Then again, it was a good thing Wolf didn’t have a hankering to use that wicked knife strapped to his belt, ’cause Rawls would have been the one filleted.
He was in pretty sorry shape, damn it. First Faith had managed to surprise him, and now Wolf. Inexcusable. He needed to screw his damn head back on. If the bastards hunting them pinpointed their new camp and stumbled onto him lollygagging off in oblivion . . . hell, his mental meltdown was going to get him dead. Get his whole team dead. Time to man up and start acting like an operator.
“A word.” Wolf let go of Rawls’s arm and crossed thick arms across a wide chest.
Rawls shrugged, forcing himself to hold his host’s hard, black gaze. “Have at it.”
Wolf glanced from side to side, his black brows drawing together. “Is it here?”
Tilting his head, Rawls studied Wolf’s face. His new friend’s tone had been raspier than normal, with an undercurrent of unease. “What?”
“The biitei.” The normally velvety baritone roughened.
With a roll of his shoulders, Rawls sucked back a tired breath. Christ, he needed a few solid hours of sleep. “You’re gonna have to speak English, hoss.”
Wolf’s lips tightened, and the disquiet lurking in his voice shadowed his face. “The biitei. He who walked the other side. He who followed you across the threshold.”
The other side?
That strange, ethereal dream rose in Rawls’s mind. “What’s a biitei?”
Wolf actually hesitated before offering a shrug. “Ghost.”
Pure shock rocked Rawls back on his heels. “You believe in ghosts?”
An asinine question since the big guy had just suggested Rawls had brought one back from the other side . . . which happened to be a pretty apt description of that eerie, silvery world in his dream.
“What makes you think I picked up a ghost?” Rawls asked.
“I know you crossed over. I know you walked the other side. I know you brought a biitei through the veil on return.” With each clipped sentence, Wolf’s voice hardened.
A denial teetered on Rawls’s tongue, but he couldn’t force it out. Damn it—he was tired of pretending. He was tired of not knowing. He wanted answers. “I died?”
“You deny this?” Wolf asked, anger flashing across his square face. He planted his thick black boots and glared.
“I ain’t denyin’ anything. Zane and Cos—they said I had a pulse.”
Wolf didn’t respond, but the anger faded.
“Hold up now,” Rawls said, studying Wolf’s inscrutable face intensely. “How’d you know there’s a ghost?”
Which was as close to a confirmation as he intended to get. While his teammates clearly knew something was wrong, they hadn’t identified the problem yet.
Thank you, Jesus.
Wolf’s black stare flattened. “Who was the biitei?”
“I reckon I ain’t sayin’ there is a ghost”—Rawls tried to lighten his drawl—“but if there was a transparent troll hangin’ around, it’d most likely be Pachico, our old friend from the lab.”
Which reminded him. It wasn’t like the asshole to stand on the sidelines when the conversation was so wickedly ironic. He glanced to the left, then the right, finally turning in a slow circle.
What the devil?
Pachico had vanished.
An icy chill washed down his back. For the second time in less than a week, the ground heaved beneath his feet. Pachico was gone? Rawls winced, massaging his temples, as a hell of a pounding shook his head.
What the hell? Had the asshole even existed?
Maybe he had been a hallucination.
But then Wolf’s words flashed through his mind. The big guy clearly knew there was a ghost. Hell, he appeared to know more about Rawls’s current situation than Rawls did himself.
Wolf dropped his arms, his body tensing. “The heebii3soo Jillian killed?”
“That’s the one,” Rawls confirmed absently, scanning the grassy field and scraggly brush surrounding him.
“Your shirt. The one you crossed over in. Where is it?”
“I tossed it.” The question, odd as it was, barely pierced his obsession with the whereabouts of Pachico.
Where had the ghost gone? How had he gone? For the past five days he’d been leashed to Rawls, unable to stray more than a dozen feet, expressing his frustration in the most annoying ways possible. And now he suddenly up and vanished? Why? What had changed? Rawls froze as the answer hit.
Wolf.
Wolf had appeared, and Pachico had disappeared. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Faith’s arrival hadn’t driven the ghost off.