“McDaniel? He caught some shrapnel in the chest,” he replied, indicating a form under a blanket. “Poor guy.”
Cort’s lips made a thin line. “Where’s his rifle?”
The soldier found it and handed it to Cort.
“That’s going to be a hard shot,” the man told him solemnly. “He’s got the high ground and he’s got plenty of cover.” He indicated the position, where movement could just barely be seen among some trees in the dim light of dusk.
Cort loaded the high-powered rifle. “No problem.”
He stole around the side of their position, going very slowly, making no sound. He was a hunter. Every fall, he brought home at least two deer for the dinner table. He loved venison stew. Nobody made it like Chiquita, nicknamed Chaca, who’d cooked for the men since Cort had been a little boy.
When he found a place that gave him a good view of the mortar and its operator, he hunkered down and rested the stock of the rifle on the broken wall that ran around the perimeter of the bombed-out blockhouse where he and the other soldiers had set up camp.
He took slow, deliberate aim at a spot he was certain the insurgent was occupying. Sure enough, seconds later, there was the faintest glint of light reflecting off metal. Cort smiled as he pulled the trigger.
There were no more rockets. Cort hadn’t seen the result of the shot, but he was pretty sure he’d wounded the enemy soldier. He put the rifle down and caught his breath.
“Nice shot,” another soldier said.
He smiled. “Thanks. I hate being bombed when I’m trying to sleep.”
“Tell me about it!”
The conversation, and his actions, had been real. But the dream suddenly morphed into a nightmare. There was a woman nearby. He couldn’t see her, but he heard her screams. She was begging someone to stop, to leave her alone. Cort searched for her, but all he could hear was her voice in the distance. “I’ll never marry!” she was sobbing. “No man will ever have power over me again!”
He wanted to tell the shadowy woman that unless she lived in a cave, someone would have power over her. A boss. A stubborn friend. Doctors. Lawyers. Power came and went. It never ended. But he couldn’t find her.
She was crying softly. “They said it would get better with time, but it doesn’t get better. It will never get better!”
“What will get better?” he asked.
“Life.”
He opened his eyes and the ceiling was above him. Bart’s ceiling. Bart’s house. He sat up in bed and drew up his knees so that he’d have a place to rest his forehead. The dream had seemed very real. The woman had sounded as if she were being tortured. He wondered why her voice sounded so familiar. He wondered who had hurt her.
Well, he reasoned, it was only a dream, after all. He lay back down and went back to sleep.
* * *
THEY WERE WORKING out on the ranch, branding calves, when one of Bart’s part-time cowboys rode up.
“There’s going to be a party for that friend of yours who writes,” the cowboy told Bart. “And get this—they’re going to have it at the Simpson mansion. How’s that for highbrow? When she was in school, the kids of the family who lived there used to throw rocks at her when she went by toward the school bus stop.”
“She’s had a hard life,” Bart agreed quietly. “It’s nice to see her getting some recognition, finally.”
“What sort of party is it?” Cort asked.
The cowboy chuckled. “The sort where anybody’s welcome,” he replied. “So I guess I’ll clean my boots and see if I can find a clean change of clothes, and I’ll present myself to the single ladies present!”
“Good luck with that, McAllister.” Bart grinned. “You’d do better to pin fifty-dollar bills to your shirt and go date-fishing at a mall. You are a disaster when it comes to women.”
“I noticed,” the cowboy sighed. “But then, miracles happen every day they say. I’m waiting for mine with both hands outstretched!”
“Uncomfortable posture,” Bart returned.
“What’s a little discomfort in pursuit of love?” the cowboy said with a laugh.
“When is this mythical party?” Bart asked.
“Saturday night.”
“I’ll bring my cousin,” Bart told him, indicating Cort. “A night out will do him good.”
“It won’t do me any good,” McAllister said in a sad tone. “He’s prettier than all the rest of us combined. I reckon the pretty ladies will trample us to get to him.” He pointed at Cort, who laughed uproariously.
* * *
MINA MICHAELS, MEANWHILE, wasn’t laughing. She was dreading an upcoming party that she was being forced to go to. A lot of people wouldn’t even recognize her as an author, because she wrote under the pen name of Willow Shane. The hosts, the Simpsons, were kind people who read her books, so she felt obligated to go. Besides, many of the local citizens who’d been so kind to her would be present. Her life had been a hard one. It was better now that she lived alone at the ranch that her father had owned. He’d left her mother when she was nine, and her mother had a rich boyfriend who kept things going at the ranch afterward.
The rich boyfriend, however, eventually got tired of Anthea Michaels. She found a married man and seduced and then blackmailed him into keeping her up. Men came and went in the house all the time Mina was growing up. She saw things that turned her stomach. Her mother thought it was hilarious that she was shocked. She chided Mina about her stupid morals and her infrequent trips to church whenever Mina could get a ride.
Despite the boyfriend who paid the bills, her mother had slept with a lot of other men, including a boy Mina had a painfully fervent crush on. She’d cried for days. The boy was too ashamed afterward to even speak to Mina, and of course, all the kids at school knew what her
