It was 3:22 p.m. when Larkin and Doyle reached a patient room on the fourth floor of New York-Presbyterian at Columbia University. A uniformed officer had been assigned to the door, but one look at Doyle and he was ushering the detectives inside. The room was one of those semiprivate layouts, but the second bed was unoccupied, so the curtain separator had been pushed against the far wall to allow afternoon sunlight to filter in. Aesthetically, it looked like any other hospital room: beige walls, beige tiles, drop ceiling, and two uncomfortable-looking chairs in a shit-brown vinyl, which Larkin felt was a misstep in the decorating of a locale known for its dealings with bodily fluids. The room was heavy with the smell of antiseptic, liquid soap sold in those industrial tubs, and lasagna—the last of which made sense when Larkin spotted a food tray on the overbed table, nothing left of the meal except an untouched Red Delicious apple.

Sitting up in the hospital bed and now wearing a shapeless gown was the same redheaded girl from Gary Reynold’s apartment. Her face had been scrubbed of makeup, and her hair looked clean too. She seemed younger than Larkin remembered of that split second before Reynold had tried to fry his brain. Young but hard—a child who’d already seen too much of the world and knew it only got worse from here. She was patently ignoring the counselor, an older woman who wore her hair in a poof of gray with a pantsuit to match, seated nearer the windows. The girl was staring at the overhead television playing an edited-for-daytime-TV version of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.

The girl shot the door a quick glance before she shoved the blankets back, jumped out of bed, and barreled into Doyle. She had her arms wrapped around his back and face pressed into Doyle’s chest as she asked, “What took so long?”

Doyle was smiling as he put a hand on the back of her head, stroking gently. In the second that hung between her question and his response, Doyle had transformed—transcended to a higher existence that Larkin refused to consider as an option in his own life because he wasn’t strong enough, brave enough, selfless enough. In that singular moment, Larkin saw in Doyle what he truly was and what had been taken away from him—he saw Doyle as a father.

“I had to check on my partner,” Doyle answered. He moved his hands to her shoulders, took a step back, and studied her face. “I told you I’d be back.”

Her complexion was tinged with pink, and her blue eyes were a little wet, but when she looked at Larkin, her voice was steady enough as she said, “You’re alive.”

“Yes.”

“Did being tased hurt?”

Again, Larkin said, “Yes.”

Doyle inclined his chin. “Why don’t you get back in bed?”