Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(33)

“It’s through her Arapaho blood that she’s able to heal.” He dropped the words slowly and deliberately into the conversation and let them just hang there, echoing in the silent room.

It took a second for his meaning to register. “What did you say? Surely you don’t mean . . .”

He had to be teasing her, but . . . the expression on his face was all too serious. Faith took a cautious step back, which was silly since the kitchen counter still separated them. “Heal?”

“Kait has the ability to heal with her hands. It doesn’t work all the time—maybe thirty percent—but when it does work, she can do some pretty incredible things.”

“Thirty percent of the time . . .” Faith repeated. How convenient.

Apparently Kait’s healing ability came with an escape clause. If the patient wasn’t miraculously healed after Kait’s laying on of hands—well, heck, she’d just claim they fell into the seventy percent that couldn’t be treated. What an ingenious excuse for failing.

Disappointment struck. She’d gotten to know the other woman fairly well over the past five days, even liked her. It burned to find Kait was capable of such dishonesty and callousness. Which just went to show how terrible she was at reading people.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Rawls said.

“I sincerely doubt it.” Faith’s response emerged crisper than she’d intended.

“You’re wonderin’ how I—a man of science, a man who went through four years of medical school, and three years of surgical residency—could believe in something as unsubstantiated as metaphysical healing.”

Okay . . . he did know what she was thinking. But that didn’t make him a mind reader, any more than Kait was a “metaphysical healer.” He was just skilled at reading body language and facial expressions. Obviously, Kait was skilled at something else entirely.

“I believe in her ability because I’ve seen her heal people,” he said, his voice flat, certain.

Faith paused, feeling her way carefully. She didn’t want to argue with him—but seriously—metaphysical healing?

Give me a break.

“My understanding is that such healings are staged, and the person being healed isn’t actually sick,” she offered cautiously, although really, how he’d managed to fall for something so predictable was both a surprise and a disappointment. “So while the session looks authentic—”

“One of the people was me,” he broke in, lifting a challenging eyebrow.

Okay, that did change things considerably. She scrambled for another explanation. “The placebo effect can be quite powerful. If you expected her touch to heal you, perhaps your body and mind worked in concert to manifest the expected results.”

His lips twisted, but the expression on his face looked more haunted than amused. “I was dead at the time. Lights out. So my mind wasn’t exactly orderin’ my body about.”

“Dead.” The word erupted from Faith on a startled breath. “I don’t believe it. You’re here. You couldn’t have—” She mentally backed up and sought a more compassionate approach. He’d obviously undergone something traumatic, and convinced himself Kait had saved him.

“If you were unconscious, you couldn’t have seen what actually happened.”

The strangest stillness gripped him, he followed it up with a feigned casual shrug.

“True enough. I didn’t see what happened. I was out of it. You, however, saw every minute of it.” He cocked his head and watched her closely. “So tell me, sweetheart, was Kait fakin’ it? Was Cosky?”

“What are you talking about?” Faith whispered, but she suspected she already knew. Something about that moonlit night in the forest had been needling her.

His long, lean, absolutely still body stretched across the ground. Cosky and Kait kneeling beside him, their hands pressed against his motionless chest. The anguish on Zane and Mac’s faces. The ethereal play of moonlight silvering his glowing, frozen form.

He’d been glowing . . . so had Kait and Cosky.

He shook his head and tsked her. “Come on, darlin’, don’t play dumb on me now. Why don’t you tell me what you saw in the woods that night?”

There was an equal measure of curiosity and challenge in the blue eyes locked on her face.

Faith swallowed hard, regrouping. “You’re saying you were dead? That Kait healed you and brought you back to life?”

“In a nutshell.” He shuffled his shoulders and frowned slightly. “Although I hear Cosky had somethin’ to do with it too.”

“But if you were unconscious, you don’t know what happened.”

“I reckon I remember enough. Like gettin’ shot. Like bleedin’ out. I remember that.” The laconic, lazy drawl didn’t match the tight look in his eyes, or the tension on his face.

Shot . . . bleeding out . . .

He had been drenched in blood, lying there so still . . . she’d been certain he’d been killed.

“Kait, Cosky, and Zane said you were just stunned. That your protective vest caught the bullets,” she repeated their explanation slowly, even as doubt swelled in her mind. She’d sensed something odd in their account, had been puzzling over it for days.

He tilted his head and considered her, curiosity eating at the tension on his face. “How’d they explain the blood?”