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Mattie pressed the big yellow button on the machine and delivered the shock. “This AED is fucking old—it should be doing all this automatically.”
“It’s the middle of rural Washington,” I pointed out.
Mattie started compressions again, and as she did, ambulance lights swirled around outside the double doors. I pulled her away. “Okay, now we have to go.” As EMS ran through the doors, pulling a stretcher with them, I yanked Mattie away from the man. Two emergency technicians—one a woman in her forties, and the other a man well past retiring age—began their protocols, and I hauled Mattie behind a shelf and dragged her to the exit.
“They need information,” Mattie protested.
“They know exactly what the AED will show them, and that’s all you’ll be able to tell them, anyway. We aren’t sticking around for the blue and red light show. Or did you forget why you’re with me?”
“I didn’t forget, but Jesus, do you have to be such a colossal a-hole all the time?” She stumbled along next to me, and the cool autumn air slapped me in the face as we headed out the front doors.
I strode past another EMT just as I saw police in the distance. I opened the passenger side front door and shoved her inside. “Let’s go.”
“Ghost, wait a minute—”
I shut the door in her face, and in five long strides, I reached the driver’s side. I ripped open my door, punched the ignition button, and put it in reverse. “He’s in good hands, Mattie. Chill.”
“You chill. I could have run like a dozen times in there, but I didn’t,” she pointed out. She coughed into her arm before adding, “I just meant you left my cold medicine.”
I paused before putting the car into drive. The blue glow from the dash cast a soft filter over her pale skin, and her long lashes threw spindly shadows over her cheeks. I gave her a double blink. “Sorry, let me clarify. You’re not objecting to my continued kidnapping of your person… but you want the cold medicine?”
“Ghost,” her lips twitched. “It’s the whole reason we came.”
“Right, and saving a man’s life was just a fun interlude.”
She shrugged. “We really aren’t even sure if we saved his life.” Her eyes bounced forward, and then back to me. “You should go before the cops get here.”
Shaking my head, I put the car in drive and revved out of the parking lot. Mattie never did what I expected her to do. Saving the man’s life? Or trying to? It made perfect logical sense. But helping me re-capture her? Absolute lunacy. The only explanation was something that made me both uncomfortable and, at the same time, unaccountably satisfied.
She trusted me. Against all sane judgment, she seemed to think that she was better off with me than away from me. And as much as I wanted to deny the intelligence of that move, maybe she already knew what I hadn’t accepted. I hadn’t even had time to think through my next move, to validate what she’d claimed, or research options.
But Mattie had stayed. She’d saved a man’s life, and then she’d gone with me instead of running away. As with everything when it came to Mattie Thorne, I didn’t have the luxury of planning. I had a moment to react, a moment to feel something in my gut and make a split-second decision. And in this case, there was only one path I knew I could live with.
“Two things,” I said as I got us back on the highway. “One, I’ll stop to get you more medicine, and you should be more comfortable in the camper van once we meet up with Tabitha.”
Mattie’s almond eyes ricocheted all over my profile. “Okay. And two?”
“My name is Kael,” I added, sparing her a quick glance. “If you insist on convincing me to jump ship then… it’s Kael.”
Either I was hallucinating, or Ghost—Kael—had agreed to be a double agent. I stared at him with undisguised, silent surprise, my eyes darting from him to the road and back to him again. We’d been driving for a good hour since the heart attack incident, and while I didn’t think the authorities would be looking for good Samaritans who had ducked out after providing CPR, I knew Kael was likely being cautious before stopping again.
The radio was playing some sort of classic rock that droned on in the background, and Kael held the steering wheel loosely with one hand, leaning his face on the other that he’d cocked against the window. I watched passing lights flare over the swirling, graphic tattoos that had formed a solid sleeve from his wrist to his defined bicep. They had faded quite a bit, but I made out a mythological-type being with wings and a skull face, along with other winged women who all seemed to be done in the classical, sculpture style. I wanted to ask him what they meant, but I was more interested in what the hell he planned to do with me.
He took an exit suddenly, heading into a sleepy city edge, and then pulled into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and convenience store. He shut off the engine, and then the leather seat creaked, filling the sudden silence as he turned to me. “If I leave you here,” he said quietly, “will you stay put for ten minutes?”
I gave him a heavy blink. “Would you believe me if I said I don’t think I could walk ten steps without falling on my face?”
He gave me an up-down perusal. “I would.”
“You agreed awfully quick, there,” I said with hooded eyes.
“You look like death,” he returned callously. I gave him a middle finger, and it caused him to smile faintly. “I’ll be right back.”
He locked the car after closing the door and then jogged out into the light drizzle that seemed to be a perpetual state of existence for this part of Washington. I watched him go, my brain sifting through what the hell had just happened. It had been a long shot to tell him about my parents. And he’d reacted pretty much how I’d expected him to. He’d shut me down and had told me it didn’t change anything.
Except it had. I wasn’t sure exactly when I had realized it, but sometime between arguing over what type of cold medicine to get and performing CPR on a heart attack victim, I’d been able to confirm what I’d already suspected about Kael.
He’s a decent human being.
