Part 9 (1/2)

A state trooper brought her home at 8:00 a.m., and she went straight to her bedroom, shed her blood-caked clothes, and got into the shower. Then, giving her long hair a lick and a promise with the dryer, she left it unbraided to finish drying on its own and pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversize s.h.i.+rt of soft, dark green chamois. She was dead tired, but she couldn't have slept if her life had depended on it. So at eight-thirty, she clipped her pager to the waistband of her jeans and headed out the front door.

The air was warm, despite the promise of rain, and as the pickup bounced over the old lake road toward Sam's cabin, Kate rolled down the window, thinking the fresh air might clear her head so she could figure out what to say to him.

She knew what she wasn't going to say. He couldn't have realized how upset she'd been that he hadn' t gone with her to Marquette, and there was no reason to tell him. Ray c.o.o.ney hadn't needed him, and, therefore, neither had she-not really. She shouldn't have taken his refusal to go personally. Yet, after pulling to a halt in front of the cabin, she approached the door hesitantly, afraid of discovering her feelings weren't foolish at all but an accurate measure of the way things stood between them.

The door was slightly ajar, and she knocked as she called, ”Sam? It's Kate.” The grumbling response she heard was not encouraging, but she ventured to ask, ”Can I come in?”

Several seconds later, he called something vaguely positive, and she pushed the door open.

At the far end of the big room, dressed in jeans and a white T-s.h.i.+rt, Sam was standing, absolutely still, staring out the window over the kitchen sink. She walked toward him, her wariness increasing when he didn 't turn to acknowledge her presence. Stopping beside him, she took in his worse-for-wear appearance-the rumpled hair and a day's growth of beard darkening his jaw.

”Good morning.” She greeted him on a questioning note.

”Morning,” came his gruff reply.

Still he didn't look at her, and she wondered if she ought to leave. For a moment, her need to talk to him warred with her suspicion that he didn't want to talk to her. The decision between the two was postponed, though, when she caught a whiff of a familiar odor, and her gaze dropped to the sink.

”Oh! You went fis.h.i.+ng this morning,” she remarked with forced cheerfulness. ”Those are beauties. Four pounds apiece, I'll bet, even after you've cleaned them.”

”Do you eat fish?”

”I love them,” she answered, lifting her gaze from the two walleye pike to Sam's oddly still face. ”I like to fish, too, but I don't get much chance these-”

”Take them.”

Kate broke off, blinked at him, then began a protest. ”Oh, Sam, that's really nice of you, but you'll want -”

”Take them. Please. Just . . .” He swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut.

Her eyes widened as she noted his growing pallor, her gaze s.h.i.+fting from his face . . . to the knife in his hand . . . to the fish.

”Katie, I hate to tell you this, but-”

”Leave the room, Sam.” Taking his arm, she spun him around and pushed him gently away from the sink. ”Go shower and change your clothes. I'll take care of this.”

He muttered something crude under his breath, but he followed her directions, striding across the cabin to disappear into the bedroom.

Kate rolled up her s.h.i.+rt sleeves and set about disposing of the problem. Wrapping the fish in a brown paper bag, she put them in her truck. Then she opened two cabin windows for ventilation and gave the sink and countertop a thorough scrubbing with a bleach cleanser. When the cabin was rid of all traces of fishy smell, she dried her hands and went to check on Sam.

She stopped in the bedroom doorway, taking in the scene: the unmade bed, its twisted blankets evidence of a restless night; a dresser drawer hanging open, clean underwear and socks stacked in the front of it; and, in a pile near the bathroom door, the clothes he'd worn last night, jeans and s.h.i.+rt both stiff with dried blood. He was standing by the open window, one bare shoulder against the frame, hair still damp but neatly combed. He hadn't put on a T-s.h.i.+rt, but a fresh pair of jeans was slung low on his hips without a belt, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. In the pearl-gray light coming through the window, he looked lean and strong and every inch a man.

At the moment, though, the man was vulnerable-a rare occurrence and one she knew she must handle with care.

Approaching slowly, she stopped several feet away to study him. The color had returned to his face, and the lines of strain had relaxed. Yet he looked terribly unhappy, and as he gazed out at the forest, the low, gravelly words he spoke were edged in bitterness.

”My dad taught me to fish. It's the only thing we ever really did together.”

She felt his deep sadness, even if she didn't understand its cause. Cautiously, she moved to stand beside him, and he s.h.i.+fted a little to make room for her in front of the window.

”On weekends, in California,” he continued, ”one of the other pilots, Sid Golden, and I used to go up to the mountains and fish. And once in a while, a bunch of us would drive down to the coast, hire a boat, and go deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng.” He paused, his lips tightening. ”I like to fish. It's relaxing and easy and . . . Ah, h.e.l.l.” He uttered a soft, self-deprecating sound. ”I don't know why I expected it'd still be that way. Nothing else is the same as it used to be.”

So many questions ran through her mind as her gaze searched the stoic line of his unshaven jaw, then skimmed quickly over the scars on the right side of his body. She didn't know where to start, which question to pick. So instead of picking any, she simply laid a hand on his arm and said softly, ”Sam, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong.”

His head turned slightly, but he didn't meet her gaze, and after a moment, he looked away again.

She let her hand fall from his arm, and she turned her gaze out the window, too, drawing the curtain aside a bit farther with her finger. They stood that way for a long time, side by side, listening to the eerie cry of a loon on a nearby lake and the faint rustling of the wind through tender new leaves.

After several minutes, he straightened slowly, pulling his hands from his pockets to fold his arms across his bare chest. Lifting his head a notch, he squared his shoulders, and she realized with dismay that if he spoke now, it would be the tough guy talking. His pride had taken all the beating it could stand for one morning, and so, to salvage what was left of it, he was putting on his armor. Except the armor had cracks in it, and through them she caught glimpses of the man within.

”Remember Tuesday, when I carried you here, out of the storm?” he said.

Unlikely she'd ever forget it ”Yes.”

”Remember when you said it was a miracle I survived the plane crash-and I said that maybe I didn't? You got disgusted, thinking I was being a smart a.s.s.”

”I remember.”

”I meant it. I died on the operating table after the crash. For twenty minutes, they told me later, I was dead-no heartbeat, no respiration, nothing.”

”Dear Lord,” she whispered. ”Twenty minutes is-” She cut herself off when she saw his jaw tighten and his expression become even more closed.

”Have you ever heard of a near-death experience?” he asked.

She replied slowly. ”I'm not sure what you mean. I've read about cases where trauma and surgical teams have resuscitated people whose vital functions have stopped. But I've never heard of it being done twenty minutes-”

”I wasn't resuscitated,” he interrupted her. ”They did all the stuff doctors do to bring people back, but after five minutes, they gave up. The head doctor had-how do you say it?-'called it.' He'd given the time of death as 2:37 p.m. At 2:52, my heart started beating again.”

”But how-”

”I found out it wasn't time for me to die. So I . . . came back-let's say, with some strong encouragement.”

For several seconds, she could only stare at him, her lips parted in disbelief. Finally, she swallowed and started to ask, ”Encouragement from-”

He stopped her again. ”It isn't something I like to talk about, okay? Most of the time, n.o.body believes me, anyway. I'm not saying you wouldn't, but right now, I'd rather not go into it. The point is, when I died, I didn't just lie there on the operating table. My body was dead, but my mind or . . . soul or whatever you want to call it went somewhere.”

Kate's look went from skeptical to astounded. ”You- You remember being dead? I mean, how could you know-”

”Because I was there,” Sam cut in, a muscle twitching in his cheek as an emotion she couldn't begin to name pa.s.sed swiftly across his features.

A moment later, his head turned, and he looked at her with eyes so startlingly clear she felt as though she were looking through the window to infinity. He knows, she thought. He knows things I can't begin to imagine.

More gently, he told her, ”It isn't a bad place, Katie. I don't want you thinking that. In fact, it's . . . beautiful. I've got some books written by people who've either had experiences like mine or who've studied them. I'll lend them to you if you're interested. And sometime, maybe, I'll tell you about it, but-” He hesitated, then glanced away. ”But not now.”

But now was when she needed to know. Kate wondered how long she could wait for what she was sure must be the key to understanding him. His effect on her, from the beginning, had been astonis.h.i.+ng; it was more powerful than ever now. He had an aura about him that s.h.i.+mmered like heat rising from a fire. On the surface, it appeared as a brazen s.e.xual energy, the potency of which sent tendrils of arousal curling through her. There was more to it than that, though, and she was drawn to know the source of his magnetism. She was drawn to know the man.

”The thing last night was close,” Sam went on. ”And when it's that close, I need some time afterward to get settled. Remind myself that I'm here, in this world, not . . . over there. Otherwise, I walk around with a replay running in my head of the things that went on when I was over there. It makes it hard to go on acting like . . . like a regular person.”

Well, that made sense, didn't it? As much as anything else in the past twelve hours.

”Sam, I think I understand,” she began. ”I won't ask you about . . . dying. But please, tell me-”