Midnight Choices

Duncan made a choked noise. “Ah…been a while since you were around kids, hasn’t it, Ben?”

“Yeah.” Ben’s eyes never left his son’s face. “Your uncle Duncan means I wasn’t supposed to say ‘damn.’ You shouldn’t, either.”

“Okay.” Zach squirmed around so he could capture Gwen’s face in his two small hands. “Mom, put me down. Put me down now. I’ll show my dad our suitcases. I bet he can carry all of ’em. He’s really big.”

Slowly she lowered Zach to his feet, stricken by a pang of separation so acute it was a physical ache. She wanted to scoop him up and run away, but it was already too late. “Keep hold of your father’s hand, Zach. Don’t be running off.”

He held up a hand, his face turned up to Ben’s in sunny confidence. “C’mon. Mom packed hunnerds of things. I brought all my army guys. We’re gonna stay with you for two weeks!”

“So I hear.” A large hand reached down and swallowed the little one. Ben glanced at her. “I won’t let him get lost.”

She nodded. “I’m not sure which carousel is ours.”

“I’ll find it. I know your flight number.” He looked down at Zach, his expression soft and grave. “I don’t know if I can carry hundreds of things. I might need some help.”

Zach giggled as they set off. “It’s all in suitcases. Do you have a dog?”

Gwen smiled. And swallowed hard. Dammit, she was not going to cry.

“Ben’s good with kids,” the man still beside her said quietly. “And he’s already gone on this one.”

“Zach’s good with everyone.” She gave Duncan a smile—and looked quickly away. Damn, damn, damn…

“I take it your flight was uneventful?”

“Aside from reading Green Eggs and Ham twenty times, yes.” What was wrong with her? Couldn’t she get anything right? She tried to pull her thoughts together, watching as Ben and Zach stopped at the first of the baggage carousels.

Ben hunkered down, putting himself at Zach’s level. Zach was chattering away. His clear voice carried enough for her to catch a few words—something about his army guys. Then he pointed at a blue suitcase. Ben stood and heaved it off the conveyor belt.

They were so delighted with each other. She couldn’t do anything to mess that up.

The man beside her spoke quietly. “The two of them look right together, don’t they?”

“Yes. Yes, they do.” Her body was humming to itself, making her feel so alive. Making her feel, for the first time in so long, very much a woman.

Stupid, treacherous damned body—this wasn’t the first time it had betrayed her. “We’d better catch up with them,” she said. “My luggage isn’t blue.”

Chapter 5

“Hey, buddy, you paying attention? Gotta bid if you wanna stay in the game.” Pat grinned at Duncan. “You chickening out on me?”

Pat looked just as he always did, the red hair a few weeks past a trim, his fatigue shirt unbuttoned. His stubby little excuse for a nose was peeling as usual—Pat always said he could get a sunburn from standing under a hundred-watt lightbulb. He was sitting in the notch of the old oak out back, leaning against the trunk, holding a hand of cards.

Duncan was straddling the same wide limb, his legs dangling down on either side. He used to sit out here like this with his brother Charlie.

Part of Duncan knew this wasn’t right; Sgt. Patrick McConaughsey didn’t belong to the time of his life when he’d sat in this old oak. But it seemed rude to ask Pat why he was here in Highpoint when Duncan was so glad to see him. “Hey, Pat, it’s good to see you.”

“You gonna play cards or not? It’s jacks or better to open.”

Duncan glanced down. Sure enough, he was holding a hand of cards. All jacks. All red Jacks, in fact. Alarm trickled in. “Pat, there’s something wrong here. Something wrong with my hand.”

“Is it your hand or your eyes? Look again.”

There was something wrong with his eyes. He couldn’t seem to focus. No, maybe it was getting darker. He looked around, his alarm deepening. Everything was dark, murky. “There’s some weather moving in. We’d better get inside.”

“Duncan, we need you on the force.” That was Jeff, standing on the ground beneath the branch Duncan straddled. “We need you to kill for us. You’re good at it. Here’s your rifle.” He tossed it up.

“No!” But he caught the rifle one-handed—he couldn’t let it fall to the ground. It was loaded. He knew it was, and even as he protested, his hands were checking it out, making sure everything worked. “You don’t understand. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Duncan, you playing cards or not?” Pat demanded.

Horror bit, clear and sharp through the darkening air. He remembered. “Pat, you’re—”

Gunfire. They were under attack. They—

“It’s a backfire,” Jeff said. “Just a bunch of kids. Nothing to worry about.”

“Duncan,” Pat said again, but his voice was wrong. All wrong, breathy and liquid. Duncan knew what he’d see when he turned his head, but he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop any of it.

Pat leaned against the trunk of the tree, his legs straddling it as before. But he wasn’t grinning. He didn’t have enough face left to grin. In the middle of the dripping, meaty mess that used to be his face, the blood bubbled.

He was still breathing.

“No!” Duncan screamed and he grabbed Pat’s shirt and shook him. “No, no, no—damn you, don’t keep doing this, coming back and dying on me. Damn you!” he said again and shook him over and over, and his friend’s blood spattered everywhere, on his face, his chest, his hands—

Knocking. Someone was knocking on…on his door?

Duncan sat bolt upright in bed. Daylight slanted through the blinds to fall in bright bars on the blue bedspread covering him. He shoved his hair out of his face. His hand shook, but it wasn’t bloody.

God, he was sick of that dream.

Rap. Rap. Rap. Out in the hall, but not on his door, someone was knocking. A little boy said impatiently, “Aren’t you ready yet?”

Zach. Duncan recognized the voice, but hung still between horror and waking. What did Zach want him to be ready for?

“Mo-om!” the boy’s voice rang out.

The bathroom door opened. “Shh,” Gwen said in a low voice. “Keep it quiet, okay? I think your uncle Duncan is still asleep.”

Oh. Right. The boy wanted his mother, not his uncle. Of course. Duncan had a sharp sense of dislocation as he swung between the horror of his dream and the cheerful, everyday sounds outside his door.

He threw back the covers, climbed out of bed and crossed to the window, lifting one of the slats of the blinds so he could look out. Mrs. Bradshaw, the neighbor who used to baby-sit for his mother back in another world, was digging in her flower bed.

His unconscious mind wasn’t exactly subtle. Over and over it hammered home the same points. The script changed slightly—this had been Jeff’s first time to make an appearance, for example—but the essence was the same every time. At the start of the dream, Pat was alive and well and wanted to play poker. At the end he was a bloody wreck…and still horribly alive.

Zach’s whisper was every bit as audible as his normal voice. “I’m hungry, Mom.”

He heard Gwen say something, her voice still low. A giggle from Zach. Then the thud of little feet, fading as they headed down the stairs.