took hold of his body, sweeping him off balance. As he fell, he split the cord from its joining with another, and sent the live end popping free and flipping into one of the puddles.
Jim hit the flooring in a loose sprawl of limbs…which ordinarily would have just left him with some bruises on his ass and his shoulders.
But his bare hand landed in the water.
The electrical shock blared up his arm and slammed directly into his heart. As his spine jacked for the sky and his teeth locked together, his eyes flew wide and his hearing shorted out, the world receding until all he knew was the wild, consuming pain in his body.
The last image he had was of Eddie's long braid swinging wide as the guy lunged forward to help.
Vin didn't see the guy fall. But he heard the hard landing of a big body and then the scramble of boots and the shouted curses as people ran over from all directions. “Stay here,” he told Devina as he took out his cell phone.
He punched in 911 as he rushed toward the commotion, but didn't hit
His thumb hit a button and the call was made.
The workman on the ground had eyes that were fixed and unseeing on the bright blue sky overhead, and his limbs were stiff as a corpse's. The live extension cord remained in the puddle, but the man's spasms had carried him away from the source of the deadly charge.
Vin's ring was answered. “Nine-one-one, what kind of emergency is this?”
“A man's been electrocuted.” Vin dropped the phone from his mouth. “Turn off the fucking generators!” Lifting the cell back up, he said, “Job site address is Seventy-seven Rural Route one-fifty-one N. He appears to be unconscious.”
“Is someone administering CPR?”
“They will be right now.” Vin handed the phone off to Chuck the foreman and pulled guys out of the way.
Dropping to his knees, he yanked the workman's jacket open and put his head down on a muscled chest. No heartbeat and a hover over the mouth revealed no breathing, either.
Vin yanked the guy's head back, did an airway check, pinched the nose, and blew two breaths deep into those frozen lungs. Moving to the chest, he linked his hands together, positioned his palms over the guy's heart, and stiff-armed ten compressions. Two more breaths. Thirty more compressions. Two more breaths. Thirty more compressions. Two more breaths…
The color in the guy's face wasn't good and only got worse.
The ambulance took about fifteen minutes to come, although not because they weren't hauling ass. Caldwell was nearly ten miles away, and that was the kind of geography no amount of pedal-to-the-metal was going to improve. The second they arrived, the EMTs didn't waste any time getting up into the house, and they took over from Vin, doing a vital statistics check before one continued what Vin had started and the other went racing back for the gurney.
“Is he alive?” Vin asked when the workman was lifted from the floor.
He didn't get an answer because the medics were moving too fast—which maybe was a good sign. “Where are you taking him?” Vin said as he hopped off the foundation and hustled along with them.
“St. Francis. You got a name, age, anything on his medical history?”
“Chuck! Get over here—we need information.”
The foreman ran up. “Jim Heron. I don't know much more than that. Lives alone down on Pershing Lane.”
“You got an emergency contact?”
“No, he's not married or anything.”
“I'm the contact,” Vin said, taking out a card and giving it to the medic.
“Are you kin?”
“I'm his boss and all you've got at the moment.”
“Okay, someone from St. Francis will be in touch.” The medic disappeared Vin's info into his jacket and the workman was shoved into the ambulance. A split second later, the double doors were shut, and the vehicle took off with lights and sirens going.
“Is he going to be okay?”
Vin looked back at Devina. Her dark eyes were glossy with unshed tears and her hands were up around the collar of her fur coat, as if in spite of all the white mink she was freezing cold.
“I don't know.” He went over and loosely took her arm. “Chuck, I'll be right back. I'm going to take her home first.”
“You do that.” Chuck took his hard hat off and shook his head. “Damn it. Damn it to hell. He was one of the good ones.”
Chapter 5
“Nigel, you are a sod.”
Jim frowned in the darkness that surrounded him. The English voice came from over on the right, and the immediate temptation was to open his eyes, lift his head, and see what was doing.
Training overrode the impulse. Thanks to being in the military, he'd learned that when you came to and didn't know where you were, it was better to possum it until you had some intel.
Moving imperceptibly, he flattened his hands out and felt around. He was on something soft, but it was springy, like a deep-napped rug or…grass?
Inhaling deep, his nose confirmed his palms' observation. Shit, fresh grass?
In a rush, his accident at the job site came back to him—except, what the hell? Last thing he knew he'd had one hundred and twenty volts of electricity sizzling through his body—so it seemed logical to assume that if he could still string two thoughts together he must be alive and therefore in a hospital. Except as far as he knew, hospital beds were not covered in…sod.
And in the States most nurses and doctors didn't sound like British lords or call each other lawns.
Jim opened his eyes. The sky overhead was dappled with cotton-puff clouds, and though there was no sun to see, the glow was all summer Sunday—not just bright and stormless, but relaxing, as if there were nothing urgent to do, nothing to worry about.
He looked over to the voices…and decided he was dead.
In the shade of a castle's great stone walls, four guys with croquet mallets were standing around a bunch of wickets and colored balls. The quartet was dressed in whites, and one had a pipe and another a pair of round, rose-tinted glasses. The third had his hand on the head of an Irish wolfhound. Number four had his arms crossed over his chest and an expression like he was bored. Jim sat up. “Where the hell am I?”
The blond who was lining up his shot glared over and talked around his pipe. Which made his accent even more high brow. “One moment, if you please.”
“I say you keep talking,” his cross-armed, dark-haired buddy muttered—in the same dry voice that had woken Jim up. “He's cheating anyway.”
“I knew you would come around,” Round Glasses chirped in Jim's direction. “I knew it! Welcome!”
“Ah, you're awake,” the one next to the wolfhound chimed in. “How lovely to meet you.”
Goddamn, they were all good-looking, with the no-care-in-the-world vibe that resulted from not just being rich, but coming from generations of wealth.
“Are we done with the chatter, lads?” Pipe Guy, who was evidently named Nigel, looked around. “I should like some silence.”
“Then why don't you stop telling us what to do?” the dark-haired one said.
“Pop off, Colin.”
With that, the pipe was shifted around to the other side of the mouth, the shot was taken with a crack, and a red-striped ball rolled through a pair of wickets and struck a blue one.
The blond smiled like the prince he no doubt was. “Now it's time for tea.” He glanced over and met Jim's
