Page 68 of Trusted Instinct
She didn’t answer because she didn’t know, and Auralia had already decided that when she grew up, she was going to be a reporter. So, when she reported on something that happened, she had to be neutral and honest. And she was neither, so she stayed silent.
Blading a hand over her brows, Auralia lifted her chin to scan the bridge, expecting to see either Creed or at least Gator standing there looking down and trying to figure out how to help.
But to her surprise, the bridge remained empty.
They hadn’t come.
Creed hadn’t heard her call as she’d gone over the edge.
Unfathomable.
Not Gator, not even Rougarou the swamp beast, who seemed in her ultra cutie-snooty doe-eyed way to sense where someone was rather than sniff them out.
What happened that Auralia was within the same catastrophe, but her tribe didn’t pick up on her distress and find her?
That squeezed her heart with what wanted to be self-pity. No, it was different than that. From a lifetime of Creed and Gator showing up if it was at all in their power, in places and at times when they wouldn’t know she was in need, Auralia had a deep conviction that she was loved and cared for, and she could depend on the psychic thread that seemed to bind them.
Then she reminded herself that the air was opaque with grief and pain.
The people with damaged bodies and, possibly, alas,probablynew and disoriented souls, all would attempt to get attention on every plane of existence.
It would overwhelm anyone with a sixth sense.
Her little whimper of need was selfish.
“Brush it off, girlfriend, and let’s get to work.”
There were probably two women trapped in a car, thinking they’d never again see the light of day.
Auralia needed to refocus.
Thiswas on her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Creed
Creed, Deep, and Randy had just handed Parker off to an ambulance team.
No rest when there were so many in need, Deep and Randy were already off on their new assignments.
Creed had walked Rou into the woods to go to the bathroom and play tug as her reward for finding the search subject.
Suddenly, she released the tug toy, and her nose went into the air; the lamenting howl that she released was a vibration that brought Creed’s blood to a rolling boil.
Every molecule in his body screamed Auralia’s name.
Poor little Rou, hunkered low, stretched her nose long. Red shoes forgotten, she sprinted out ahead of Creed.
Creed’s feet never touched the ground as he flew toward the bridge, where there was no more car dangling from the rails.
Since the moment at Gator’s wedding when Creed saw Auralia as someone other than his best friend’s little sister, when he saw her as a person that he wanted in his life as his own to love, Creed had wanted to yell it from the mountaintops that he cherished Auralia dearly.
But Auralia’s answer was always, “No, Creed, not now, not yet, we’re tempting Fate.” Always the temptation of fate: What was given could so easily be taken away. And given his childhood in the Bayou where magic hung like fog over the shoreline, he knew Fate was not to be tempted.
So he agreed, every time.
They’d give it time, and Fate wouldn’t turn her head in their direction.
