Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

She waits in silence while I take an uncharacteristically long time to comprehend what she’s saying. A piercing pain is skewering my heart, while merciless voices in my head hammer at my insecurities, now totally exposed to their worst fears. You knew this would happen. Don’t you dare act surprised, because you knew it, and everybody else knew it, and you didn’t listen. Why are you so stupid? How many people have to tell you the same thing before you’ll listen? Now he’s gone, and nobody will care or feel bad for you, because you did this to yourself.

My words come out thick and slow. “She…took him?”

“Yes. He didn’t fight it. I think he knew that if she took him, the battle would be over. He was right. She grabbed him in her talons and flew straight up and out. If I had a chopper on hand, we could’ve followed, but…” She clears her throat. “Soon as she left, it was over. The rest of them retreated.”

“And you sent people after them?”

“What people? Half my team was wiped out. The other half needs a hospital.” She rubs her eyes, forcing calm into her voice. “But we will, Shayne. I promise you. We’ve got your tracker, remember? Thanks to you, that revenant will lead us right to them. We’ll send a whole army.”

Thanks to me. My tracker. The tracker which is now stuck in the neck of a revenant at the bottom of the Detroit River. “My tracker…” I say, and only those two words come out before something breaks in me. I don’t speak again, not for hours.

It’s hard to think back on that time, much less put it into words. Even now, my fingers tremble over the keys of my laptop as the feeling comes back. A thick, heavy feeling. Something sitting on your chest. It’s hard work just breathing. The thing is, there’s no physical equivalent to this kind of heartache. You can’t just say, Oh, imagine being stabbed in the spine, or your Achilles tendons slashed, or needles inserted beneath your fingernails. It’s not like that. And it’s not just a kind of sadness, either. It’s a bitterness, a poison. It’s…I don’t want to think about it. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. The fact is, if any of you have felt this, then you understand, and the rest of you simply can’t.

Jay is gone.

The shock is literally stunning. I can’t feel anything. Not my gushing neck or my broken bones. Something’s wrong with my lungs, because there’s a wheezing sound when I breathe. I hear it, but I don’t feel it. I sit there in a kind of surreal daze as people bustle around me. Their voices sound garbled to me. Even when they lower their face to make eye contact with me and over-enunciate their words, I don’t understand. Hillerman tries; an FBI medic tries; when I’m shepherded up to the ship’s deck, Nick Gorgeous is there and he tries. Finally, Enzo, the Agency’s best healer, shoos everybody away and goes to work on my neck. In the past, I’ve heckled Enzo mercilessly for being such a quiet, introspective person—almost a mute—but right now I can’t think of a better person to be with.

Well, actually…I can think of one obvious person. That’s when the tears come. Not loud, messy sobbing. Just a gentle but continuous overflow down both cheeks, dripping from my trembling chin. Enzo makes a gesture to breathe. I exhale slowly through chattering teeth.

At some point I end up in the back of a car, then led into the Agency. Lots of faces there, all gawking at me, but somebody has given them the memo not to try and speak to me. I’m sure I look just how I feel. There’s a giant bandage attached to one side of my neck; my arm’s in a sling; my face is bruised and cut and burned.

Dark thoughts—black thoughts—boil up from gashes splitting open in my heart. I entertain the bitter, unfair, and self-centered thought that everybody’s probably cheering the fact that Shayne Davies finally got what she deserved, which is exactly what everybody told me would happen. The whole world is against me. I don’t know what I ever did to them.

Scratch that. I know exactly what I did. I dared to have the life they all wanted. Young and happy, with a great job, a great love life, a soul mate. All these miserable bastards want that, and they couldn’t stand that I had it. Nick Gorgeous is probably patting himself on the back. Donna, I’m sure, is grinning smugly behind her computer monitor.

But when I dart a glance across the office, Nick offers me a water with a sympathetic look, and Donna becomes flustered when I catch her watching me with concern.

Determined to stay wounded, I decide it’s even worse to think that they’re all feeling sorry for me. I just want to get the hell out of here. Why on earth am I just sitting here like a zoo animal on display? I should get up and march right out that door. Forget Director West. The last place on the planet I want to be right now is in her office for a debriefing.

Another lie. There is one place that would be worse right now. Which is why I don’t move a muscle, and when Madison West opens her door and signals, I pull my blanket tightly around my shoulders and shuffle obediently into her office. I lower into a chair across from her desk and stare down at my shoes.

It’s quiet. I hear the soft finger taps of Director West silencing her phone. Gently, she pulls out a desk drawer, sets the phone inside, then closes it. For a long moment, she simply sits watching me. Then I hear the squeak of chair wheels as she pushes away from her desk. Padding across the carpet, she opens a mini fridge, pulls out two beers, twists the cap