The Man Who Didn't Belong (M/M - Mature) Ch 50 - 3/15
Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:01 am
Eva – There’s something very wrong but is it with the forest? Or with something else?
Timelord31 – Thanks for reading.
Alien Friend – Poor Michael, huh? Well, he’s had it so easy with women, up until now, he can suffer a little. It’s only justice.
Mary mary – Thank you, glad that you liked Michael’s POV.
Part 50
They were too far into the jungle to encounter hunters, farmers, or any of the people living in the surrounding villages, so that only left one option: rebels. He heard their hushed voices as they neared his location and he forced his breathing and his heartbeat to fall into the same synchronous rhythm as his hand momentarily tightened around the grip on his weapon. They were too close to the camp to risk the men giving their position away either vocally or by firing their weapons, so they had to time the hit perfectly. He raised his arm and drew a bead on the man on the right, knowing that Stone would take the other man out.
A nearly silent click came over his earpiece letting him know that she was in position and at the count of three he squeezed the trigger. The rebel didn't even have time to register shock as he dropped to the ground, hitting his knees and swaying for several moments before falling forward to land on his face. The second rebel followed suit and his forward momentum carried him to the ground next to his comrade.
"This is not good," he snarled as he moved in to verify the kills. Not much more than checking for a pulse since one no longer had a face and the other one was missing the back of his head. Funny thing about bullets, he mused. They didn't make that much of a mess going in, but that exit wound was a whole different story. "The camp is in the valley across the river; why would they be all the way over here?"
Stone shook her head as she grabbed the collar of one of the rebels and dragged him back into a dense patch of overgrowth and started covering the body. "They wouldn't be, not if our Intel was right."
"It's either bad Intel or a trap and I don't like either of those choices."
Stone remained silent while they finished hiding the bodies. Bad Intel or a trap, neither one mattered because a man's life hung in the balance and it was their job to retrieve him before the rebels started carving him up and sending him back to his family in pieces.
Michael nodded when as they stood back to look at each other. "I know," he muttered, "the mission comes first; doesn't mean I have to like it." He turned his head, listening for anything out of place. "How d'you wanna proceed?"
Stone understood what he was saying and she agreed with him. "We need to reach the ridgeline so we can get a look at the camp and make an assessment of the situation." She glanced at the sky, judging how much time they had before darkness fell. "We need to be in position so we can get in and out by sunup if we're gonna make it to the pick up point in time."
"We'd better pick up the pace then. We've still gotta make it across the river and a quarter mile up the side of that damned mountain, and we're gonna need daylight so we can see what kind of numbers and artillery we're up against."
They continued on their original course, the machete hacking through the thick vegetation the only sound as they each contemplated the danger lying ahead of them.
Darkness was quickly moving in as they finally reached the ridgeline and they scouted the area carefully before beginning the short climb to the top.
"Stone."
She froze when Michael called her, easily recognizing the warning tone in his voice. She glanced at him and turned her head to follow his gaze, cursing under her breath when she located the tripwire several feet away, carefully hidden beneath the deep green foliage.
"Fuck," she muttered.
Another few minutes and it would've been too dark to see it. They had lost precious time when they had reached the river and found the bridge destroyed and it had taken time to find a place that was safe to cross.
"Rebels nowhere near the camp, the bridge knocked out by explosives, and now a landmine on the ridge we need to access to verify our target? I don't believe in coincidence, Stone."
"That makes two of us." Fuck! It was a setup; there probably wasn't even a hostage waiting to be rescued. "We need to verify the hostage situation and figure out what we're gonna do now."
Michael nodded and snapped his fingers. "Toss me the binoculars and then keep an eye out while I take a look at the situation." He carefully stepped over the tripwire and his eyes scanned the ground in a nearly futile effort to locate any other traps.
"Freeze!" Stone hissed when the moonlight revealed a second thin silver wire stretched taut across the path.
Every muscle in his body locked in response to her order while he waited for her to assess the situation. "Step over with your left foot, but don't go any further; we have no visibility beyond your current position. Go high, Guerin, that tripwire's right at calf level." She breathed a sigh of relief when his booted foot cleared the wire and settled on the other side.
Michael shoved away the thought that there was an explosive device between his feet and brought the binoculars up to his eyes, switching them over to night vision so he could scan the camp in the valley below them. He scanned over every inch of the camp and shook his head when the sweep only confirmed what he had already suspected. "There's no activity down there; it's completely deserted and looks like it's been that way for quite a while." He braced his left arm on the tree beside him and just as he turned his head away something hit the binoculars and they flew out of his hand to land on the ground next to Stone.
He quickly backtracked, following Stone's instructions to avoid the tripwires and he crouched down beside her as she examined the binoculars in the moonlight. "Sniper," he muttered when he saw the shattered lens and what was left of the other end… where his eye had been a mere second before the equipment had taken the hit.
"Looks like he got you, too." Stone nodded at the torn fabric of his shirt and the blood staining the camouflage material.
Michael glanced at his shoulder and shook his head. "Flesh wound," he said carelessly. He pulled a small can out of one of the pockets in his pants and handed it to her as he shrugged the strap of his rifle off of his right shoulder. "Paint the tripwire… we're gonna need a distraction."
'Painting' a target meant spraying it with a substance that was only visible with a certain lens. She nodded and took care of it while he checked his rifle and removed his scope from another pocket, attaching it to the weapon and then checking to make sure that the marker was showing up.
They moved back, carefully making their way along the path they had cut through the jungle until they had nearly lost sight of the ridgeline. Stone kept her own weapon at the ready, scanning the area around them as he pulled his rifle up to rest against his shoulder. She knew he was taking the landmines out, hoping that they would draw their would-be assassins out into the open; their only advantage at this point was to draw them out at night, when they would have a fair chance of getting away.
The rebels knew the area a lot better than they did and they would be able to track them during the day. By drawing them out at night they kept their enemies from having the upper hand; neither side could risk using flashlights because it would give their position away.
The landmines exploded within seconds of each other and the resulting explosion lit up the night sky. They hurried along their path, the ground underfoot slippery from the freshly cut vegetation and the humidity that still hadn't let up. They were sacrificing safety for speed as they made their way down the mountain, heading for the river where they knew they were going to lose time. They weren't going to have the luxury of going back to the safe point to cross the river; they were going to have to cross wherever the trail dropped them and hope that the current didn't carry them too far before they could reach the opposite side.
The air around them was suddenly filled with the sound of gunfire and bullets ricocheted off of the ground as they reached the bank of the river. They ran for the river and jumped, hearts pounding as the water around them was pierced by hundreds of bullets from multiple directions. They managed to grab each others flak jackets, keeping them connected, as they fought the current to make it across the river.
Michael had no idea how far the river had carried them when he was finally able to reach out and grab the exposed root of an old tree on the opposite bank. "Sonofabitch," he muttered as he hauled himself up out of the water and then turned to give Stone a hand.
"That was one insane ride," she said as they turned to disappear into the jungle once more. "C'mon, there's an undercover agent who just nearly got us killed and he owes us one helluva - "
The sound that a bullet made as it tore through human flesh was something that once heard could never be forgotten and Michael knew before he even turned that Stone had been hit. The shock was immediate and he looked down to see her staring at her hands where they were pressing against her abdomen. Blood coated her hands and the pressure she was using wasn't doing anything to stem the flow. He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her deeper into the jungle before tearing a strip off of the bottom of his shirt and using it to tie around her waist, hoping to slow the blood flow long enough to get her out of the sniper's path.
He risked moving deeper into the jungle and clearing out a small area where he could lay her down and try to put a field dressing on the wound so they could keep moving. She hadn't made a sound and he hoped that the shock would keep her unaware of what was happening to her; he could dress the wound, he could dose her up with morphine, but he knew what he would see before he reached for the hastily tied makeshift bandage.
Wounds like this were never good and without immediate attention they were also fatal. They were in the middle of the jungle and he knew there was no way she was going to survive the night, much less the trek back to the pick up point. He pulled the medical kit out of his pack and filled the syringe with enough to dull the pain she would feel as soon as the shock began to wear off, sinking the needle into her flesh and pushing the plunger down to inject her with the painkiller.
He worked quickly and efficiently, trying hard to choke down the nausea that rose when he pulled the remnants of her flak jacket and shirt away from the wound. Hollow point, he thought, recognizing the damage done by the sniper's choice of bullet. It was his preferred type of bullet primarily because of its accuracy from a distance but he had also chosen it for the damage it did to its target.
There wasn't much left to the right side of her stomach and he could see her intestines protruding from the gaping wound. He tried to be as gentle as possible as he dealt with the wound, dressing it and wishing that he couldn't see how quickly the bandage was turning red.
"You should get outta here," Stone wheezed. It was taking everything she had to not scream as the agonizing pain ripped through her body in waves.
"We don't leave our people behind, Stone."
"We do if it's our only chance to get out alive."
"You're not dyin' in this fuckin' jungle!" he insisted.
"Wanna bet on it?" She coughed weakly, glassy eyes staring up at the starry sky. "I've got a bad feelin' I won't see daylight, Guerin."
"We're not discussin' this." He turned his attention to his weapon, stripping it down and checking it over to make sure it was ready for action.
The morphine started to kick in and a blessed languid feeling began to settle over her. "Did you know I met Azrael on a mission?"
Michael snorted softly as he reached for her weapon and started to break it down. He leaned over her, unable to hide the concern in his gaze when he saw that the bandage was nearly soaked through. "Everyone knows you met him on a mission," he said as he tore another strip off of his shirt and wrapped it around her abdomen.
"Did you know I was workin' for a private contractor at the time? I had been hired to take him out because he was a threat to one of their clients." She shook her head, wincing when a sliver of pain reached past the morphine to remind her of her situation. "I was young and idealistic… thought I could change the world, one bad guy at a time."
Michael snorted, unable to picture her the way she was describing her younger self. "Guess that means Azrael set your ass straight."
"He got the drop on me the night I… I was supposed to kill him and that p-p-prick held me hostage for a week before he… he convinced me that he… was the good guy and I had been hired by one of the C-C-Company's enemies." She coughed, tasting the metallic tang of blood. "Didn't know who the Company was at… that time; I thought he was full of shit and… and spinning a line of bull to get in my panties."
"Was he?"
She laughed and it quickly ended in another bout of coughing. "Don't make me laugh, Guerin. Obviously the part about the Company was true, but…" She tried to draw a breath, having more and more difficulty talking as the minutes passed by. "…but that man was definitely tryin' to get in my panties. He was cold-blooded… ruthless… and damn he could b-b-be a heartless bastard out in the field, but when it came to us… together… there was a side of him that… that most people never would've even suspected existed." The light in her eyes dulled as she turned her head to look at him. "I stopped living the night he died," she admitted quietly. "After that it was just a matter of survival, biding my time until I could be with him again."
"Fuck, Stone, what're you talkin' about?"
"Somethin' that scares you more than the wrong side of a bullet… lettin' somebody in, lettin' yourself care for her…"
Michael busied himself with putting her rifle back together. "We're not havin' this conversation."
"Give a dyin' woman a chance to give you some advice - "
"You're not - "
"I am, and you know it. If it weren't for the morphine I'd be screaming in agony and begging you to put me out of my misery right now… it's only a matter of time… and that time's getting shorter."
He sighed and let the rifle rest across his legs as he gave her his full attention. "Fine, share your advice with me."
"I've watched you with her… over the past few months and I've seen you start to change; it's nothing overt," she hurried to assure him when he pulled back and looked offended, "but it's happening. You treat her differently than you do… any other woman, you talk to her instead of at her, and you actually listen to her when she talks." She tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a gurgle and she was unaware of his concerned gaze when blood began to trickle down from the corner of her mouth. "The woman's got you goin' to the fuckin' supermarket and buyin' groceries for God's sake… you care about her whether you want to or not." Her hand settled weakly on his thigh and he automatically reached down to wrap his hand around hers. "People like us don't find that very often, Guerin; don't let it slip away from you if you think you can really have somethin' with her… promise me."
Michael swallowed hard. Her voice was getting weaker, her breaths coming in shallow pants now. "Promise," he said gruffly.
She nodded, satisfied that he would keep his word. "Promise me one more thing, you stubborn bastard," she gasped on a raspy breath.
Michael nodded. "Anything, Stone."
"Make sure they bury me next to Azrael. I've been separated from him long enough…"
Her body convulsed as she tried to draw in another breath and he could see how much even that weak effort was costing her. "I'll make sure you're with him," he promised. His hand shook as he reached out to wipe away the blood that spilled from the corner of her mouth and he squeezed his eyes shut when he heard the last ragged breath ghost past her lips.
Timelord31 – Thanks for reading.
Alien Friend – Poor Michael, huh? Well, he’s had it so easy with women, up until now, he can suffer a little. It’s only justice.
Mary mary – Thank you, glad that you liked Michael’s POV.
Part 50
They were too far into the jungle to encounter hunters, farmers, or any of the people living in the surrounding villages, so that only left one option: rebels. He heard their hushed voices as they neared his location and he forced his breathing and his heartbeat to fall into the same synchronous rhythm as his hand momentarily tightened around the grip on his weapon. They were too close to the camp to risk the men giving their position away either vocally or by firing their weapons, so they had to time the hit perfectly. He raised his arm and drew a bead on the man on the right, knowing that Stone would take the other man out.
A nearly silent click came over his earpiece letting him know that she was in position and at the count of three he squeezed the trigger. The rebel didn't even have time to register shock as he dropped to the ground, hitting his knees and swaying for several moments before falling forward to land on his face. The second rebel followed suit and his forward momentum carried him to the ground next to his comrade.
"This is not good," he snarled as he moved in to verify the kills. Not much more than checking for a pulse since one no longer had a face and the other one was missing the back of his head. Funny thing about bullets, he mused. They didn't make that much of a mess going in, but that exit wound was a whole different story. "The camp is in the valley across the river; why would they be all the way over here?"
Stone shook her head as she grabbed the collar of one of the rebels and dragged him back into a dense patch of overgrowth and started covering the body. "They wouldn't be, not if our Intel was right."
"It's either bad Intel or a trap and I don't like either of those choices."
Stone remained silent while they finished hiding the bodies. Bad Intel or a trap, neither one mattered because a man's life hung in the balance and it was their job to retrieve him before the rebels started carving him up and sending him back to his family in pieces.
Michael nodded when as they stood back to look at each other. "I know," he muttered, "the mission comes first; doesn't mean I have to like it." He turned his head, listening for anything out of place. "How d'you wanna proceed?"
Stone understood what he was saying and she agreed with him. "We need to reach the ridgeline so we can get a look at the camp and make an assessment of the situation." She glanced at the sky, judging how much time they had before darkness fell. "We need to be in position so we can get in and out by sunup if we're gonna make it to the pick up point in time."
"We'd better pick up the pace then. We've still gotta make it across the river and a quarter mile up the side of that damned mountain, and we're gonna need daylight so we can see what kind of numbers and artillery we're up against."
They continued on their original course, the machete hacking through the thick vegetation the only sound as they each contemplated the danger lying ahead of them.
Darkness was quickly moving in as they finally reached the ridgeline and they scouted the area carefully before beginning the short climb to the top.
"Stone."
She froze when Michael called her, easily recognizing the warning tone in his voice. She glanced at him and turned her head to follow his gaze, cursing under her breath when she located the tripwire several feet away, carefully hidden beneath the deep green foliage.
"Fuck," she muttered.
Another few minutes and it would've been too dark to see it. They had lost precious time when they had reached the river and found the bridge destroyed and it had taken time to find a place that was safe to cross.
"Rebels nowhere near the camp, the bridge knocked out by explosives, and now a landmine on the ridge we need to access to verify our target? I don't believe in coincidence, Stone."
"That makes two of us." Fuck! It was a setup; there probably wasn't even a hostage waiting to be rescued. "We need to verify the hostage situation and figure out what we're gonna do now."
Michael nodded and snapped his fingers. "Toss me the binoculars and then keep an eye out while I take a look at the situation." He carefully stepped over the tripwire and his eyes scanned the ground in a nearly futile effort to locate any other traps.
"Freeze!" Stone hissed when the moonlight revealed a second thin silver wire stretched taut across the path.
Every muscle in his body locked in response to her order while he waited for her to assess the situation. "Step over with your left foot, but don't go any further; we have no visibility beyond your current position. Go high, Guerin, that tripwire's right at calf level." She breathed a sigh of relief when his booted foot cleared the wire and settled on the other side.
Michael shoved away the thought that there was an explosive device between his feet and brought the binoculars up to his eyes, switching them over to night vision so he could scan the camp in the valley below them. He scanned over every inch of the camp and shook his head when the sweep only confirmed what he had already suspected. "There's no activity down there; it's completely deserted and looks like it's been that way for quite a while." He braced his left arm on the tree beside him and just as he turned his head away something hit the binoculars and they flew out of his hand to land on the ground next to Stone.
He quickly backtracked, following Stone's instructions to avoid the tripwires and he crouched down beside her as she examined the binoculars in the moonlight. "Sniper," he muttered when he saw the shattered lens and what was left of the other end… where his eye had been a mere second before the equipment had taken the hit.
"Looks like he got you, too." Stone nodded at the torn fabric of his shirt and the blood staining the camouflage material.
Michael glanced at his shoulder and shook his head. "Flesh wound," he said carelessly. He pulled a small can out of one of the pockets in his pants and handed it to her as he shrugged the strap of his rifle off of his right shoulder. "Paint the tripwire… we're gonna need a distraction."
'Painting' a target meant spraying it with a substance that was only visible with a certain lens. She nodded and took care of it while he checked his rifle and removed his scope from another pocket, attaching it to the weapon and then checking to make sure that the marker was showing up.
They moved back, carefully making their way along the path they had cut through the jungle until they had nearly lost sight of the ridgeline. Stone kept her own weapon at the ready, scanning the area around them as he pulled his rifle up to rest against his shoulder. She knew he was taking the landmines out, hoping that they would draw their would-be assassins out into the open; their only advantage at this point was to draw them out at night, when they would have a fair chance of getting away.
The rebels knew the area a lot better than they did and they would be able to track them during the day. By drawing them out at night they kept their enemies from having the upper hand; neither side could risk using flashlights because it would give their position away.
The landmines exploded within seconds of each other and the resulting explosion lit up the night sky. They hurried along their path, the ground underfoot slippery from the freshly cut vegetation and the humidity that still hadn't let up. They were sacrificing safety for speed as they made their way down the mountain, heading for the river where they knew they were going to lose time. They weren't going to have the luxury of going back to the safe point to cross the river; they were going to have to cross wherever the trail dropped them and hope that the current didn't carry them too far before they could reach the opposite side.
The air around them was suddenly filled with the sound of gunfire and bullets ricocheted off of the ground as they reached the bank of the river. They ran for the river and jumped, hearts pounding as the water around them was pierced by hundreds of bullets from multiple directions. They managed to grab each others flak jackets, keeping them connected, as they fought the current to make it across the river.
Michael had no idea how far the river had carried them when he was finally able to reach out and grab the exposed root of an old tree on the opposite bank. "Sonofabitch," he muttered as he hauled himself up out of the water and then turned to give Stone a hand.
"That was one insane ride," she said as they turned to disappear into the jungle once more. "C'mon, there's an undercover agent who just nearly got us killed and he owes us one helluva - "
The sound that a bullet made as it tore through human flesh was something that once heard could never be forgotten and Michael knew before he even turned that Stone had been hit. The shock was immediate and he looked down to see her staring at her hands where they were pressing against her abdomen. Blood coated her hands and the pressure she was using wasn't doing anything to stem the flow. He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her deeper into the jungle before tearing a strip off of the bottom of his shirt and using it to tie around her waist, hoping to slow the blood flow long enough to get her out of the sniper's path.
He risked moving deeper into the jungle and clearing out a small area where he could lay her down and try to put a field dressing on the wound so they could keep moving. She hadn't made a sound and he hoped that the shock would keep her unaware of what was happening to her; he could dress the wound, he could dose her up with morphine, but he knew what he would see before he reached for the hastily tied makeshift bandage.
Wounds like this were never good and without immediate attention they were also fatal. They were in the middle of the jungle and he knew there was no way she was going to survive the night, much less the trek back to the pick up point. He pulled the medical kit out of his pack and filled the syringe with enough to dull the pain she would feel as soon as the shock began to wear off, sinking the needle into her flesh and pushing the plunger down to inject her with the painkiller.
He worked quickly and efficiently, trying hard to choke down the nausea that rose when he pulled the remnants of her flak jacket and shirt away from the wound. Hollow point, he thought, recognizing the damage done by the sniper's choice of bullet. It was his preferred type of bullet primarily because of its accuracy from a distance but he had also chosen it for the damage it did to its target.
There wasn't much left to the right side of her stomach and he could see her intestines protruding from the gaping wound. He tried to be as gentle as possible as he dealt with the wound, dressing it and wishing that he couldn't see how quickly the bandage was turning red.
"You should get outta here," Stone wheezed. It was taking everything she had to not scream as the agonizing pain ripped through her body in waves.
"We don't leave our people behind, Stone."
"We do if it's our only chance to get out alive."
"You're not dyin' in this fuckin' jungle!" he insisted.
"Wanna bet on it?" She coughed weakly, glassy eyes staring up at the starry sky. "I've got a bad feelin' I won't see daylight, Guerin."
"We're not discussin' this." He turned his attention to his weapon, stripping it down and checking it over to make sure it was ready for action.
The morphine started to kick in and a blessed languid feeling began to settle over her. "Did you know I met Azrael on a mission?"
Michael snorted softly as he reached for her weapon and started to break it down. He leaned over her, unable to hide the concern in his gaze when he saw that the bandage was nearly soaked through. "Everyone knows you met him on a mission," he said as he tore another strip off of his shirt and wrapped it around her abdomen.
"Did you know I was workin' for a private contractor at the time? I had been hired to take him out because he was a threat to one of their clients." She shook her head, wincing when a sliver of pain reached past the morphine to remind her of her situation. "I was young and idealistic… thought I could change the world, one bad guy at a time."
Michael snorted, unable to picture her the way she was describing her younger self. "Guess that means Azrael set your ass straight."
"He got the drop on me the night I… I was supposed to kill him and that p-p-prick held me hostage for a week before he… he convinced me that he… was the good guy and I had been hired by one of the C-C-Company's enemies." She coughed, tasting the metallic tang of blood. "Didn't know who the Company was at… that time; I thought he was full of shit and… and spinning a line of bull to get in my panties."
"Was he?"
She laughed and it quickly ended in another bout of coughing. "Don't make me laugh, Guerin. Obviously the part about the Company was true, but…" She tried to draw a breath, having more and more difficulty talking as the minutes passed by. "…but that man was definitely tryin' to get in my panties. He was cold-blooded… ruthless… and damn he could b-b-be a heartless bastard out in the field, but when it came to us… together… there was a side of him that… that most people never would've even suspected existed." The light in her eyes dulled as she turned her head to look at him. "I stopped living the night he died," she admitted quietly. "After that it was just a matter of survival, biding my time until I could be with him again."
"Fuck, Stone, what're you talkin' about?"
"Somethin' that scares you more than the wrong side of a bullet… lettin' somebody in, lettin' yourself care for her…"
Michael busied himself with putting her rifle back together. "We're not havin' this conversation."
"Give a dyin' woman a chance to give you some advice - "
"You're not - "
"I am, and you know it. If it weren't for the morphine I'd be screaming in agony and begging you to put me out of my misery right now… it's only a matter of time… and that time's getting shorter."
He sighed and let the rifle rest across his legs as he gave her his full attention. "Fine, share your advice with me."
"I've watched you with her… over the past few months and I've seen you start to change; it's nothing overt," she hurried to assure him when he pulled back and looked offended, "but it's happening. You treat her differently than you do… any other woman, you talk to her instead of at her, and you actually listen to her when she talks." She tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a gurgle and she was unaware of his concerned gaze when blood began to trickle down from the corner of her mouth. "The woman's got you goin' to the fuckin' supermarket and buyin' groceries for God's sake… you care about her whether you want to or not." Her hand settled weakly on his thigh and he automatically reached down to wrap his hand around hers. "People like us don't find that very often, Guerin; don't let it slip away from you if you think you can really have somethin' with her… promise me."
Michael swallowed hard. Her voice was getting weaker, her breaths coming in shallow pants now. "Promise," he said gruffly.
She nodded, satisfied that he would keep his word. "Promise me one more thing, you stubborn bastard," she gasped on a raspy breath.
Michael nodded. "Anything, Stone."
"Make sure they bury me next to Azrael. I've been separated from him long enough…"
Her body convulsed as she tried to draw in another breath and he could see how much even that weak effort was costing her. "I'll make sure you're with him," he promised. His hand shook as he reached out to wipe away the blood that spilled from the corner of her mouth and he squeezed his eyes shut when he heard the last ragged breath ghost past her lips.