“This is going to kill my mom,” Jordan muttered before sobbing. He fisted a hand and pushed it against his mouth.
“You don’t have to be quiet. No one else can hear us.” Gideon opened his arms up and Jordan hesitated a moment. “We’re dead, Jo. I don’t really think there’s any need to worry about pride and machismo at this point.”
They’d never so much as hugged before. A slap on the back, nudge of shoulders or fist bumps, yeah, they’d done those. Hugging was weird for them both, or at least, Gideon thought it was as weird for Jordan as it was for him.
“Your mom’s a strong person,” Gideon murmured, hoping he was saying the right things. “She’ll get past this. She won’t get over you”—Jordan sobbed. Shit, shit, shit! Wrong thing to say!—“but she’ll get past it, Jo. She will. Maybe someday she’ll, er…maybe we can go check on her.”
Gideon figured he deserved props for catching himself before he told Jo maybe someday his mom would join them as ghosts. He frowned. Ghosts sounded so cheesy, like something that didn’t exist except as a TV show gimmick. He guessed it didn’t really matter at that point.
“We could go back to that little Texas town you’re always talking about hating so much,” Gideon rambled on. “Go see it, keep an eye on your mom.”
“What’s gonna happen to us?” Jordan asked in a rough voice. “I never believed in ghosts. How can we be something that doesn’t exist? What if…” He pushed out of Gideon’s hold. Excitement lit up his entire expression. “What if we aren’t dead? Or you aren’t, or I’m not? Something, I mean. What if one or both of us is in a coma somewhere and this is a totally fucked-up dream?”
Gideon almost wished it was. Well, he definitely wished they were both still alive, but being in a coma was almost as scary as being dead. He shook his head. “Jo, I didn’t dream that blast, or the pain.”
Jordan’s face crumpled for a split second then he straightened his back and tipped his chin up. “So fine. We’re dead, then. Now what? We just hang around here and haunt people? Oh.” The sneaky, troublemaking look that Gideon knew so well settled over Jordan’s features. “Oh yeah, I’m gonna haunt the fuck out of the assholes who did this!”
Gideon swung around and gestured at the point of impact on the ground, a large, scorched area. “Think he’s toast, bud.”
“Damn it!” Jordan glanced around furtively. “He’s not here, is he?”
“Nope. Just us. I saw some people go up.” He pointed at the sky. “Don’t know where that guy went.”
Jordan grunted and rubbed his eyes. They were red-rimmed, and his cheeks were wet with tears.
“You really did cry.” Gideon held up a hand when Jordan opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t tell me I’m an idiot for stating the obvious, and it wasn’t a jab at your manhood. It’s just that I’m surprised. I don’t know what we are, what we can do. Other than touch each other, and sink into the ground.” Gideon remembered something else. “One other thing. When I wanted to get to you, I thought really hard about it, then poof, there I was at your side.”
“Poof?” Jordan asked, raising his right eyebrow in a familiar look of disdain. “Did you really just say poof?”
Gideon was going to be the better man and not point out that Jordan had just bawled like a baby all over him. Besides, he knew Jordan was mostly teasing. If he was being any kind of mean at all, it was because he had broken down and cried.
Despite the ‘sensitive male’ crap Gideon had heard women wanted, every guy he knew thought crying equaled weakness. Gideon didn’t, and he didn’t care what women thought of him for the most part, not if they were looking to hook up with him. Lady bits did nothing for him and never had. Jordan raised his left eyebrow as well and Gideon took a second to remember whatever it was Jordan had asked.
“Yeah, I said poof. Get over it.” Gideon shook his head. “We’re going to argue about shit like the word poof? We’re dead, Jordan.” He’d never pussy-footed around anyone or any subject since he’d become an adult.
“I know.” Jordan ran a hand through his hair and looked past Gideon. “God.”
“Stop looking,” Gideon said with only a hint of exasperation.
“Can’t. I see Morty’s body. Fuck. His wife just had that baby…” Jordan trailed off as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what to do, Gid. I don’t know how to live—exist—like this. Why didn’t I go up? Is there no heaven? No hell?”
Gideon couldn’t help but to glance up at the sky. At least he wasn’t boiling hot anymore under the sun’s rays. “I don’t know. I’ve never been religious anyway, so you’re really asking the wrong person.”
Jordan let loose a laugh that sounded more like he was choking. His lips were curled up in a smile, which was how Gideon knew he wasn’t choking. That, and he didn’t think it was possible to choke now.
“Let’s go home, Gid.” Jordan sighed heavily and took one last look at their surroundings. Sadness seemed to leak out of his pores. “I don’t even know where that is now, but I’m hoping maybe it’s McKinton, Texas.”
Chapter Three
One of the oil field workers, a short, stocky man who smelled like he’d worked hard all day, had caught Stefan’s eye. Stefan didn’t mind the man-sweat odor. It wasn’t like he was going to have sex with the guy or anything. He just appreciated the way the man moved. Sensuously, like a human-cat hybrid or something. He moved like sex, that was it!
Stefan saw the name on the man’s credit card when he took it from his wallet to slide it into the gas pump’s card reader. Wallace W. Whitaker. Boy, someone’s mommy and
