Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Twenty-three

Flames!

Flames so virulent they threatened to suck the breath from Patrick’s lungs even as their crackling whispered in his ears with a seductive passion. Its heat, warm and comforting when he first felt it, made him feel as if he was melting an instant later.

Flames so beautiful he wanted to embrace them.

Flames that sang to him, beckoned to him, urged him closer.

No! The flames were evil! They were destroying his home, devouring his family, consuming his very life! Now their soft lullabies were drowned out by the screams of his wife and children, and though he wanted to rush to them, to reach into the flames and pull them to safety, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t even see them. All he could see were the flames dancing in front of him, mocking him, laughing at him, torturing him.

And drawing him closer…

It wasn’t too late — he could still save them, could still rush into the flames and find them and—

But their screams were fading, and he knew they were dying and there was nothing he could do and—

As if to punish him for his helplessness, a tongue of flame lashed out at him, and he jerked back just as an alarm bell sounded.

Patrick’s head slammed into a wall, and the fire abruptly vanished, its heat instantly replaced by a terrible cold.

The cold of death itself.

Yet the alarm was sounding again.

But how could that be? If there was no fire—

He groped in the fading amber light that was all that remained of the glow of the flames, and his hand met cold concrete.

His left leg felt numb, and when he tried to move it, he discovered that it was twisted around, pinned beneath his right leg.

As the last vestiges of the nightmare faded from his consciousness, Patrick opened his eyes and found no fire, no heat. Rather, he was in near darkness, in the cold, his muscles cramped, his joints aching.

His left leg, though, was beginning to come back to life and tingling painfully. He groped again, but found only a pair of concrete walls coming together into a corner.

A corner in which he was huddled like some kind of vermin trying to hide from a predator.

The fire! That had been the predator! It had hunted down and devoured his entire family, and all he’d been able to do was cower helplessly, just as he was cowering now.

But where was he? He tried to concentrate, to think of what he last remembered, but his mind was still filled with the memory of the flames, flames that even now seemed ready to leap at him once more.

The alarm sounded again, but now he knew he was awake, and the sound seemed unnaturally loud in the small confines of the concrete room.

He flailed about, and slowly his mind cleared until he recognized the alarm for what it was: the ringing of his cell phone.

And the phone was in the pocket of his robe.

As it rang again, he realized he was wearing only his robe and his pajama bottoms and was no longer in the house.

Then he recognized the amber light slanting down through a small stained-glass window above a heavy door, and he knew.

He knew where he was, though he had no memory of how he had gotten himself there.

The mausoleum.

The huge concrete structure in which generations of Shieldses were interred. In front of him was his wife’s crypt, and below were those of their children. He could see the brass plates with their names engraved. He could see the wilting flowers in their teardrop vases.

And he could see the still empty crypt next to Renee where he himself would someday be entombed.

The cell phone rang again, and with fingers that seemed to be operating under their own volition, he found the key that would answer it. “Yes?” he asked, his voice sounding distant even to himself.

“Patrick?” an unfamiliar voice said. “It’s Alison Montgomery.”

The name meant nothing to him.

“We met once, through Claire, though I doubt you’d remember.”

He did not remember.

“Claire tells me that you’re having a difficult time getting through your grief.”

Patrick stared numbly at the empty crypt next to the one that held his wife’s remains.

“Patrick?”

A faint grunt emerged from his throat.

“Grief is a hard thing to handle,” the woman went on, and he could tell she was choosing her words carefully, as if he might bolt if she said the wrong thing. “Especially the feelings of guilt that always go along with it. I lost my son last year, and I don’t think I’d be here today if it weren’t for the weekly support group.”

Suddenly he understood.

“How about if I pick you up this morning and take you for a cup of coffee?”

Patrick ran his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t sure he could make his way back to the house, much less dress and go to coffee with this woman. And how could he tell her — or anyone else — that he had awakened this morning in the mausoleum, and not for the first time?

How could he describe to her what he was feeling? How could he explain that it wasn’t just the grief — it was the guilt.

She’d just said something about guilt, but how could anyone understand the guilt he felt at not being able to save them?

“Patrick?”

“Yes.”

“Are you having some trouble?”

A small strangled sob erupted from his throat.

“I’ll pick you up at ten o’clock,” Alison Montgomery said, seemingly having understood every emotion that had been packed into his single sob. “That’s an hour from now.”

“All right,” he breathed, and without waiting to hear her response, he closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. Maybe Claire was right — maybe he did need help. Certainly he couldn’t go on much longer the way he was.

If he hadn’t seen Claire’s Range Rover parked in the drive when he came back from his meeting with Alison Montgomery, the massed yellow tulips that greeted Patrick would have come as far more of a shock than they did. Still, he felt his heart race when he saw them — the first perfect blooms of the season — arranged in Renee’s favorite vase on the circular table in the center of the great foyer.

Exactly as Renee herself would have arranged them.

But it wasn’t Renee who had cut the flowers — it was Claire.

With a surge of energy he hadn’t felt in a long time, Patrick strode through the hall to the kitchen, where Neville was disposing of the leftover stems and leaves, as well as the dozens of not-quite-perfect blooms that Claire had rejected for the foyer’s centerpiece. Through the windows, he could see Claire in a blue sundress with hat to match.

Leave it to Claire to be dressed for a garden party despite the lack of even a single guest. And now she was filling yet another basket of blossoms, most of which he was sure would be as firmly rejected as the blooms that now stuffed the wastebasket. He went through the butler’s pantry to the dining room, pushed through the French doors and walked down the path to her.

“Planning to cut every flower we have?” he asked, taking her basket.

“But the tulips are glorious,” Claire replied, surveying the now decimated bed. “I just had to come over and