Whispers in the Dark (KGI #4)(35)

Her relief was palpable. Her entire body shook and she leaned back, resting her head against the seat. “Thank you. I was so scared. I knew I wouldn’t make it alone and I don’t know whom I can trust.”

“You can trust me.”

She nodded tiredly. “I know. I know.”

“We have a long drive. I don’t want to stop until we’re well away from here. Tell me what I need to know while I drive. I’m sure we have a lot of…questions. About each other. About this…connection. But for now, let’s put that aside so we can focus on the most important thing. Your safety.”

She nodded again and then surprised him by reaching for his hand. She laced her fingers with his and let their hands rest on the seat beside her.

“I’ve been running from them for a year,” she said quietly. “They killed my parents. They want me and my sister, Grace. But especially Grace.”

“Okay, why do they want Grace so badly?”

Shea sucked in a breath. “She can heal people. Really heal people. I can take their pain but I can’t fix them. Grace can. It was she who helped me help your friend when you were escaping.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not sure I get the difference. You take pain. You take on the wound. How is that not healing?”

She sighed and rubbed her head tiredly. “It’s different. I know it all sounds crazy, but I can draw pain away from an individual. I even seemingly absorb the wound. But I don’t really. It’s temporary. Even the pain I take is temporary because after a while, it comes back. Because I don’t heal them. I’m like a Band-Aid. A temporary fix. When it’s all said and done, the affliction remains. You know like when you were…h-hurt…”

She drifted off momentarily, her face haunted by the memory of what he’d endured.

“When you were hurt, I took your pain but I didn’t heal your injuries. You still bear the scars. You had the cuts, you bled. What I did for you was temporary. What Grace does isn’t temporary. She actually heals the person. She takes the wound or illness, siphons it away like I do with pain and it’s like they never had an injury or were sick. Like she did for Swanny. She did for him what I couldn’t do for you,” she said painfully.

If he hadn’t already been exposed to all Shea could do, he would have said bullshit. But he’d experienced firsthand that healing ability. He’d thought Shea had done it. Swanny knew it too. He knew something had saved him.

“The problem is, healing comes at a great cost to Grace, which is why she has to be so careful. It’s hard on her because she’s so tenderhearted. She can’t stand to see people suffer. She’d help them all if she could. But it would kill her. And so she tries to stay away from people as much as she can because she can’t refuse anyone.”

Nathan frowned. “Did helping Swanny hurt her? What happens exactly?”

“I wouldn’t let her help him for long. Just enough that he could move again. But yes, it hurt her. Just like I take the wound or the pain of someone I’m connected to, she takes the actual illness or injury.”

“But wait a minute, you take the injury too. I felt your pain, Shea. I could feel those cuts on you. I smelled your blood, goddamn it.”

“It’s different. I know it sounds far-fetched. Ridiculous even. In some ways I have it far better than Grace. The wounds do appear on me. I feel the pain. But it doesn’t last long. They appear and then they fade. For the time they’re present, they are very much real. I bleed, hurt, feel it as though it happened in real time, as if someone stood over me with a knife. But then they go away. With Grace, she takes on the injury or the illness, and her body processes it differently. At a much slower rate. She heals the wound itself, and so it takes her much longer to rid herself of the injury. She could die doing what she does. If she gets overloaded. If she does too much, her body could shut down and she wouldn’t recover. We simply don’t know and I’m afraid to risk her.”

“Where is she now?”

Shea’s mouth quivered and she picked up her other hand to wipe at her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. We can speak to each other. Like you and I did. But I don’t because I can pick up things through the link. I can see things. The surroundings. It’s possible I’d know where she is and I knew if I was ever caught that they’d try to get information from me in any way they could. So I closed myself off from her because I couldn’t very well give them information I didn’t have.”

Nathan’s blood ran cold. “What did they do to you, Shea?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said wearily.

“The hell it doesn’t!”

“It’s over and done with. I escaped. Now you came. I’m safe.”

“What did they do?” he ground out.

“They drugged me. They interrogated me. They wanted to know how to find Grace. I didn’t know, so I couldn’t tell them. Grace is safe. That’s all that’s important.”

Nathan swore under his breath. She wasn’t telling him the whole story. The idea of some bastard torturing her for information made him physically ill. She’d already endured far too much for him when he’d been in captivity.

“Do you know who they are?” Nathan asked. “Do you know anything about them at all?”