Page 44 of Finding Amanda

She shrugged. "I guess I assumed he behaved like a professional. Is that not it?"

"It's short for prophet."

She shifted onto the other foot. The girls were giggling upstairs. She didn't want them to come down yet. "Did he make a lot of money or something?"

"Not that kind of profit. The kind who sees into the future. The kind who knows things."

"Oh." She'd seen that skill at work. The nickname made sense.

He tossed the envelope onto the dining room table. "Can I tell you a story about something that happened over there?"

Over there. In Afghanistan. "I guess."

"We were on the road one miserably hot day. Some of the villagers were happy to see us. Every so often, we'd stop for a few minutes. In the back of one of the trucks, we had a bunch of soccer balls, and we'd been handing them out. I was with a buddy. We were taking a break, waiting for orders. Mark was standing next to the driver's window, and they were laughing about something."

Chris shuttered his face, something she'd often seen her husband do when memories overcame him. When the wave passed, he focused on her again. "This kid was walking toward us. Young, skinny kid, maybe eleven or twelve. He was smiling and waving and yelling, 'Ball! Ball!' I reached in the back of the truck to grab one of the soccer balls, figuring he'd seen another boy with one. I started to walk toward him. All of a sudden, Mark grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, yanked me backwards, and flipped me over the side of the truck into the bed. Climbing in beside me, he pounded on the side and yelled, 'Drive!'"

Chris scrubbed his face with his hands before dropping them to his sides. "I thought he was crazy. Why would he run from a skinny kid? We weren't fifty yards away when that kid . . . exploded.Suicide bomber."

She gasped. "How did Mark know?"

"I don't know. He doesn't know. He just . . . knew. It was only because he'd done that so many times—seen things nobody else saw—that we survived. If Mark said run, we ran. That's how he got the nameprophet."

"Wow, I didn't?—"

"If not for Mark, Jamie'd be a widow. So, if he says your psychiatrist friend is a threat, Amanda, then you're in danger. And, for the record, he didn't drag me into anything."

She blinked. "I didn't mean anything by it. I was just trying to make conversation."

Chris half-smiled. "You want to make conversation? Why don't you tell me why you kicked him out?"

She propped her hands on her hips. "That's none of your business."

The smile faded. "Then I guess we don't have anything to talk about."

Amanda's heart pounded. How dare he? She stared at him, and he stared back. The only sound in the room came from the girls giggling upstairs.

A car door slammed, and a moment later, Mark entered. "Sorry I'm late. I had to run some tools by the Carlisle house so the guys could get started." He stopped, looked back and forth between them. "Is everything okay?"

Chris nodded to Mark. "Of course." He reached for the envelope on the dining room table and handed it to him. "Here you go. Let me know what else I can do."

"Will do." Mark squinted at Amanda again, studied her face. He turned back to Chris. "What were you two talking about?"

"Just small talk. I gotta run. Call me before you get to work on that stuff."

Chris disappearedout the door.

Mark turned to her and frowned. "What did I miss?"

She shrugged. "He hates me."

Mark studied her. "He doesn't hate you. He just doesn't understand why you're doing this."

"You could explain it to him."

"I could, except I don't understand, either."

They stared at each other, the cold air swirling between them. There was nothing to say.

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