“That’s not possible,” Riley hissed as a gurney slid past— and the face beneath the stained blanket was the one she had mourned for five years. The corridor moved around her like a river and she was a rock fixed in its current. Paramedics shoved, rubber soles squealed, oxygen hissed. Bright hospital lights threw everything flat. Someone shouted a code—something that smelled like iron and fear rose up with it. Riley’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her fingers went numb. “It’s you,” she breathed before she could stop herself. The blanket shifted. A pulse beat in the wrist exposed by a torn cuff. A strip of adhesive plaster gave way and revealed a pale forearm, skeletal, tattooed with a thin black line that slanted just behind the elbow—the stupid, private mark he'd had since college. Riley had memorized it back when she could say his name without the weight of a funeral pressing on her chest. “Miss Carter, please step back,” a voice snapped. A tech in green scrub pants reached for her elbow like the law had been written on his hands. She didn’t step back. The gurney kept moving, wheels clattering on linoleum like a mock parade. A paramedic’s breath fogged in the air. The man under the blanket moved his head. For a second the world narrowed to the tilt of his chin and the hollow of his cheek. His hair was matted and shorter than