“Everyone else is fine.”
Everyone else, as in she wasn’t fine. Possibly her willingness to remain in his arms was giving him the wrong impression.
“Honestly, I’m fine. Put me down.”
“No.” His arms tightening, he continued walking.
Well, fine then. She’d just enjoy the ride. With that in mind she looped her arms around his neck and settled back down to enjoy his muscles and scent. Her momma hadn’t raised a fool.
The silence that fell between them was easy. Comfortable. She gave in to the impulse to close her eyes and doze.
“Faith.”
“Hmmmm.”
“Do you remember anythin’ from when you were out? When your heart stopped?”
That question brought her head up. “What do you mean?”
He was quiet for a moment. And then a shrug lifted the arms curled around his neck. “You have any weird dreams? Any stray memories? Anythin’ odd happen back then?”
She frowned. “Like what?”
Stillness fell again, only this time it lacked the ease of earlier.
“Any . . . you know . . . out-of-body kinda experiences?” he finally asked after the silence had dragged on far too long.
She raised her eyebrows at the combination of curiosity and discomfort in his voice. “You mean like an NDE?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“No. There was nothing like that.”
What an odd question. Why in the world would he ask about near-death experiences? But his question elicited another memory.
The rifle lifting. Rawls spinning in a circle shouting a name. Pachico. Pachico—who was dead and apparently acting as Rawls’s ghost.
Suddenly the question about NDEs made sense.
And just like that it was her turn for curiosity. She tried to frame her question as tactfully as possible. “Is that what happened to you that night you were shot in the woods? Is that where you picked up your ghost?”
He’d told her in the kitchen the day before that he’d been mortally wounded and Kait had healed him. Maybe he’d experienced something akin to a near-death experience while he was out, and the experience had paved the foundation for his delusion.
“My ghost,” he repeated beneath his breath in a disgusted voice.
Who was that irritation directed at? Him? Her? Pachico? All three of them?
Nor did it escape her notice that he hadn’t answered either of her questions. Obviously he didn’t want to talk about what he’d gone through. She swallowed her brewing sermon on the scientific veracity of near-death experiences. As someone with wide experience in the medical profession, he would have heard all the competing theories.
His ghost, on the other hand, that was just too tempting a subject to ignore. “Is Pachico here?”
A slight twitch of his shoulder was the only indication he’d heard the question. But once again he refused to participate. Apparently the topic of his ghost was off limits too.
Well, that was just too bad.
However, her plan to pester the information out of him vanished beneath a wave of exhaustion. Apparently, her body recommended immediate sleep to offset its recent ordeal. It didn’t help that his arms were warm and comforting or that with each step, he rocked her. Her eyes drifted closed . . . she’d just rest for a while . . . plenty of time to ask about his ghost later.
Eric Manheim scowled as he dropped his cell phone on the breakfast table.
Breathing deeply, he counted to ten while sitting perfectly still. Damn it. Another delay. Another fuckup. They’d found their targets, even had the camp surrounded. They’d had every fucking thing in place. Was it too much to ask that things go according to plan?
“Problem?” Esme murmured, commiseration warming her pale blue gaze.
He focused on her face. Breathed in her light, breezy scent, and the frustration eased. Her eyes never failed to fascinate him, shifting as they did between pale icy-blue and brilliant azure, depending on the whim of the lighting or her emotions of the moment.
“The signal’s gone underground,” Eric told her tightly.
“How far and where underground?” Esme folded her newspaper in half and set it neatly on the glass table beside her cup of tea.
“Twenty feet, give or take, within a thousand feet of their camp. Apparently, the campsite was built over some kind of rabbit’s warren.”
He hadn’t taken any chances this time. He’d surrounded the camp with snipers before calling in the air strike. He’d covered every angle—except the damn ground.
Irritation flared. If he were lucky, eventually the signal would simply cease, indicating that the boys had died beneath ground. With the compound exploding above them, there was a good chance the tunnel had collapsed, burying them.
But he couldn’t count on luck.