Page 239 of Hidden Nature

They’d gotten to the end of the drive, made the turn to his when she stopped, bent over.

“Jesus, oh Jesus. Minute.”

“It’s okay.” He stroked her back, felt the shaking start. “Breathe, Sarge. Slow breaths.”

“Trying. I need—”

“To take your time.”

“I killed a man. Oh God, God, I killed a man. I didn’t even hesitate. I just fired.”

“And I’m thanking any god there is for that. You saved lives today, just like O’Hara said.” As he spoke, quietly, he stroked her back. “You saved your own, you saved Terry’s, and you saved mine.”

When she just shook her head, he ran a hand over her hair. “Yeah, mine, too. I was steps away, and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—have stopped.”

When she straightened, he put an arm around her. “Lean on me. Even tough women know how to lean.”

“Oh, I’m leaning. I couldn’t fall apart in front of the family.”

“Why?”

“Because they were already scared. Because what happened before would’ve been right there for them. It was for me.”

She shook so hard he wanted to just pick her up and carry her, but she took the next step.

Just as she had the first time he’d seen her on the lake path.

“He was already in the house. I knew someone was in there, or had been, the second I came in. Little things not exactly as I’d left them. Little things missing. I thought maybe kids, but…”

“You watched your back.”

“Yeah.” The next breath she drew in came easier now. “I had my gun out, clearing the house, and was about to call it in when she drove up. Blue van. A van, that was the first trigger. Then I saw her, and knew. ER nurse, I’d seen her, spoken to her when I was checking on hospitals.”

Absently, she rubbed at her chest.

“Her eyes flicked from mine for just a second when I opened the door.”

“You let her in.”

“I was armed, and she was the link to finding Terry. That eye flick, and I swung around. He came at me, gun, syringe. I shot him. She jumped on my back, he kept coming, and I shot him again, knocked her off. And you were there.”

“I saw the van, heard the shots. Christ, now I have to stop and breathe a minute.”

She let a few tears come. “You can lean on me, too.”

“I’ve been scared in my life. When I was a kid, they scared the crap out of me plenty. But I haven’t been that frightened since I thought Theo drowned. You handled it.”

“Part of me was sliding back and forth from the living room to the mini-mart.”

“And you handled it.”

“The things she said. They killed people because they decided they were meant to. And me? They had holy water and other things in that van. She’d convinced herself I was a witch, a demon sent to stop them from saving the resurrected.”

Finally, they turned into his drive, walked toward the house.

“The cops who found Terry? They found labeled packets of blood. The victims’ names. They drained them, Nash, but before, theydemanded—they recorded—what they called their stories. What they experienced during clinical death. They had the tubing, medical equipment, restraints, and when they had what they wanted recorded, they exsanguinated them.”

“Jesus Christ.”

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