blood. So much blood. And all of it mine. I’m sure it was mine.” She lowered her eyes. “Or else I’m hallucinating, maybe losing my mind. Because it was that vivid. That real.”
He glanced her way briefly, and when she met his eyes, he gave her the validation she sought with a single nod. “You didn’t imagine it. It was real.”
She wondered if she could accept that.
“And then you came,” she said softly. “And you put your hands on me. I thought I felt heat, and I thought I saw … a light. It came from you, from your hands on me. Was that real, too?”
He didn’t answer.
“Are you an angel? Are you some kind of … guardian angel, James?”
He licked his lips as if he were nervous, and then nodded once, as if having made a decision. “You’re going to have to know sooner or later anyway, I suppose.”
She wanted to ask why he would say that, since she would probably never see him again after he took her wherever he was taking her and dropped her off. Right? She wanted to ask but couldn’t bring herself to interrupt just when she thought she was about to get some answers.
“I was born with a … a gift,” he told her.
“A gift?”
“An … ability that most people don’t have.”
She tipped her head to one side, watching him. “The ability to … heal gunshot wounds?”
“Yes. Or just about anything else.”
Her brain told her that the man was clearly delusional, and she thought what a shame it was that such a gorgeous specimen was mentally warped. But she couldn’t really brush off his claim that easily when she’d been on the receiving end of his healing touch. Could she?
“You don’t really believe me.”
“I … I don’t how I can doubt you. And yet, it just doesn’t seem … plausible.”
He shrugged, drove for a while in silence.
She rested, waiting, wondering if she’d offended him somehow, regretted it if she had. He’d saved her life. And then found her on the beach.
How had he done that?
“Here we are,” he said, and he pulled the car carefully over onto the shoulder of the road and brought it to a stop.
“Here we are where?” There was nothing around them.
“Proof.” He opened the car door and got out, and to her surprise, he moved toward a black bit of road-kill just ahead. A crow, its feathers all askew, its body limp.
She frowned, intent on James as he crouched down beside the bird. A car sped past, its back draft blasting his hair and clothes briefly, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He was holding his hands over the bird. “Good,” he said. “It’s still warm.”
Compelled beyond resisting, she opened the car door and got out, moving closer to him without even planning to do so. She squinted, leaning forward. Was there light coming from his hands? There was. A soft yellow glow that seemed to emanate from his palms.
Shifting her focus to his eyes, she thought she glimpsed a similar light there, but then he closed them. She kept moving nearer, then knelt right beside him.
There was a sudden flapping, and then he was holding the crow between his hands, wings contained. The bird’s black-currant eyes were open, and it parted its large dark bill to release a series of loud squawks that did not sound like gratitude.
Then James rose, lifted his arms, parted his hands, and the crow flapped its big wings and took flight.
Lucy stood there for a long moment, watching until the gleaming black corvid was out of sight. “That bird wasn’t injured,” she said quietly. “That bird was dead.”
He shrugged, saying nothing.
“Are you telling me you can raise the dead?”
“Sometimes.”
He had avoided her eyes until then. But he looked into them now. “But besides that—I’m really just an ordinary man, Lucy.”
“There’s nothing ordinary about you.”
He shrugged, lowered his gaze. “I just … I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you?” She continued to stare at him, her mind lost in wonder. “You’re some kind of an angel, or … or a superhero. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Good.” He met her eyes again, and for the first time she saw his smile. “Good.” Then he took her arm, and they started back toward the car.
“How did you find me?”
“All too easily, I’m afraid,” he said, opening her door for her.
She got in, and he rounded the front of the car and got in, as well.
“What do you mean?” she asked when he was seated.
“I need to know how you escaped,” he told her.
She shook her head. “As I said before, I didn’t. I was there—”
“Where?”
She frowned, thinking back. “I don’t know. I was unconscious for most of the ambulance ride—they drugged me. I woke in a hospital-like room, but it wasn’t a hospital. Or at least, not an ordinary one. I was interrogated as if I were a terrorist or something.”
“About what?” he asked. “The shooting?”
“A little. But mostly about you, and then they started asking me about my blood type, which is rare. And I have no idea how they knew that.” She shook her head, more confused than ever. “Much less why they would even care. Eventually they fed me, and then I was out again. I suspect they drugged the food.”
“Probably.”
“I woke up on the beach.” She met his eyes. “And you were there.”
He had been about to put the car into gear and pull away, but he stopped in midmotion and looked at her. “They just let you go? Just dumped you on that beach for me to find?”
“I don’t know that they could have expected you to be the one to find me there, but yes.”
“Oh, they expected it.” He drew a deep breath. “Do you trust me, Lucy?”
She tilted her head to one side, searching his eyes. “I think so, yes.”
“Good, because I have to ask you to do something for me.”
She nodded. “I guess I owe you a favor, given that you’ve saved my life—maybe twice now. What is it?”
“Take
