Gabe squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, rage and grief and regret churning in his stomach. He could not go there. Could not go there. He drew a deep breath, willed his hands to unclench. "Look, Kat. I know you've convinced yourself that you're in love with me or some damned thing, but you're not. You only think so because I saved your life, and because I'm the first guy to make you come. Fooling yourself into believing you love me makes it easier for you to do what your hormones want you to do--which is to get good and fucked."
"If that's what you truly believe, then you know nothing about me." Her voice quavered as she spoke, her face flushed with rage.
"In the morning, I'll call Chief Irving and ask him to move you to a police safe house. I think it would be best."
Tears shimmered in her eyes. "Okay. If that's what you want."
Then, she turned and, cloaked in that damnable dignity of hers, walked to his bedroom, and locked the door behind her. As he stomped out the back door, desperate to get some air, his heart still pounding, he heard her break into sobs.
CHAPTER 21
KAT AWOKE, HER head throbbing. She hadn't meant to fall asleep. She sat up, gasping in shock at the pain in her head, dizziness washing over her, forcing her back onto the pillow. What was wrong with her? Was she sick?
The answer came with a wave of body aches and nausea.
Maybe she'd caught the flu--except that she'd gotten a flu shot. Or maybe she'd picked up something like food poisoning. Or perhaps it was a migraine. She'd never had one before, but she'd heard they made some people nauseated.
Outside the window, the sun had already set. She lay on her back in the darkness, fighting overwhelming drowsiness. She needed to get up and get some aspirin and water. Somehow, she needed to make it out of bed and out of the bedroom if ...
And then she remembered why she was in the bedroom. Gabe had come upstairs. He'd seen her looking at the photo album. He'd yelled at her--hurtful words, horrible words, words that had made her think of Samantha crying on his doorstep.
Just because we've fooled around a little doesn't mean you can pry into my life!
Is that how he saw it? They'd fooled around?
For her it had been so much more than that. And now it was over. In the morning, he'd call Chief Irving and have them move her to a safe house, and she probably wouldn't see him again. But if he'd truly meant what he'd said about "fooling around," he was probably doing her a favor, as painful as it might ...
She drifted again, only to be awakened by the throbbing in her head. Knowing she had no choice but to get up and get aspirin if she wanted to feel better, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Overwhelmed by dizziness and pain, her heart racing, she fought to stay upright. She couldn't think of the last time she'd felt so sick. Maybe when she'd had pneumonia as a kid. But even then, her heart hadn't raced like this.
She held a hand to her forehead and was surprised to find that she wasn't burning up. She thought of calling for Gabe, but she didn't want his help. She didn't want anything from him. Not anymore.
That thought got her on her feet. Out of breath, she steadied herself, her palms splayed on the bed. Then slowly she turned and step by step made her way toward the bedroom door, her heart slamming in her chest as if she were running up stairs. She grabbed the doorknob, turned it, stepped into the hallway--and felt her knees give.
Unable to stop herself, she sank to the floor. "Gabe!"
She managed just his name--and then the world went black.
IT WAS THE sound of his name that woke him.
"Kat?" Gabe lifted his head and glanced around, surprised to find that he'd fallen asleep. On the television, Steph Davis was making her way up El Cap. Certain he'd heard someone call for him, he sat up.
It was only then he realized how dizzy he was and how much his head hurt. Hell, his entire body hurt. He sat back, drew several deep breaths, his heart thrumming erratically in his chest.
What the fuck?
He never got sick. Ever. Well, not unless he'd gotten drunk--but he hadn't touched a drop today, not even when the sound of Kat's tears had left him hating himself and wanting to drink away the echo of his own words.
Well, you sure as hell are sick now, buddy.
Trying to ignore the pain in his skull, he fought to sit up, but found he could barely move, as if some unseen force were holding him down on the couch. "Shit!"
Again he sank back, his breathing as ragged as if he'd just climbed El Cap himself, and some part of him wondered if he should call an ambulance. But even as he decided that he was being a big wimp, he fell over onto his side, his head landing against the armrest. And that's when he saw her.
Kat lay unconscious in the hallway, her arm outstretched as if she were reaching for him, her dark hair a tangled mass on the polished wood.
"Kat?" He called out her name, but she didn't move.
Adrenaline punched through him, got him on his feet. Spots swam before his eyes, as he took one step toward her and then another, his legs threatening to buckle. And then his paramedic training kicked in.
Dizziness. Rapid heartbeat. Confusion. Drowsiness. Headache.
Carbon monoxide poisoning.
They were dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
There was no time to dial 911. If they didn't get fresh air, they'd be dead before the ambulance arrived. But there was another possibility ...
Gabe turned on unsteady feet toward the living room window, drew his HK, flicked off the safety, then fired, aiming for a spread, hoping to God the rounds didn't make it past his security fence and kill somebody.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The window cracked, three clean holes appearing in the pane--but the glass held.
Dammit!
The handgun's recoil sent him staggering. He dropped the weapon, caught the edge of the entertainment center, barely managing to stay on his feet.
Kat!
She lay still, so still he thought she must have stopped breathing.
Oh, God, Kat!
He had to get her outside, had to get her outside right fucking now.
He drove himself forward, fell to his knees beside her, his heart hammering. Her cheeks and lips were flushed cherry red--a sign that she was dying or already dead. Bolstered by another shot of adrenaline, he lifted her into his arms. "Stay alive, honey. Stay alive."
There was no time to see whether she was breathing, no time for CPR. If he collapsed, if he passed out, they would both die.
Somehow, he made it back to his feet, his legs threatening to give, his heart beating so hard it hurt, his head throbbing. One step, two--and he sank against the wall, Kat's weight drawing him off balance. He fought to steady himself, fought to catch his breath, knowing that the harder he breathed, the more carbon monoxide he was pulling into his lungs, his heart, his brain.
Another step. Another. And another.
He pushed himself forward, the front door only a handful of steps away. His vision grew spotty again, black dots dancing before his eyes. He forced himself to focus on the doorknob, willed his feet to keep moving.
Another step. Another.
He reached for the deadbolt, turned the lock, then grabbed for the doorknob and jerked the door open. Cold night air hit him full in the face. He staggered forward trying to reach Irving's men, who were already running toward him. But then his legs gave way, the cold concrete of his front porch rushing up at him, his vision going black. With his last shred of consciousness, he wrapped his arms around Kat, trying to shield her from the fall. And then there was nothing.
"I THINK HE'S coming around."
"His SAT rate says ninety-six."
"It's bullshit. Ignore it. Carbon monoxide poisoning gives false high readings, so keep the oh-two running at one hundred percent."
Gabe had no idea whose voices he was hearing or where he was. His head throbbed, his heart pounding hard. Faces swam in and out of his vision. Flashing lights. The crunch of boots on ice. And, slowl
y, the picture came together.
He was lying on a stretcher next to an ambulance. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. There was an IV in his right arm and electrodes on his bare chest, a pulse ox monitor clipped to his forefinger.
What the fuck had happened? Had he fallen?
"Hey, big guy. Welcome back." A man in a blue Boulder Ambulance cap smiled down at him. "Can you tell me your name?"
"Gabriel ... Rossiter," he answered, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask.
"We're going to take good care of you, Mr. Rossiter." The paramedic covered Gabe with a warmed blanket, and then they were moving.
As the stretcher turned, Gabe saw two ambulances and four or five police cars. They were sitting in front of his house, takedown lights and floodlights turned toward his front yard. And then he remembered.
Waking up. Terrible dizziness. Kat unconscious in the hall. His head and heart pounding as he carried her toward the door.
Carbon monoxide poisoning.
"Kat!" He tried to sit, couldn't. "Where is she? Is she ... ?"
Then he saw her--or, rather, he saw where she was.
Ahead of him, four paramedics worked around another stretcher, two guiding it into the other ambulance, one walking alongside, pumping oxygen into her lungs with a hand-held ventilator, another straddling her, doing chest compressions. He knew what that meant--imminent cardiac arrest, agonal respiration. Her heart was beating too slowly, and she was struggling to breathe on her own.
Oh, Christ!
She couldn't die. Not Kat. He couldn't lose her, too.
"Kat!" Gabe jerked himself upright, tearing at tubes and wires, trying to get off the stretcher to reach her, dread twisting cold and sharp in his chest. "Get this shit off me! Kat!"
"Easy now!" Strong arms forced him onto his back and held him there.
Too weak and too out of breath to fight back, Gabe struggled but couldn't break free. "Goddamn it! Kat!"
She can't die! Not Kat! Please, God, not Kat!
"Hey, big guy! Take it easy! They're doing all they can for her. You need to let us take care of you, okay? Hey, Eric, I think we're going to have to sedate him."
"IV Ativan?"
"Yeah."
"Kat!" Gabe didn't hear them, his gaze fixed on her stretcher as she was lifted into the other ambulance and the doors were closed behind her. Nor did he see the paramedic who approached him with a syringe or notice when they injected the sedative into his IV line.
Flashing lights. The shrill wail of a siren. And the ambulance holding Kat disappeared down the street.
"Kat!" Christ! If she died ...
But the thought unraveled before he could finish it, and he was drifting.
GABE STROKED His thumb across Kat's cheek, his gaze drifting back to the monitor beside her hospital bed, the normal rhythm of her heartbeat holding him together. He'd come so close to losing her, so unbelievably close.
She was breathing on her own now, but they still had her on oxygen. None of her organs had failed, and though they couldn't say for certain that she hadn't suffered any permanent injury, she wasn't showing the typical signs of brain damage. Still, she hadn't once moved during the hours he'd sat here beside her, hadn't opened her eyes, hadn't shown any sign that she knew he was there.
He'd awoken in the emergency room, disoriented and drowsy, as much from whatever they'd given him to knock him out as from the carbon monoxide. Fighting to control his temper so they wouldn't sedate him again, he'd refused to answer a single question, even from police, until someone had told him how Kat was doing.
"She's still critical," a sympathetic nurse had finally told him. "They've got her in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber."
The nurse had then gone on to explain what that meant, but he already knew--doctors were using pressure to force oxygen into her cells in an effort to keep her alive. And Gabe, who had never given any credence to the idea of deities and who had certainly never prayed, had begun to pray in earnest.
The next few hours had been a blur--doctors, blood tests, questions from detectives. Gabe had found it painfully hard to stay awake and had been forced to admit that he was in worse shape than he'd realized. He'd been unconscious when they'd finally moved Kat into intensive care.
He'd come to in his own hospital room after sleeping through most of the night. When he'd remembered why he was there and what had happened, he'd gotten out of bed, slipped into his jeans, and, battling dizziness, had dragged his IV pole to the nurse's station, where he'd demanded to know where Kat was. He must have looked half out of his mind to them--hospital gown, IV, jeans, bare feet--and maybe he had been. Perhaps that's why, rather than forcing him back into bed, a nurse had escorted him to intensive care, where he'd sat at Kat's bedside for the past three hours, holding her hand.
He leaned in close. "Kat, honey, can you hear me?"
Why was she so much worse off than he was? Even as he asked himself the question, Gabe knew the answer. He'd gone outside several times during the day to get firewood, while she'd stayed inside, breathing poison.
What had happened? He'd put a new filter on the furnace in September, something he did every fall. Had he done it wrong? Had something gone wrong with the machine itself? And the irony of it struck him. He'd brought Kat to his house to keep her safe, and doing so had almost killed her. If she'd suffered brain damage ...
Her lashes lay dark against pale skin, her eyelids still swollen from crying, the tear stains on her cheeks proof he'd hurt her deeply.
Just because we've fooled around a little doesn't mean you can pry into my life!
God, he was a bastard! What had he been thinking?
He hadn't been thinking. He'd seen her looking through that damned photo album, and the past and present had collided. All the rage he felt about Jill's betrayal, his grief about her death, his confusing feelings for Kat had come together--and exploded. His temper had gotten the best of him, making him say things he wouldn't otherwise ...
No, that was lie, a lame-ass excuse. He'd said what he'd said, knowing his words would hurt her, some sick part of him hoping to drive a wedge between them so that he could go back to being in control of his emotions again, back to the guarded emptiness that had been his life before he'd met her. And despite the pain he'd caused her, she'd still cared enough about him to show him compassion.
You say you don't believe in ghosts, but she haunts you.
How could she see through him so clearly? He'd never even spoken to her about Jill. As far as he knew, Kat knew nothing about Jill's death, apart from what she'd heard Samantha say. Yet, Kat had cut right to the heart of it. And it had shaken Gabe to his core--so he'd thrown her compassion in her face and pushed her away.
In the morning, I'll call Chief Irving and ask him to move you to a police safe house. I think it would be best.
Okay. If that's what you want.
No matter how he tried, he couldn't erase from his mind the image of her as she'd turned and walked away from him, tears in her eyes. But that wasn't what he regretted most. What ate at him, what gnawed at him, was the fact that she'd almost died believing he didn't care about her, that he'd used her, that he no longer wanted to be near her.
It wasn't true. None of it was true. If only she could know how he'd felt when he'd come to and seen paramedics fighting to revive her ...
Jesus!
Had he ever felt that afraid, that helpless?
"I'm sorry, Kat. I'm so sorry." He kissed her cheek, watched her sleep.
"You're not very good at following doctor's orders, are you?" A deep voice came from behind him.
Gabe jerked awake, unaware he'd drifted off again. "Hunter."
"How is she?"
"She hasn't regained consciousness. We won't know if there's brain damage until ..." Gabe's throat grew strangely constricted, making it hard to talk.
Hunter laid a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
"I'm sorry," Hunter said at last. "Everyone's shaken up
by this."
Gabe nodded.
"I came by to check on you both--and to let you know this wasn't an accident. There's nothing wrong with your furnace. Someone packed your flue with wet leaves, forcing your furnace to vent carbon monoxide into the house."
The words took a moment to sink in, but when they did, a fire began to build in Gabe's gut, anger every bit as potent as adrenaline. He fought to keep his voice steady. "How do you know it was deliberate?"
"There were blades of grass and traces of muddy snow mixed with the leaves," Hunter told him. "Those leaves were raked up. They didn't drift in off a tree branch. Besides, you don't have a cottonwood in your yard, and neither do your neighbors. Whoever did it obviously wanted it to look like an accident but got sloppy."
It was a sick, insidious way to kill someone--turn a home into a gas chamber.
"I promised her I'd keep her safe. I did a great job of that, didn't I?"
"Knock that shit off." Hunter glared down at him. "Whoever did this is playing dirty. I don't know how you realized what was going on or found the strength to carry her outside. That was quick thinking to fire those three rounds, by the way. It didn't shatter the glass, but the guys outside heard. If you hadn't gotten to them, they'd have gotten to you. You're a damned hero, Rossiter. Get used to it."
But as Gabe watched Kat sleep, he didn't feel like a hero.
"WHY ARE YOU here, Kimimila?"
"I don't know." Kat looked up to see Grandpa Red Crow, joy spreading through her like sunlight, the burdens of her life--whatever they had been--slipping away, leaving her with a sense of peace she'd never felt before, as if all were well and had always been well. "I'm happy to see you."
From the distance came the steady beating of a drum and a bright light like the glow of a thousand fires. Her people were waiting for her there. She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she knew it just the same. Perhaps Grandpa Red Crow had come to take her to them.
"My sweet, brave Kimimila." Grandpa Red Crow smiled. "For most of your life, you've felt alone, but you aren't alone now. He is a good man."
"He doesn't want me." A shard of half-forgotten pain pricked her happiness.