He tore away the sleeping bag that confined him, stumbling out onto the ground and to his knees. Beside him, Swanny shot upward.
“What the hell?”
Nathan shoved his hands into the grass, trying to push himself upward, but he was too weak, too disoriented to maintain his balance. He fell heavily to his side, cursing because he couldn’t wade through the fog in his mind to reach out to Shea. She was there. He knew it. Was she trying to reach him? Did she need help?
He curled his fingers into the soil, trying again to right himself, to get up and battle the confusion. Swanny scrambled over, his face close to Nathan’s.
“What’s wrong, man? Do I need to get help? What’s happening to you?”
Nathan snarled his frustration, grabbed on to Swanny and pulled. “Help me.”
Swanny pushed to his knees and then stood, Nathan still gripping his hands as he pulled upward. He staggered to his feet, wobbling like he’d been on a bender from hell.
The world kept moving around him, dipping and swaying until nausea rose sharp in his belly and into his throat, clenching and squeezing until he couldn’t breathe.
“What the f**k is wrong?” Swanny demanded. “Let me call a damn ambulance. Or at least drive you to the hospital.”
“Just let me get my feet under me,” he gritted out.
He put his hands to his head, sucked in breaths and then reached out again.
Shea, talk to me, damn it. Are you okay? What’s going on? Please, just talk to me.
He caught just a hint of his name, and suddenly the disorientation faded. The shadows drifted away, leaving him sharply aware of his surroundings. The smell of a late Tennessee spring, verging to summer. The lake. The trees, the pine.
A breeze cooled the sweat that dampened his body, and he shivered in reaction.
She was gone. Like she’d never been there. Again.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Nathan, talk to me, man. What the hell is going on?”
He pushed away from Swanny and stalked toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake. Below, the water was inky, reflecting only a sliver of moonlight.
Was he losing his mind? Was he crazy? Was she real or not?
How could he explain the emails, the very real emails, if she wasn’t real? He clung to that piece of evidence, the only thing he could point to with any assurance. If it weren’t for those emails, he’d have already surrendered the last threads of his sanity.
“She’s real, goddamn it.”
“Who’s real?” Swanny asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“She’s real and she’s in trouble and I have no idea how to help her.”
Helplessness and frustration swamped him. Overwhelmed him. What could he do?
He cupped his hand over his face and dug his fingers into the corners of his eyes. He squeezed the bridge of his nose as he concentrated on the mess he’d awakened to.
None of it made sense. He hadn’t seen anything. Only sensed it and had an experience so bizarre that he’d swear he’d taken some bad acid trip.
“Look, just calm down. We can talk about this.”
Nathan shook his head. “Just let it go, Swanny.”
There was a pronounced silence and then Swanny shoved in front of him, obscuring Nathan’s view of the lake. All he could see was the determination gleaming in his friend’s eyes.
“I won’t let it go,” Swanny said in a low voice. “I came here for answers. I haven’t pushed. But something happened in Afghanistan. Something I can’t explain. Now you’re talking crazy and mentioning this woman’s name, the same name you screamed when we were rescued. Whether you want to talk about it or not, you put your hands on me and something happened. I wasn’t going to make it out of there. I knew it. You knew it. But then you did something. I’ll never forget that feeling. Like sunshine warming me from the inside out. And the pain. Gone. I could breathe again. It was so damn peaceful that for a minute I thought it was the end.”
Nathan looked up at the sky, closed his eyes and breathed out as his shoulders sagged.
“You played it off, man. And I let you. But you know you fed me a line of bullshit. Angels, God. Yeah, maybe, but you know more than you’re letting on.”
“I don’t know! I wish to hell I did,” Nathan bit out.
He balled his fist in frustration and pressed it to his forehead.
“Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe we both are.”
“I’m perfectly okay with that explanation,” Swanny said calmly. “But we aren’t. Now stop holding out on me.”
Nathan stumbled back toward the sleeping bag, sat down and pulled his knees to his chest. Beside him, Swanny crawled into his and stretched out on his side. For a long time, Nathan just sat there, staring into the distance. The silence was brooding, but Swanny waited. He just lay there and watched Nathan, waiting for him to speak.
“Her name is Shea,” he said quietly. He wasn’t betraying her because Swanny had already heard him calling her name on more than one occasion.
“Yeah, I gathered that much. The question is who is she and…well…who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Swanny sighed and rolled to his back to stare up at the sky. “Has anyone ever told you what a frustrating son of a bitch you are, Nate?”
“I thought I imagined her. Right up until the time she emailed my brothers to let them know where to find us.”
“How the hell did she do that? There weren’t any women that I saw in that hellhole.”