IT WAS A new color.
Yellow.
Blue meant death in his synesthetic brain.
So what the hell did yellow mean?
Heaven?
Am I dead?
He couldn’t seem to open his eyes, so maybe he was.
Yet the fact that his eyes weren’t open and he could still see the color yellow meant that he was viewing it in his head. Was that evidence of conscious thought and thus life?
Or was it his afterlife?
He felt something. A poke, a prod. It seemed distant and distinct from him.
His ears hurt. But he could sense something there too.
He was vaguely aware of a loud sound. Like a cannon going off.
He could feel nothing else about himself. Just the sound. And the color yellow.
And the poke and the prod.
The sensation in his ears continued. Growing in intensity.
Something hit his face. Lightly, then harder.
He tried to open his eyes, but the only thing he seemed able to manage was to scrunch up his forehead.
The next blow on his face did the trick.
With a monumental effort, he managed to blink.
At first all he saw was darkness.
Then he glimpsed something in the middle of that darkness. It was hairy and close to him; he could smell its breath.
Then his eyes closed again. He seemed to sink into the ground.
He remembered now. They had been out in the woods.
The trailer.
The trailer had exploded.
Then Decker stopped thinking. His chest stopped rising.
He had a moment’s sensation of the hairy creature’s breaths coming closer.
An animal. An animal come to feast on him.
He dropped into unconsciousness. He dropped into something maybe more than that.
Right before everything went black again he felt his mouth being prodded open. And then something hit him right below his chest.
Black.
He had no idea how much time had passed.
He felt himself jerk up and then fall to the side. He vomited and lay there moaning for a few seconds.
He felt something on his arm and pushed it away violently. Then Decker got to his knees and tried to scramble away.
He thought of the hairy creature. The pokes and prods. The breath. The blow to his chest. He was scared. Terrified. Was it a bear?
“Amos!”
At the sound of her voice Decker stopped scrambling, turned, and dropped to his butt, panting.
Jamison was on her haunches a few feet away. She looked dirty and disheveled, but unhurt. Yet there was such a look of terror in her features that Decker could only gape.
“A-Alex, are you okay?”
She rose on unsteady feet. “Me? You…stopped breathing. I had to perform CPR.”
Decker touched his lips and then his sternum.
CPR?
That had been Jamison breathing and pounding life back into him.
“That was you? I just saw…hair. I thought it was an animal. A big, hairy animal.”
Jamison frowned and pushed her thick hair out of her face. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been equated with a big, hairy animal.” Her features softened. “Are you feeling okay now?”
Decker took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. When he took his hand away, it was bloody. “I felt something hit me back there. I guess it did some damage.”
“Oh no,” exclaimed Jamison. She took out her phone, engaged the flashlight feature, and examined the back of his head. “It’s cut, a deep gash. You need medical attention.”
She pulled some tissues from her bag and pressed them against the wound. “Here, hold that there.”
Decker did so. “I thought I’d had a heart attack, but I don’t think that’s possible. I’d be out for the count.”
He slowly rose to his feet and looked around. The trailer was gone. Their Yukon was heavily damaged.
“You saved my life,” he said.
“Well, you certainly saved mine.” She pointed at where the trailer had been. “That would have been our crematorium.”
He nodded and took a series of long, deep breaths. “It must have been all that smoke in my lungs. And then running.”
“With me on your back. And then your head wound. It must have been debris from the explosion that hit you. I wish you could have fit under the car.”
“Even when I was thinner I really never could have fit under even an SUV.”
“We need to call an ambulance.”
“We need to call somebody if we want to get back to town.” He looked at the two front tires of the Yukon. They were flat and the wheels were pushed in. “And the fire department needs to come out here and douse those flames before the forest catches on fire.”
Jamison pulled out her phone and called Green, succinctly explaining to him what had happened. The detective promised a response ASAP.
She put the phone away and looked back at the trailer. “Somebody really wanted us dead.”
“That’s actually a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” she said, looking horrified by his words.
“It means we’re making somebody nervous. Which means we’re heading in the right direction. Which is a good thing.”
“It wouldn’t be so good if we were dead!” snapped Jamison.
“Do you have the graph paper?”
“What?”
The graph paper from the house?”
“My God, Decker, we were nearly killed. And you apparently did die. And all you can think about is the case?”
When he didn’t say anything, she sighed, pulled out the graph paper from the evidence pouch in her bag, and handed it to him.
With the tissues stuck to his head, Decker laid the paper on the ground and used the flashlight feature on his cell phone to go over it. He held the light an inch from the paper and still had to squint to make things out.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Just impressions from the pencil or pen he used to draw something on the sheet above this one. It looks to be pretty large. It covers most of the sheet. I’ll take a better look at it when we have some decent light.”
He clicked off the phone light, handed the paper back to Jamison, rose, and leaned against the truck bumper.
Jamison said, “Do you think whoever it was we chased came back and tried to kill us?”
“I don’t know. Could be, but that would have been a risk.”
“So maybe somebody else? Do you think we were followed?”
Decker looked back at the dirt and gravel road. “It would have been hard for anyone to follow us here without us seeing them.”
She looked back at the trailer. “Good thing we went over that before it disappeared. Though we didn’t find anything, really.”
“We found some things.”
“Like what?”
He suddenly clutched his head and groaned.
“Decker, what is it?” asked Jamison anxiously.
“Just the mother of all headaches.”
A few minutes later two police cars, an ambulance, and two fire engines showed up.
The firemen dealt with the trailer, dousing it and the surrounding area with water. Two EMTs checked out Jamison and Decker. She had some bumps and bruises and some smoke inhalation. They treated her and gave her oxygen. They did the same with Decker, but after examining his head wound and testing his cognitive responses, they insisted that he go to the hospital for an X-ray and other tests.
“I don’t have a concussion,” said Decker. “At least not a bad one.”
Jamison admonished, “Decker, you stopped breathing. So you’re going to the hospital. I’ll ride with you in the ambulance.”
As they drove off, Decker lay back on the gurney with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. Jamison had wiped her dirty face and tried to get some stains off her clothes with a clean wet cloth that one of the EMTs had given her.
“I’m going to have to get some new clothes. When packing for this trip, I didn’t account for being nearly drowned in a monsoon and then almost blown up.” She leaned back against the interior wall of the ambulance and closed her eyes while Decker stared at her from the gurney.
Decker said quietly, “So, Alex, are you enjoying it?”
She opened her eyes and gave him a bewildered look. “Enjoying what?”
“Your vacation.”