Chapter 15

He was texting furiously. Eyes glued to the tiny screen. Phone snubbing her.

Now?

"I'm out of here."

She saw him glance up from the phone, a look of steely determination on him.

"Tish..."

"Get lost." She got up, sped as fast as she could toward the doorway. Damn this little idyll. Just damn it. Her heart squeezed. None of it had been real. None of it.

She was almost at the door when it happened. A loud crack overhead. Then, before her eyes, it appeared. A long, broken line in the wall, starting at one of the holes she'd created. Like a gopher's burrow it travelled through the wall in front of her widening, then stopped abruptly overhead. Another resounding crack.

Abruptly, plaster from the ceiling rained around her, chunks, along with swirls of dust. She looked upward, shielding her face with her arm and gazed in horror as a large, rusty rod of steel hurtled down toward her from the high ceiling.

And then the walls were spinning past her in a rush as arms clasped around her and they flew, like a crazy rollercoaster ride, and crashed into the doorframe together.

Her shoulder landed hard, and suddenly the arms were gone. A scream of pain beside her told her the price of her unhurt body had been paid.

Eli, in a crumpled mess, on the floor.

Just the way she’d imagined him, too many times, when he was serving in Afghanistan.

“Eli! Damn it, Eli!” Kneeling quickly, she bent and touched his face. “Can you hear me?”

Looking paler than before, words spilled from his mouth. She strained to hear, but they didn't make sense. Gibberish, though her name was in there, amidst the nonsense. And something warm and sticky met her hand.

Blood.