Eighth Grave After Dark

“Okay, I’m going to pull her out one shoulder at a time. Don’t push.”

“What?” But with one final jolt of pain, Beep was out. And pissed as hell.

I covered my mouth with my hands. “Reyes,” I said, unable to take my eyes off her.

“She’s perfect,” he said into my ear. Thank God he continued to hold me. I doubted I had the strength to hold myself upright anymore.

Denise worked to get our daughter cleaned up. I could relax and focus on the broken rib and the nigh-fractured hips and the blood still running out of my head.

I smiled at Reyes. “What a day, huh?”

He shook his head.

“So, do you still need the rope?” Osh asked.

“Yes, but not for a few minutes,” Denise said. She cut the cord, clipped it with a clothespin from the looks of it, and wrapped our bundle in a clean-ish sheet. Then she handed her to me.

All I could see was a little round face still covered in spots of muck, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. Dark lashes. Full mouth. Stubborn chin. She was Reyes incarnate, and my heart swelled with pride. “She’s so perfect,” I said.

“Yes, she is, but we need to get you both out of here as soon as possible.”

“Katherine the Midwife is here,” Amber said. “Can I hold her?” she asked me.

“You’ll have to ask Katherine, hon.”

She laughed. “I meant Beep.”

“You absolutely can, just as soon as we get out of here.”

“One more thing,” Denise said.

“What?”

“We have to get the rest out of you.”

“What rest?”

I shouldn’t have asked.

* * *

They lifted Denise out first while she carried Beep. Then the guys lowered Reyes to get me. He lifted me into his arms and they hoisted us both up at the same time using some kind of pulley system Garrett had jerry-rigged. I lost consciousness about halfway up, exhausted and broken, but as long as Beep was okay, I was okay. I knew she’d be well taken care of. She had a large family.

I awoke hours later in bed beside Reyes with a tiny bundle between us. One lamp fended off the darkness in the small room, and I could see Katherine the Midwife snoring in a chair close by. Though I didn’t much care what time it was, I did wonder how long I’d been out. How many hours of Beep’s existence I’d missed.

They’d dressed her in the first outfit Cookie had bought her. When I first saw it, I’d remarked that it looked too small. Babies couldn’t possibly be that tiny. Now that she was wearing it, however, it looked too big. Beep didn’t seem real. She was like a doll with thick lashes, a perfect nose, and a widow’s peak. She was surreal and angelic and mesmerizing.

I rolled onto my side and loosened the blanket. Her tiny fingers splayed in reaction to my touch, and I marveled at her fingernails—exact replicas of Reyes’s—as I counted them. An even ten. Just what the doctor ordered. I felt as though my eyes were glued to her. I couldn’t stop gazing at this little person we’d been waiting so long to see. I fought back tears as I looked at her, ignoring the fact that I felt like I’d been run over by a train. I’d been run over by trains before. The tenderness between my legs, however, was novel. And nature wasn’t calling. She was screaming, ranting and raving like a lunatic.

Unable to ignore my bladder any longer, I kissed Beep’s head, then her cheek, then her hand, before rolling out of bed. I glanced at my husband, wondering if he was really asleep at last. He lay on his side with his head propped on one arm, the dips between his biceps forming deep, alluring shadows. His long lashes fanned across his cheeks, just like Beep’s, and I stilled to watch them just a few seconds more, until I heard Denise.

“She’s perfect,” she said softly.

I turned to see her sitting in another chair they’d brought in. “She is, isn’t she? She’s so tiny. It’s like she’s not real. She’s like a pink flower floating on a big blue sea.”

“They’re always smaller than you think they will be.”

She and my dad had never had more children, and I always wondered why. Not enough to ask, but … “How long have I been out?”

“Since yesterday morning. About eighteen hours.”

“Eighteen hours?” I asked, scanning the room for the clock. “She had to face the world without me for eighteen whole hours?”

“They said you were in stasis or something. That you had to rest to heal.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think it worked this time.” I tried to stretch. It was just too painful.

“Do you want to hold her?” she asked, stepping forward. “We finally wrangled her away from your husband long enough to let Katherine check her out. A pediatrician is coming tomorrow, though, just to make sure.”

“Oh, good. Let me go pee, then she’s all mine.”

I grabbed my phone, then walked to the bathroom, my pace that of a snail in its late nineties. The soreness I felt was beyond anything I’d experienced before. My hips hurt the worst, then Virginia. Poor Virginia. She’d never be the same again. Then my ribs, et cetera. It hurt to brush my teeth and wash my face, too. I had a nasty bruise on the side of my head with a lovely gash in the middle and a black eye.

I checked messages while sitting on the toilet. Multitasking had always been a specialty of mine. And I peed forever, so I had a lot of time. I had a text from Mr. Alaniz, my PI, asking me if there was any progress on the home front. Meaning, had I told Reyes yet? I was going to have to tell him. The Loehrs had given me until tomorrow. Maybe now that we had Beep, he would understand what I did. Either way, I dreaded that conversation.