suddenly parched and raw.
Neil’s lips thinned in regret. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. With no relatives to contest it—”
“But what about his sister?”
“Sister? Farrow has no living relatives. And according to his file, he’s never had any siblings.”
“No, that’s not right,” I said, reopening the file and tearing through the pages. “He had a sister that night.”
“You saw her?” Neil’s voice was filled with hope. He didn’t want Reyes to die any more than I did.
Knowing there would be nothing about his sister in the file, I stopped and closed it again. “No,” I said, trying not to let disappointment swallow me whole. “The landlady told me.”
With a disappointed sigh, Neil collapsed into the chair beside me. “She must have been mistaken.”
As I drove to the Guardian Long-Term Care Facility in Santa Fe, where they were keeping Reyes, my head swam in a sea of information, trying to fit each piece into neat little folders, to organize what I’d learned. Reyes had continued his education, and one year after his conviction, he’d received a degree in criminology. Then, surprisingly, he’d switched to computers. He had a master’s in computer information systems. He’d bettered himself. He would have been a productive, taxpaying member of society when he got out.
Yet now they were going to kill him. Neil had explained that the only way to stop the state would be to get an injunction, but I’d have to have a damned good reason. If I could just find his sister …
As I picked up my phone to call Cookie, it rang with her personal ringtone, Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
I flipped it open, and Cookie asked, “Well?”
“He’s in a coma.”
“No stinkin’ way.”
“Stinkin’ way. And they’re going to take him off life support in three days, Cook. What am I going to do?” The emotions I’d held at bay in Neil’s office threatened to break free. I fought hard to tamp them down with the deep- breathing techniques I’d learned on my
“What
“I need to find Reyes’s sister. She’s really the only one who can stop this. Not that I’m giving up. I’ll blackmail Uncle Bob. Maybe he can do something.” I was not going to lose Reyes without a fight. Finding him after all these years … there had to be a reason.
“Blackmail is good,” she said.
The world turned green as I pulled my car into a parking lot that resembled an English garden. Before hanging up, I gave Cookie yet another job. According to the article I’d read the night before, Reyes had spent three months at Yucca High. Maybe his sister did, too. I needed those transcripts.
Cookie went to work on the transcripts as I headed inside the gorgeous health-care facility. This was certainly better than the prison infirmary. I figured they couldn’t have cared for a comatose patient in prison, so they moved him here. Neil had called ahead and told the corrections officer watching Reyes that I would be paying him a visit.
When I walked down the hall to the nurses’ station, the officer stood in an alcove off the main hallway, flirting with an RN. I couldn’t blame him. Watching a comatose prisoner could hardly be exciting. And flirting was fun.
He straightened when I approached, and the RN hastened off to see to her duties. “Ma’am,” he said, tipping an invisible hat. “You must be Ms. Davidson.”
“I am. I guess Mr. Gossett got ahold of you.”
“He did, indeed. Our boy’s in there,” he said, gesturing to a sliding-glass door across the hall with a pale blue curtain covering the opening.
A little surprised the officer didn’t ask for an ID, I headed toward the door. Well, most of me headed for the door. My boots were cemented to the floor. What would I find when I went in? Would he look the same? Would he have changed much in the ten years since the mug shot had been taken? In the twelve years since I’d seen him? Would he have the look of prison about him? The hardness that seemed to saturate people who’d done such a substantial amount of time behind bars?
The officer seemed to recognize my distress. “It’s not bad,” he said, sympathy softening his voice. “He has a breathing tube. That’s probably the worst of it.”
“Do you know him personally?”
“Yes, ma’am. I asked for this duty. Farrow saved my life once during a prison riot. I wouldn’t be standing here today if not for him. Felt like the least I could do, you know?”
My throat tightened and I wanted to ask him more, but something was suddenly pulling me toward Reyes’s room, like the gravity in that one spot had just increased exponentially. I finally took a step, and the officer tipped his invisible hat again and strolled away toward the coffee machine.
When I crossed the threshold, I scanned the area, just in case he was in the room incorporeally. I was a little disappointed when he wasn’t. He did incorporeal well.
Then I glanced at the bed. He lay there, Reyes Farrow, solid and real, his dark hair and skin a bronze shadow against the white sheets. Gravity took hold again; only this time, it was centered on him as I stepped closer, walked to the edge of the bed, and saw utter perfection for the second time in my life.
A breathing tube had been inserted into his trachea, and he had a bandage wrapped around his head. His mussed hair, thick and dark, swept over the bandage and brushed his brow. Three days’ worth of stubble framed his strong jaw, and his lashes, long and thick, cast shadows across his cheeks. And then my gaze landed on his mouth, sensual and sculpted and impossible to forget.
The ventilation machine made the only sound in the room. No beeps of a heart monitor, though one had been hooked up, its lines and numbers in a constant state of flux. I stepped closer, brushed a hip against his arm that lay beside him. The sleeves of the pale blue hospital gown were short and afforded a generous view of sinewy muscles, hard and lean even in slumber. He had a tattoo that flowed along his tanned biceps, lending to its beauty and fluidity. A tribal work of art with graceful lines and sensual curves, lines and curves that had meaning. I’d seen them before. They were ancient, as old as time. And important. But why?
My heart and mind were having difficulty grasping the fact that it was truly Reyes Farrow in the bed, lying there, vulnerable and powerful at once. My knees had liquefied, and I wondered how long I’d be able to stand in his presence without falling. After all this time, he seemed even more surreal than in my dreams. More beautiful than in my fantasies.
His wide chest rose and fell to the rhythm of the machine. I ran my fingertips along a shoulder that scalded. A quick glance at the chart hanging from the end of his bed confirmed his temp to be a perfect 98.6, yet his heat was as real as if I were standing in front of a furnace.
Even at rest he looked wild and untamed, something impossible to domesticate, to restrain for very long. Enduring the heat of his touch, I placed a hand in his and leaned over him.
“Reyes Farrow,” I said, my voice cracking with emotion, “please wake up.” I didn’t care what the state said; Reyes was no more dead than I was. How could they even consider taking him off life support? “They are going to turn this machine off if you don’t. Do you understand? Can you hear me? We have three days.”
I glanced around the room, hoping he’d show up in another form. I still didn’t know exactly what he was, but he was something more than human. I knew that now beyond a shadow of a doubt. I had to find his sister. I had to put a stop to this.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered. But before I could leave, I lowered my head and put my mouth on his. The kiss scalded my lips, but I stayed for several miraculous heartbeats, relishing the feel of his mouth beneath mine.
I tried to rise, to end the kiss, but images started coming at me in a rush. I began to remember our nights over the past month. His hands gripping my hips, my legs wrapped around him as if holding on for dear life as he pushed inside, sending waves of unimaginable pleasure crashing into me. I remembered the kiss in Cookie’s office, how he guided my hand, how he held me when my knees gave beneath my weight. Then I remembered that night so long ago. When his father hit him, when he lost consciousness for that split second. I remembered the look in his eyes when he snapped back. The anger. Directed not at his father but at me! He had looked at me. For a split second, he saw me and anger washed over him.
Then I remembered a cup at my mouth, a warm towel at my head, an arm holding me in place as I swam back to reality, wondering where my bones had run off to.
