There was a pause.
Not confusion.
Not panic.
A clean, dangerous silence.
Then Ryan said, “Put me on speaker.”
Hannah tapped the screen.
Caleb laughed once under his breath. “This is ridiculous.”
Ryan’s voice filled the hallway.
“Caleb.”
Caleb looked at the phone as if it had become a weapon.
“Ryan,” he said. “This is a family matter.”
“My sister is my family.”
Your sister is my wife.”
“And right now she’s your victim.”
Denise inhaled.
Dr. Mercer looked from Hannah to Caleb, reading the room with a surgeon’s speed.
Caleb’s smile vanished.
“You need to be careful.”
“No,” Ryan said. “You do.”
Hannah opened her eyes.
Her twin brother’s voice was calm.
Too calm.
She knew that tone.
Ryan Carter had used that tone when they were twelve and a neighbor’s dog had gotten trapped under a collapsed shed. He had used it when their father’s heart stopped in the garage and everyone else screamed. He had used it when Hannah had called him five years ago from a locked bathroom on the night of her rehearsal dinner and said, “I think Caleb hates me when no one is watching.”
Ryan did not waste fear.
He turned it into movement.
“I’m six minutes out,” Ryan said.
Caleb’s face drained a shade.
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