“I’m right here.”
Jim wrenched his head to the female voice. And as he did, a sharp shooter rode up right into his brain, making him wince.
“Let me get a collar on him,” another medic said.
“Can you tell me your name?” the cop asked.
But Jim wasn’t tracking, and he didn’t care what they did to him. Sissy was standing under a streetlamp just on the periphery of the action, watching over the drama, her arms wrapped around herself.
Talk about an angel.
Maybe it was his injury … but man, all he could think of was how beautiful she was—and not in the ways of a girl, but as a woman. That illumination she was under cast a beckoning thrall around her, her long, straight blond hair teased by the wind, her eyes grave and serious, not wide and scared: In spite of the accident, she stood tall and strong, even though there had been way too many traumas tonight.
“Thank God,” Jim breathed.
“Really,” the cop said as the EMTs crowded around and various medical devices were taken out of carry-ons and attached to him. “Didn’t think parents went with Thank anymore as a first name. And God’s pretty unusual.”
Wha—oh, the name question. “No, I found her,” Jim muttered.
“Who?”
“Sissy.” Jim tried to lift his head again. “I’m okay,” he called out to her.
“Have you had anything to drink, sir?” the cop asked.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sissy said.
“Yes,” Jim replied. “I’m sure.”
“We’ve got a confirm on the alcohol,” the cop interjected.
Another uniformed somebody or other came over. “Have you found a wallet on him?”
“Sir, do you have a driver’s license?”
“Don’t worry,” he told Sissy.
“Well, I’m supposed to be concerned about this,” his cop said. “It’s my job.”
“Give the man your license,” she interjected.
Shit. He probably still had his old one with him, but if they searched the name and photo? “I’m dead,” he mumbled.
The paramedic who he’d clotheslined laughed. “If so, you’re the first stiff I’ve ever met who has blood pressure.”
Wait for it, Jim thought.
“I’ll put a spell on them,” Jim said as a cuff was put around his neck. “It’ll take care of everything.”
“Bring over the stretcher,” a voice shouted.
“I’m not going to the hospital.”
The cop leaned in and smiled at him. “A spell, huh? You’re just going to blink and this is all going to go away?”
Jim met the man right in the eye, locking on, locking in. “That’s right.”
With a force of will, he sent energy outward, pushing it through the air molecules between them, assuming control of the man’s mind, and through it, all of his thoughts and actions. The solution out of this mess was to do the same thing one by one with the others, and then he and Sissy were free.
Hell, he could even get this uniform to give them a ride home—
“You guys get your board?” the cop asked as he turned and looked over his shoulder. “Time to get him into transport.”
Jim blinked in confusion. What the hell?
The EMT who’d been checking the blood pressure shrugged. “There’s little flight risk, if that’s what you’re worried about. His leg’s probably broken. He’s going nowhere.”
“He managed to jump you pretty good,” the police officer pointed out.
Wait, wait, wait, this was not how it was supposed to—
“Here’s the board. Okay, sir, we’re going to move you. On three … One … two … three—”
As pain barged in and took over, shorting his brain out, Jim’s last thought was that it should have worked. Ever since Eddie had shown him the tricks of the angel trade, he’d been able to influence things and people like magic.
Apparently, playing sledgehammer with your own face cut those benes short.
Damn it.
Chapter Seventeen
Hours after Cait put herself to bed … she was suffocating.
In spite of all the cool, clean air in her bedroom, she was choking, a band of constriction tightening on her ribs, making it impossible to take a deep breath. In fact, it was almost as if she were underwater and being held there, the surface something she could only see in the distance through a wavy, blurry death sentence.
For the one millionth time since she’d gotten into bed, she looked over at her alarm clock. The Bahama-blue digital number glowed 2:34.
Oh, the irony. Even freaked-out in the dark, her mind still somehow knew when to check the time so that the numbers were in sequence.
Her eyes had long ago adjusted to the dimness of the room, and as her house gently snored, its familiar creaks and buckles like the rhythms of a sleeping dog, she measured the order that surrounded her, defined her.
Across the way, all the books on the shelves on either side of the window seat were arranged alphabetically. The throw blanket was precisely folded over the carefully arranged down pillows in the alcove. The pictures on the walls were set in identical frames that had been hung not by eyeballing it, but through a torturous process involving two tape measures and four hours with a pink hammer and slippery little nails. Her desk up here was for bills and documents, not drafting or drawing, and everything was where it needed to be, the pens locked away in a tray in the middle drawer, her to-be-paids filed in a vertical holder with beginning-, middle-, and end-of-the-month slots, the paperwork she was in the process of dealing with set aside in a manila folder.
No clutter. Nothing out of place—ever. And the same was true with her bureau, her closet, her whole life.
Rubbing her face, she wanted to scream.
Her insides felt radioactive, like the experience in that parking garage had contaminated her, and the after-effects were going to have a sizable half-life. And goddamn it if being around all of her obsessive need for control wasn’t making that itchy-twitchy burn so much worse.
Don’t tell me you didn’t think about me last night.
Are you always this arrogant?
I don’t worry about what other people think.
And what if that kind of attitude doesn’t get you where you want to go.
You want this, too. Don’t deny it—
Okay, she was not thinking of that man. She was absolutely, positively not thinking about that man—
Shoot. Maybe she was. And maybe … just maybe she kept picturing where she’d left her car keys, downstairs by her purse.