The Last Time I Saw Her (9 page)

And her widening eyes immediately fixed on what was planted in the center aisle only a few inches in front of her face.

A man's scuffed brown cowboy boot, attached to a long, muscular leg encased in faded jeans, attached to a—

Charlie kept on looking up, and then her heart stood still.

Michael.

He stood there, in spirit form, looking as solid and real as any living, breathing human being on the bus.

If Charlie had been able to say anything, his name would have flown out of her mouth like it had wings.

“So what's your plan B?” Sayers yelled, belligerence in every syllable.

Abell or one of the others replied, but the words didn't register. All the pandemonium in the bus, the rattling and jolting and shouting and burst of feverish activity as they tried and failed to catch and close the wildly swinging rear door, even her own fear, fell away, blocked by a wave of emotion so strong that it rocked her.

Michael.

If she'd been able to move she would have flung herself at him. Not that it would have done any good, because throwing herself at ectoplasm was pretty much the same as throwing herself at thin air, but that's what she would have done anyway. Instinctively. Because she had never, ever been so glad to see anyone in her life.

Fortunately, shock paralyzed most of her muscles, including her vocal cords. In those first critical seconds she could neither move nor speak.

Having traveled up over his wide, white T-shirted chest, her eyes stayed fastened on his face.

There was no mistake. He was
there,
all six-foot-three hunky golden inches of him. Aggressively masculine despite the outrageous good looks. Seriously badass.

He wasn't looking at her. He was glancing around, frowning, and seemed maybe a little dazed, like he was having to work to get a handle on exactly where he was. She had a really good worm's-eye view of the underside of his square jaw, of the stubble that darkened it, of the flat planes of his cheeks, of his chiseled nose and high cheekbones, of the firm lines of his beautifully cut mouth. From her angle, she couldn't see his eyes. She didn't need to.

Michael.
She had no doubt whatsoever about his identity, couldn't believe she had ever in a million years mistaken Hughes for him. She recognized him with something more accurate than anything her eyes could tell her. She recognized him in some deep, atavistic place in her soul.

For a moment, an agonizing moment, she wondered if he was some kind of illusion, if he would vanish as suddenly as he had appeared, if this was a repeat of the quick vision she'd had of him the previous twilight.

Her hand shot out on the thought and grabbed the nearest part of him, which happened to be the instep of his boot. At least, she tried to grab the instep of his boot. Of course her hand sank right through.

But the tingle, the electric tingle that accompanied any contact she had with him in his incorporeal state, was there.

He was real. Present. On the bus just inches away.

He must have felt the tingle, too, or sensed her eyes on him, or something, because he looked down at her.

Sayers went storming through him right then, shouting at the men in the back, waving an impatient hand at the air where Michael was standing as he passed, like he thought he'd run into a patch of cobwebs or static electricity or something.

Charlie yanked her hand out of the way of Sayers's stomping feet just in time. She heard a
thunk,
and Sayers's curse, and guessed that he'd stumbled over or kicked Hughes on his way to the back of the bus.

Michael looked after him, then looked down at her again. However dazed he might have been originally, he was clearly getting over it now. His brows rushed together in a fierce frown that was absolutely directed at her.

Her lips parted—

“Do not say a fucking word. Do not make another fucking move,” he growled, and then he hunkered down, squatting in the center aisle directly in front of where she huddled on the floor beside her abandoned seat. He looked as big and bad and muscular and intimidating as he ever had. His expression was scary enough that any right-minded person on the receiving end of that look would have shrunk back as far away from him as she could get.

Charlie didn't shrink. Instead she drank in the sight of him. Her pulse hammered. She could feel the blood rushing to her head, feel it pounding against her temples. She didn't care how menacing he looked. Her heart erupted in glad hosannas.

“Oh, my God, where have you
been
?” Her voice was a barely audible croak. Not because she was deliberately keeping it low. That wasn't a consideration; everything that wasn't him had temporarily fallen off her radar screen. She didn't wait for his answer, because she knew: his eyes were the burning, fathomless black that she'd seen before, and the savagery in his face and voice were familiar, too. The longer he stayed in Spookville, the darker he got, and this time he'd been gone longer than ever before. She didn't care. She would take him any way she could get him, darkness be damned. “I didn't think you were coming back!”

“What part of ‘Do not say a fucking word' did you miss?” Those ferocious black eyes glittered at her. “Oh, I know: the same part as ‘Keep away from fucking serial killers' and ‘Stay out of the fucking prison' that you never seem to hear. The whole damned thing, because you refuse to listen to a word I say, because you have a fucking
death
wish.
”

It was vintage Michael, all of it, and, God, she was so glad to see him, so relieved, so happy, that she could feel herself smiling at him even as he yelled at her.

“Do not,” she said, forming the words with her mouth without making a sound.

“Are you fucking
smiling
?” He sounded furious. He looked furious.

“No.” She shook her head. But because she simply couldn't help it, her smile stayed in place, or maybe even grew.

Michael.
To have him back—

“You are! You're smiling. Goddamn it, you're totally nuts, do you know that? Do you know what that bastard Fleenor is going to do to you if he gets the chance? Hell, yes, of course you know: you meet with him every week, so you can do your precious research that's probably going to end up getting you killed.” His mouth tightened as he glanced around. He was speaking in a perfectly normal tone—actually, a louder-than-normal tone, because he was angry and yelling at her, and a tone that was deeper and more gravelly than usual, too, because that's what Spookville did to him. Listening to him, looking at him, Charlie suddenly felt better than she had in, oh, a little over two weeks. “What did you do, take your serial killer buddies on a fucking field trip? Who wouldn't have guessed
that
might go wrong?”

Giving him a mildly indignant look—as if she would!—she opened her mouth to reply and offer a quick explanation of what was happening. He shut her down with a fierce look and a warning finger pointed at her. “We're talking about this later. For now, for once in your life, just keep quiet and stay still while I try to figure out how the hell to get you out of this alive.”

“We're sitting ducks! They're on our
ass,
” Sayers yelled from the back of the bus, almost certainly addressing Abell. Michael cast a frowning look in their direction. Now that the first shock of his return was over, Charlie was once again becoming fully aware of the world beyond him, beyond them. She heard distant sirens—either there was an echo or there was more than one cop car chasing the bus now. She felt a shiver that combined hope and fear. Far more than before, she wanted to be rescued. She wanted to get out of there alive. They—the hostages—all wanted to be rescued and get out of there alive, of course. But for her, the stakes had just heightened dramatically. Michael was back, and he needed her to keep him grounded to the earthly plane. Michael was back, and that meant her world had regained its color and warmth and possibility. The weight that had been crushing her was gone. She felt like she could once again breathe. She felt like she could once again live.

If the escapees were cornered, though, she had no doubt at all that that could change in an instant. She knew five of them very well, and if they saw no way out for themselves they would not only have no compunction about killing everyone in the bus, they would enjoy the slaughter.

Go out with a bang and all that.

Her chest tightened again.

Abell bellowed, “You gettin' up in my face? Huh? Huh? Get back up front, Google Eyes, and let the people who know how to run things run them.”

Sayers's reply was so loud it practically rattled the windows. “What did you call me?”

An unexpected sound—a soft little whimper, really—drew Charlie's attention to something closer at hand. Turning her head in the direction from which it had come, she found herself looking through the dark space beneath the seats at Bree, whose face was pressed to the floor, too. The girl had her fist shoved up against her mouth in an attempt to muffle what were obviously sobs. Her whole body shook. Tears flowed from her eyes as they met Charlie's. Her fist moved away from her mouth.

“I'm scared,” she whispered.

Charlie didn't waste time by lying and telling her that everything was going to be all right. She had no way of knowing that, and feel-good platitudes were of no help to anyone.

“We have to get away,” Charlie whispered back. The escalating argument between Abell and Sayers, the banging of the unsecured back door, the rattling of the bus, and various sounds from the others on board were enough to mask her barely-there whisper, she hoped. A quick glance at Michael reassured her: he was still focused on the argument at the rear. If he wasn't hearing her, she could be certain Abell and Sayers and the rest weren't, either.

Bree nodded as another head dropped into view: a boy, with buzzed brown hair and a nose ring, peering beneath the seats. Previously she'd been able to see only the lower part of his jeans-clad legs as, like the others, he knelt on the floor. He looked at Charlie, who went “Shh!” with a finger to her lips, then continued with what she'd been saying, directing it to both of them now. “When the bus stops, when there's a distraction, try to get out a window or one of the doors. These men are killers. Take any chance you get to escape.”

“Are you talking to somebody?” Michael demanded. Charlie's head snapped up guiltily.

“…think they're not going to set up roadblocks?” Sayers screamed. The bus swayed as they went around a curve, and Charlie, on all fours now, had to brace her hands against the floor to keep her balance. “They're probably blocking every damned road off this mountain right this minute!”

“You don't know shit,” Abell screamed back. There was more, but Charlie quit listening to focus on what was going on closer at hand.

“Under there,” Charlie mouthed to Michael, and pointed.

Michael bent down and looked. Charlie followed suit. The kids couldn't see
him,
of course. Now the blond girl was looking beneath the seats, too. Her pale cheek rested against the floor.

“They're going to kill us, aren't they?” the girl whispered. Her voice trembled.

“Shut up, Paris,” the boy responded, sending a glare her way as Bree drew in a harsh breath that was just short of a sob and then pressed her fist to her mouth again.

“We have to try to escape,” Charlie repeated as quietly as before. “First chance you get: go out a door, a window, whatever, and run. Tell the others if you can.”

“She won't fit out a window,” the boy said, jerking a thumb at Paris.

“Suck off, dirtwad,” Paris fired back.

“Shh!” Charlie cautioned fiercely, glaring, and they both clamped their mouths shut while Bree stifled another sob.

“Holy shit,” Michael said, resurfacing. Charlie straightened to look at him and found her gaze colliding with those angry, burning black eyes. “Those are fucking
kids.
”

She knew he had a thing about getting involved with endangered kids. “Yes, they are.”

“How the hell—”

“They were visiting the prison. A Scared Straight group. This is a prison break, and they got caught up in it.”

His face tightened. His eyes looked even scarier than they had before. “Same as you did, huh? Just one of those unfortunate things that could happen to anybody.”

There was no missing the sarcasm.

“Could you drop the attitude, please?”

“Drop the
attitude
? Like that's the problem here? My
attitude
?” He eyed her like there was a whole lot more he wanted to say, then made a disgusted sound and shook his head. “You know what your whole life reminds me of? That Hole album,
Live Through This.
”

Funny.
Charlie didn't say it out loud, but she made a face at him. Then she caught herself smiling at him again, because it felt so good to have him there and being pissy at her and because, with him there, she was no longer quite so deathly afraid.

That last thought didn't even surprise her. Her faith in Michael as her own personal superhero was infinite, she was discovering.

“I knew it. You're insane,” Michael growled in the face of her smile, only to have his attention diverted as Sayers, who'd been in the act of storming toward the front of the bus, stopped when he reached Hughes and snapped, “This asshole's in the way. Help me get him out of the aisle.”

From her position on the floor, Charlie couldn't see a lot, such as who Sayers was talking to. But by looking beneath the seats again, she was able to see Hughes's body come up off the floor. She presumed Sayers and one of the others at the back were lifting him. Then Hughes was dumped in a semi-sitting position between two seats. As he slumped sideways Charlie saw his hands, which were cuffed behind him, clench into fists.

Not so unconscious, then.

She was just watching Hughes's fingers straighten and clench again, a clearly deliberate movement, when something, a sound or a vibe, she didn't know for sure, snapped her attention back to Michael.

He was looking toward where Hughes had been. His expression was absolutely shell-shocked.