Page 79 of Following Their Heart

“Yeah,” I say. Something new, all right.

Chapter 29

Cora

Night 12: Doc

The lodge isunusually quiet tonight. Dinner has been consumed and cleaned up, we’ve had our nightly meeting, and now I’m sitting on the floor at Doc’s feet. I’m leaning on his leg while he plays his fancy guitar, and it’s just the two of us.

Shep is away, taking the livestock to the nearest survivor that can handle them. Grim is in his camper. He’s always quiet and distant with the others, but tonight, he was quiet and distant with me, too. I think what he and Doc did today—giving life to all those birds—affected him deeply. He needs space to process his feelings.

Rev, Scrap, and Brawn have all made themselves scarce. They’re probably off smoking and talking somewhere. Or maybe they’re cleaning weapons or making preparations for our trip. Who knows?

All I know is I’m emotionally wrung out and glad for the quiet. Doc’s trilling Latin-style music is the perfect backdrop for me to reflect on the past couple days.

There’s a hole in my heart because Jud is gone. He’s not away like Shep is. He’s not running an errand. He won’t be returning soon. Jud was taken. He was brought low by the enemy, and he might even be dead. Rev doesn’t think so, but he can’t guarantee it. The Working hasn’t shown him for sure. All it’s shown him is the seven of us traveling south. To Texas.

It’s hard to trust when there are so many unknowns.

I’m also aching for Grim. Doc told me all about their day.Grim was reluctant to pair his Gift with Doc’s. But he bravely cooperated. Initially, raising the birds from the dead was a delight, a surprise. But as they worked, Grim’s excitement became overshadowed by something darker. “He has demons,” Doc said. “Like all of us. Something about what we did today stirred up things he’d let settle.”

All I can do is hope Grim is able to work it through and come out the other side stronger, like his Gift.

Grim and Doc weren’t the only ones who pushed their Gifts to new heights today. Scrap learned he can extend the range of a radio with hardly a thought, charge batteries with a touch, and even get a camera to operate without any batteries inside. Right now, he’s working on viewing the camera recordings with his mind’s eye. “I’m picturing, like, a bank of monitors,” he told me while I sat beside Doc at dinner. “I can look at them all at once or sort of scroll through them. It’s weird. It sounds chaotic, but it’s not. It’s like I can monitor the whole perimeter at once and know the second anything moves out there.”

While practicing this skill today, he saw a herd of elk meander through the brush near the spot where I first encountered Jud and Grim. He also spotted a bear cub that had wandered away from its mother and a pack of coyotes relaxing by the river. Nature seems to have forgotten about the insult Raptor dealt to the area’s entire bird population. And even better, no humans are out there. Scrap is sure of it, and I trust him. I trust his Gift, and I let him know with a post-dinner cuddle on the couch how proud I am that he pushed himself today.

Brawn pushed himself, too. He went with Rev to scout the chopper crash out on the east face of the mountain. They found four dead men inside the burned-out wreck and no signs of any survivors. The chopper’s frame had been so burned and twisted that to inspect the interior, Brawn had to become a human jaws-of-life. But when the sharp edges tore his gloves and his skin, he discovered a whole new aspect of his Gift. He kept on widening the opening…with his mind.

“You should’a seen the look on the big guy’s face,” Rev said as he told the story over dinner. “I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him. It was somethin’. Anyway, once we got in, we could count the corpses. Four. One of ’em had a duffel bag with a tag on it that read‘Jammer.’Must’ve been the one causing all the equipment to fail. No sign of Raptor.”

Fingers begin carding through my hair. My eyes close as pleasant tingles cascade over my scalp. The room is quiet now. Doc has stopped playing, and his guitar rests against the chair. His thigh warms my cheek, and his touch warms my soul.

“You’re awfully quiet down there on that hard floor. Why don’t you come up here and tell me what’s on your mind,chér?”

I prop my chin on his thigh and gaze up at him. He’s so golden and gorgeous. With that jawline and those cheekbones, he could be a model. I never thought a man like him would ever look twice at me, but Doc adores me. It’s written all over his face.

Within the frame of his trimmed beard, his lips tilt in a smile. His eyelids lower in this sleepy, sexy way that makes me melt. When he extends his hand, I take it and let him tug me onto his lap.

“There, now. Ain’t that more comfortable?”

I answer by snuggling into him. He’s warm and safe and comforting. This is the best I’ve felt all day.

“How’s your chest?” he asks, rubbing circles on my back.

“Fine.” I’d actually forgotten about it. Doc cleaned and bandaged it for me, deciding it didn’t need stitches. Ibuprofen took care of the pain. A beer at dinner might have helped a little bit, too.

“That’s good,chér.” He quietly strokes my hair for a while. Then, with a kiss on my temple, he says, “What’s on your mind? You look sad tonight.”

I am sad. Missing Jud goes without saying. Instead, I bring up the other thing heavy on my heart. “You and Grim raised those birds from the dead today.”

He nods but stays quiet.

“That’s kind of a big deal,” I say.

“It is,” he agrees.

“Do you…think what you two did today…would work on people?”

---