Page 36 of Wired Ghost

“Where is he?” Sophie scanned the room. “And where is Connor? I could swear he was part of the rescue effort.”

“Like I said, I don’t know. Who do you want me to call?”

“I don’t know Raveaux’s number. It’s in my phone, and the meth gang took it before they threw us in the pit. I’ll have to try to get an update from Bix at Security Solutions.” She directed her father on how to find the primary contact number, and soon the phone was ringing through to Bix’s office.

Sophie drank more water to lubricate her throat as Bix’s crisp voice picked up. “Sophie. I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”

“It’s hard to communicate without a phone.” Sophie coughed. “Or much of a voice. It appears I will be discharged soon—they were treating me for dehydration and gas inhalation. But I can’t find out anything about Jake. Is he all right?”

Bix cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but he isn’t. He’s in a coma and on a ventilator. They’re worried about a lack of brain activity that may have to do with being deprived of oxygen for too long.”

Sophie’s eyes widened and her throat seized up. She tried to speak, but nothing would come out.

Her father snatched the phone and put it on speaker. “Bix? This is Ambassador Smithson. Back up the bus and tell us everything you know.”

“I don’t know much.” Bix’s voice had slowed; he sounded genuinely regretful. “I’m sorry, Sophie, and I hope I’m wrong, but the doctor that spoke to me and Raveaux said he’d been deprived of oxygen for too long to recover normally. He was on the ledge four or five feet below you with less oxygen available; and he exerted himself strenuously getting you up onto the shelf above him. He’s no longer breathing on his own—that’s why they put him on a ventilator. He has not regained consciousness, and he’s not expected to.”

Sophie gasped, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to breathe, but the air wouldn’t come in.She was smothering. Her damaged lungs labored and she coughed uncontrollably, curling on her side.

Her father ended the call and pulled Sophie into his arms. “Breathe, honey. Just breathe. It’s all you have to do.”

But how could she, when Jake couldn’t even do that?She coughed and coughed, and then she wept.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Raveaux

Raveaux staredthrough the glass window of the Intensive Care Unit at what remained of Jake Dunn. After responding to CPR out in the field, his breathing function had failed, and now he was on a ventilator, propped up in bed. Tubes and wires surrounded him in a nest of beeping, blinking activity, but the man himself lay still. He’d been thoroughly cleaned of the ash and dirt he and Sophie had been so liberally coated in, and the many cuts and abrasions he’d sustained from falling debris were covered with bandages. The red flush had faded from his skin, but his tan was a sickly yellow, and purplish circles hung beneath his puffy eyes, barely visible behind the ventilator’s mask.

Jake looked like hell. Close to death.

And he’d probably wish he’d died rather than be a vegetable like this . . .Sophie’s heart was going to be broken. Raveaux’s belly lurched with compassionate pain.

“Excuse me, sir.” A nurse approached. “Are you Pierre Raveaux?”

“I am.”

“A patient we are discharging, Sophie Smithson, is asking for you.”

“All right.” Raveaux sighed heavily. He dreaded breaking the news to her. “Is Jake Dunn’s family on their way?”

“Yes. They’ve been apprised of his condition.” The woman turned to look at the broken form on the bed. “Such a shame. He was in the prime of life.”

“Yes, he was.” Raveaux felt ancient, far from that prime of life—as if he’d always been too old. “I’ll go to Sophie’s room. No need to show me the way—I know where it is.”

He took the stairs instead of the elevator; it was only one flight up to her room, and he needed to get his blood moving. His hands had been professionally bandaged from the damage they’d taken yesterday, but the rest of his body ached like he’d been flogged, and he wheezed as he went up the stairs. “Guess I sucked in a bit of sulfur dioxide, too,” he muttered.

At Sophie’s floor, he ducked into the men’s room for a quick wash and a shave with the plastic disposable he’d picked up in the gift shop. A couple of aspirin and a cup of coffee later, he felt ready to face her—and her intimidating father.

Raveaux walked down the hall and turned into her room. Bright sunlight streamed in over the empty bed. “Sophie?”

She was gone, already.

The cowardly part of him sighed in relief—someone else would have to tell her about Jake.

“She left with her father,” a nurse told him.

Raveaux hurried down to the lobby, and sure enough, Sophie was sitting in a wheelchair on the sidewalk at the pickup area of the hospital.

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