. He ran his hand over her limp hair—nothing like the bouncy curls she used to have—then used the same hand to wipe away his tears.
“I love you, baby sister.” He didn’t care who knew that part. She was his only family. He’d already failed her once. He couldn’t do it again.
Ash pushed out of his chair and exited the room quickly. It was slightly less painful than a lingering goodbye.
The nurse waited for him in the hallway.
“Any change?” He asked every visit.
“No better, no worse, baby.” She gave him a sympathetic smile.
Ash smiled back, though his heart wasn’t in it.
His brain was too full, too heavy, so when Ash left the hospital, he decided to walk. Maybe the night air would help him clear it.
Visiting Hope always made him restless and restlessness always made him reckless. That was how he’d been drawn into the bombing plot.
Not that he’d known their true intentions. He’d happened upon an ad seeking dirt on the Tremaine Corporation.
Over the years, he’d helped the company stop hackers and hide information, so he knew it existed.
His initial offerings—petty crimes by executives that were covered up and corporate espionage—had been deemed too mundane. He’d taken that as a challenge.
Now, due to his involvement, his sister was in danger—again.
Ash couldn’t fail her a second time. He had to convince the Jack to help him. To help Hope.