TWENTY-ONE

What was once a grand entrance to a great plantation was now spotted by several houses and a few mobile homes. In the distance, a half mile off through a tunnel formed by a tree-lined lane, Abby could make out the whitewashed walls and double staircase of an old plantation home, its columns reaching skyward.

The long drive leading to the house was overhung by ancient oaks, their broad branches merging in a canopy overhead. They nearly shut out the sunlight. To Abby, the drive looked like the vaulted ceiling of a Gothic cathedral hung with moss.

The road itself was soft sand, in places puddled with standing water from the recent rain. The rear end of Jack’s car fishtailed a little as it hit one of these.

“You own all of this?” said Abby.

“Don’t look so impressed,” said Jack. “You haven’t seen the inside yet.”

As they drew closer she could see that he was right. Jack’s house was like the man, well built, but showing signs of wear. It could have played well on a movie set: plantation house sans slaves, fallen on hard times. It stood three stories if you counted the flood basement set up on white pillars and shielded behind a mass of shrubbery. Heavy postered beams supported the covered porch that ran the length of the house and the picket-railed balcony at the top level.

Abby guessed that the place dated to the early part of the nineteenth century, something Sherman missed on his march to the sea.

They pulled up in front of the twin staircases and stopped. Jack got out and stretched. Abby joined him and felt the warmth of the dappled sunlight on her face. The smell of early blossoms was in the air. It was a setting as far removed from Seattle or any other big city as was possible; peaceful without a hint of traffic or the bustle of modern life. Without Jack’s car parked in front, it could have been a picture from the last century.

“I’ll get the luggage later,” he told her. “Come on inside.”

On the way to the house he took a detour toward a little kiosk under the stairs, went inside, and a second later came out with a stack of letters in one hand, and a red, white, and blue express package in the other, the size of a shirt box.

It seemed the mailman and delivery trucks left mail and packages for Jack in the little building when he was gone. “An informal agreement,” he told her. “One of the perks of country life.”

Jack started picking through the envelopes as Abby followed him up the stairs. The front door wasn’t locked. Another perk of country life, she assumed.

The entry hall was like something Abby had seen only in museums: broad-planked floors scarred and heavily polished by a century of wear. In one corner was an antique hall-tree, its beveled mirror blotched by missing silver in a few places.

Jack headed into a large central hall and Abby followed.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be right down.” He went up the stairs, a grand sweeping affair with a carved railing, the mail in one hand, the box under his other arm.

Abby wandered toward a large parlor. The interior was dark. Heavy curtains that looked like velvet with fringe, dated like the rest of the house, hung from the windows behind panes of bottle glass and long shades. The parlor was at the front of the house and was separated from the dining room by two twelve-foot pocket doors that rolled back into the walls for entertaining. Each of the rooms offered high-coffered ceilings. An immense crystal chandelier hung over the polished mahogany dining table and its surrounding high-back chairs. It looked like a setting for a war counsel.

In the parlor the museum decor continued; cut crystal dishes and bowls behind curved glass in a French cabinet. There were open shelves of leather-bound books, floor-to-ceiling. Some of the titles were in gold leaf, the histories of great battles and the thoughts of great minds: Cicero, On the Republic, and Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. She took a book down and looked at it; a first edition. Abby carefully put it back.

There were certificates and diplomas framed on one wall, something from Annapolis conferred on Joseph Jermaine, and a glass cabinet filled with trophies, several of them with little bronze men on top pointing pistols. Three of these had Joseph Jermaine’s name on them. Two more dated thirty years later bore the inscription “Joseph Jermaine, Jr.”

She studied these for a moment, then walked, hands coupled behind her back, toward the fireplace. The fire pit itself was the size of a small room, with giant andirons bearing twin bronze horse heads staring out at her. Over the fireplace was an immense mantel carved from a single piece of walnut.

There were military medals in a display case on top of this. Abby recognized one of these, a purple heart. Several others appeared to have inscriptions in foreign languages, one of them in French, and a case of battle ribbons, all the colors of the rainbow.

In a box off to one side, by itself, was another medal. It was not larger than the others but had a distinction. It was set off by the broad blue ribbon from which it hung. The medal itself was a bronze five-pointed star inverted with a single point down. The star was surrounded by a wreath. In this case the pendant was supported by an anchor. It was the Congressional Medal of Honor.

She picked up the box and looked at it, holding its wooden lid with her fingers.

“Most of them belong to my father.” Jack had come into the room behind her and caught her touching things.

“I’m sorry.” Abby put the box back on the mantel.

Jack was carrying a thick sheaf of papers held together by a rubber band in one hand. He came around her, took the box with the medal, and put it in a drawer in a cabinet in the corner.

“What can I get you?” said Jack. “Are you hungry?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Something to drink?”

“Anything cold and wet,” said Abby. “Your dad was in the military?”

“Marines,” said Jack. He drifted toward the kitchen and she followed him.

“Who’s Joseph, Jr.?”

“I confess,” said Jack.

“You?”

“Jack’s my nickname. Joseph Senior was my father.”

“Was?” said Abby.

“He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He had a full life. Lived to be over eighty.”

“Was he a professional soldier?” said Abby.

“You could say that. Others prefer to think of him more as a professional son of a bitch.” He smiled as he said it.

“You make it sound like a term of endearment,” said Abby.

“In these parts? You bet your ass. Camp Perry’s right over there.” He pointed casually in the direction of the sound that she could see through the kitchen window. “Its own kind of hell,” said Jack. “Among the officer corps, only sons of bitches live there. The rest die or retire early.”

“Besides being a son of a bitch, what did he do?”

“Oh, he wasn’t just a son of a bitch. He was the son of a bitch of sons of bitches. The Great Son of a Bitch. The Commandant at Perry.”

“You make it sound like a concentration camp.”

“In a word,” said Jack. “His ghost spends half its time over there, and the other half here in this house.”

She looked at him.

“Oh yeah. He haunts this place. If you hear any salty words at night, it’ll be the old man. Any smacking of flesh, you know he’s thumping somebody.”

“Sounds like a wonderful guy,” said Abby.

“People who knew him when he was younger tell me we look a lot alike.”

“So are you a professional son of a bitch, too?” she asked.

“Who, me? No. I’m a pussycat. Just a little chip off the block. In my case, you could call it more of a splinter.”

Jack rummaged through the refrigerator. “Cold and wet,” he said.

The kitchen was institutional. The sink was stainless steel as were all the countertops, and a large island in the center of the room. You could have cooked for an army on the commercial gas range, though it looked like it was forty years old.

“Let’s see. I’ve got milk.” He smelled it. “Scratch the milk.” He put it on the countertop. “I wouldn’t recommend the orange juice. Not exactly USDA,” he said. When he took it out in the clear glass pitcher the orange juice had a brown tinge to it. It looked like maybe it had been there since the previous Christmas. Jack wasn’t fastidious about his refrigerator.

“Looks like wine, beer, or soft drinks.”

“Anything diet?” said Abby.

“You got it.” He took out the can and popped the lid, grabbed a glass, and put it under the ice dispenser in the refrigerator door.

“Did you follow in your dad’s footsteps?”

“Hmm?”

“Marines, I mean?” said Abby.

“Oh yeah. You heard of the X and Y chromosomes. The things that make little boys and little girls. Well somewhere in my blood is a G chrome.”

“What’s that?”

“For grunt,” said Jack. “My grandfather had it. My great-grandfather had it. You could strop a razor on our necks. Hidebound leather. But it looks like it’s gonna end here.”

Abby gave him a questioning look.

“No little Jacks,” he said.

“Ah,” she nodded. “I thought maybe you’d been married?”

“That’s not a good subject,” said Jack.

More questioning looks from Abby.

“Let’s just say they weren’t fruitful relationships.” He took a swig from a frosted bottle of beer and put the glass, fizzing with soda, in front of her on the stainless-steel island right next to the thick sheaf of papers he’d brought down from upstairs.

“And the house?” said Abby.

“That’s inherited,” said Jack. “Just like the genes. I got the house and nine hundred acres of bottom land, all leased out. Jess. You remember Jess—the leopard-skin flosser?”

Abby nodded and laughed.

“He got most of the family trust. Some stocks and bonds.”

“He must be frugal,” said Abby. “From the looks of his apartment.”

“Frugal? Jess? Right. Pissed through most of it is more like it,” said Jack. “Jess likes the fast lane. Life’s just a big party. He found L.A. and never stopped.”

“He didn’t go into the Marines?”

Now it was Jack’s turn to laugh. “Jess was a throwback. Someone in the woodpile, I think. He and the old man used to come to blows.” He looked at the ceiling and thought, like maybe this brought back memories, not all of them pleasant.

“Lucky for Jess he came along so late in life. If the old man’d been ten years younger, Jess would have never made it out of childhood. But that’s another story. Are you tired?” They were leaning on separate sides of the stainless-steel island.

“Wired’s more like it,” said Abby. She often got that way after long trips.

“Well, good. Maybe you’d like to sit down, relax, read something,” said Jack. “We got lots of things here in the house to read.”

“I know. I saw your library.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He gave her a coy smile and slid the pile of papers under the rubber band toward her side of the island.

“What’s this?”

“Oh. Just something I wrote,” said Jack.

“Is that what was in the box you got outside?” Abby was thinking a rejected manuscript.

“Oh no,” said Jack. “I stopped making submissions several months ago. The box contained something else.” This was at least good news. Abby had been concerned that Jack might be sending stuff over the transom in his own name, unsolicited manuscripts to publishing houses in New York. If so, and an editor put his name together with Gable Cooper’s, it could lead to questions. It could also sully Cooper’s name if Jack produced garbage.

She flipped the corners of the pages, a few of them dog-eared, with her thumb. It was a long manuscript. Abby guessed a thousand typed pages. “You try to sell this by the pound, do you?” she said.

“You think it’s too long?”

“Not if you’re going to print it in multiple volumes,” said Abby.

They both laughed.

“I can’t guarantee I’ll read it tonight,” she said.

“Oh, take your time. Take tomorrow. Take it with you when we go. No rush,” he said, though there was a gleam in Jack’s eye, like he couldn’t wait for her critique.

It was four in the morning and Abby couldn’t sleep. She heard noise downstairs and figured Jack was an early riser. He had put her up on the top floor of the house in one of the ornate four-poster beds with a full canopy. There was a porcelain bowl and pitcher for washing in the room, and a bath down the hall. Jack had given her privacy upstairs and taken one of the rooms down on the main floor for the night. Abby’s room was bigger than some hotel suites, and filled with antiques.

She had gone to bed about ten, and had slept for nearly three hours when she woke with a start. For a moment she seemed dazed, disoriented, wondering why the window was on the left instead of the right, then suddenly realized that she wasn’t in her old room at home.

She rolled over in bed and sat up. Abby didn’t know what woke her. Perhaps it was dreams of Theresa. She had thought a lot about it the past several days. She had visions of Theresa’s lifeless body on the gurney that morning outside her house. These images haunted her, especially at night. She wondered if the cops had caught up with Joey, and why Morgan hadn’t called. There were a lot of things turning over in her mind.

She lay down and tossed restlessly for two more hours, then finally flipped on a light and tried to read. Abby hadn’t written a word since going to L.A. with Theresa. She had worked on an outline for a sequel but hadn’t actually broken ground on the manuscript. She would do that in the islands. Jack wanted to know the story line, but Abby wasn’t talking, not yet anyway. He already had too much control over her life, and she didn’t like it. The sequel and its details were her leverage. Publishers were never satisfied with just a single book, especially if what you wrote held the prospect of money. They expected creation on demand, constantly shortening the time between manuscripts. The halcyon days of publishing as part of the arts were over. Books were now just another product, and the people who wrote them were viewed by the industry as an eccentric but necessary evil. Abby knew that sooner or later Carla and Bertoli would be demanding details on the sequel. They would want jacket copy and art for the cover before the manuscript was written. Jack would have to come to her for bits and pieces to keep them happy. It was how she would keep him on a string like a puppet. The sequel was Abby’s ultimate source of control.

Lying in bed she read a little Elmore Leonard from a paperback she’d bought at the airport. Leonard was the king of dialogue, and after Jack’s manuscript, he was like a dish of sorbet on the heels of a course of raw onions; something to cleanse the reader’s palate. If Jack’s manuscript contained a message it was that the man couldn’t write.

His story was one of those male thumping things, high tech hardware wrapped in a cartoon of global dimensions. It was peopled with an army of evil politicians and bureaucrats, and heroic soldiers. The protagonist was amazingly handsome and had graduated at the top of his class from Pedigree U. All the women were amazingly beautiful but hadn’t gone to college. That didn’t matter because they all had big tits and long legs. The amazingly beautiful women couldn’t keep their hands off of the amazingly handsome man. When all of these amazingly beautiful people weren’t otherwise occupied humping, they could be found disarming nuclear bombs, and uncovering plots to kill the president. The protagonist was ageless and single, and driven by a purity of duty matched only by Superman. The only thing faster than a speeding bullet was the hero’s dick. All things taken together, Abby guessed that the invention was a lot like Jack himself, unbelievable, except that Jack was the incarnation in the flesh.

There was a degree on the wall downstairs in Junior’s name. It didn’t come from Annapolis. Jack had taken a degree from Stanford in Latin American Studies. She wondered where he’d stood in his class, if he’d ever disarmed a nuclear bomb, or met the president. She had little doubt that he liked long legs and big tits. She wondered how all of this, especially the stint at Stanford, had sat with the old man, as Jack had called him. She could imagine a lot of shouting when Jack stepped out of the military mold.

By now she was reading words, her mind distracted by other thoughts. She heard the sound of gravel under wheels in the driveway, got out of bed and walked to the window just in time to see Jack’s car rolling down the lane. By the time the engine started, it was too far away to hear it. The car disappeared into the tunnel of trees. Abby wondered where he could be going at five in the morning.

Wherever he had gone, he would be back. She returned to bed and her book. She read half a page without a single syllable denting her consciousness. She closed her book and got out of bed, considered for a moment the fact that she was how alone in the house.

“No. I shouldn’t.” She said it to herself but without much conviction. Then she remembered how he’d bulldozed his way into her life. Without further thought she slipped her jeans on, pulled a sweater over her head, put her running shoes on over bare feet, and slid quietly from the room.

The hall outside was dark, lit only by the dim light of an early dawn that spilled in through a skylight over the staircase.

She tiptoed down the hall to the door at the far end. She had seen Jack come and go from here, gathering a few things for sleep the night before. She figured it had to be his room. She turned the door handle and it opened. Abby stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

It was a large room, larger than the one she slept in, and cluttered. There were clothes folded neatly on the bed. It was not a postered antique like her own, but a metal frame which, like Jack, had a military hardness to it.

A door on the other side led to a small sitting area. This opened onto a wall of windows, a shed dormer that looked out on the yard, the marsh, and the sound beyond.

Under the small-paned windows was a large antique partner’s desk inset in leather with a large computer and an array of electronics on top. Crude pine shelves supported on cinder blocks flanked the desk on each side to a height just below the windows. These sagged under the weight of books. Not the uniform leather and gold spines of the library downstairs, but an assortment of cheap covers, many of them stapled instead of bound, what to Abby appeared to be technical monographs.

The surface of the desk was littered with paper, some of it still sprouting from the top of the laser printer.

The bouncing blue globe of an earth careened off the inner edges of the computer’s color monitor.

Abby didn’t know much about computers. She had purchased a small used notebook just before leaving Seattle. This was to replace her old manual typewriter that had disappeared in Joey’s wake. Spencer had turned the basement upside down looking, but there was no sign of it. She could not figure why Joey would have wanted to take it.

Jack’s desktop computer was cutting edge, a million graphical interfaces hooked to the buttons on a mouse; a joystick that looked like it had been ripped from the cockpit of a jet fighter. And games, an entire shelf of games, helicopters and planes, tanks and missiles.

She reached down and without thinking touched the joystick. Instantly the globe on the screen disappeared, replaced by the inside image of a cockpit careening through space at high speed. Abby took her hand away and watched while whatever was flying was shot at by other faster moving things. The pinging sounds of an arcade resonated from speakers somewhere inside the desk. She tried to push the stick away, hoping that the screen would return to the tranquil blue globe. Instead, the horizon on the screen flared up. An instant later there was an orange flash on the monitor and the gargled sound of a crash from the speakers. Large red letters appeared: GAME OVER. Abby could only pray that Jack didn’t keep score.

She turned her attention to his collection of books. There were the usual writer’s references, dictionaries and an assortment of synonym finders, a volume of famous quotations, and books on how to write novels. Jack had cornered the market on these. How to Write; How to Plot; How to Craft Characters. They were propped up on his desk between a single bookend and the computer as if by osmosis the machine itself could absorb their contents. It was clear that Jack had failed. What he really needed was what he’d found in Abby: a ghost writer. The question now was how she would maintain control until it was time to go public.

She turned her attention to the stack of books next to the desk. There were not the usual reference texts: Household and Recreational Use of High Explosives; The Anarchist’s Armory; and The Art of Strangulation. Some of these were stapled and clearly produced by copying machines, all the signs of an underground press. Abby opened one of them. Inside were explicit recipes for explosives and directions on making bombs, everything from fire jars to road mines. It was a veritable encyclopedia of terror. She had heard of such things but had never seen them. She put it back on the shelf.

A slender trade paperback was open-spined, printed page down on top of a stack of other books; Making a New Identity. Underneath the book was a small dark blue notepad. To Abby it looked like a pocket address book. Abby picked it up and turned it over:

PASSPORT

United States
of America

She opened the cover and turned it sideways, the way a Customs inspector might to read it. Jack’s photo was crystal clear, under plastic laminate on the bottom page. Next to it, typed on the passport form, was the name Kellen Raid.

Jack had an arrangement with the NCO, an old buddy, who ran the commissary at Parris Island. Once a week Jack would drop by in the early morning and leave a list of groceries pinned to the back door of the commissary. An hour later an enlisted man in a jeep would deliver them to the house at Coffin Point. There was nothing particularly wrong with this. Being retired, Jack had commissary privileges and always paid the freight. Besides, he hated to shop.

Dew was still dripping from moss in the trees as Jack drove back toward the big house at the end of the road. He checked his watch. He had been gone only a few minutes and figured she would still be sleeping. A hundred yards from the house he pulled off and parked near a small locked shed, got out, and opened a padlock from the shed door. He went inside. Against one wall was a wooden workbench with two metal presses bolted to it. One was primitive, probably fifty years old. His father had bought it secondhand after the war. The other one was larger, newer, and more sophisticated, what people in the trade called a progressive loader. With brass, primers, and powder it could load a thousand bullets in an hour, any caliber you wanted, depending on the dies that were threaded into the machine.

Against the other wall were four old metal gym lockers, each with a combination lock on the door. Jack went to the second locker, worked the dial, and opened the door. Inside, stacked from the bottom nearly to the top, were plastic ammunition boxes with several different calibers of loaded rounds, each box holding a hundred bullets. If he had to guess, there were probably five thousand loaded rounds in the locker. The other lockers contained gun powder, cases of primers and barrels of new brass casings. There were boxes of lead and jacketed bullets. The loaded bullets were mostly copper jacketed, the kind that slide and eject easily from semiautomatic weapons. All of this was stored a good distance from the house. Though Jack’s heroes were all invulnerable, he had no desire to become a human skyrocket. What a bullet did in fiction was one thing. What it did to a real body was another. Jack had more potent things besides gun powder in one of the other lockers. The firearms he kept at the house along with a handful of rounds for personal security. In Jack’s mind, you could never be too prepared.

He looked for the boxes marked nine millimeter, found one and grabbed it, closed the locker, and spun the dial. He walked outside and locked the door to the shed, then headed toward the house. He left the car parked where it was. There was no sense in taking a chance. He might wake her up. Besides, he would have to drive right up to the house to get the gun that was inside.

Abby was studying the date and place of birth on the passport, scribbling notes on a scrap of paper from Jack’s desk, when she heard it: an indistinct creaking somewhere in the distance beyond the door to his room. It sent an adrenaline rush through her body. She stopped the pencil scratching on paper and listened. Maybe it was just the settling of the old house, the creaks and groans of age. She heard it again. This time she dropped the pencil on the desk and literally flew to the window. She looked out on the side of the house. She could see a part of the gravel drive as it disappeared, sweeping in front of the house. But she could not see the area directly in front where Jack had parked his car the day before. Still, she hadn’t heard the sound of tires on gravel or the motor. She pressed one eye close to the old bottle glass window but still couldn’t see anything.

Then she heard it again. This time there was no question. Someone was coming up the stairs. Frantic, her eyes scanned the room for a place to hide. First instincts, the closet on the far side of the bed. Then she realized the passport was in her hand. There was no time. She took two steps toward the closet and stopped. It would be the first place he would go if he needed a change of clothes for the day.

Abby hit the floor with an easy motion. A second later she was under the bed, sliding on her stomach on the dusty hardwood floor, just as the door opened and two male feet shod in dark high-top Nikes entered the room. She thought they were Jack’s, but she wasn’t sure.

Abby held her breath, fearful that the sound might give her away. Her eyes focused on the passport still in her hand. She prayed that he hadn’t come looking for it. Until she had seen the passport, getting caught would have been only a major embarrassment. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Whoever he was, Jack or Kellen, he strode across the room confidently. He was standing in front of the desk rummaging through papers. Cold sweat dripped down Abby’s forehead and mingled with the dust to make mud under the bed.

She wondered if she’d left anything else out of place. Then it hit her; the screen on the computer, the game she had interrupted. If the large red letters were on the screen, he couldn’t miss them. He would know instinctively that someone had entered the room.

She craned her neck but still couldn’t see the monitor. His body was in front of it. Now he was looking through drawers. Maybe he was looking for the passport. Perhaps he’d forgotten where he’d left it. If so, he might check another room, giving Abby time to drop it someplace and get out, to slink to her own room.

He was in the second drawer at the level of his knees when his hand disappeared inside. When it came out he was holding something black and hard. It flashed quickly and then disappeared from Abby’s view. She’d seen it for only a fleeting instant, but Abby knew what it was: a matte-black pistol. She was breathing in little gasps now. Her hands spread flat, one of them on the floor, the other holding the passport. She heard the sound of metal sliding and clinking. He was doing something to the gun, perhaps loading it. Abby’s heart began to pound.

When he finally moved, she could see the monitor on the desk. It was aglow—with the blue bouncing globe. But how long had it been there? She knew it was on a timer. Was it there when he’d entered the room or not? She couldn’t be certain. Was he loading the bullets for her?

She took a deep breath and then heard the slam of metal against metal. She didn’t have to be told. It was the sound of a clip being jammed into the handle of the gun.

He walked over, closer to the bed now, and stood silent. Abby’s body tensed. She slid a few millimeters away toward the other side of the bed. The only advantage was the dust on the floor. It made her body glide. He inched closer. Now the toes of his shoes were actually under the bed with her. Something heavy bounced on the bed and rattled like pebbles in a box. She heard noises but couldn’t tell what he was doing. The sound of a spring, but it wasn’t coming from the bed. Then he slapped something shut, like the lid on a plastic box. He moved around the bed and a second later he was out the door, closing it behind him.

Her heart pounded. Her temples throbbed. Then she wondered: would he check her room? She listened to his footsteps as they receded from the door. She couldn’t be sure which direction he’d gone, whether down the stairs or toward the other bedroom.

Abby lay there for a long time, silent on the cold, hard floor, unable to move. When she finally did, she didn’t hesitate. She went to the desk first and pushed the passport under a pile of loose papers so that if he came back and looked he might think he’d simply missed it the first time. Then she went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. She could see the staircase and down the hall toward her room. He was not there. She listened for sounds. Nothing. She waited a second longer. It was now or never. He might return any moment. She slipped out, closed the door behind her, and tiptoed down the hall. She was four steps from her room when he nailed her from behind.

“Did I wake you?”

Abby gasped and whirled, hand to her breast. Her heart exploded in her chest so that she jumped.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Jack was standing there ten feet away, in the doorway to another room, the pistol in his hand and what looked like a box of bullets in the other. She couldn’t be sure how long he’d been there, whether he’d seen her coming out of his room. Abby was petrified, her eyes focused on the gun that he made no effort to conceal.

“Ah . . . I . . . ah . . . had to go to the bathroom,” she said. She pointed to the door a few steps behind her. “I got lost,” she said.

“Ah.” He nodded like he understood.

They stood, two adults in the dark hallway, one of them holding a pistol, and the other covered in dust, and said nothing about it. Their own versions of the emperor’s clothes.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked.

“Oh yeah.” Her gaze was monopolized by the pistol in his hand.

“Does this bother you?” He held it out.

“No. No.” But she couldn’t take her eyes off of it.

“Good. I was just going to do some targets. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I have to take a shower,” said Abby.

He came closer, his eyes on her. Abby wanted to back up, but her feet wouldn’t move. Frozen in place.

A step away he stopped, reached out with one hand, and rubbed a smudge of dust from her cheek.

“I can see,” he said.

Nervously she rubbed her face with her hand.

“You can take a shower later. There’s plenty of time,” said Jack. It seemed more an order than a suggestion.

“Let’s go shoot,” said Jack. He stepped toward her and put his arm around her shoulder so that she felt the weight of the pistol against her breast under the cotton sweater. There was no saying no to Jack.

“Well maybe,” said Abby. She wasn’t sure if she was under duress or not. But she wasn’t going to press the point. They headed downstairs. In the service porch he grabbed some targets, orange with a bull’s-eye and a cross in the middle. He picked up two sets of ear protectors, the kind of mufflers that ground crews wear at the airport. He handed one of these to Abby.

She started to put it on.

“Not yet,” he said. “We don’t start shooting ‘til we get outside.” He laughed a little. “You’ve never done this before?”

She shook her head.

“Never fired a pistol?”

“A rifle. Once,” said Abby. “When I was a kid with my dad.”

“A twenty-two?” said Jack.

“I don’t know.” Abby was still shaking. Unless it was an elephant gun fully loaded and pointed at Jack’s head, Abby couldn’t have cared less what her father’s rifle might have been at this moment.

“Relax. It won’t hurt,” said Jack.

Abby wasn’t sure what he meant: shooting, or getting shot.

They crossed the yard to an area on the far side near the marsh. Here there were several pieces of heavy wire strung between two poles. Jack hung two of the targets from metal clips on the wire.

He then walked to an area near a little wooden table. Abby guessed they were a good fifty feet from the target.

“You want to get a little closer to start?” he asked.

“Whatever,” said Abby. “Why don’t I just watch?”

“Nonsense. You’ll enjoy it. Ever written about guns in your books?”

She shook her head.

“Then it’ll be a good experience for you. Broaden your horizons. Grist for the mill,” said Jack. “You can put those on now.” He pointed to the ear protectors. He put his own on and Abby followed suit.

“I’ll shoot a couple so you can gauge the sound and see how it works.” He shouted a little so she could hear him. “Then you can try.”

Jack took aim with two hands, one braced underneath steadying the other, clicked off the safety, aimed, and fired a single round.

It happened so quickly that by the time Abby’s body jerked from the shock wave the empty brass casing was on the ground and the slide was back in place with the hammer cocked for the next round. The pistol worked with the speed of light.

He fired again. This time she jerked, but a little less, and she kept her eyes on the target. It didn’t seem to move. She was sure he’d missed.

He clicked the safety on, ejected the clip still with bullets in it, pulled the slide to eject the round in the chamber. Without a clip in the handle it stayed open. He put the pistol on the little wooden stand.

“Let’s take a look.” Jack walked toward the target. Abby followed along. About twenty feet out they came into focus, two small holes. As she drew closer she could see that they were actually touching, each no more than half an inch from the center of the target.

“What you look for is a pattern,” said Jack. “Bullet strikes that are close together. You can put a quarter over a good pattern and cover three holes.”

He walked her back to the wooden stand and the gun, coaching her all the way. “Don’t worry right now about hitting the center of the target. Try to keep a tight pattern. Aim for the same place each time.” He picked up the gun, loaded it, and handed it to her.

It felt awkward, too big for her hand. She was still shaking, but she held it out. Abby’s hands clasped the pistol between them as if she was in prayer.

“No,” said Jack. “Like this.” He moved behind her, put his arms around her, and placed his hands over hers. Then he directed them, the left hand underneath, the flat of the palm open so that the heel of the pistol grip rested on it for support while she held the gun with the other hand.

“Don’t squint. Keep both eyes open. Line the sights up and aim with your right eye.”

Abby wasn’t squinting. She had her eyes closed tight. She opened them for an instant and jerked the trigger. Nothing happened, though the gun waved all over the place.

Jack started laughing.

Abby was starting to calm herself. If she had an emotion stronger than fear, it was anger. She didn’t like to be laughed at. If he wasn’t careful, the next time he saw the gun it might be pointed at him.

“You have to take the safety off first,” said Jack. “And don’t jerk. Squeeze the trigger. You want to be surprised when it goes off.”

Abby didn’t need any more surprises this morning.

He reached up with his thumb, his body braced up against hers, and flipped off the safety, then cocked the hammer with his thumb. Amazingly for a woman whose body had been quaking only moments before, Abby was now stone steady.

“Ready.” Before the words had cleared his lips the gun exploded in her hand. When the recoil stopped, it was aimed somewhere up into a tree out near the marsh.

“It’s alright. Try it again,” said Jack.

With the recoil measured from the first shot, she held it down, lined the sights up on the target, and squeezed. It exploded with a sharp crack, only this time she controlled the gun. It didn’t jump nearly so much.

“Good. Again,” he said.

She fired four more times before she put the gun down and they checked the target. She had actually hit it three times, twice inside of the big outer circle, each time moving closer in the direction of the bull’s-eye. She was getting into the challenge of this, competing against herself to improve with each shot.

A few minutes later, she looked at the box of a hundred rounds and noticed that it was more than half empty. Abby had shot most of them. For many of the shots Jack was standing behind her holding her steady, giving her pointers.

The fear had drained from her body. His touch up against her wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience. His hard body against her back, the low whisper of his voice in her ear, had a calming, almost mesmerizing effect. She fired four more shots, emptying the clip, when he tapped her on the shoulder and pointed in the other direction.

“We’ll take a break. Breakfast is here.”

An old military jeep was rumbling down the road toward the house, a man in fatigues behind the wheel. The jeep pulled up in front of the house, and when the driver got out he gave a lazy salute to Jack.

“Captain. You want me to take it into the house?”

“Appreciate it,” said Jack.

The man carefully handed Jack a big brown paper bag, the wafting warm odors of which escaped and ran under Abby’s nose. Suddenly she was famished.

“I hope you like eggs and hash browns,” said Jack.

“Smells delicious,” she told him.

The enlisted man was busy unloading the groceries, lugging them up the stairs.

“So where did this come from?” she asked.

“Officer’s mess,” said Jack. “An old friend who takes pity, especially on my guests. Cooking is not one of my finer arts. You’ll appreciate this more if you ever have to eat my cuisine,” he told her.

They headed up into the kitchen, where Jack set two places at the table, and opened a large container of orange juice from one of the bags. He had put up a pot of coffee earlier in the morning, and as Abby sipped she had no complaints with his coffee. She nibbled at her eggs now removed from their plastic container and spread on a china dish.

“Outdid himself today.” Jack dug into what looked like Potatoes O’Brien.

Abby had to admit they were delicious. All the terrible things she had heard about food in the military was a lie if this is how they ate.

She was exhausted. The lack of sleep, and the adrenaline rush of the morning, were catching up with her. Though she had to admit she enjoyed the shooting. It had actually taken the edge off of the earlier events, but she still wondered about the books and the passport in Jack’s room. Who was he? Had he lied to her about his name?

“Is this how you always get your groceries?” She nodded toward the soldier who had just left the last package on the sink and retrieved a check in payment from Jack.

“Sometimes. Sometimes a lady stops by and leaves things in the fridge for me.”

“Oh.” Now Abby felt like she was prying. A woman in his life.

She tried to change the subject by scanning the little morning paper that lay on the table. There was a lot of country news, but nothing to spark a conversation.

For Jack’s part, between scoops of eggs and potatoes, he was writing on a small form with a pen. It looked like an express label. There was a box to match, like the one he’d retrieved the day before when they arrived. The box was on the counter behind him. Again it looked like a manuscript box, and Abby shuddered with the thought.

“Excuse me.” Jack realized that he was ignoring her and that her eyes were on him.

“It’s alright. Finish what you’re doing.”

“Be done in a minute. I hope you don’t mind if we stop on the way to the airport. I need to drop this off for delivery. I’ll just take a minute.”

“That’s fine.”

“What did you think of the manuscript?” asked Jack.

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. What could she say? “I was pretty tired last night.” A lame excuse, but it avoided an awkward subject.

“Well, you can take it with you,” said Jack. “I don’t need it right now.”

“Oh. Great,” said Abby. “Thanks.” If he kept pushing, sooner or later she would have to tell him that it wasn’t only his cooking that sucked.

“Tell me about yourself.” Maybe this would be a more pleasant subject. “You must have friends?”

“Oh. A few.”

“The lady who drops your groceries off?” Now she was prying. She was also smiling across the table at him.

“Oh yeah. A great woman. We’ve known each other for a long time. She used to change my diapers.” Jack smiled back. “An aunt in failing health. Maybe you’d like to meet her?”

“I doubt if we have time,” said Abby. She took another sip of coffee. “You’re going to tell me that there’s no one in your life, that writing is a jealous mistress.”

“I don’t know if she’s jealous or not,” said Jack. “But she is a bitch.”

Abby laughed. At least he made no bones about it.

“There was somebody. Once,” he said.

Abby gave him a look, like go on.

“Her name was Jenny. She was beautiful. And young. Though not as young as I was.”

“Ah. The older woman,” said Abby. “Were you in love?”

“Who knows. Never been able to define love,” said Jack. “But I know I had a fire in the pit of my stomach whenever I was around her. And my heart thumped like a cement mixer. Probably more lust than love.”

“What happened?”

“She caught me looking at another woman.”

“Just looking?”

Jack nodded.

“And?”

“I blinked. Looked a little guilty, I suppose. Started making excuses. What you do when you’re young and stupid,” said Jack.

“What did you say?”

“I told her, ‘What am I supposed to do? I enjoy looking at women.’”

“And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Gee, that’s funny. So do I.’” He gave Abby a kind of smile that made her think this might be the setup to a joke, then sipped his coffee, leaving her to wonder.

“You’re pulling my leg?”

He raised his hand with his mouth full of coffee, like honest Injun.

“Swear to God,” said Jack. “I was eighteen. She was twenty-two. Last I heard she was living in Atlanta with three cats and a woman named Alice.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re putting me on.”

“Yeah, I am.”

She laughed and gave him a look of exasperation.

“I was exaggerating,” said Jack. “There were only two cats.”

She looked at him for a moment, waiting for him to laugh again. But he didn’t.

“You know, I don’t know when you’re telling me the truth and when you’re lying,” said Abby.

“That’s what makes life interesting.” Without missing a beat, he smiled, took a sip of coffee from the mug in front of him, and returned to his address label.