couldn’t even move. Come to think of it, most people couldn’t move when they were dying, so how the hell were you supposed to go toward anything? He tensed his muscles, but all that did was make his ribs hurt. It got the shadows moving, though. They flashed in and out of sight, making a constant and incomprehensible noise, like quacking ducks.
If heaven was full of ducks, he was in trouble. About his only contact with a duck had been shooting one on a hunting trip in 1998. He’d fed some once too, when he was a kid, but he doubted a few chunks of bread tossed into a scummy pond would offset cold-blooded duck murder. If ducks controlled the pearly gates, he was out of luck and headed for hell.
Oh, well. He’d never really expected to make the cut for heaven anyway. Too much carousing. Too many women.
Still, he’d done a few good things in his life. He’d done his best to help Trevor after his accident. He’d insulted the guy the entire time, but that was just to make everybody feel more comfortable.
And he’d helped a few horses. Flash, especially. If he did nothing else in his life, he’d always be proud he’d given that horse a chance to escape the pain he’d suffered so long.
And that brought him to Sarah. Had he helped her? Probably not. He’d done his best, but she was still deluding herself, believing in her stepfather and blaming Lane for all her family’s troubles. She didn’t realize families had troubles no matter what the circumstances.
Look at his own family. His father, who had died stern and disapproving even though a stroke had robbed him of the ability to express his disappointment in his sons. His brother, driving the company onward as it ate up land and sucked out communities’ souls along with the precious oil beneath them.
But not this time. He’d prevented that from happening to Two Shot. He was pretty sure he’d convinced his brother that taking responsibility for the community would have earned their father’s approval. And if that didn’t work, he’d had paperwork done up on the conservation easement and Trevor didn’t know it yet, but he had power of attorney if anything happened to Lane.
Anything like this.
He closed his eyes and listened to the quacking of the ducks for a while. They sounded pretty riled up. And they were pretty big ducks. One in particular loomed over him. He felt it brush against his hand, and then something stroked his face. A feather? A wingtip? Man, he was in trouble.
The duck moved away and the light hit his eyes like a laser, sending a sharp, shooting pain straight to the back of his head. He closed his eyes and tensed. It was like he’d been shot. Damn, he shouldn’t have done that to a poor innocent duck. It hadn’t even been good eating. The thing was tough as an old saddle and tasted like a bad chicken gone worse.
The wingtip brushed his face again and he opened his eyes. Things were starting to come into focus now. The illumination he’d taken for the light at the end of the tunnel to heaven was actually just a big lighted square in one of those cheap drop ceilings. The shadows weren’t ducks; they were people. Thank God. He wasn’t dead. He might have come close—but he was alive and clearly in the hospital.
He hadn’t died; he’d just been delusional. And that meant he had a second chance at life.
What was he going to do with it?
Well, first of all, he’d be nicer to ducks. Maybe he could dig a pond at the ranch, make a little duck country club for them. He pictured a duck lounging by a swimming pool on a duck-sized chaise lounge with an umbrella drink in his hand and almost laughed.
“Did he just laugh?” someone asked. It was a woman’s voice, probably a nurse. It reminded him of Sarah, but no way would Sarah be here. Sarah hated him now.
The sharp pain came again, but this time it hit his heart.
“I think he did laugh,” said a low, masculine voice. “But did you see him flinch?”
He knew that voice. It was Trevor. If Trevor had set foot in a hospital, Lane had to be in pretty bad shape.
He squinted, struggling to make out the shapes that had blurred into shadows again. He wanted to see that nurse. She really sounded a lot like Sarah. Maybe it was.