and more love.
To ALL my Heartwarming author sisters who sent flowers, cards, phone calls, emails, text messages, each and every one of you saved my sanity and allowed my heart to begin to heal.
God bless you every one.
Contents
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JACK WAS AT the bottom of a dank, wet drainage tunnel. He smelled earth, rain and blood. It was dark and he couldn’t see even a few inches in front of him. The ringing in his ears drowned out everything else. He felt as if there was something nibbling at his ankles. Rats? He hated rats. Just the thought of them made his stomach lurch. He tried to shake them off but couldn’t move his legs. No, not rats. It was pain. Shooting, biting, sharp pain that now went careening up his calves.
His thoughts were confused and morphed into one another, creating a senseless universe. That was it, he reasoned. He’d been catapulted into some black hole. Floating. Spinning. Weightless.
And alone. Utterly, completely alone.
Except for the pain. The pain was his bedfellow. His traveling companion. It overtook his entire body now. His spine felt as if someone had shot it with molten steel. His skull pounded in agony. He couldn’t open his eyes for fear that the tiniest beam of light would penetrate him like bullets.
Surely, he was dying.
This was what it was like at the end, he thought. Every cell in his body felt as if it had been shot with electricity strong enough to fry him to ash. No human could endure this kind of torture and live. No human would want to. This was the moment, that sliver of awareness that he was about to give up the ghost. And in his moment of choice, Jack knew it was okay to let go. Except for his sister and brother-in-law, he had no one. No wife. No children. No one would mourn him. He wouldn’t be missed.
Then he heard a familiar male voice, though he couldn’t place it.
“9-1-1? There’s been an accident. Hurry. We’re going to lose them!”
* * *
LIKE THE HIGH-PITCHED, irritating buzz of a mosquito, a voice reached into Jack’s consciousness. Impossible as that was to accept, he struggled to figure out what it was saying.
“Jack? Can you hear me? Help is coming. Stay with me.”
Jack had expected to talk to an angel upon dying, but this was a man’s voice. A young man who sounded vaguely like the new recruit he’d hired for his insurance agency, Owen Jacobs. Yes. His mind slowly ground into gear.
“Jack,” Owen said. “Can you hear the sirens? The cops are here. The ambulance, too. It’s going to be okay.”
Jack didn’t hear sirens. It took all his effort to listen to Owen’s voice, which he was positive was coming to him from the other end of a tunnel. Jack wanted to answer Owen, but there was so much blood in his mouth, all he could do was choke, cough and spit. His tongue refused to obey his commands.
Now that he was a little more aware, though, his training kicked in. Apparently, even in his last minutes on earth, he was an insurance agent through and through. He wanted to know all the particulars. Where was he? What happened? Why was he paralyzed and in pain? And what was Owen doing here in this tunnel, if that’s where they were? He wanted facts. Even if Owen was talking to him, Jack couldn’t be sure he’d understood all the words. Each wave of pain smothered reality
