buttons on her blouse and imagining his fingers running over the hidden scar halfway up her leg.
It isn’t going to happen, pal, Dan kept telling himself. You read her file. What about the fiancé she left languishing in New York? Once she settles in to her new identity, she’ll find a way to reestablish the connection. It was only a matter of time. If she looks at you now with that banked fire in her eyes, just take it for what it is. Getting it on with the handyman. Passing time with the help until her real life resumes.
“I had fun tonight.” She leaned her head back on the seat. “Thanks for taking me, Dan.”
“You’ll get the hang of small-town life after a while. Moonglow’s not such a bad place.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” She turned her head toward him, and he couldn’t help but notice a hopeful shine in her eyes. “Do you think you’ll stick around? I mean, after you’re finished with my house?”
“Probably not.” He turned into her driveway, hoping his terse response had put an end to whatever she was wishing for that had anything to do with him. “Here we are. Home sweet home.”
While Molly worked the new key in the new lock on the back door, Dan glanced at his trailer. Moonlight filtered through the live oak, dappling the Airstream’s dented aluminum skin. For a minute it seemed hard to believe he actually lived in what he had come to think of as his movable squalor. For a moment it was utterly depressing to know it was only a matter of time before he was in residence there again.
It seemed so natural, following Molly into the house, watching her flip on lights and seeing her hair turn different shades of gold, depending on the wattage of the bulbs.
“I changed the sheets,” she said, gesturing toward her bedroom. “And I put some extra pillows out in case you want to elevate your foot.”
“Thanks.”
“The clock is kind of noisy. Just put it in the drawer of the nightstand if it bothers you too much.”
“Okay.”
“Well…”
Only a blind man could have missed the longing that turned her light blue eyes a deeper shade. Dan readjusted his crutches and leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
“Good night, Molly.”
He had a beaut of a nightmare, no doubt induced by the club soda he’d consumed. He and his partner, Carrie Gray, had just taken over escort duty from Deputies Underhill and Roarke. Hector Morales, their witness, was finishing his room service breakfast of steak and eggs, and in no particular hurry to put on the Kevlar vest that would protect his traitorous heart between the hotel and the federal courtroom where he was due to testify in a little over an hour.
As dreams tended to do, the scene shifted suddenly and they were walking down a long corridor, Carrie and Morales in front, Dan just a step or two behind them, his right hand itching as it always did in situations like this, and his brain measuring distances, delineating shadows, processing everything and labeling it threat or inconsequential, friend or foe.
Carrie pressed the down button on the elevator with the pad of her index finger, her long nail making a little clacking sound on the brass plaque behind the lit button. Then all of them—Dan and Morales and Carrie—gazed up at the light panel overhead.
Was that his mistake? Was that the moment when he let down his guard and all of his instincts failed him?
The elevator door slid open. Dan never saw the men, only the muzzle flashes—fierce, perpetual flames—from their semiautomatics. At such close range, those rifles worked with the efficiency of a Veg-O-Matic. In a heartbeat, Carrie and Morales were no longer identifiable even as they fell.
In this edition of the dream, Dan took a bullet in his ankle rather than his leg, but he continued to empty his gun into the open elevator and he put a dozen holes in the bronzed doors after they swooshed closed.
They said a woman fainted in the lobby when those doors opened on the two dead Colombians inside.
They also said that Dan was crying when the first NYPD cops arrived on the scene. Babbling incoherently was written in his file.
But that was never part of his dream.
Molly was glad that Dan was sleeping in. The more he slept, she figured, the less pain he’d have to endure. Also, the more he slept, the less chance she’d have of making a fool of herself again as she had the night before. She’d practically begged the man to kiss her. Now, the morning after, she was relieved he’d turned her down.
While she graded essays, she kept an ear out for the knock she was expecting at her front door. She had promised Raylene to tutor Buddy Jr. in English composition. The boy, it seemed, was mechanically inclined like his father, but unless he passed English and received his high school diploma, there would be no technical school in his future.
“Besides,” Raylene had said, “every hour Buddy Jr. spends with you, Molly, will be one less hour I’ll have to worry about him getting into trouble. He might even take a look at what Danny’s become and realize there’s no future in earning a bad reputation instead of a diploma.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Dan,” Molly had said defensively.
“Well, I didn’t say there was, honey. He’s just not exactly chairman of the board of General Motors, now, is he?”
“Who’d want to be?” Molly muttered at her monitor. Then, a second later, realizing what she’d said, Molly almost laughed out loud.
As an associate professor of business, Kathryn Claiborn had spent the last six or seven years attempting to convince her students that being chairman of the board of General Motors was a worthy, if not the ultimate goal for which to strive. She had lauded the glories of the balance sheet and sung the praises of tax credits, debentures and initial public offerings.
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