Chapter 48
I GENTLY CLOSED Xanthos’s soulful brown eyes.
As I did, I realized something: I killed him.
I also got Mel kidnapped.
If I had never come to Kentucky, if I had never met my father’s spiritual advisor, if I hadn’t gone horseback riding, if Xanthos hadn’t bucked me off his back when we were crossing that creek, if…
“What’re you doing, Daniel?”
It was Dana.
I gently laid Xanthos’s head on a pillow of the cleanest straw I could scrape together in his stall. “He’s dead,” I said faintly. “I killed him.”
“No, you didn’t.” Dana knelt down beside me and wiped the last tear from my eye. “You feel terrible about what happened to your friends. Maybe you even feel guilty, because if you weren’t here, things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re right, Daniel. If you weren’t here, things would be different. In fact, they’d be a whole lot worse.”
“No.”
“Daniel, if you hadn’t put that dome over our heads…”
“It didn’t stop them.”
“No. But it sure slowed them down. If you weren’t here, chances are Number 2 would’ve wiped this horse farm off the map the same way he took down New York, Beijing, London, and Moscow. You saved Agent Judge’s life, not to mention all those other FBI agents out there.”
“But what about Mel?”
“She’s a tough girl. She’ll be fine.”
“Wait a second. Are you actually saying something nice about Melody Judge?”
“Whoa. Don’t get carried away….”
“But I think I just heard you actually compliment Mel.”
Dana shrugged. “She’s okay. I mean, for an earthling.”
I actually brightened to hear her say it. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Um, let’s leave ‘like’ out of this, okay? Mel saved my bacon on the bridge. I figure I owe her one. So come on; let’s go rescue her already. I don’t like being in debt.”
I reached out and held Dana’s cheek in my hand so I could gaze into her brilliant blue eyes. “You’re really something, Dana—you know that, right?”
“What?” she said with a laugh. “Are you admiring your own handiwork again?”
“Man, sometimes I so wish you were real.”
“Yeah,” she said sweetly. “Me, too.”
As I cupped her cheek in my hand, I let my thumb trace the white line that was still marring her otherwise perfect skin.
“You like my souvenir?” Dana joked. “I picked it up in Moscow.”
“I’m going to fix that, you know.”
“I know. But first we need to fix the rest of this mess.”
I was holding Dana’s cheek, gazing into her eyes, which were steadily gazing back into mine. We were definitely having a moment.
A moment that was suddenly shattered by the roar of a thousand gunning helicopter engines hovering overhead.