Outcast. Joan Johnston

around his friend’s shoulders and helped him navigate the front steps.

      “Wait!” Julia called out when they reached the redbrick driveway.

      Ben half turned with Waverly as Julia tripped down the steps. She held her fiancé’s face gently between her palms and gave him a tender kiss on the lips. “Good night, my love,” she murmured. “Until tomorrow.”

      When Waverly reached drunkenly for her, she turned and ran back up the stairs.

      “Take it easy, buddy. Tomorrow she’ll be your wife, and you can sleep with her every night for the rest of your life.”

      “Love her so much,” Waverly said, staring after Julia.

      “Yeah, I know.” As he stuffed Waverly into the passenger seat of his Jag, Ben heard a cell phone play the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

      “That’s mine,” Waverly said, fumbling in his tux jacket for his phone. He dropped it on the floor at his feet.

      As Ben picked it up and handed it to his friend, he said, “You had this on all night? You do like living dangerously. If that had rung during dinner—”

      “‘Lo,” Wave said. “Uh-huh. Yeah. A few.”

      Ben was halfway to The Seasons before the conversation was over. He turned to his friend and said, “Julia wanted to whisper sweet nothings?”

      “I have to go back to D.C.,” Waverly said slowly and distinctly.

      “Have you forgotten about your bachelor party? Friends? Strippers? The works?”

      “Screw the party.”

      Ben stared at his friend. “Who was that on the phone?”

      “None of your business.”

      “Look, if there’s some problem—”

      “I have to go out for a li’l while,” Waverly slurred. “I’ll be back. I just have to go do something.”

      “You shouldn’t be driving. If you need to go somewhere, let me take you there.”

      Waverly shook his head, then put his hands to either side of it and closed his eyes, as though he were dizzy. “Just get me to my car.”

      One of Waverly’s cop friends was supposed to have driven his Ford Explorer to The Seasons.

      “I can’t let you drive, Waverly. Not in this condition.”

      “I’ll stop and get some coffee. Don’t argue with me, Ben. I don’t have any choice.”

      “Then let me drive you where you have to go,” Ben insisted.

      “You’ve seen me drive in worse shape.”

      “When we were stupid kids. Before I promised Julia I’d get you to your wedding in one piece. If you drive drunk—”

      “Stow it, Ben.”

      They’d reached The Seasons, and Ben pulled his Jag in next to Waverly’s Ford SUV. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

      “If you’re my friend, you’ll let me do this,” Waverly said. “I need to settle this before Julia and I take off on our honeymoon.”

      “There’s another woman?” Ben said incredulously. “Is that it?”

      “Hell, no! It’s gang—It’s none of your business.”

      “What’s so important you have to miss your bachelor party to handle it?”

      “This can’t wait.”

      Ben put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Look, Waverly, I can’t let you drive.”

      Wave pulled free and shoved open the door of the Jag. “I’m not sure when I’ll get back. Tell the guys I’ll see them at the wedding.”

      Ben jumped out of his Jag and grabbed for the keys to the Explorer where they’d been left above the visor.

      “What do you think you’re doing?” Waverly demanded.

      “Saving your life,” Ben said. “And maybe the lives of other innocent drivers. You’re drunk, buddy.”

      “Give me my keys!”

      Waverly grabbed for the keys and Ben deftly stepped aside. Waverly’s momentum carried him forward, so he lost his footing and landed on his hands and knees. He came up mad and he came up swinging.

      Ben bunched his hand into a fist around the keys and hit Waverly hard in the chin. “Damn it, Waverly!” he shouted as he nursed his stinging knuckles. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

      Waverly was out cold.

      Ben stuffed Waverly’s keys back behind the visor and returned to heft his friend over his shoulder. He hauled Waverly inside, grunting with the strain as he headed up the broad, winding, Gone With the Wind staircase. He could hear the shouts and laughter of Waverly’s friends coming from the kitchen and parlor.

      “Damn you, Waverly,” Ben snarled at his unconscious friend. “Julia’s going to give me hell if your chin is bruised tomorrow. But I promised her I’d get you to your wedding alive and well. And, by God, that’s exactly what I intend to do!”

      14

      “Wake up, you sonofabitch!”

      Ben felt himself falling off the bed and realized the sheet and blanket had been ripped out from under him. He hit the Aubusson carpet on his hands and knees, searching frantically for his XM107 .50 caliber long-range sniper rifle. Which wasn’t there.

      A breath shuddered out of him as he reminded himself he was no longer in the desert. He was in his bedroom at The Seasons. And he stank with the foul sweat of someone scared shitless.

      He’d been dreaming again. The same lousy dream. He looked at his shaking hands, expecting them to be covered with sticky red blood. His fingertips were callused but clean.

      “Get up!” Waverly ordered.

      Ben sucked in a breath and shoved himself upright enough to see a furious Waverly standing in boxers and a T-shirt on the other side of the bed.

      “I told you I had to get back to D.C. last night. Look at this!” Waverly leaned across the bed to shove The Washington Post under Ben’s nose.

      Ben was still hung over—he’d celebrated Waverly’s wedding after he’d put the groom to bed—and he struggled to focus his eyes. The headline was hard to miss: “Gang Riot Leaves 3 Dead.”

      “This is all my fault,” Waverly gritted out between tight jaws.

      “How could it be your fault?”

      Waverly threw the folded paper in Ben’s face. “That call last night was from my confidential informant. My CI told me trouble was brewing between MS and the One-Eight, that a shoot-out was likely. I knew those kids. I could have intervened. Maybe I could have prevented those deaths.”

      “And maybe not,” Ben said, pushing himself to his feet.

      “Both gangs will be out for blood now. I need to get to D.C. and find the other boy involved in that shooting—the one still left alive—before the whole city erupts in gang violence.”

      “Have you forgotten you’re getting married at one o’clock? You don’t have time to go to D.C. The only place you have time to hit is the shower.”