“Brave of you to buy a house tucked in the woods near a graveyard.”
“Would you say brave?” Sommer asked. “I’d say thrifty. I’m an emergency room nurse, so funds are tight.”
“You work in a hospital. Have you ever wondered if any of the people who died there followed you home?”
“This is what you want to talk about with a body six feet away from me?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.” What was he thinking?
“Go ahead, tell me why you asked that,” Sommer said.
Gabriel imagined he’d planted a thought-worm and they’d better finish this part of the conversation and be done with it. “I have a friend, and back when we were soldiers, he was always wigged out by the idea that if he killed someone, with the dying guy's last gasp, he’d send his soul over.”
“To what end?”
“The way this guy explained it was that he was a fit and healthy body, and since he was the reason the dead guy’s soul was disembodied, it might just want to go and live in him. And I thought, if there were any place where that might regularly happen, it would be in a hospital.”
“That gave me goosebumps,” Sommer said. “I never considered that before. I don’t want to consider it now.” She looked toward the open door and frowned, and Gabriel felt like a shit head.
Usually, he had better control over his tongue.
Something about being with Sommer Hayes in person was throwing him off. Way off.
Gabriel tried to recover, saying, “Yeah, it made him a liability in the field, and he eventually had to get a desk job because he second-guessed every bullet. That slow-twitch put our team in danger.”
He looked down at his sat phone when it pinged.
Reaper:I’m working on a plan to reallocate resources if required. We need eyes on the medical situation on the summit and a sitrep before taking action. If some electrolytes and antidiarrheals can do the trick, we need to keep searching for that family.
Gabriel typed back:As soon as emergency response is on scene, and I can leave Sommer, I’ll be moving. Will check in with sitrep. Anticipated time to summit twelve hours.
Reaper:Is Sommer going up with you?
Gabriel:She needs a paramedic to clear her. She’s an emergency room nurse. She’ll be the best resource on the mountain to tell me how to proceed.
Gabriel put the sat phone in his thigh pocket. “That was my emergency contact telling me they need a better idea of the situation on the summit, so they know best how to help.”
Sommer didn’t seem to hear him. She kept her gaze on the open door. “I was hitchhiking a couple hundred yards up the road, and she stopped. As I was getting in the car, a herd of deer came out of nowhere just ahead of us. She said that if she hadn’t stopped to pick me up, she could have been killed.” Sommer stopped and shut her eyes. “My lips are buzzing, and I’m wondering if I’m picking up an electrical charge from the car or I’m just upset.” Sommer sat quietly for a moment. “I’m pretty sure it’s that I’m upset.” She let out a heavy exhale. “She told me that that stretch of road always wigged her out.”
Gabriel had seen the limbic responses many times. Her words embodied that sensation of ‘freeze,’ as if she were physically forcing her thoughts over her lips and out her mouth.
“She told me that, since she could remember, even as a little girl, she always got a chill down her spine at this stretch of road and had always thought about dying when she came this way. She said she thought this stretch of road was probably haunted.” Sommer turned to him. “Isn’t that astonishing, Gabriel? It’s like she always knew the time would come. And minutes before she died, she thought she’d dodged the bullet.”
“There was a second herd?” Gabriel asked his words loud enough to reach Sommer, but he tried to keep his tone soft and supportive.
“She got up to speed, then the rest of the family came leaping out of the woods. The one put its hoof through the windshield. She swerved into the pole. The impact bounced the deer off the windshield and there onto the hood, then it slid off. The line came down when we hit it. I knew about the electricity because that last deer came running across, brushed the car, and dropped to the ground. We were fine. Everything in the car was fine. I mean, the airbags went off. But I turned to see if any other deer were coming when the woman opened her door. It was like something out of a nightmare. I could see her doing it. But I couldn’t get my hand to reach out. And when I tried to yell a warning, nothing. I was chomping at the air, not forming any words. I’m an emergency room nurse. I deal with emergencies all the time. I don’t know what happened. My brain glitched.”
“You were also racing down a mountain desperate to save your friends. You were in a car accident.” From her expression, giving her an out, even a reasonable one, was the wrong tack. Gabriel switched gears. “I’m sorry that happened. Being trapped in there must be a hell of a thing.”
“If it’s okay with you. Talking helps me with the inner voice I don’t want to listen to right now. But I’d rather not talk about death and dying.”
“Fair. Let’s find something else to talk about.”
“So you are a one-man rescue team?”
“I was going to find you and assess if a team was needed,” he said.
“Because my sister asked you to?”
