Back to Life. Linda O. Johnston

often gotten within twenty feet of each other. In Angeles Beach, the SWAT team trained alone.

      His features were strong and masculine—so appealing that she had an urge to stroke his slack cheek.

      Get real, Rydell. She had work to do here. Fast.

      As she continued to grasp Owens’s limp hand, a sensation pulsed through her, startling her. There was something this officer had left to accomplish—needed to accomplish.

      She had felt it in the other injured people whose lives she had determined to save. It was an important factor in her split-second decisions.

      Those she had saved had never been so far gone. But, with this man, there was something utterly critical yet to come in his future. That was what she felt. What she knew. And there was more. Something disquieting. Something important to her? A bond of some kind between them?

      She sensed some intense emotions inside his mind as well as a determination to survive.

      “You’ve got to move, Officer,” an EMT shouted. She ignored him for an instant.

      This cop could not die. She would not permit it even though she felt his spirit approach the bridge where Danver had crossed.

      You will live. It is not yet your time. Open your eyes. The unspoken voice issuing commands was hers, and it was inundating him with a life force that flowed intentionally, excruciatingly, from her.

      Officer Owens groaned and his eyes opened. They were dark, the deep brown of polished mahogany, and stared straight into Skye’s.

      “Holy shit,” said one of the EMTs. “I thought this guy’d had it. But look at those vitals. Atta way, sir!”

      They’d hooked Owens up to some monitors. Apparently whatever showed there looked promising.

      Yes, Skye thought as she stood up and got out of the way. You will live.

      That didn’t make up for helping the other officer to die, but it lessened her pain, a little.

      Although utterly exhausted, she managed to smile down at Owens, soothingly and encouragingly.

      And when he gazed faintly back at her while lying there with blood covering his badly injured body, a sensation she could not identify rolled through Skye. Recognition? Pleasure? Satisfaction? Anticipation?

      All of them?

      Time to get out of there. Bella and she had work to do, and it didn’t involve daydreaming.

      And yet, she couldn’t help watching as Owens’s eyes closed again. Slowly. Peacefully.

      He was going to live.

      Skye hoped that whatever she’d sensed he’d needed to do was worth it and that he would in fact accomplish it.

      She nearly stumbled over her own shuffling feet as she took Bella’s collar and made her way out of the warehouse.

      In the chaos outside, she was handed a shirt by another officer. “Suspect’s still at large. Got this from his automobile—ran his plate. See if Bella can find this bastard.”

      Skye led Bella back inside to where officers who’d witnessed the shooting said the suspect had stood to shoot the two downed men. She held the shirt out, and Bella sniffed it.

      She immediately picked up the scent. Skye followed—until Bella lost track of it in the parking lot outside. She couldn’t pick it up again.

      The suspect must have stolen a different vehicle.

      He was gone.

      Chapter 2

      “That’s why you feel so tired,” said Hayley Sigurd. The willowy ice-blonde who’d been Skye’s friend since childhood smiled sympathetically. Although she’d kept her voice low, it was unnecessary. Bernardo’s at the Beach wasn’t only the favorite dinner hangout of Skye’s group of transplanted Minnesotans, it was also Angeles Beach’s most popular restaurant, and the boisterous crowd around their table of four was noisy enough that no one could be eavesdropping.

      “Yeah,” agreed Kara Woods, at Skye’s left. “Helping the first guy pass over was draining all by itself. And if that second guy was as gone as you say…” Kara was the most curvaceous of them. Her straight black hair belied her mother’s Nordic ancestry, but her dad’s side of family was Native American, and her strikingly sharp features had come from him…just as her powers, like Skye’s and Hayley’s, had come from her mom’s side of the family.

      “Of course he was.” Ron Gollar jutted his broad, smooth chin out belligerently as if expecting the women to contradict him…as usual. Like the others, Skye sometimes enjoyed giving Ron a hard time for fun, but not today, when she felt utterly serious and drained.

      Although Ron was also twenty-seven, he was like Skye’s little brother. He’d been in the marines for a while and now was a rookie ABPD cop. He had been at the warehouse, but not close enough to the victims to see how far gone they were. At the moment, he was just being supportive of Skye, which made her want to hug him.

      Skye sipped her peach margarita, feeling the sweet alcohol drink slip through her, relaxing her even more. She stared out at the golden sky. The sun was just setting over the Pacific, a beautiful, peaceful twilight that also helped to mellow her mood. As exhausted as she’d felt since her work at the crime scene that afternoon, she’d also been edgy. Worried. Had she made the right choices this time?

      And what was that odd sensation she had felt about the second victim, Owens? Since she’d left his side, she’d ached to see him again—to assure herself he really would be all right, to try to understand his unassailable need to survive, and why she had felt so compelled to save his life.

      “It’s the first time I ever took on two victims at the same time,” she said to her friends. “How do you two handle it?”

      Kara was an emergency medical technician. She faced multiple casualties nearly every day. And Hayley, who was on her way toward becoming a trauma surgeon, did as well. As a male, Ron did not share their unique abilities and never had to engage in the life-and-death decisions that Skye shared with her female friends. Friends whose mothers, like hers, were all descended from Valkyries.

      The waitress came to the table balancing delectable-looking salads containing greens with nuts and fruit, smothered in raspberry vinaigrette. “Here you are,” she said. “The rest of your food will be up shortly.”

      Skye used her fork to play with a piece of arugula. The others dug in right away, though, even Ron.

      “You’ll get used to it, honey,” Kara eventually said. Her piercing, hazel eyes had gone as sympathetic as Hayley’s blue ones. “It is exhausting, though. Drains our own life force. I’ve even managed to bring back a couple of guys from a motorcycle accident at the exact same time—although neither was as far gone as the officer you described.”

      “Doesn’t it help when you can also use regular lifesaving medical stuff, too?” Ron took a piece of bread from a basket. He’d curved his broad shoulders beneath his white T-shirt as if waiting to be criticized. “You two have it easier than a cop like Skye, don’t you?”

      “How would you know, twerp?” Hayley asked good-naturedly. Then she frowned, creating lines on her high forehead that the wispy bangs of her pale hair didn’t quite conceal. “But you’re right, Ron. Kara and I always use whatever resources we can and Skye has her Bella, who helps her find the bad guys. But we’re all stuck with making tough decisions about which people should live and which should die.”

      All were silent for a moment, and Skye felt the weight of what Hayley had said.

      They could have stayed in the familiar environment where their families had resided for over a century. There, in a small Minnesota town, their mothers and their mothers’ mothers, only had to use their special life-preserving powers on rare occasions when those who were young and healthy and not ready to head toward the afterlife suffered accidents or other life-threatening