Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(74)

Who the hell knew what the rules were? As Pachico had complained, death didn’t come with a manual.

“Look,” Rawls said after a few seconds of uneasy silence. “All I’m sayin’ is that I was outside my body, in a transparent state, watchin’ everythin’ that was happenin’ there on the ground. I heard everythin’. Saw everythin’. At least until I was dragged back into my body . . . everythin’ gets hazy after that.”

“Take us through what you saw and heard,” Zane said calmly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Mac snapped, disbelief flashing across his face. “We’re wasting our time with this shit.”

Zane shot Mac another of those quelling looks. “We were all there. There’s no harm in comparing his version to ours.”

Cosky nodded in agreement.

Well . . . hell . . . Rawls rocked back slightly in surprise. They were actually taking his story under consideration . . . maybe.

With Faith’s hand still warming his palm and fingers, he briskly recounted what he remembered from that night, a week earlier, when he’d died. He skipped telling them about the weird snake of energy that had impaled his transparent chest and pulled him back into his body. From what he remembered of the conversation back then, as they circled his splayed, still body, they’d seen the energy as a glow, or a shimmer, but nobody had mentioned that weird tentacle. If they’d seen it, sure as hell someone would have mentioned it.

After he finished, an edgy hush seized the cavern.

“What he described is pretty much what I remember,” Zane finally said. He shifted to scan Mac’s and Cosky’s faces, as though looking for confirmation.

A round of uneasy agreements lit the tense silence.

“Which doesn’t mean shit,” Mac interrupted, although a troubled expression had settled on his face. “He could have heard everything we said.”

“While unconscious?” Zane asked with raised eyebrows.

“We don’t know that he was unconscious,” Mac fired back. “But hell, even if he did step out of his body like he claims, to play voyeur on us, that has no bearing on the damn ghost he claims tailed him back.”

Rawls locked his instinctive protest down. Arguing wouldn’t convince anyone that he was sane.

“Your belief holds no weight,” Jude announced in his habitually expressionless tone. “The biitei existence is not conditional on your acceptance.”

Another thick silence fell.

Once again Zane was the one to break it. “Biitei?”

Rawls turned to Jude, but the big Arapaho had stilled and was staring at the ground, his long, graying braid dangling over his right shoulder and swaying slightly. As paranoid as he was about the whole ghost thing, he must have decided to go back to ignoring the topic under discussion.

“Ghost.” Rawls finally translated the Arapaho word.

Jude suddenly straightened. “Wolf comes.”

As distractions went, it immediately shifted everyone’s focus—although from the censorious look Zane directed at him, the ghost conversation was far from over.

“Come,” Jude said, pivoting and heading toward the back of the cavern and the rock passageway that penetrated deep into the heart of the hillside.

“What the f*ck,” Mac growled, slamming his hands down on his hips. “He could spend a few f*cking words filling us in.”

Faith beside him, Rawls weaved his way between people as he headed for Jude. He had no clue how much range that amulet had. He couldn’t afford to let his ghost protection get too far ahead. But just before he joined the gray-haired warrior, a huge body dressed in camo stepped out of the darkness behind Jude and joined the older Arapaho in the mouth of the cavern.

Wolf.

Rawls picked up his pace.

After a brief conversation with his second in command, Wolf shifted, his dark eyes landing on Rawls. He beckoned him forward. When Rawls reached him, Wolf passed him a wad of leather.

“Don’t take it off,” Wolf said flatly, and brushed past him, advancing on Cosky and Kait.

Rawls unwrapped the leather and found a small weaving attached to a leather cord. The new amulet carried the same stacked starburst pattern as Jude’s charm, but in vibrant purple and blue.

Relief whooshed through him. He slipped the thin cord over his head and lifted his T-shirt, slipping the weaving beneath it. It rasped against his skin, itchy and annoying, but at least he didn’t have to count on someone else’s shield now. With this hiixoyooniiheiht he could protect himself and Faith and everyone else for that matter.

“Does it feel . . . I don’t know . . . weird? Strange?” Faith asked him, curiosity shimmering in her eyes.

“Just itchy,” Rawls said absently. He turned to find Wolf, Mac, Zane, and Cosky in a huddle maybe ten feet behind him.

“Can I see it?” Faith asked.

Rawls tugged the weaving up by the cord, dropping it into her hands when she reached for it. Since the cord was still around his neck, she had to lean in to inspect it, until she was so close her head was tucked beneath his chin and the sweet scent of her hair tickled his nose and libido.

To distract himself, he sought out Wolf again and found the huddle breaking apart.

“Listen up,” Mac said, stepping into the center of the hub and raising his voice. “We’re moving out. Wolf, Jude, and I will lead the way. Rawls, Cosky, and Zane will bring up the rear.”