She froze.
Her eyes slowly moved to the man in the doorway.
It was Tom.
Her husband was standing there in one piece, but it had to be a trick.
She hadn’t been feeling well the last few days, but this morning she’d gone into work. There was a big meeting with a new client who wanted to sell their jewelry in her store, and she hadn’t wanted to reschedule. She’d had her phone off because she didn't want any interruptions as she negotiated the best deal she could.
Besides, she hadn’t been worried about anyone needing her during those couple of hours.
She had been wrong.
When her newest client left, and she finally turned her phone back on, there had been almost four dozen messages and missed calls.
All of them had been about Tom.
Apparently, her husband had been shot.
She hadn’t bothered listening to much more information than that. Just left her employees to finish out the day and lock up and jumped in her car.
While she had expected to go to the hospital, probably to find Tom lying hooked up to a ventilator in a bed in intensive care, the messages had instead directed her to head home.
The entire drive she had been expecting to be met by a family member or a colleague of Tom’s or both. She’d thought they were going to sit her down and gently inform her that her husband had been killed in the line of duty. Tom had been shot. If there was no need to go to the hospital, that had to be because he was dead, right?
So why was he standing there looking the same as he hadwhen they’d both left for work this morning?
It had to be wrong.
Ithadto be.
Hannah shook her head.
No.
This was wrong.
She must be hallucinating.
Or maybe this was Tom’s ghost.
She didn't believe in ghosts, but what else could it be? If he had been shot, then he couldn’t be standing here looking fine.
“Hannah.”
Ghost Tom or hallucination Tom or whoever he was took a step toward her, and she quickly backed up.
“Hannah, it’s all right. I'm okay. Really.”
She just shook her head at him.
She knew what guns did.
It was why she was deathly, paralyzingly afraid of them. She had tried so hard to overcome her phobia, but so far, she hadn’t had a whole lot of success.
“Hannah, calm down.” Tom was speaking to her slowly, a look of concern on his face. Why was he concerned about her? He was the one who had been shot. “You look like you're going to pass out. Come and sit down.”
She was still backing up, but he quickly advanced on her and wrapped warm, strong hands around her biceps.