Deep Down (Hallie Michaels) by Deborah Coates

Author:Deborah Coates
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2013-03-05T06:00:00+00:00

18

“Hey.”

Quiet. Familiar.

“Don’t move.”

Hallie moved.

“Ouch.”

“I said—don’t move.”

That voice—Boyd. Hallie opened her eyes and, with some effort, sat up.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Not, hi, or I’m glad you’re okay, though afterwards she wished she’d said one or the other. But, really, where the hell had he been?

“Take it easy,” Boyd said. “Is anything broken?”

She moved cautiously. Everything hurt, from the top of her head to her feet, but it all worked. “Nothing’s broken,” she told him.

She looked around.

Half the roof on Boyd’s big garage was gone. The entire front yard was dirt and broken tree limbs. It looked like a battleground, like it had been hit by a mortar. Hallie scrambled backwards without thinking, because she could smell it. Afghanistan.

A quick breath and it was gone. Ironic that Boyd’s hand on her arm and the arctic cold of Lily’s ghost against her spine were what rescued her from that other place. Not so ironic about Boyd—but the ghost, that ghosts were home, that was ironic, like she really had died and was just too stupid to know it.

Hallie tried to rise to her feet—a flash of pain through her rib cage, though she was still pretty sure nothing was actually broken.

“Ole?” she asked. Because he wasn’t just some guy. He was a guy she knew and he was only here because of things he didn’t know anything about and probably wouldn’t believe if he did. If he was dead—

“Ambulance is on its way,” Boyd said. He had a streak of dirt down the side of his face. “Ole’s … I think he’ll be okay, but he’s definitely got a broken arm, maybe a concussion. He’s unconscious. He has a fairly deep three-inch gash on his right temple. There’s a lot of blood,” he cautioned, like Hallie hadn’t seen blood before. He left Hallie then, moved like he was as stiff as she was, like he’d only been waiting for some evidence that she knew where she was and wasn’t going to completely flake out on him—and when had she ever flaked out on him? He returned to where Ole lay a few feet away.

Ole was clearly unconscious and Boyd was right, there was a lot of blood, though it looked like nearly all of it was from a long gash across his right temple. A woman Hallie’d never seen before was applying direct pressure to the wound. When Boyd stood beside her, she made a move like she would relinquish her position, but he waved at her to continue.

Hallie watched them for a few minutes before she tried to get up again. She felt like there was dirt in her left eye and she couldn’t stop blinking. Everything seemed oddly quiet—no birds, no traffic, no wind. Hallie felt both defenseless and yet, like things weren’t that urgent. Maybe she had a head injury herself. Because that was wrong. It was wrong. Things were urgent.

She needed to think. Hollowell had been here and he hadn’t taken her, even though she’d been unconscious on the ground.

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