“Let him go.” Alicia’s voice was stern. “The sheer quantity of dysfunction is making me dizzy. He’s been goading you all night. You snapped and said something out of character. Let it go at that. We’ve more important things to tend to.”
Dream met Alicia’s unwavering gaze, derived some strength from it, and nodded. “Okay, what now?”
“We find Shane.” Karen’s voice was insistent, rife with impatience. “He could be hurt. He could be dead.”
She made a move to plunge again into the gloom, but Alicia restrained her. “Hold on. Let’s do this right this time. There a flashlight in your car, Dream?”
Dream nodded. “In the glove compartment.”
“Go get it, girl.” Alicia held Karen’s gaze. “We’ll go find your man when she gets back, okay?”
Dream moved in the direction of the road.
Karen said, “Wait!”
Dream hesitated, glancing first at Alicia then meeting Karen’s gaze. “Yes?”
“Shane didn’t want anyone to know, but there’s a gun in his bag. A Glock.” The admission seemed to pain her. “I don’t care what Chad says, there’s something out here.” She swallowed hard. “You should get the gun.”
Dream looked at Alicia. “I don’t know anything about guns.”
Alicia shrugged. “Shit, I sure don’t.” There was a new hint of nervousness in her voice. “And I’m not sure we should be fucking around with firearms anyway.”
Karen said, “Shane took me to the shooting range.” She was trying to sound confident, but her voice was still all ragged edges. “I know how to use it.”
Dream said, “I’ll look for it.”
But she thought, And I’ll leave the goddamn thing right where it is.
She decided to keep the sudden flare of anger she felt toward Shane to herself. The son of a bitch had transported a firearm over several state lines.
In her car!
Karen said, “Thank you.”
Dream moved again toward the road, but pulled up short when she heard Alicia say, “Hey… hear that?”
Dream frowned, and listened. “What? I-“
Alicia made a low shushing noise. “Listen!”
There was a moment of absolute stillness.
Then they heard it.
The sound of something approaching from deeper within the woods. Dream was suddenly very afraid. The rational part of her understood what they were hearing was probably just Shane finally returning from whatever he’d been doing-Dream had a strange, almost extrasensory inkling about that-but she was surprised to find a part of herself suddenly buying Karen’s giant monster story. The now significantly louder approach of lumbering footsteps filled her with dread. Her imagination supplied a very vivid image of some horror-movie abomination emerging from the darkness to eat them alive.
Something was flailing about out there. Something very clumsy, to judge from the sound of it. Then Dream detected another sound. She couldn’t quite make it out. It could have been a moan, or a low growl-the kind of sound a monster might make.
A nearby snapping of twigs made them all flinch.
Dream gasped.
It was even closer than she’d thought.
Run! her mind implored her.
Her feet managed a backward a step or two before the presence finally emerged from the darkness and into the little clearing.
It was Shane.
Only, he was nearly impossible to recognize. He was covered in blood, and his clothes were shredded rags. He staggered toward them, his mouth opening as he attempted to tell them something, but blood burbled out instead. He took one more unsteady step, wobbled, and crashed to the ground.
Karen sank to her knees beside him and wailed.
Dream heard another scream.
Her own.
Chad was more than a quarter mile down the road by the time the situation he was leaving behind attained genuine crisis status. His travel bag was slung over his right shoulder, and he was walking briskly. He was in excellent condition from daily workouts at the neighborhood gym, so a walk into town wouldn’t be too taxing. Of course, he wasn’t so sure how far away this theoretical town was, but he had little doubt an oasis of civilization would be nearby. Soon he’d reach one of those little clusters of mcDonald’s restaurants and Holiday Inns that were so liberally interspersed at regular intervals along the major highways. Any minute now he’d round a bend in the road and the golden arches would be looming in the distance. He didn’t doubt he was doing the right thing by leaving his former friends. Alicia was right, damn her-this break was long overdue. He’d outgrown them. The prospect of a future without the girls was at once exhilarating and frightening. He would establish an identity that wasn’t informed by mostly female perspectives. Yet he couldn’t deny the encroaching feeling of bittersweet regret that was gaining a foothold in his heart. It was a kind of grief, he supposed, the loss one feels at the passage of youth. They’d been such good friends in the old days. He’d always been closest to Dream, but he’d known Alicia since high school and Karen since sophomore year of college.
A sliver of doubt slowed his pace somewhat.
Don’t! a stern voice in his head admonished him.
This was the voice of independence, he realized. The voice he’d been listening to as he stormed out of the woods with Dream’s words echoing in his head. He didn’t like to make major life decisions based on emotional impulse, but he felt now was the time for a bold, unusual move. So he reached inside the unlocked Accord, popped the trunk open, retrieved his bag, and started moving.
And those first steps down the path toward a new life had been so intoxicating. So much so he resented this new infusion of doubt. He wanted to believe himself righteous, but his conscience betrayed him, reminding him of his shameful series of trysts with Karen Hidecki. The guilt he’d been holding at bay for months threatened to emerge from a locked door of his subconscious. His pace slowed, and he realized he was contemplating a return to the Accord.
No! railed the admonishing voice.
It was almost a scream now.
Chad suspected it might not really be the voice of independence. That instead it was a manifestation of intense emotional pain. Of deep hurt. A memory of Dream in high school entered his mind like a taunt from the nether regions of his psyche.
One day after school he’d made the mistake of wandering too near the football team’s practice field. He was new to the school, but he’d already been marked as a loner and a geek. Nobody liked him. Nobody talked to him. This kind of exclusion from the social hierarchy of high school-he wasn’t even a Loser, a status that would have at least afforded him membership in a recognized clique-might have bothered him more if not for the transitory nature of his childhood.
His father was a military man and they moved around a lot.
But he was oblivious to all that now as he walked in the late-summer sunlight, reading from an open paperback as he walked. A group of the football players saw him as he strayed from the path that led from the rear of the school to the nearby public library. He was drawn by the sight of a picnic table. The Gatorade dispensers and stacks of plastic cups should have served as warning, but he was blissfully ignorant of the lurking danger. All he knew was that he was a little tired from the heat and needed a place to rest for a few moments. The picnic table had seemed like a good solution.
Until three very large football players were looming over him.
He remembered looking at their hostile faces and naively asking, “There a problem, guys?”
One of the players repeated his question with an exaggerated lisp.” ‘There a problem, guys?’”
He started to get up, but a big hand clamped around his wrist, wrenched his arm behind his back, and pushed
