The Southern Comfort Series Box Set
Page 113
He shifted his glance, hoping he hadn’t offended Kim unforgivably, and was surprised to catch her smiling.
Then he realized the full significance of his outburst.
He’d gone and admitted, real publicly, what she meant to him.
He found himself smiling back.
But then the pain slammed into his ribs again, his vision going blurry and double, and despite the fact that the x-ray right in front of him said otherwise, he could have sworn the damn things were broken.
“He’s not faking that,” Kim complained to the doctor as she rushed over to Rogan’s side, running her hand across his brow, which had gone cool and clammy.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the doc said. “All the evidence we have suggests otherwise.”
Kim peered into his eyes as the pain slowly ebbed and dissipated. After a moment or two he was pretty much back to normal. Even he admitted it was weird.
She frowned and straightened beside him. Then the cell phone she was supposed to have turned off started to ring, and she shot a guilty glance at Steinmetz before checking the readout. “It’s your dad,” she told Rogan, then pressed the phone to her ear. “I’ll just step out in the hall to talk to him.”
Rogan watched her walk off, appreciating the view, mentally stamping Mine all over her retreating backside. It wasn’t like him to be so possessive – and one didn’t exactly possess a woman like Kim anyway – but then he guessed he’d never been in love before.
When he caught Steinmetz doing his own ogling he crossed his arms, then found himself actually snarling.
The man shrugged his shoulders unrepentantly.
They glared at each other for several moments, until Kim came back into the room, her brows drawn tightly together.
“What?” He dropped his arms, pissing contest forgotten.
“Doctor Steinmetz?” she said, but her eyes were locked with Rogan’s. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to speak with the patient alone for a moment.”
“Sure.” Steinmetz offered her a smarmy smile. Asshole.
Then he sauntered out of the room, sucking most of the air with him. Took a lot of oxygen to keep that ego inflated.
Rogan forgot him, and turned his gaze back to Kim. “What’s wrong? What did Dad say? Was there a problem at the bar?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
She crossed the room, laid her hand on his arm. Any time she touched him he went pliant as putty. One hundred and eighty-five pounds of dough. “You remember that I was a nurse before the Bureau. That I worked in the psych ward?”
“Sure.” Rogan didn’t ask what that had to do with anything. Kim always spoke with a point, so he waited for her to make it.
“Well, one time we had a woman in with severe, unexplained pain. Pretty much all over her body. She said everything felt like it had been crushed. They’d run all the tests, could find nothing wrong with her physically and were working on the theory that it was psychological. Anyway, long story short, it turned out she had an identical twin who’d been in a major car accident. They’d both been adopted, had only just found out about each other, and the woman’s husband called the twin to try to get some background on the family medical history so that he could do something to help his wife. That’s when he heard about the car crash, discovered his sister-in-law was wearing a body cast. And realized his wife was experiencing her sister’s pain.”
Rogan blinked.
“And you’re telling me this because… shit. Declan was in an accident? Is that what the phone call was about? What happened?” God, God. He couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t breathe. “Is he okay?”
Kim calmed his rising concern with another stroke. “I don’t know for sure that anything has happened.” Then she explained the conversation she’d had with his dad. Apparently Declan and Sadie’s disappearing act was perhaps not of their own volition.
Rogan leaned back against the pillow, closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that his brother hadn’t been mangled in a car accident or terrified over the possibility that he was in even worse trouble.
“I never would have put this together without talking to your dad,” Kim continued. “Or without having witnessed something similar myself. I know it’s not widely accepted in the scientific community,” she told him. “But I was there and I saw it. If you do the research, you’ll find it’s been documented before. A four-year-old girl burns her hand, and her twin develops an unaccountable matching blister. Chest pains in one twin when the other has a heart attack. Labor pains when the other gives birth. There are too many examples to discount.”
He opened his eyes, searched her face. “You’re serious about this.”
“If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I admit I’d have a hard time believing it. The research I did back then suggests that this… phenomenon is most likely to occur when one twin is under some kind of extreme duress. And when your dad said what are the chances of something happening to both my boys at the same time, that’s what got me thinking. The timing is curious, to say the least.”
Fear for Declan again blocked the air from his lungs. “So what you’re suggesting is that my brother has been… injured.”
“I don’t know that.” Kim squeezed his hand. “Maybe he and Sadie really did just go away, and Kathleen is off base. Maybe I’m off base, Declan is fine, and you’re experiencing phantom pain for a different reason.”
Her tone was neutral, but her eyes were worried. It was clear she thought there was something to this woo-woo.
And if he allowed himself to stop thinking, to set logic aside and just go with gut feeling, he was terrified that she was right.
He and Dec were basically two halves of one person. A zygote that split at the last possible moment, making them two separate individuals. Identical DNA. Undeniably joined.
At least they had been many years ago.
“Call Kathleen,” he said, suddenly feeling nauseous. “She would have edited what she told Dad. I want the unvarnished reality.”
“Okay.” She stroked him again.
“Let’s say you’re right. Do you think there’s any way to… use this? To somehow help whatever’s going on with Declan?”
“Again, I don’t know.” But this time she looked doubtful.
“You hear about stuff like this,” he said. “But in the back of your mind you don’t really think it’s possible. Sure as hell not possibly happening to you.”
“True,” she agreed easily. “But stranger things have happened. After all, we are talking about Declan. If anyone is capable of making someone else suffer along with him, you know it would be your brother.”
He smiled, but it didn’t last long.
“I’ll call.” She tried to reassure him before standing. “Maybe we’ll find out this is all just a big misunderstanding.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“I’M sorry.”
The words were the barest wash of air across his ear. Declan squeezed Sadie’s shoulder with his good hand, pulling her into him, because he didn’t want to risk conversation, even in whispers.
He knew she was beating herself up for screaming, for losing it over something as comparatively insignificant as a snake when it was the human serpents they needed to watch out for. But the fact was her mini-meltdown might not have been such a bad thing.
They hadn’t been moving through the woods with any great degree of stealth, both of them being battered and neither of them being commandos, and whoever was tracking them probably would have caught up to them sooner or later.
And would likely have taken them out before they even knew what hit them.
Now, at least, they knew for certain their big escape had been discovered.
Knew they were being followed.
Knew whoever was following them was armed.
Of course, all that knowledge completely sucked.
Declan thought of what might have happened if Sadie hadn’t bent over at the exact moment she had,
and pulled her in even closer. The bullet that had splintered the bark on that pine could have just as easily splintered her head. Even now he could all but smell her fear, feel her heart beating wildly against his chest as adrenaline practically burst through her veins, and his own heart kicked in response. He hated this. Hated his own fear, hated feeling like a fox about to go down under the hounds. But more than that he hated feeling that he wasn’t man enough to protect Sadie. He knew that was wrong-headed, knew that his sister would have something feminist to say, but he’d never been a particularly politically correct male.
And damn it, it was Sadie.
Sadie, who might be smart and strong and capable, but who nevertheless aroused every territorial and protective instinct he never knew he possessed.
Sadie, whom he loved.
And he protected what he loved, damn it.
He may have done a piss poor job of it up till now, but that was the old Declan, the one who didn’t think he deserved love. But even screw-ups deserved second chances. And he was going to fight for his with everything he had.
The problem was that right now he had diddly.
He and Sadie were holed up inside a log that they’d literally stumbled over as they fled from that gunshot. The shooter hadn’t been close, thank God, because that had given him enough time to grab Sadie and run deeper into the forest. But neither of them was in any condition to keep the flat-out pace for very long. Sadie had taken a header over the log after he’d cleared it, going down in a tangle of limbs. When he’d bent over to haul her back to her feet, he’d noticed that the log was mostly hollowed-out.
Given the fact that he felt like several of his body parts were going to fall off at any moment, and Sadie wasn’t wearing shoes, he quickly revamped the run like hell escape plan he’d been operating on to hide in the log and be quiet.
It was a snug fit, to say the least, given the fact that he was almost too tall to get his feet all the way in. And the circumference was barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. Not to mention that he wasn’t the only one stuffed in here. But being plastered up against Sadie was never a hardship in any case, even if her elbow was jabbing him in his busted ribs.
He listened to her breath come in terrified gasps of shallow air, felt the dirty snarls of her hair against his neck. Smelled the faintly musty scent of his damp shirt mixed with the pungent odor of decaying vegetation.
And had the thought that if their pursuer were to discover them here, he and Sadie had basically crawled into their own coffin.
Stop it. That was the old Declan talking.
He had to have hope for the future.
And for the first time since he’d been a young boy standing over his mother’s lifeless body, Declan Murphy closed his eyes and prayed.
When he opened them the first thing he noticed was the quiet. Birds that had been calling to each other in late morning song had fallen silent, even the insects whose busy music of incessant buzzing and droning seemed to have laid down their miniature instruments. The entire living orchestra of nature surrounding them had stilled but for the cadence of their heartbeats.
Death was stalking them, Declan thought, miserably. And its sound was the sound of silence.
Against him, Sadie tensed, having sensed it too in the gentle rustling of the underbrush near them. He applied pressure with his fingers, an unspoken warning. Sadie’s lips found the hollow of his throat, pressing there warmly in response, despite the chill of fear.
His eyelids fell again, helpless, hopeless, because despite his pep talk he knew there was nothing he could do. He was unarmed, unmanned, his dominant hand broken, crammed into a rotting log like a sardine. And short of shielding her with the larger bulk of his body, their survival just now was out of his hands.
Please, he thought again fervently. Not like this.
A twig cracked, too close by for comfort, and Sadie shook so hard she practically rattled her bones. Declan tightened his grip to still her. Any noise, even one so insignificant, could be enough to give them away.
A heartbeat passed, and some dried leaves crackled.
One of the men had to be standing next to the log.
Then a crash sounded off to the left – probably a deer taking off through the underbrush. He heard a curse, saw a flash of blue as their pursuer ran past them, the saw palmettos shielding their hidey-hole swaying violently in his wake.
Sadie caught her breath, went absolutely motionless against him. They laid there still and silent until eventually the cacophony of animals and insects going about their business alerted him to the fact that the danger had, at least temporarily, passed.
He exhaled a pensive burst of air. “I think he’s gone.”
SADIE tried to nod in answer to the whisper. But she was frozen, all her muscles unresponsive. The steady warmth of Declan’s body against hers was the only thing keeping her from turning to ice.
“It’s okay, honey. We’re okay.”
You know, she’d really like to believe that. But hiding inside a log that stank of wood-rot and mildew while being hunted by gun-wielding crazies was so far outside the realm of okay that if she hadn’t been a human popsicle, she would have laughed.
Maybe they could just stay here, indefinitely.
Eat grubs or whatever came along.
Because working up enough heat to thaw the ice that had replaced her blood was about as likely as her ever feeling kindly toward corn snakes.
Keep it as a pet, her ass.
But thinking about that snake had her shifting around uncomfortably, because that one had been lying on a log, hadn’t it? A log pretty much like this one. Sadie lifted her head away from Declan’s neck and shifted her gaze over her shoulder.
Maybe staying in this log for the rest of their lives wasn’t such a hot idea.
But neither was running around and drawing gunfire from the maniacs who were pursuing them.
“What should we do?” she asked, because truth be told she was totally clueless. She wasn’t sure whether Declan had any brilliant plans either, but surely he could come up with something better than living in a log.
But she pulled back enough to look at him, saw the gray tinge of his skin beneath his pallor, and knew that all that cat-and-mouse through the woods had really cost him.
“You okay?” Stupid question.
“I’ll be fine, and my vote is we get out of here. Start heading – quietly – back toward the water, because the asshole obviously thinks we’ve gone inland. So we’ll move in the opposite direction.”
“Opposite direction is good. Alternate universe would be even better.”
“I’m fresh out of magic portals at the moment.”
“At least you still have your magic wand,” she said, relieved that she could still muster up a joke.
“Which I’ll happily wave for you once there’s less chance of getting it shot off.”
Sadie smiled because their verbal volleying was such a familiar comfort. In fact, she couldn’t imagine getting through this without it.
“Declan,” she said, smile fading.
“Hmm?” He was looking toward the opening. Probably psyching himself up for what would undoubtedly be a painful exit.
“I wouldn’t have wished for this under any circumstances, but if it had to happen, I’m glad it happened with you.”
His gaze jerked back to hers in open astonishment. Astonishment that morphed to something almost unspeakably tender. “We’ll make it out of this,” he assured her. “We’re both due a second chance.”
Then his head dipped, and his lips found hers, full of heat and promise, and what had been frozen went fluid and warm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
KATHLEEN slowly lowered the cell phone from her ear.
She never would have taken the call while Anthony was conducting an interview on the other side of the glass if the number hadn’t flashed up as Kim’s. One brother might be missing, but she couldn’t forget that the other was in the hospital.
Her brothers hadn’t been as close as they should’ve been in recent years, but the fact remained that they were identical, right down to their genes. As toddlers they’d had this weird language of their own, and when they’d finally learned regular English had been able to finish each other’s sentences without even trying. Honestly, it had creeped her out occasionally, the way they’d seemed to be some kind of unit unto themselves.
It wasn’t until after their mother’s death that they’d lost that cohesiveness.
So while she normally wasn’t given to believing something so readily, twin telepathy wasn’t an idea she was going to sneeze at. Not when she’d grown up with those two. She might be a cop, might make her living compiling data, looking for the hard, scientifically quantifiable evidence that would make her case, but there was enough Irish in her blood to understand that not everything could be weighed, and measured. Not everything could be explained.
Especially not when the possibility of something more was smacking her in the face.
True, they had no proof that Declan had suffered a broken anything. But if he had been taken against his will, it was more than likely there would have been violence. The kind of violence that led to broken bones, or worse. It fit so well into her abduction theory that she started to feel a little sick.
Was this how it was going to be, then?
With Rogan acting as some kind of window on what was happening to Declan?
Kathleen’s mind drifted treacherously to what might happen to Rogan if Declan were to die. Would he actually experience it physically? But that thought was too morbid, too horrible to be borne, and she pushed it away.
Miller opened the door and strode into the observation area.
“Problem?” he asked, looking her over.
No way was she going to explain that Declan’s twin was currently hospitalized because his body was possibly suffering right along with his brother’s, so she shook her head.
“Frustrated,” she hedged, sliding her phone back into her pocket, because the last thing she needed was for these guys to think she was nuts. Start talking things like twin telepathy around most people and they started shelving you right along with the Planter’s.