Back to Life

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At the moment, Skye stood on a paved path along the cemetery’s steep hillside that faced the Pacific below. She had arrived early with the rest of the K-9 unit, ostensibly to help keep order among the masses of people attending the interment. Members of law enforcement departments from across the country filed in to pay their respects to the officer killed in the line of duty. The parade of vehicles had begun early that morning along the city’s thoroughfares and hadn’t stopped, though the funeral was scheduled to begin in half an hour.

The Angeles Beach Police Department was on alert, observing attendees. Killers often came to their victims’ funerals. Even cop killers.

Jerome Marinaro might be hiding in plain sight, in a uniform or suit. The best way to penetrate a good disguise would be for one of the dogs to identify him by scent.

Since Bella had been the only dog at the scene that day, she had an edge over the others.

“Lotta people,” said Ken Vesco, who stood beside Skye holding his German shepherd’s leash. Like Skye, he watched the crowd enter through the gates at the cemetery’s entrance and spread out over the hillside.

“Sure are,” Skye agreed.

A lot of living souls, but they weren’t the only people Skye was thinking about. Below green, manicured grass lined with stone markers were a lot of deceased people. This was the main Angeles Beach cemetery, and it was huge. Buildings held crypts containing multiple layers of decedents’ remains, often grouped in families with spaces reserved for those to follow.

Skye inhaled slowly, sadly. She was far from a stranger to death and its ultimate inevitability, but despite all her childhood training with family members and others who understood, she still felt every loss personally—even when she was unable to do more than assist a worthy, dying person to the best of the other side. Especially then.

Her decisions were critical, though. They were irrevocable and based on immediate impressions of the person at the crossroads between life and death. Often, she chose to restore life. Sometimes, she didn’t.

Too bad the ancient legends were only partly true. Some form of existence lay on the other side, of course, but not exactly the exalted Valhalla of stories—or so today’s Valkyrie descendants believed.

Skye’s ancestresses may have chosen which valiant soldiers would live and which would cross over, but descriptions of what Valkyries in those days looked like, how the dead were treated in the halls of Valhalla and why…The variety and inconsistency of tales proved that no one who knew the truth had disclosed it to the living—or, if they had, it had not been glamorous enough to be passed down through time.

As she was growing up, Skye’s family and friends often discussed the legends, but despite their important role in end-of-life decisions, no one could describe the afterlife for certain. No one who completed their crossing of the rainbow bridge, with or without assistance, ever came back to tell. But today’s descendants were sure there was a pleasant plane of existence to look forward to on the other side.

Some people did not deserve to be there. A fortunate few of them had their forevers saved by being assisted across the bridge by a Valkyrie descendant who sensed something salvageable within them. The rest wound up elsewhere, the equivalent of purgatory or hell—someplace too awful to describe.

Maybe if she knew for certain, it would make her chosen path easier, give her even more hope to pass along to those she helped to die.

Skye realized that she had been craning her neck, watching for the other person she had helped that day…really helped.

Almost as if he had heard her, Officer Trevor Owens emerged from the crowd just below and walked slowly up the path, past the open grave, toward where she stood.

He wore a dress uniform, and despite the ocean breeze, the hillside climb was obviously a challenge for the still-recuperating man. Skye couldn’t help admiring him. Despite the effort it obviously cost, he didn’t falter, didn’t miss a step.

Until he looked straight at her. He stopped, the grim smile on his face suddenly replaced with no expression at all. It was as if the sight of her meant nothing to him.

Why did that make Skye feel so sad? There was nothing between them. He didn’t owe her a smile or anything else. She had chosen to save him. It had been her decision for reasons of her own—reasons she didn’t fully understand herself. But whatever the rationale, he could never know what had actually happened.

“Officer Owens,” shouted a well-dressed woman with a microphone in her hand. Her call started a frenzy of reporters vying for Trevor’s attention. They all wanted a sound bite from him. Skye recognized some of the area’s most famed news commentators, including Adrian Dellos, who was known for his criticisms of the ABPD.

Trevor stopped suddenly and turned to face the reporters who clamored to be noticed. With his back toward Skye and her K-9 unit, he said in a voice so low that Skye barely heard it, “Sorry, but no comment, at least not today. We’re here to celebrate the life of a hero whose life was cut short. The ceremony today will speak for itself.”

That was probably the sound bite they were panting for.

But Skye found it appropriate. Admirable. And a little annoying. She didn’t want to admire anything about the man, or do anything else that might make her feel closer to him. If that happened, she would worry more about his recognizing what she was and what she had done. Nevertheless, she found herself watching his every move. Something about him reminded her not only of being alive, but of being very alive—of wanting to participate in all life had to offer and of longing to do something about how her body tingled just thinking about him.

Trevor turned then, ignoring further calls for his attention, and soon reached her.

“Hello, Skye,” he said. “Hell of a day, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” She tried to find the right words of sympathy for him, for his whole SWAT team, but by then he was being greeted by the other K-9 officers.

“Good to see you,” said Tritt. “When are you back on duty?”

“Not soon enough,” Trevor said. “But I know what you guys are doing here. Any indication from your partners that Marinaro’s present?”

He looked down at Bella and then up at Skye.

“Nothing yet,” Skye said. “But we’ll start patrolling when everyone’s taken their places. If he’s around, Bella will pick up his scent.

“Yes, I bet she will,” Trevor said as Skye knelt beside Bella and gave her a big hug.

Why the hell did Trevor suddenly feel jealous of that dark dog with her tongue hanging out of her mouth? It surely wasn’t because he could have started panting over the woman hugging the animal.

The woman filled out her dress uniform well. The thing shouldn’t look sexy on her, but it did. Hell, everything probably looked sexy on her.

She stood again, glanced toward him, then looked quickly away, as if the activity along the hillside had once again captured all of her attention.

Maybe the idea germinating in his head was a bad one. He was considering teaming up with Skye after he was healed enough to do his job—his way. Her dog partner might have the best chance of ID’ing Marinaro. But right now, all he should be thinking about was Wes being laid to rest.

A small band consisting of three bagpipers and a drummer marched into place near the grave site below. They played a sad, slow rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Trevor steeled himself against an onrush of grief, then stared into the glistening, tear-filled blue eyes of Skye Rydell as she turned slowly, so slowly that she barely seemed to move—and looked at him.

Everything around him stopped. He was aware only of her. Her lovely, sad eyes watching him.

The world seemed to dissolve into a shimmering mistiness around him. It was as if he were asleep, dreaming, back in the warehouse where he had felt the bullet that penetrated his neck.

He again saw Wes Danver go down as his scream of pain abruptly stopped. Trevor felt himself shout, go after Wes—and get shot, too. Saw himself in some shimmering afterlife with Wes surrounded by light. He’d forgotten that at first, but now it had come back to him.

Had he seen Wes continue on, over a bridge? Toward the light? Was there a slender, sad woman walking with him?

No way. It wasn’t possible. But he had seen those sad blue eyes of Skye Rydell’s crying over him as he lay dying. He was certain of that. But had she really insisted that he live, drawn him back, away from that mist, away from Wes and the bridge?

“Hey, Owens, you okay?”

The sharp voice of Tritt penetrated Trevor’s thoughts, bursting them as quickly as a blade stabbed into a balloon.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “Just don’t like funerals, especially ones for friends.” He looked abashedly toward Tritt.

“Look, you had a rough time. You coulda died, too. Maybe you ought to sit down for a while.”

“I’m fine,” Trevor insisted as Ken Vesco made his way over.

“Like Tritt said, sit down,” he ordered. “Before you fall down.”

Interesting that they seemed to give a damn about how he was doing, but Skye Rydell, who’d even visited him in the hospital, wasn’t looking his way at all.

Of course, she’d come because he’d had Greg Blanding ask her. Greg was down below a little ways, standing on a grassy area with a bunch of other guys from their SWAT team.

Trevor should head there. Hang out with his real teammates. Get away from the dogs and their handlers.

Skye still wasn’t looking at him. She seemed tense, and her shoulders were shaking as she stared toward the mass of funeral attendees below.

A loudspeaker began to blare the service. The minister praised Wes, his courage, his life…and expressed great sorrow over his death.

Trevor didn’t consider himself an emotional sort, but he felt his eyes mist, and he blinked. Damn! Now he really needed to get down the hill to his team.

But Skye was openly sobbing now. None of her own compatriots seemed to notice, or if they did they gave her no solace. At least she had her dog, who obviously sensed her grief. Bella sat so close to Skye’s legs, nuzzling her, that she seemed attached.

It wasn’t his job, but even so, Trevor drew closer to Skye. “You okay?” he whispered.

She nodded curtly, but as he repositioned himself at the side opposite Bella, he saw tears still streaming down her face.

Most women he’d seen crying got all red and puffy.

So how could Skye Rydell look so damned beautiful with the wetness bathing her skin, her blue eyes half shut in pain?

Almost instinctively, Trevor put his arm around her.

And just as instinctively, she leaned into him, put her head on his chest and shook as she wept even more.

Had she known Wes that well? Or was it the idea of a funeral? A cop’s funeral? Would she have cried this way if he, too, had died?

He tightened his arms around her. Skye pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. As he watched, she pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her face as she bent to hug her dog. She stood and watched stoically as the funeral continued.

Trevor wanted to keep holding her. Tight. No matter that he wasn’t at all touchy-feely. He found her hot, but there was nothing sexual about this feeling of connection. Was there?

Enough of this. “See you later,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve got to be with my team.”

“Of course.” The glance she gave him seemed poised now. Cool and remote, despite the tears still illuminating her eyes. “Thanks for your support, but I’m fine. I just hate funerals.”

“Who doesn’t?” He made himself hurry away at last, edging past tightly packed people as he headed downward.

His team greeted him silently, with nods and frowns that asked if he was okay. He gave them a thumbs-up and went to stand beside Greg Blanding.

Soon, the twenty-one-gun salute signaled the end of the funeral.

When the crowd began to disperse, Trevor couldn’t help glancing back up the hill, toward where the K-9 unit had stood. They, too, had scattered, probably allowing their dogs to meander through the throngs, seeing if they picked up the scents of any interesting suspects.