Page 37 of Wired Ghost

He slowed for a moment, just looking at her.

Her short, curly brown hair gleamed in the sunshine. She turned her head, and he sighed a little inside—her profile was as perfect as the statue of Nefertiti in the Metropolitan Museum. She wore a loose purple velvet shirt and black pants that her father had picked up for her.

He reached her side. “Good morning, Sophie.”

Sophie looked up. Her eyes were the color of old tea; her lids were swollen, her skin blotchy. The scar stood out on her cheek like a badly stitched seam.

She knew.

Raveaux dropped to one knee beside the wheelchair, taking one of her cold hands in his. “I’m so sorry about Jake.”

“Are you?” Her voice was scratchy. “I don’t recall your liking him much.”

He ignored that. “Jake was a good man, a brave man. It should not go this way for someone like him.”

“It should not go this way for anyone. But that’s the way things happen sometimes.” She stared over Raveaux’s shoulder. “My father’s coming. I’ll be taking a leave of absence from work to recover—from all of this. You can check with Bix for next steps.”

“Of course.” Raveaux stood back up. He was being dismissed. He squeezed her shoulder. She did not acknowledge it.

A big black Lincoln Continental pulled up. Her father got out and trotted around the front. Frank Smithson was a tall man with an elegant bearing; he moved quickly for someone in his sixties. They’d met briefly at Sophie’s bedside the day before, but the ambassador shook his hand. “Pierre Raveaux. Good to see you again. Thanks for all you did for my daughter.”

Raveaux felt something small and hard slip into his palm. He slid it into his pocket. “It was nothing. Sophie is a friend.”

“Colleague,” Sophie said, her eyes still facing front.

“I will be in touch,” Raveaux said. “Get well, Sophie.”

She did not acknowledge him in any way as she got into the car. Smithson raised a hand to him, though, as they drove away.

Raveaux stared after them for a long moment, then opened his hand to look at what the ambassador had slipped into it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sophie

Eighteen hours later

Sophie stoodbeside Jake’s sister Patty outside of the ICU, gazing through the window at her lover’s body on the bed.

“He looks a little better today.” Patty’s hair roots were coming in, the same dark brown as Jake’s hair. Her eyes were gray with a blue ring—Jake’s eyes. Sophie’s heart squeezed in her chest as she met those eyes.

“He’s going to wake up any time.” Janice Dunn, their mother, stood on the other side of Patty. Her voice sounded shaky. The two women clung to each other, and had since they’d arrived the night before. Patty had been warm toward Sophie, but Janice hadn’t spoken to her at all. Sophie could feel hostility coming off the petite woman in waves. Janice Dunn blamed Sophie for Jake’s injuries, and she could understand the woman’s rage.

And as to Jake looking better, not really. if anything, he looked worse.

The wounds he’d sustained while sheltering her during the quakes inside the tunnel hadn’t healed, and he was swathed with bandages. The bruising from the meth gang’s beating had spread unpleasantly, and his facial color was yellow and wan.

His head sagged to one side, and Sophie longed to push it back upright against the pillow.

She turned and went to the nurse’s station. “Jake’s head has fallen sideways. His neck is going to be strained. Can someone go in and check on him?”

The nurse looked down at her monitors and tightened her lips. “He’s status quo on his vitals.” But her expression softened as she looked up and met Sophie’s eyes. “Of course.” She picked up the phone and called for Jake’s attending nurse.

Jake’s mother approached Sophie at the desk. Janice looked haggard, her normally well-groomed ash blonde hair in disarray, her clothes rumpled from sleeping in the waiting room. “Tell us again how you’re fine, and Jake has barely survived?” She narrowed quartz-hard gray eyes at Sophie. “I want to hear the whole story. Why is he covered with cuts and bruises, and you’re not?”

“Mom!” Patty exclaimed. She’d followed her mother over. “I’m sorry. She needs this to be someone’s fault.”

“Don’t speak about me like I’m not even here,” Mrs. Dunn flared. “I want this bitch to give an account.”

---