Midnight Choices. Eileen Wilks

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.

      This was supposed to be reality, wasn’t it? Crisp, sunny spring mornings. Neighbors weeding their flower beds. Little boys who were hungry for breakfast, mothers who tried to keep them quiet. It was all so blasted normal.

      It was a reality he didn’t fit into anymore.

      Get a clue, he told his unconscious. Pat was dead. One hundred percent dead, not breathing in bubbles through his ruined face.

      The ruined face had been all too real, though. Duncan scrubbed his hand over his own face. So had the blood.

      He turned away from the sunshine and grabbed his sweatpants. She’d headed downstairs with her kid, which meant the bathroom was empty. He wanted a shower, hot as he could stand it and as soon as he could get it.

      The bathroom smelled of woman stuff. There was a tidy little makeup case by the sink and a plastic cup holding a yellow, adult sized toothbrush and a smaller red one. The yellow one was damp. The shower stall was wet and smelled like flowers.

      One good thing, he thought as he scrubbed skin that didn’t show the bloodstains from his dreams. At least he’d gotten over his weird initial reaction to her. He’d discovered that when he’d gone with Ben to pick up her and her son at the airport. Not that he’d stopped reacting, but that spooky whatever it was he’d experienced the first time he’d seen her had faded to normal lust. He could handle that.

      He lathered his face, then reached for the razor he kept on the small shelf. There was another razor beside it. A pink one.

      Had she noticed his razor when she showered earlier?

      Oh, no, he told himself. Don’t go there. But it was too late. The instant mental picture of her, wet and naked, annoyed him as much as it aroused him. He held the skin of his cheek taut with one hand and started shaving. She needed to be sharing a bathroom with Ben, not him. But Ben’s bathroom opened off the master bedroom. Chances were, she’d start using it once Ben talked her into his bed again.

      Ouch. Damn. He’d cut himself.

      Ben had better start paying more attention to her than he had last night. First he’d insisted Duncan go to the airport with him. Then he’d barely spoken to her, either on the ride back to Highpoint or once they arrived. That was no way to impress the woman. Duncan had suggested that he go out for a while, leave the three of them alone, but Ben had been unusually nervous—about seeing Gwen again? Duncan wondered, frowning. No. Nervous about getting to know his son.

      Well, what of it? He snapped off the water. Of course Ben was focused on Zach. That was the way it should be.

      It did seem that if he’d been half as interested in Zach’s mother five years ago, he would have known about his son all along.

      But that didn’t make any difference. Gwen wasn’t free, not in any way that counted. Maybe he didn’t see her as a sister-in-law yet. That, he thought grimly as he dried off, was going to take time. But once she was sleeping with his brother again, his body would get used to the idea that she wasn’t available.

      Right now, all he had to do was go downstairs and act normal. He grimaced as he opened the bathroom door. That shouldn’t