The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner Book 3) (14 page)

As he walked away, I put my hands on my hips. “He knows I’m pregnant. Who did you tell?”

Nathan held up his hands. “I didn’t say a word. Who did
you
tell?”

“Just my boss but only yesterday.”

He helped me out of my coat. “Well, this is a pretty small town. News travels fast.” He motioned toward an empty table near the exit. “Want to sit where we can make a quick getaway?”

Smiling, I nodded my head. “Please.”

The room filled up over the next few minutes. I often forgot how many people worked for the county. Half of them I didn’t recognize because they either worked in a completely different division or they were so dressed up I couldn’t place them. Mary was one of those. I had to do a double-take when she appeared at our table dressed in a red gown that sparkled like a disco ball. She was even wearing makeup. “Hello, Mary. Don’t you look beautiful!” I said, standing up to hug her.
 

“Thank you, dear. So do you!” When she stepped away from our embrace, she noticed Nathan. “Detective McNamara, I wasn’t expecting you here tonight!”

He squeezed her hand. “I’m here against my will, I assure you.”

I laughed. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s here for the open bar.”

He grinned at her. “That too.”

Mary blushed. He had that effect on people. “You two kids have a lovely evening. I’m going to go join my date.”

I blinked with surprise. “Your date?”

She looked like she might squeal with excitement. “You’re not the only one around here with a juicy love life these days.”

My eyes widened. “Well, don’t hold out on me! Who is it?”

“Calvin Jarvis.”

The name sounded familiar. My brow crumpled.

Nathan laughed. “We were sworn in together.”

I grabbed her hands. “Oh, I’m so happy for you!” Mary had called him a fox the first time we’d seen him—the day I met Nathan.

She was so excited, I was worried she might pass out. Glancing from me to Nathan and back again, she squeezed my fingers. “I guess both our wishes came true.”

It wasn’t till she was gone that I realized what she meant. I plopped down in my chair. “Everyone’s staring at us because they all think we’re having this baby together.”

He popped the collar on his shirt. “What can I say? I’m a stud.”

I laughed and swatted him with my cloth napkin.

* * *

After a delicious meal, dessert, and coffee—decaf, Nathan leaned into me. “You’ve yawned nine times in the past four minutes. You ready to head home?”

Home.

“Yes.”

My eyes were watery with exhaustion while we waited for the valet to bring around his SUV. It was freezing outside and flurrying again, and all I wanted was to curl up in my warm bed. I was dozing in and out by the time we reached the bottom of the mountain. Soft Christmas music floated through the speakers.

Thoughts of what the next Christmas would be like danced around in my mind. I’d be a mother by then, and Warren would be home, hopefully. We’d have a tree; I’d never bothered to put one up before. And my dad would buy lots of expensive toys that were completely unsuitable for a baby. I smiled and leaned my head against the cold glass window as the car gently shifted around a curve.

“Whoa!” Nathan yelled.

I looked up in time to spot a skeleton shaped figure with stringy red hair standing in the dead center of the road. She was barefoot in a hospital gown. An IV dangled from her withered and scarred arm.
 

Nathan swerved to miss her, sending the SUV careening off the side of the road. We missed a telephone pole by inches and tore through a cluster of mountain laurel before going off an embankment.
 

The last thing I saw was the French Broad River in front of us before my face smacked the dashboard.

10.

Nathan was screaming somewhere off in the distance. I was bobbing up and down, floating on a faint stream of consciousness. Something was gurgling. My feet were cold.
I should have worn thicker stockings,
I thought.

When my eyes swirled into focus, Nathan was frantically jerking on my seatbelt. I blinked.

“Sloan!”

I blinked again. “Nathan?”

“Sloan, we’ve got to get out of here!”

I shook my head from side to side. It hurt like hell. I touched my fingers to a throbbing spot on my forehead, and when I pulled them back, blood dripped down my palm.
 

Water was everywhere.

Outside my window, water and ice sloshed up and down against the glass. I pressed my hand to it, trying to make sense of what was happening. Nathan’s SUV was bobbing in the river. My feet were wet. One of his hat patches pinned to the ceiling above my head said,
All Work. No Pay.
 

I chuckled.
It’s sad all of Nathan’s patches are going to drown in the river…

“Sloan!”

I’m going to drown in the river.

Realization hit me like a freight train. Confusion gave way to panic. My fingers fought with Nathan’s over the seat belt. He grabbed my hands. “Sloan,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. I focused on his gray eyes. “I need you to stay calm so we can get out of this. Unbuckle your seatbelt. I’ll break the windshield.”

I nodded my understanding.
 

Cold was spreading from my wet feet, up my legs, and deep into my bones. I shuddered as I fought with the seatbelt latch. It must have been damaged in the crash, but after a moment, I worked it free. Nathan turned around on his seat and yanked the headrest out of the seat. The water was sneaking up the glass on both sides of us, and we were moving downstream in the current.

I tried the button to roll down my window, but the electric opener was no longer functional. Perfect snowflakes were freezing on the windshield.
 

“Can you swim?”

My teeth chattered. “Yes.”

“Take off your coat and your shoes. We’ll have to get to the bank as quickly as possible before we freeze to death,” he said.

The water was over two inches up my window. My hands were shaking but only partly from the cold. “We can’t die in here!”

“Nobody is dying today,” he said. “Take off your shoes.”

I slipped off my heels and struggled out of my thick wool coat. I detached the silver angel pin and shoved it down into my bra.

Nathan slammed the posts of the headrest against the windshield. The glass cracked, but it didn’t shatter. “It would be easier to bust out the side, but I’m afraid the car will sink before we can both get out. Problem is, the windshield’s bulletproof,” he said. “This could take a minute.”

The water was at least four inches over the window, and it was up to my calves in the floorboard. Looking down at the water swirling around my feet, I noticed my hands—seemingly of their own accord—shielding my stomach.
My baby.
That was all the motivation I needed. I got up on my knees and pounded the windshield with the balls of my fist.
 

“Sloan, stop! You’ll wear yourself out!”
 

“I’m not going to drown in your stupid car!” I screamed.
 

With all my desperation focused on getting out of the windshield, I slammed my fist into the glass again. This time, it splintered beneath my hands, and ice cold water gushed in. I sucked half of it down my lungs before realizing the barrier between me and the oxygen above was gone. My feet pushed against the sinking passenger’s seat and kicked till my face pierced the surface.

I thrashed around in the freezing current until I saw Nathan pop up a few feet away. He gasped and began thrashing toward the river bank. The ice felt like needles in my skin as I forced my legs to kick for the shore after him. A small crowd of people had gathered on the snowy bank. Everyone was screaming. Flashlights were blinding me as they flailed in the dark sky.
 

I kicked and kicked, but I couldn’t feel anything below the water anymore. As my arms reached for the riverbank, the burning sensation slowly faded.
A few more feet…

The pain in my chest exploded as I went under the surface again. The beams of light from the shore grew more and more distant. I thought I was swimming, but there was enough light to see my arms floating motionless up toward the surface of the water. I could no longer close my eyelids.

Then a hand wrapped around my wrist, and a warm, familiar buzz of energy flowed into me. Only one other person had that touch. His energy ignited the life inside me. Warren’s face was inches from mine under the water.
I’m dreaming again…

We broke through into the icy night air.

For a split second, I saw his face.
 

Then the world went black.

* * *

“Get blankets!”

“Bring her here!”

“Get those wet clothes off!”

The world faded in and out for a few moments. Someone ripped off my dress, and another pair of hands wrapped a fleece blanket around my shoulders. I opened my eyes to look for Warren, but I couldn’t find him. I was inside a minivan. Nathan was there, and I could hear his teeth chattering beside me.

I couldn’t hold my head up on my own. I thought of my baby and slipped into oblivion once more.

Halogen lights blinded my eyes when I opened them again. The wheels of the bed underneath me squeaked as I rolled down the familiar hallway. Between Adrianne’s accident, my near-death trauma with Billy Stewart, and Mom’s death, the Mission Hospital emergency room was becoming like a second home.
 

A nurse with long dark hair bent over me when we stopped moving. Her name tag said,
Rena.
My jaw wouldn’t stop trembling. “Wh…wh…where’s N...N…Nath…than?”

Rena put her hand on my shoulder. “He came in right before you did. He’s fine. Can you tell me your name and what happened?”

“M…my n…ame is S…S…Sloan J…Jor…Jordan. I w…was in a ca…car cr…rash. A w…woman w…was s…standing in th…the r…road,” I replied.

She nodded. “Ms. Jordan, we’ve notified your father. He should be here soon. We need to check out your head, but your body temperature is coming back up.”

“I’m pr…pr…egnant,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “I’ll let your doctor know.”

“Is m…my b…boyfriend, here? W…W…Warren P…Parish?” I asked.

She looked around the room. “Just you and Detective McNamara were brought in.”

When they wheeled me behind a curtain across from the nurses’ station, they covered me from head to toe with warm blankets. I wiggled my legs and realized I wasn’t wearing any pants. At least I’d worn pretty panties with my dress.

“Sloan, is th…th…at you?” I heard Nathan ask on the other side of the curtain divider. His voice was as shaky as my own.
 

“Y…yeah. Are y…you ok…k?” I asked.

“C…cold,” he answered. “You?”

“A…l…live,” I chattered.

Rena came back into my cubicle. She pulled the curtain back between me and Nathan enough so we could see each other. She winked at me. When I looked over, Nathan’s face was blotchy and red. He was in a similar blanket cocoon.

Two deputies from the Sheriff’s office walked in and went to talk to Nathan. My nurse returned and hooked me up to a warm IV bag. She paused after sticking the needle in my arm and cocked her head to the side.

My eyes widened at the look on her face. “Wh…what is it?”

Her brow scrunched together. “The gash on your forehead… It’s closed now.”

Because I was so cold, I hadn’t felt it. “I’m a f…fast healer.”

“That’s impossible,” she said.

I gave a sheepish shrug.
 

A doctor, a man I hadn’t seen on any of my previous visits, walked in behind her. She motioned for him to come over. “Dr. Lambert, five minutes ago this mark on her forehead was a gaping wound. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

He pulled at the skin on my forehead with his thumbs. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” she replied.
 

He rubbed his chin. “That’s strange.” He looked at me expecting an answer.

“M…maybe I d…didn’t hit my h…head as hard as w…we thought.”
 

He scribbled something on my chart. “I’m still ordering a CT scan to make sure the bump on your head is OK. I’ve also paged the obstetrician on call to check on the baby.”

Just then, I saw my dad walk up to the nurses’ station behind them. “D…dad!”

He turned, and panic flashed across his face when he saw me. “Sloan, thank God you’re OK.” He walked over and kissed my forehead. “You’re freezing.”

“Your daughter is lucky,” the doctor said. “The water temperature could have killed her.”

 
“I know.” Dad leaned down toward me. “How are you feeling?”

“C…cold,” I answered.

He blew out a long sigh. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “I d…don’t think so. I’m gon…na need some dry c…clothes.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll take care of it once they confirm you’re stable.”

I nodded. “H…have you s…seen W…warren?”

His head snapped back with surprise. “Warren?”

“He p…pulled m…me out of the w…water,” I stammered.

Dad looked around the room confused. “Honey, Warren isn’t here.”

I’m officially crazy.

* * *

Just as I suspected, the CT scan came back clear. If I had sustained any injuries to my skull, they would have healed before I reached the hospital. My teeth had stopped chattering, and I could once again feel my arms and legs.
 

Nathan was sitting in a chair, dressed in a dry outfit, and he stood when I was wheeled back into my curtained cubical. When they parked my bed, without a word he closed the space between us and bent over me. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed the back of his neck. I cried into his shoulder.

“Shh…” he said. “It’s over. You’re safe.” He eased down onto the bed beside me, and he brushed the tears off my cheeks with his thumb. His eyes were glassy. “I looked back and saw you go under.” With each word, he struggled to not fall apart.

He pressed a long kiss to my forehead.

My father walked in behind him, followed by another doctor in a white coat. Dad motioned toward me. “Dr. Rhodes, this is my daughter, Sloan.”