“You’re a detective? That’s strange. My partner is a private investigator and knows most of the local detectives. I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.”
Well, fuck me. That’s what I get for trying to make myself sound more important than I am.
“Oh, yeah, I just recently moved to this city, so I haven’t had a chance to meet many people yet.”
As I mumbled out my answer, I clenched my hands around my phone. Unlike a paperback book, which could bend, the little device couldn’t withstand my manhandling. I nearly snapped the damn thing in half before I realized what I was doing and shoved it in my pocket.
Newt gave me that strange look again, his blues eyes scanning me up and down, and I actually found myself taking a step back.
How was this little nurse managing to intimidate me?
He was nearly a foot shorter than me, and I could probably bench press him. I’d spent years fighting wars on foreign soil and taken more lives than I cared to count—though, I couldcount them if I wanted, I knew the face of every life I’d ended—and yet, in this moment it was clear I did not hold the authority. This hospital was Newt’s domain, and only he could decide if I was worthy to be here.
Whatever he saw in me at that moment must have passed his silent test, because after staring at me for a moment, Newt’s strange gaze turned into a bright smile.
“Well then, welcome to our city. I hope you’ll be back to volunteer more. The kids seemed to like you, and you’re the first person to get any sort of response out of our John Doe here, so I think he likes you, too.”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” My gaze trailed back to the man lying in the bed, locked in an unnatural sleep that he couldn’t wake up from. “I’ll definitely be back.”
CHAPTER 4
Auggie
My own dreamswere unrestful that night. This was nothing new. I rarely slept well at night.
Falling asleep was never the problem. Ever since boot camp, the ability to lie down and immediately drop into REM had been drilled into me.
No, falling asleep wasn’t the problem. Staying asleep, however, was a different issue.
There were always dreams. Sometimes, it was the faces of the people I’d killed during my years of service; sometimes it was the fellow soldiers I’d lost along the way. Sometimes, it was the “what ifs” that haunted me.
What if I’d reacted sooner and pulled my companion away from that IED faster?
What if the intel was wrong, and the target I’d killed had actually been innocent?
It was so reoccurring, I could almost predict what I was going to dream even before going to sleep.
Tonight, however, was different. There were no soldiers, no dusty war zones, no dead victims crying out for me.
Instead, there was just a hospital room, and a beeping machine counting each heartbeat of the body lying still on the bed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I reached out for the John Doe, just intending to touch their shoulder, when I realized I was holding a bag. It wasn’t the bag I usually carried books in. I’d never even seen it before. Made from purple velvet with a golden drawstring, it looked like it had been stitched together by hand. Not something I would ever own, yet somehow I still recognized it.
It was a bag of fairy dust.
If just one pinch could make children fly, then surely a whole bag could help the John Doe rise up off the hospital bed.
Quickly opening the bag, I turned it upside down to dump the contents over the man’s unconscious face, but it was empty. There wasn’t a single speck of dust to be found.
Beep. Beep... Beep...
The heart rate on the machines slowed down, each beat taking longer than the last.
“No, wait.”
I gripped the John Doe’s shoulder, the only part of him that wasn’t taken up by injuries or tubes, but even under my hand I could feel him growing colder.