sixty-nine

Angel lay silent and unmoving in her hospital bed. A labyrinth of wires and tubes invaded her body. The rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the life machines filled the stillness while their lights and dials illuminated the room like eerie eyes and demonic fingers. Three times over the past hours the doctors revived her, and three times she’d returned to my world. On her fourth resuscitation, her vitals fell and her breathing became almost imperceptible. Whatever thread of life she grasped escaped us both. Now she stood beside me near the window and watched herself slip in and out of worlds.

I stood waiting for her decision. Silence was my only vote.

Outside her room, a nurse wearing surgical scrubs came down the hall and stopped at a portable computer terminal outside her door. She glanced up and down the hallway, checked the terminal’s monitor, and scrolled through the screens. She tapped here and there on the keyboard and got busy with work. Twice she looked through the ICU window and rechecked her watch before she returned to the computer screen.

Everyone was on deathwatch.

“Tuck, I’m staying with you.” Angel looked from her dying body to me. “Bear will take Hercule. He’ll be fine. We can both be with him like you’ve been. It’ll be better than before.”

I put a finger to her lips. “No, Angel. You belong here now—and for a long time. Fight back. Fight back and you can still make it. We’ll work things out.”

“No. It’s my choice, not yours.”

I touched her face and let my finger linger on her cheek, a feeling I hadn’t truly felt for a very long time. I missed that. “I wasn’t given a choice, but you have one. Fight back, Angel. Stay with Bear and Hercule. Please? Do this for me.”

The nurse walked into the room and over to Angel’s body lying on the bed. She checked more monitors and electronic devices standing guard. Satisfied, she turned to leave.

The heavy, acrid odor of smoke reached me as the nurse made her move.

And just then, I understood.

The nurse closed the curtains on the observation window and returned to Angel’s bedside. She withdrew a syringe from her smock, slipped it into the IV bag’s port hanging above her bed, and depressed the plunger. The contents flowed into Angel’s IV line.

Angel and I watched from across the room.

“Bear!” I yelled and grabbed the electrical line Bear had purposely left snaking from a wall junction panel. It took but a second for the electricity to take effect. The euphoria was instant and the power overflowed from me. My world opened and collided with the living.

And I was there—beside Angel’s bed—staring into Karen Simms’s eyes.

“What the hell?” Karen’s eyes exploded. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

I grabbed her hand, yanked the syringe from it, and tossed it onto the floor. “Hello, Karen. I thought you’d never show.”

“No … no. It can’t be.”

“I’m Detective Oliver Tucker of the Frederick County Sheriff’s Department—well, formerly at least. Angel, my wife, called me Tuck.” I shoved her backward against the glass observation window just as the door swung open and Bear Braddock rushed in.

“Oh, hell no.” Karen tried to find escape behind her. “You’re dead. William told me you were dead. This can’t …”

Bear wrenched Karen’s arms behind her, pressed her face-first into the wall, and snapped handcuffs on her wrists. Then he spun her around and held tight to the handcuff chain to leverage her arms high and keep her off balance up on her tiptoes.

Karen settled and stared at me, her face wild and frightened. “You’re dead. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m dead all right, Karen.” I walked over and locked eyes with her. “I’m just not gone. And that’s the trick, don’t you think?”