Page 5 of A Breath of Life (Shadowy Solutions #4)

The blood drained from his already pale face as he peered up at me in desperation. Wheezing and whistling, he grasped hold of my T-shirt with a strength he shouldn’t have possessed and made every attempt to draw me to his level.

He spoke—or tried to—but without enough air to push the words out, I didn’t understand.

“Focus on breathing, not talking, you idiot.”

Shaking his head, he repeated almost soundlessly. “Poc-ket.” The single word came out thin and airy .

“Pocket?”

A nod. “Look… find… poc-ket.”

“He wants you to check his pockets,” Tallus said, bouncing between feet, hugging his phone and our food for dear life.

“Why?” I growled.

The man’s glassy gaze landed on Tallus. Still struggling to suck air down his damaged throat, he wheezed, “Poc-ket. Please.”

Something in my brain told me not to look. If I was caught rummaging through a beaten man’s clothing as he lay dying in a back alley, I would be the one arrested. Who were the police going to believe? Never me.

Echo whimpered and moved to my side.

“Find… it,” the man said. Another wheeze. Another whistle. His mouth opened and closed like he was doing all he could to gulp air. “Find… it… Poc-ket.”

“Find what?”

“Find… Poc-ket.”

“Diem, he wants you to—”

“All right. I know. Hang up the fucking phone first.” The last thing I needed was some nosy operator listening in while I frisked a dying man for his wallet or whatever he wanted me to find.

I refused to act until Tallus had obeyed, then I rummaged inside the man’s coat pockets but found them empty. “There’s nothing there.”

“Find… somewhere.”

“Check his pants.”

“Tallus.”

“Do it. He wants you to. He said so.”

“The man’s out of his fucking head. He doesn’t know what he wants. ”

A siren blared in the distance, and the gentleman registered the noise. His trembling, bloody hand, still clinging to my T-shirt, tightened, balling the fabric as he enunciated, “Find… Take… Find… Take.”

“Find what, asshole? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“His pants, D. Check his pants.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

I went through the front pockets of the man’s pants and found them empty. “There’s nothing here.”

I didn’t want to move him to check the ones in the back.

On the verge of giving up, a pocket on the front of his vest caught my attention.

I fished inside with two fingers and discovered a leather drawstring pouch, flat but not empty.

Whatever it contained was only slightly larger than a business card and as hard as metal.

I held it between us, and the man’s eyes widened in fear—a greater fear than before.

“Is this it? Is this what you wanted?”

The gentleman moved his hand from my T-shirt to my wrist, pushing the object farther from his face. “Get… away. Throw… away.” Another wheezing gasp. The man’s blue lips stood out. His ghostly skin made the bruises appear darker.

Still, he continued to speak. “Throw… away… Bad.” He gawped and did what he could to pull oxygen, but the swelling around his throat had grown worse.

The ambulance was nearer. The wailing sirens bounced off the high buildings and rang through the night.

“I’m going to flag them down,” Tallus said. He left the takeout on the ground and handed me Echo’s leash since she wouldn’t leave my side. Then he ran.

The gentleman’s eyes closed, and the whistling of thin air entering his damaged throat stopped briefly .

If the ambulance didn’t hurry up, the man would suffocate.

He seemed to be unconscious, so I moved to return the leather pouch to his pocket—I was not interested in being accused of robbing him—but the man jolted, strained, and did all he could to suck in a final gasp of air.

The dying man shook his head. Again, he tried to speak, but the words were barely audible. “No… Throw… away.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I yelled.

His lips formed one final word. Please . Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

Echo licked my cheek and pressed her weight against my side. My blood pressure was through the roof, and this freak from another century, in the throes of death, wasn’t making sense.

A clatter sounded from the far end of the alley.

“Hurry the fuck up,” I hollered. “He stopped breathing.”

In the seconds before the paramedics arrived, I stuffed the leather drawstring pouch into my pocket and moved out of the way, encouraging Echo to follow as the medical team surrounded the gentleman.

“His throat is swollen shut,” I explained. “He can’t get oxygen. He stopped breathing less than a minute ago.”

They wasted no time. First, they attempted to intubate without success. Then, they performed an emergency tracheotomy right there in the alley. The two-man crew worked fast and efficiently.

Tallus returned to my side, taking my hand and holding on for dear life.

The man did not die, at least not there in the alley, but it was a close one.

We watched as the team stabilized him, transferred him to a gurney, and raced off to the nearest hospital.

The police arrived during the chaos and required Tallus and me to give statements.

Thorough fucking statements. I hated the police with every fiber of my being, so it took a world of patience and Echo’s calming influence to translate what had happened.

We explained how Echo had alerted us to the incident, how we’d seen someone run off into the night, likely the attacker. No, we couldn’t identify them. No, we didn’t know if they were male or female, black or white, old or young, short or tall. No, we didn’t know what they were wearing.

We knew nothing but the aftermath.

When asked about the gentleman’s condition upon our arrival, we explained about his stab wound, his bloodied face, and his struggle to breathe.

We did not relay his desperate request that we search his pockets and dispose of whatever was in the soft leather pouch.

I wasn’t a fan of cops, and the man’s demand had felt ominous.

Call it a hunch, but I suspected revealing those details to the police would somehow bite me in the ass.

Eventually, the officer gave us his card and drove away. By then, our food was likely congealed and inedible, and our peaceful night was ruined.

Somber, we aimed for home. At the mouth of the alley was a garbage bin. I fished the pouch from my pocket with every intent of throwing it away as the man requested, but Tallus caught my arm and stopped me.

“Wait. Aren’t you going to look inside first?”

I should have said no, then maybe everything that followed wouldn’t have happened, and we could have continued our lives in safe, blissful ignorance.

But I’d never been good at saying no to Tallus.