Mastering her own rampant emotions, Megan prayed that she wouldn’t faint. “No.” She put as much conviction into her answer as she could.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I know.”
Leslie wiped at her mascara-smeared face. “I tried to shoot myself earlier.”
Megan remembered the deafening report and the hole in the wall.
“I couldn’t do it,” Leslie said. “I was just too afraid. I kept hoping everything would get better.”
“It will. But you’ve got to trust me.”
Leslie shook her head. “But that’s the problem! Don’t you see, Mrs. Gander? You’re not you!” She snuffled and hiccupped and cried out in frustration. “You’re me! And I can’t wake up!”
Before Megan realized what was going on, the gun barrel was pulled away from her cheek. Too late, she saw that Leslie had turned the weapon on herself, burying the muzzle against her stomach.
The sharp explosion echoed within the room.
Horrified, Megan reached for the teenager as she twisted away and fell. But as Megan closed her hand on Leslie’s arm, the girl jerked away from her, propelled by an outside force. Even before the sound of the rifle shot penetrated the bedroom and the broken glass from the shattered window tumbled to the floor, Megan knew that one of Kerby’s team had fired, thinking that he was saving Megan’s life.
Leslie’s body sprawled across the floor. Her blonde hair fanned out around her, making her look impossibly young, as blood gushed onto the carpet.
8
Sunshine Hills Cemetery
Outside Marbury, Alabama
Local Time 2148 Hours
“I’d feel better if I could pay you for the shovel.” Delroy Harte stood in the drizzle beside the old truck at the front of Sunshine Hills Cemetery. Wild and frenzied, the wind yanked at his slicker and buffeted his back. A jagged blade of lightning ripped through the black sky, followed immediately by a thunderclap. The rain had abated somewhat, but the storm remained, regaining strength.
George spoke through the open window. “An’ I don’t feel right about chargin’ you for the use of one knowin’ you ain’t set on keepin’ it.” The old man took a last drag on his hand-rolled cigarette and filled the truck’s interior with the warm orange glow. As he exhaled, he pinched the cigarette out between a callused thumb and forefinger, then fieldstripped the charred and spit-wet remnant so the tobacco and paper blew away.
Over the years, Delroy had seen several soldiers practice the same procedure out in the field. “That a habit?”
“Smokin?” George lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Been doin’ it for years.”
“Stripping the butt away like that.” Delroy nodded toward the overburdened ashtray sticking out of the pickup’s battered and sunripened console. “Looks like you normally use the ashtray.” Observing men’s mannerisms had become second nature to him as chaplain. Most sailors aboard a ship weren’t predisposed to saying when they had a problem or what that problem was.
George looked at the full ashtray, then back at Delroy. “Hadn’t paid attention. Guess I been doin’ that for some time these past few days.” He glanced around the cemetery. “Just don’t feel safe here, I reckon. Guys in-country, where they ain’t supposed to be, fieldstripping cigarettes comes as easy as manners at your momma’s table.”
An old habit of soldiers in dangerous places, Delroy thought. Trained to move on and leave no trace of themselves behind. Over fifty years later and the life-or-death training returned as if learned yesterday. Comes from serving in the war, and from getting left behind. He knows this isn’t a safe place.
“These here times, Delroy,” the old man said in a soft voice barely audible over the crack of the branches slapping each other overhead, “why I’m afeared they ain’t safe for man nor beast.”
“God sees us through the darkest times,” Delroy said automatically.
George squinted and studied Delroy with bright interest. “You really believe that?”
“I’m working on it.”
“An’ you a-standin’ there with that shovel in your hand.” George shook his head sadly.
Guilt flushed through Delroy; he knew then that the old man had guessed what he planned on doing, but he made no apologies for his decision. He had to know. He had to know for a lot of reasons.
Glancing ahead where the ancient pickup’s dulled yellow headlights played over the wrought-iron gates of Sunshine Hills Cemetery, George said, “This here ain’t no place to be in the dead o’ night, boy.”
“It’s the place I have to be for right now.”
“Be better to come back in the light o’ day.”
“Can’t.” Delroy couldn’t imagine accomplishing the task he’d set before himself in broad daylight. He was also afraid that if he got a good night’s sleep, fatigue wouldn’t again numb him enough to allow him to set foot into the graveyard. He tightened his grip on the weathered shovel handle.
George sighed and crossed his arms over the steering wheel again. “I wouldn’t like it none, but if you needed me to, I reckon I could wait out here for you for a spell.”
Delroy shook his head. “Couldn’t ask you to do that.”
The pickup’s windshield wipers slowly swept the drizzle from the smoke-stained glass in brief waves. “You wasn’t askin’. It was me was offerin’.”
The prospect of remaining alone in the graveyard left Delroy edgy. Still, he couldn’t ask the old man for that. And no matter how things turned out when he finished, Delroy was certain he’d need some time alone. “You’ve got people waiting on you.”
“An’ they’ll be waitin’ till I get there. You probably ain’t even got a dry place to sleep picked out.” George looked at him. “Ain’t even thought that far ahead, has you?”
“Marbury has hotels.”
George gave a grudging nod. “That they do. Yes, sir, that they do.” He paused and scratched his whiskered cheek. “You got this to do, don’t you, boy? An’ you knowin’ it ain’t fit nor proper to go questionin’ things like this.”
“Aye.”
“Then you best be at it.” George shoved the clutch in and ground the transmission gears. He fumbled inside his shirt pocket, took out a business card,
