“I don’t understand.” The words rasped in his shredded throat. Shredded like the skin of his right hand. Like the soul that twisted inside him.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.
“You woke me up,” he whispered. “At the bottom of Marble Canyon, You put me back together and woke me up.”
Be still, and know that I am God.
Zac lay motionless beneath the weight of the timbers and shivered, not only with the cold. The quaking began within him, in the soul whose rage and pain were morphing into something else. He had laughed as he told the fawning fangirls an angel had caught him. He had signed autographs in the place where Jehovah Elohim had restored his life although he had run as far as any man could run, a distance of one hundred years. He had made the canyon a mockery rather than admit what God had done there.
A week later, thinking he’d regained his grip on the world around him, he had learned Colm’s true nature, presided at his execution, and turned shovelfuls of dirt onto the monster he had believed was his best friend through lifetimes.
“I’ve been wrong,” he whispered, shaking hard now. “About too many things.”
Know that I am God.
“Yes.” Zac covered his face with his raw right hand. “You. I AM WHO I AM, You are God.”
Be still.
“I don’t know how. But I know I’ve sinned against You.” His voice shook so hard he almost couldn’t speak. Oh, how he had sinned. “You have to judge me. You’re just to judge me.”
But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
“Wh–what?” Zac lowered his hand to the cold ground and looked up at the hole in the roof. The clouds still hid the moon.
The words had been set into his soul from a source other than himself. True, he’d memorized them long ago, before the serum. But he hadn’t been thinking of that parable at all. That son hadn’t run from the Father for a century.
“I don’t get to go home. I don’t expect You to let me do that.”
Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.
“Not me, that’s not for me.”
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry. For this my son was dead, and is alive again.
“I was. I was dead.”
He was lost, and is found.
If only he could be found. The yearning for it broke out of him in a groan. “Oh God, find me. Forgive me. Please, please, come and find me, God.”
This my son.
“Father?” The name he had held most in awe for Him. Zac had thought never to speak it again. “You’d let me be Your son again, Father?”
My son.
Two tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes and trickled into his hair, into the dust.
TWENTY-THREE
He lay still as the sun rose, no longer struggling to move when the panic crept up on him, but the repeated spikes of adrenaline left him battered and frayed. He was drifting in his mind, cold and bruised and queasy with hunger, trying not to focus on anything in particular, when a noise brought him fully awake. Gravel crunched under someone’s feet. He tried to call out, but his throat could make only a feeble, rasping croak. If they didn’t come into the barn, they’d never hear him. His scabbed fingers scrabbled at the dirt, as if somehow the person’s presence would lend strength to his own limbs.
The big front door slid and squeaked in its track. Now light poured in from there as well as the back, fell on Zac’s face and warmed him. He lifted his hand, and a female voice gave a cry.
“Zac?”
Cady. She dropped to her knees beside him and enfolded his hand in both of hers, which were blessedly warm. Her green eyes and red-blond ponytail caught the new sunlight. She had a lot of hair. It was kind of beautiful.
“You’re freezing. Are you badly hurt?”
He tried to answer. Drew a breath that ended in a cough that brought fresh pain to his side. Cady let go of his hand, a true loss, to dial her phone. She put it on speaker and set it on the ground beside her as she surveyed the heap of lumber pinning him.
“Well?” came the snapping voice from the phone.
She’d called Simon. But she didn’t know Simon. What …?
“I found him. Out on French Road, I just happened to see his car.”
“He’d better be recovering from something mortal or I’m going to kill him.”
“He isn’t talking, but I think he’s all right.”
“It’s Zac. If he’s not talking, then he’s not all right.”
“Simon, listen, I need you and David here. He’s pinned under a bunch of rubble, and I don’t think I should move it without someone else’s help. If he’s injured, I could—”
Zac pointed to his throat. “Hoarse. But I’m fine.”
“Did you hear that?” Cady said to the phone.
“You said he’s pinned? As in buried?”
“Other than head and shoulders and one arm, yes, as in buried.”
“Zac,” Simon said. “Buddy, tell me how you’re doing. And remember what I said.”
Life Buoy, no masks, got it the first time, Simon. “Breathing through it.”
“Been bad,” Simon said, not a question.
“Why I can’t talk.”
“Shoot, I’m sorry, man. We looked all night at the dunes. David said it’s where you go to get away, and I thought you’d heard bad news about the kid.”
They had missed him. He could hug every one of them, but his gladness sharpened to an ache. No one was missing Rachel. No one but Zac.
“I’ll be there in five,” Simon said. “David’s farther, closer to the dunes.”
“I think two of us can free him,” Cady said. “I could eventually, but I might shift something and hurt him.”
“No, wait for me. If Zac can wait.”
“I’m okay,” Zac said.
“I’ll call David and Tiana.” Simon hung up.
“Tiana too?” Zac rasped as Cady pushed her phone into her pocket.
“And Finn until around midnight. He had to go back to the hotel for some sleep.”
While Rachel drove farther from them, unlooked for. To keep back tears he said, “Is there any water?”
“Not with me. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Cady reached for his hand again and froze when this time she noticed the torn flesh of his palm and fingers. “What was Simon asking you?”
“Closed space. I’m not a fan.”
She looked over his trapped state and set her hand on his shoulder.
“Change the subject? Until I’m out of here.”
“Are you injured anywhere that you can tell?”
“Broken rib, maybe two. I think that’s the worst of it.”
“I’ll keep talking until Simon gets here.”
“Nothing’s really going to help except getting me out of here.” Then he remembered Tiana’s words in the bookstore. “Well, maybe if you would talk about the sky?”
Whoa. The unmasking thing wasn’t supposed to happen without his permission.
For some reason Zac’s request seemed to move her. She set one hand on his head, and as worn out and beat up as he was, the gesture felt intimate. He closed his eyes to the dim, dusty confines around him and tried to imagine the sunset Cady painted with her words until Simon’s tromping feet sounded on the gravel outside.
He burst into the barn like a roused bear, growling the moment he saw the rubble and Zac beneath it. He stood over Zac and shook his head.
“Buddy, you look like—”
“Lady present.” Zac jabbed a finger toward Cady, and she laughed.
Simon was already moving. Circling the wreckage and tilting his head this way and that, calculating.
“Simon, do you have water?” Cady said. “I finished mine.�
��
“Black sports bottle in my car.” He tossed her his keys without looking up from the puzzle in front of him.
Cady jogged out of the barn jingling them in one hand.
“Guess you’ve met,” Zac rasped.
“I like her. Can’t make heads or tails of Finn.”
Zac chuckled then swallowed a moan.
Simon stood back with his hands on his hips. “Nice work.”
“I don’t plan these things, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
Cady returned with an industrial-sized water bottle and knelt beside Zac. She held his head in one hand and the bottle in the other. The taste of water hadn’t been so dear to him in a long time.
She helped him drink his fill and then rested his head on the ground again. “No pillows on hand.”
“Just get me out.” His voice was a little stronger. Good.
Simon beckoned Cady to a long beam pinning Zac’s legs. “Come on. This guy’s been stuck here long enough.”
As they lifted it, a portion of the weight on Zac lifted too. Because David wasn’t here, Zac grinned and said to Simon, “If the damage is worse than we expect, you can shoot me through the heart. Should speed things along.”
Simon didn’t pause in his work. “I came here with a carry-on backpack. Weapons stayed home.”
“Too bad. I’ll have to heal up the old-fashioned way.”
“Stop tempting me.”
Cady’s gaze darted back and forth between them as if she’d never heard longevite jokes in her life. Well, maybe she hadn’t. Finn would take them seriously.
Twenty minutes later they had moved enough of the debris to see down inside the pile to Zac. Cady gripped Simon’s arm as she stood on tiptoe and leaned past the tipping point of her balance, peering down.
“Can you move your legs now, Zac?”
“It’ll all cave in again.” The possibility choked him.
“Just try it, little movements. If you can, then there’s just one more timber and this big slab of flooring—if we pull this off you, you should be able to slide out from under the rest.”
His mouth dried as he wiggled his feet. Bent his knees the slightest bit. Shifted his hips and blinked away the slice of pain across the left one.
“I’m good if the rest doesn’t move at all.”
The section of flooring had been the heaviest weight on him, he realized as it lifted.
“Can you slide out?” Cady said.
He tried to prop himself on both elbows to shimmy backward, but his left arm wasn’t there. He gasped. No, it was there. Dead and numb and useless. Had it been sheared off by something in the fall? But his shoulder joint was attached—
“Zac,” Simon said.
“It’s asleep.” He laughed, coughed, laughed again. “My arm’s asleep. Can’t move it. One second.”
“One second’s about what you’ve got, man.”
He rolled toward his right side, propped up on the elbow he could feel, and dragged the rest of him out from under the rubble. As his feet cleared, he said, “Free.”
They lowered the slab as he flopped onto his back. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, try not to fall through another floor, if you don’t mind.” Simon sat next to him and mopped sweat from his forehead with his coat sleeve. “You’re bleeding.”
Zac pushed up on his elbow and surveyed himself. He was filthy, coated in dust. And yeah, his jeans were sliced at the hip, dark with drying blood.
“Can you stand?”
“Uh, in a minute. Might need a hand. Legs feel stiff.”
“So what were you doing out here?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
“Is it your boy? Something happened to him?”
The man had no patience whatsoever. “His dad left his mom.”
Simon folded his arms across his knees. “Not sick again?”
“No. Just stunned. Hurt. Too young for loss like that.”
“Like you were.”
One of those things he rarely thought about anymore. “He’s a little older than I was, but still too young.”
“Why’d that send you out here?”
“It didn’t.” Zac glanced at Cady, who was listening without comment. They all needed to know as soon as possible, but he wanted to start with Simon. “It’s a long story. Help me up.”
Simon stood and bent to grip Zac under the arms. “Ready?”
“Here, let me help.” Cady moved to Zac’s left side as Simon got him halfway to his feet, and Zac lifted his left arm to drape it over her shoulders.
The ribs stabbed straight through to his back. He sucked a hard breath and doubled over, spots filling his vision. He tucked his left arm close to him.
“Right,” Cady said. “Simon, if you’ll drive him to his apartment, I’ll follow in his car, and then you can bring me back here for mine.”
“I can drive.” The words gritted past Zac’s locked teeth.
“You are not driving right now,” she said. As if the decision were hers. As if she had known him for years, not days.
“I’m fine.”
Simon nudged Zac’s side with one finger.
“Agghh.” The pain buckled his knees.
Simon caught him and lowered him to sit on the ground. “Idiot.”
“Moron.”
“Someone needs to look you over,” Cady said.
“I’m not dying.”
She rolled her eyes. “If there’s something nonlethal wrong with you, you’ll have to heal at mortal speed. Do you want a grinding rib for the next hundred years because you were too stubborn to let someone set it right?”
“What’re you, a nurse?”
“I’m a female who’s lived through both world wars, who wanted to serve her country, who wasn’t interested in joining Rosie the Riveter. So yes, I was a nurse. Additionally my best friend has a closed head injury and can’t be treated by a doctor. I’m all he’s got. I have to know my stuff.”
“Finn breaks ribs often, does he?”
She glared at him. “Finn ignores pain until it puts him prostrate on the floor. I see male giveaway behaviors before you guys even know you’re broadcasting them.”
He could keep protesting, or he could relax in the passenger seat while Simon drove him home. He’d wanted to talk to the guy alone anyway. He allowed his body to double up as he sat there on the ground.
“Okay,” he said. “Uncle.”
He told Simon everything and concluded with, “We have to locate her.”
“Good luck,” Simon said. “Her home is her car, and you have no way of predicting her.”
“No detective tricks to help me out?”
“You’ve got nothing, Zac, not even a surname. Social media might give you a shot, but only if her account has interacted with yours. She’s probably just watching you anonymously from a browser.”
“I have to try.”
Simon’s mouth tightened. “You think saying she has nothing to offer makes her a danger to herself.”
“And she’s prepared to pay for the deaths she caused. And she didn’t want to be hated ‘at the end.’”
“You’re also assuming she kept aside some of the cure for herself.”
“The way she was talking, I’d be shocked if she didn’t.”
“Hmm.”
“I have to try, man.”
But by the time Simon pulled into the apartment lot, Zac’s body was demanding immediate sleep. Then he’d have to refuel with some good food. Then, maybe, he would let Cady examine his ribs.
Before he could tell Cady the order of events, she followed him into the living room and scrutinized his movements as he lowered himself to the couch and closed his eyes.
“Shirt off,” she said.
“But we just met.”
“I’m serious, Zac. Let me look at you.”
He cracked an eye open and cocked an eyebrow and tilted his mouth. She bit her lip, which was cute. Then she rolled her eyes, and he had to adm
it his game at the moment sounded less Freudian quip than usual, more high school cheese. Turning on the smolder was a nonstarter when he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
“You don’t get to sleep until I check your ribs,” she said.
Nurses. So freaking dedicated to their calling. He pushed up from his slouch and tried not to wince. He undid the first few buttons of his shirt and was thankful he’d donned a button-down yesterday. He jolted at the thought.
“What time is it?”
“A little after eight.”
“Oh no. The bakery.”
“Bakery?”
“I got a job this week.”
Her mouth twitched. “Well, you can call in and explain in a minute.”
“David said he would when I called him,” Simon said from the kitchen. “He knows the owner.”
Zac sagged against the couch. Whether Connie would accept the excuse of broken ribs was anyone’s guess. He should care about her deciding he was undependable after all. But it was a ridiculous trivial job working for mortals, and she could fire him with no repercussion to his bank accounts, and … and he was a jar with a thousand cracks, energy leaking out of him everywhere.
Cady sat beside him on the couch. “Adrenaline crash?”
“Sucks.”
“Yeah.” She nodded to his fingers, gone still in the act of unbuttoning his shirt. “Come on, let’s get this done.”
Too drained to keep arguing, he eased out of the shirt, and Cady made a humming sound of sympathy. He looked down at his torso. The purple and black bruising was darkest along his side but reached all the way to the tattoo on his pec. The ship braving waves, challenging tides. Zac himself, sailing his own way through this ageless life.
He knew what Jehovah Elohim would say to that.
Shame surged into him, and he closed his eyes. You can’t possibly want me for Your son. Not after a hundred years.
“Zac?”
He blinked. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Can you lean forward for me?”
Not a problem. Eased his side a bit. She set her hand on his back, to one side of his spine, and her palm pressed carefully. Ow. A pathetic yelp burst out of him.
From Sky to Sky Page 18