He was standing.
Amazing. Impossible. On the first night she had come upon him lying sprawled on the narrow sidewalk, his back braced against steel girders, his long legs stretched out onto the pavement. The moment she’d reached his side, he’d expelled his last breath and vanished into the mist, leaving her stunned, horrified, and concluding she was on the fringe of some kind of breakdown. Yesterday’s experience had been much the same—except that it had lasted longer somehow. Neither episode had made any sense.
And tonight he stood. Actually, he was leaning back against a steel truss. As before, his hands were wrapped around his middle. But what made this moment equally tragic, or perhaps even more so, was that this time the terrible flow of blood seeping from between his fingers had only begun.
“It’s me.” She cleared her throat, disgusted with herself because she thought her voice sounded unsure and shaky. “Please don’t disappear. I think I know the drill now. I’m not supposed to touch you, right?”
“Rachel.”
She almost dropped her bag, nearly lost all courage and ran. Her name was the last thing she’d been expecting to hear. How did he know it?
“Who are you?” she forced out.
“Rachel…”
The agony and concern in his voice tore at her heart, even as his use of her name unnerved her. No, she decided firmly, he had to be delirious and was confusing her with someone else called Rachel. But his pain-glazed eyes focused on her, and his expression, his entire being, reflected that of a man who knew the end was near…a man who wanted to go while gazing at the one thing he valued most in life. But how could that be?
“Ah…jeez. It hurts, Bright Eyes. Hurts bad.”
The endearment had her insides doing an unfamiliar flip-flop; nevertheless, she didn’t let it intrude on her determination to help—and to get more of her questions answered. “I know it does. I’m a doctor. Maybe I can—”
“Don’t touch!” he warned, anxiety overriding his pain. But the expenditure of energy proved costly and he began sliding to the ground. “Just…don’t touch.”
Barely holding back a cry of despair, Rachel followed him down, landing hard on her knees. She set her bag beside her. “All right, all right! I won’t touch.” But it meant restraining everything she was, everything she had trained to be, particularly when he looked so tormented. “Look, if you can feel pain, there has to be something I can do.”
“Do…yes. I know…I know you have to get out of here, Rachel. If they find out you know me, I think they might…”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
Instead of answering, he screwed his face into a tight grimace as once again pain racked his body. Rachel bit hard on her lower lip. Stomach wounds were ugly business, and his challenged her resolve to honor his request.
“Please,” she said, leaning as close as she dared without risking accidental contact. “Help me to understand this?”
“N-not sure I get it myself.”
“At least tell me your name?”
This time he was the one who looked shocked. “You don’t…?” He swore. “Joe. Joe Becket. Say it, Bright Eyes. I need to hear you say it…one more time.”
He sounded so desperate, Rachel never considered refusing him. “Joe,” she whispered. But his aggrieved expression told her that he knew the name meant nothing to her.
A sound broke from his lips. It may have been an attempt at a bitter laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. “You’re not getting it at all, are you? Listen…I’ve figured out this much. You can’t go back.”
“Back where?”
“Leave. Tonight. Now. You can’t…I can’t let you meet…Damn.”
“Who? Meet who, Joe?”
“No good. It’ll only put your own life in danger. I’m not going to let that happen, understand? I’m willing…willing to lose it all, the memory of you…of us, if it means…”
“Hush now.” He wasn’t making any sense, and he was using up precious strength. “Try to lie still. Let me think.”
He rocked his head back and forth. “No. Won’t go like this. Not with you looking at me as though I was some stranger.” The pain had to be excruciating, yet he struggled to sit up. Then he reached for her. “Once more. I have to just once more….”
As soon as she understood what he meant to do, Rachel tried to back away from him. But it was too late.
She felt his touch, a ghostly caress of air against her cheek. Fleeting and eerily cold as it was, it left her feeling a burning awareness she knew she didn’t dare examine too closely.
Then he began to disappear.
CHAPTER TWO
“No!” Rachel lurched forward—to do what, she didn’t know since on some level she understood that any action she took would be pointless—and as expected, he vanished before her eyes.
She balanced herself by resting her palms on the cement, felt something warm and wet, and inspected her hands. They were smeared with blood. Real blood. Closing her hands into fists, she searched through the mist swirling around her. “I don’t understand this! Do you hear me? I don’t understand.”
As if in reply, Rachel found herself illuminated by a pair of fast-approaching, blinding lights. Through the din of a roaring engine a horn blasted her. Certain the wide-bodied beast was broad enough to sweep her up in its path, she spun around and pressed herself flat against the steel beams where Joe Becket had reclined only moments ago.
The eighteen-wheeler raced by. Although it didn’t come close enough to hurt her, she decided it had added enough impact to the moment to shock a decade or two off her lifespan.
With her heart thudding in her throat, chest and head, she gulped for air. Brilliant place to catch your breath, Gentry, she chastised herself. Keep it up and you’ll become a ghost yourself.
It was the first time she’d admitted to herself what she might be dealing with, and the thought had her shaking her head in instant rejection. She was a sensible, logical person, she reminded herself, an educated professional. She’d never had cause to believe in the possibility, let alone the plausibility, of such things in all her twenty-nine years. Even while she’d been gauging the chances of succeeding in this encounter, she hadn’t allowed herself to put a label on it. Him.
Then she inspected her hands. To reassure herself, since she’d never heard anything about ghosts bleeding. Only, the blood was gone. Except for a few grains of street grit stuck to her skin, her palms and the pads of each finger were clean.
“Who are you?” Rachel murmured, staring at her hands before gazing up into the night. “Who are you?”
She didn’t get a reply. At least he was going back to being consistent, she thought, grasping at whatever seed of sanity she could. But he did have a name. It was a start, she decided, pushing herself to her feet and collecting her bag.
For the rest of the crossing she found herself constantly looking over her shoulder, torn between wishing she would see him again and being relieved when he didn’t reappear. Recurring visions of some past tragedy were one thing—if that was indeed what she was dealing with, and it was the one explanation that made the most sense at this point—but being warned that she could be in danger put a flaw in that theory, didn’t it?
How had he learned her name? And what about the intimate way he’d spoken to her? Bright Eyes. She’d received enough compliments about her brown eyes to accept that people thought they were her best feature. She’d attributed that to having a fast, inquisitive mind and a clear conscience. Right now, however, she was less than