Page 96 of Born for Starlight

"That's the face," Jase said again. "I've seen it. She was two. Sitting in my lap in a room I don't talk about, looking straight through me with that exact face you’re describing. I know what you're looking at, Matthew. You're not going to talk her out of it. I couldn't either."

"Then what?"

"Put me in her ear."

"What?"

"Your comm. Put your bud in her ear and let me talk to her. Now. Please."

It was the please. It was the way he said it.

But I don't take orders on my own op. Every man on that net knew it or had figured it out. And there wasn’t a chance in hell I planned to pass over my comm so that I was out of the loop. I stayed there on my haunches for a moment, then turned to Deke. I lifted my chin. Deke started pulling the bud out of his ear and holding it out to me. I took it.

I brushed her hair aside and set it in her ear. Her head didn't move. Her eyes didn't move.

"She's on, Jase."

For a second, nothing came over the net.

Then Jase's voice. I could hear it doubled, in my own ear and faintly from the bud in hers. "Angel. Hey. Hey, it's Jase. It's me. You hear me? I'm right outside. I'm right here."

Nothing.

"I know where you are, Angel. I know it. I've been there with you before. I'm the one who came and got you, remember? I came and got you. I'm going to come get you now. Just, hey. Hey."

Her face didn't change. I had my hand on her knee and I felt nothing change in her, not a tremor, not a breath out of rhythm.

And then Jase stopped talking, and after a second, he started to sing.

I'd never heard the man sing. I'd never have believed he could. His voice came over the net low and rough and not quite in tune. An old lullaby, the one about counting your blessings instead of sheep. He sang it the way you'd sing it to a two-year-old in the dark. Slow. Sure. Probably the same way he’d sung it to her the first time in the orphanage they’d saved her from.

The whole net went silent. Nine men on a comm and not one of them breathing. Simon, Billy, Bruno, Beto in the car, Vargas and Pinto in the hall. And me on my knees on a tile floor, listening to a former SEAL sing a lullaby to his sister through an earpiece from the street outside the gate.

Her hand came up slowly.

It came up toward her own ear, toward the voice. Her fingers touched the bud. Rested there.

One tear ran down her cheek and dropped off her chin.

"Jase," she said.

She blinked rapidly as her eyes moved. They found me, and this time there was somebody behind them. Somebody confused and wrecked and coming up from a long way down.

"Jase," she said again, to the bud.

"I'm here, Angel." His voice broke clean in half. "I'm right here."

She came the rest of the way up over the next few minutes, in pieces. Her eyes cleared. Her other hand stopped lying in her lap and started moving. She looked at the crucifix, the dead computer, the stuffing coming out of the sofa arm. Then at Deke. Then at me, down in front of her with my hands still on her face.

Now that she was back, I couldn't stop shaking.

I hid it, or I tried to. Deke was right there and the net was live, and I've never in my life let a team hear me lose it. But my hands were going and I could feel it. I took them off her face and I put them firmly on her knees so she wouldn't feel it too.

"Angelica, can you tell me what happened?”

She looked at me, confused.

"We need to get you out of this place. Right now. Can you tell me what happened?” I asked again.