Too Late For Regret, Mr. Booth

Callum Booth stepped from the elevator with his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand gripping his son's.

"-the Dubai deal closes Friday. Tell them we want the revised terms or we walk."

Iaan walked beside him, mirror to his brother in every way except the expression-where Jacob wore perpetual suspicion, Iaan maintained a careful blankness, a wall of polite disinterest that fooled most adults into leaving him alone.

Most adults. Not all.

"Callum!" Jaida materialized from the stairwell, her face flushed, her composure fractured in ways he'd rarely seen. "Thank God. I've been looking everywhere. We need to talk about-"

"Not now." He brushed past her, his grip on Iaan's hand tightening. "Jacob's waiting."

"He's fine. The nurse said-Callum, listen to me. Elise is-there's a woman-"

He stopped. Turned. The movement was sharp enough that Iaan stumbled, and Callum steadied him without looking down, his eyes fixed on Jaida's face.

"What did you say?"

Jaida's mouth opened, closed. Something flickered in her expression-fear, calculation, a rapid reassessment of whatever she'd been about to reveal.

"Nothing. Just-stress. The wedding planning. I'll tell you later."

Callum studied her for one long moment. Then he pushed open the playroom door and found Jacob sitting alone on the carpet, surrounded by scattered Lego pieces, staring at the window with an expression that matched his brother's perfectly.

"Where's the nurse?" Callum asked.

"Gone." Jacob didn't look at him. "They always go when they realize I won't perform."

Callum crossed to his son, crouching to meet his eyes. "Perform?"

"Smile. Take the pills. Thank Jaida for her gifts." Jacob's lip curled. "I don't perform anymore. It's boring."

Iaan detached from Callum's hand and went to his brother. They didn't touch, didn't speak, but something passed between them-a communication beyond words, the private language of twins who'd learned early that the world was not their friend.

"She was here," Jacob said, suddenly. "The woman. The one with the little girl."

Callum's pulse stuttered. "What woman?"

"Dark hair. Sad eyes." Jacob finally looked at him, and in those blue depths Callum saw something that might have been recognition, might have been warning. "She looked at me like she knew me. Like I was a ghost."

"Jacob-"

"Then she ran." Jacob returned to his window, his voice dropping to a murmur. "Everyone runs eventually."

Callum stood. His hands were shaking, he realized. His hands were shaking and his chest was tight and there was a ringing in his ears that had nothing to do with hospital acoustics.

"Get their things," he told Jaida. "We're leaving. Now."

"But Jacob's treatment-"

"I'll bring the medical team to the penthouse." He was already moving, pulling both boys with him, his long strides eating the corridor distance. "Dr. Frye. The cardiac specialist. Anyone else they need. They're not staying here."

Jaida scrambled to keep up, her heels clicking in undignified haste. "Callum, this is irrational. The hospital has everything-"

"It has her." He didn't slow down. "Whoever she is. Whatever she wants. She's not getting near my sons."

They reached the lobby in a storm of whispers and turned heads, the Booth family drama unfolding in real-time for anyone with eyes to see. Callum scanned the space automatically, his security training asserting itself-exits, threats, anomalies-

A woman bent over a child by the pharmacy counter.

Dark hair. The curve of a neck he'd traced with his mouth in another life. The particular angle of her head as she adjusted a scarf, as she smiled at something her daughter said, as she-

"Elise."

The name escaped him. A whisper. A prayer. A wound reopening.

He dropped Iaan's hand. He was running before he made the decision, shoving through the crowd, his expensive shoes slipping on polished floor, his voice rising to something broken and desperate.

"Elise! Elise, wait-"

He reached her. His hand closed on her shoulder, spinning her around, and he saw-

Brown eyes. Not green. A stranger's face, startled and afraid, nothing like the woman who'd haunted his dreams for four years.

"I-I'm sorry." He released her, stepping back, his hands raised in surrender. "I thought-you looked-"

The woman gathered her child and hurried away, casting backward glances of alarm. Callum stood in the middle of the lobby, breathing hard, his sons watching from ten feet away with identical expressions of concern.

Jaida approached cautiously. "Callum? What-"

"Nothing." He straightened his jacket, his composure returning like armor, piece by piece. "A mistake. Let's go."

But as they walked toward the doors, as the November wind hit his face and cleared the last of the delusion, Callum couldn't stop himself from looking back.

Just once.

Just in case.

The pharmacy counter was empty. The woman was gone. And somewhere in the city, a black car carried Elise Preston and her daughter away from the hospital, away from the past, toward a future neither of them could yet imagine.