“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Gwen waved a hand at her, gesturing that it made no difference, then pointed at the chair next to her bed, inviting O’Dell to come sit beside her. But even as she obeyed, O’Dell couldn’t help noticing how drained and pale her friend’s face was. She still hadn’t gotten used to seeing Gwen with her golden red hair chopped short in preparation for what was to come.
“How did you know calla lilies are my favorite?”
It was the first smile O’Dell had seen in days.
“Sometimes I remember stuff.”
“You mean stuff other than details about killers and dead bodies.”
O’Dell’s turn to smile, pleased to hear the familiar ribbing.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” O’Dell said as she sat down.
“It’s okay. I already know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kunze called me.”
“He called you?”
“He wanted to know how I was doing.”
“Are we talking about the same Raymond Kunze?”
Gwen smiled again. She had worked with the man on a case last spring, acting as a consultant. O’Dell suspected Kunze ended up very fond of Gwen. Most men were. It was after working together on a case that Tully had fallen for her. But that Kunze would actually call to see if it was okay to pull one of his agents away from Gwen’s bedside—that was beyond anything O’Dell would have expected.
“He promised that you wouldn’t be away for too long. A few days at most. Something terribly classified. Bodies unearthed after a landslide? Obviously not victims of the landslide, I gathered.”
“No. One of them has a gunshot wound. They believe it happened before all of the slides began.”
“All of the slides? There’s more than one? Are they still happening?”
A slip of the tongue. O’Dell needed to backtrack. She didn’t want Gwen to worry. But she knew there had been more slides and smaller ones were expected. Conditions hadn’t changed. It was still raining. Part of the area where one of the bodies had been discovered was already flooded.
Instead of telling her friend any of this, O’Dell said, “Hey, I’ve handled worse. It can’t be as bad as a hurricane, right? Or chasing a serial killer through graveyard tunnels?”
O’Dell meant to make light of this assignment, but her friend didn’t smile. Instead Gwen added, “Your last out-of-town assignment landed you in a pit of scorpions.”
She couldn’t argue that fact. Some nights O’Dell awoke from her regularly scheduled nightmares swatting at her arms and batting at her hair. It would take a special compartment in her mind for her to forget how it felt to have them scurrying across her body, stinging her over and over again.
“I’ll be okay,” she told Gwen, this time serious, all joking set aside.
Then she caught and held her friend’s eyes, and she could see that Gwen was thinking the same thing—how quickly, once again, they had reversed roles. But going down for a few days to deal with a couple of dead bodies wasn’t anything close to her friend’s battle. It certainly wasn’t a life-or-death matter, or at least that’s what O’Dell thought at that moment.
“Are you doing this only because Ben asked?” Gwen wanted to know.
“He’s done a lot for me without asking for anything in return.”
“When you care deeply about someone you don’t expect anything in return.”
O’Dell knew Gwen wasn’t Ben’s biggest fan. She thought he was playing mind games with O’Dell. By telling her that he couldn’t be in a relationship with any woman who didn’t want children, Gwen said he was only testing her, pushing her to make a decision.
O’Dell didn’t want to hear it. Instead she tried to change the subject and found herself suddenly saying, “Speaking of scorpions, Ryder Creed’s there working the North Carolina site with one of his dogs.”
“Really?” And now her friend was smiling again. O’Dell had confessed to Gwen about her attraction to the man the last time she had worked with him. “Well, now that makes things interesting.”
22.
Haywood County, North Carolina
Creed watched Jason shovel in ham and eggs like a man who hadn’t eaten for a week. He didn’t even put the fork down to pick up a biscuit or the glass of water. Creed couldn’t help thinking the kid was already learning some one-handed bad habits. At the same time he sort of admired his survival skills.
The community had set up the high school gymnasium with cots for the rescue workers. The school cafeteria was right next door. Volunteers prepared meals, trying to accommodate the different shifts, and even providing sack lunches.