There was a petulance to her now, like a kid threatening to tattletale because someone ate Play-Doh in the back of a classroom.
“You save him, and you and I are even,” she announced. “I may have trespassed, but you’re stealing from fate if you intercede now—oh, and if you let him live? I’m not leaving him. There’s still only one way I’ll go, and you know what it is, angel. He gets his freedom if I get what I want from you. So be a savior, or don’t. I don’t give a fuck.”
With that… the brunette disappeared.
Right into thin air.
Closing her eyes, Erika moaned and prayed for an end to the pain she was in, the confusion, the conviction that she was in a different world altogether… even as she was ostensibly in Caldwell—
Instantly, the pressure on her chest disappeared. Between one heartbeat and the next, the squeeze was just gone, and she fell to the floor, landing on her back, her head smacking into the concrete and stunning her. But now was not the time for that. The ragged inhale she took was loud in her ears. She grabbed another. And another.
That was when she realized the gurgling had stopped.
Rolling onto her side, she reached a hand out for the man, and opened her mouth to say his name. But she didn’t know what it was—
She was not alone.
Turning her head, she looked at the figure who had come through the doorway in the form of illumination. She should have been afraid. She wasn’t—and not because she was confused.
When the entity just stood there, staring at her, she refocused on the man who had cut himself. As a feeling of helplessness choked her, she stretched even farther to reach the suspect, not that she could save him. Nothing short of blood transfusions and an operating room could—
“Save… him…” she whispered as she looked back up to the mysterious man. “Please.”
The man looked over his shoulder as if he were checking to see if the coast was clear. Then he stared off at something that was beyond her, maybe to a back door.
As he seemed suspended by his inner thoughts, she knew he was their only hope. She was losing strength fast, and she was worried she was going to pass out. And the suspect—well, it was probably already too late. But she couldn’t not beg.
“Please…”
Later, she could wonder why she was so determined to rescue a suspect. Then again, he had come in here to help her.
Abruptly, the glow returned. An outline of light appeared around the man with the long blond-and-black hair, and its magical warmth reverberated outward from him, engulfing her, calming her, healing her pain and easing the burn in her lungs.
The man came forward and knelt down beside her—and that was when she recognized the sensation on her face, her body: Sunshine. She felt as though she were lying out on a towel, at the Million Dollar Beach at the base of Lake George, the late August sun shining down on her, getting into her bones as a breeze coming from the water kept her from overheating.
Rays of heavenly grace.
Is this Jesus? Erika wondered.
No, came an answer in her mind.
A hand extended toward her, and she had a thought that he was out of luck if he wanted to help her to her feet. As much as his presence seemed to magically improve how she felt, she was empty of energy, incapable of moving.
“I can’t…” Except then Erika frowned.
In the seat of his palm, a ball of light formed and hovered. And while she tried to comprehend what she was looking at, the man reached out and brushed her face. His touch was not sexual in any way, but it traveled through her bones, registering all over her as warmth.
As kindness and compassion.
Gently, he took her limp hand and turned it over. Placing the orb in her palm, he rose up to his full height again.
Erika gazed upon the energy source with wonder and awe. Then she lifted her heavy head and met his oddly colored eyes.
The man nodded over to the suspect.
After that, he took a step back and disappeared just as the brunette had: One moment he was there, the next… he was just gone.
With a moan, Erika held the ball of energy up to where he had been, like it was something that could bring him back. Then she refocused on the suspect.
He had disappeared. It was too late.
And what was she holding anyway?
That rumination was momentary. Even as she questioned what she was doing, she rolled over onto her stomach and started to drag herself over to the man she had been searching for, the man who, as with Keri Cambourg, had been in her dreams.
The man who had sacrificed himself to save her.
Snippets of what had been said between him and the brunette floated around her mind. None of it made any sense and she didn’t even attempt to sort things out. Trying to pull herself over the concrete with only one hand and her feet to push was all she could handle at the moment.