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And then, just as quickly as it started, the motion stopped. Jan half lay on the floor, listening, waiting. She was breathing.
She tried to stand, slowly, straightening her limbs—waiting for them to fail, waiting for the ensuing pain. She explored her face with her fingers, assessing the damage, feeling for cuts. There were none.
She was alive—and she had to get out before there was an explosion. She searched frantically but the distressed and agitated people blocked her view. And then she saw Johnny. Her only sibling had glanced her way, but he must not have seen her. He turned toward a beam of light and dashed into it.
Scrambling over files, slipping on debris, Jan stumbled after him, desperate to get to the light before the plane burst into flames. She gulped. And her lungs filled with the coolness of fresh air. She’d made it out.
Distraught, she looked for someone she knew. She was crying. Needed to be held, comforted, and everyone was busy, unaware of her presence. Pushing through the crowd, she caught a glimpse of a familiar body up ahead.
“Mom?” she called out.
Her mother turned, saw her, and then immediately turned back to the women she’d been walking with. They were heading toward the crash. Jan wanted her mother to know that she’d been in the crash—that she’d survived.
She said the words. And then again louder. Her mother looked at her, nodded, patted her on the head and continued on her way, leaving Jan standing alone in the street, sobbing. Sobbing. So hard…
Desperate crying woke her. Sitting up in bed Jan brushed damp tendrils of hair back from her face and forehead with both hands, holding her head between them.
Oh, God. Would these dreams never end? Almost thirty years she’d been having the nightmares. The situations varied, but the feelings never changed. Devastation. Unanswered cries for help. Loneliness. What did it mean? Why was she tortured like this?
With her head resting against her knees, Jan hugged her legs. She hated the nightmares, the subconscious she couldn’t control, but she didn’t hate herself. She tried hard every day. She did her best.
Slowly, thoughts of the preceding day penetrated her consciousness. The newspaper article describing Hall’s arrest. Her visit to the jail. Lunch with a law-school classmate. A spat between the office manager at the county attorney’s office and a prosecutor who didn’t understand job jurisdiction. Simon. The quick Friday-night phone call to Hailey, confirming their outing the following morning. Nothing uncommon. A good day.
Jan glanced at the clock. 3:00 a.m. She considered lying down again, trying to get some sleep. And shivered as all the horror of her nightmare resurfaced. She couldn’t chance going back there. Not tonight.
Getting up, Jan pulled her hair over one shoulder, giving the sweaty back of her cotton pajamas a chance to dry out as she walked over to the window to peer into the night. At the side of her house, more long than square, the bedroom window allowed only a partial view of the street. Not that she was missing much. Dark houses. Stillness. A couple of dim streetlights that cast more shadow than illumination. But the view straight ahead was a different matter. Light was streaming from Simon Green’s bedroom window, which was opposite hers. She couldn’t see through the pulled curtains—not that she wanted to.
But there was a strange kind of comfort in knowing she wasn’t the only human being awake on the block.
Did he suffer from nightmares, too? Somehow, she doubted it. Smiling tentatively, Jan left her bedroom and went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Simon’s mind probably entertained him with stand-up routines all night. Or maybe he was working late. She’d heard that writers did that. And why not? That freed up his days to do whatever he pleased.
Jan was coming out of the shower several hours later when she heard the front bell ring. Wringing out her hair, she wrapped it in the only towel that would hold it all, an extra-large bath sheet she’d bought for just that purpose, pulled on her violet robe and went to peek out the front window.
A motorcycle was parked in the gravel beneath the low-hanging branches of the aspen tree. She didn’t recognize it. Hesitated, as she stared at it. But really, anyone who meant her harm wouldn’t park out front—especially in the broad light of day.
Reminding herself of the fine line between caution and paranoia, she went to the door and opened it a crack, intending to ask her visitor to wait while she got dressed, then she threw it wide instead.
“Johnny!” She reached up to give her younger brother a hug. “I didn’t know you were back.”
A sales rep for a major publisher of nonfiction and self-help books, Johnny was on the road a lot. And too busy to see her, most of the time, when he was in town.
He shrugged, his off-white shirt opening at the collar, revealing what looked like the edge of a tattoo just beneath his collarbone. “I just got in last night,” he said.
He had a tattoo. Everyone was getting them these days—she knew that. But Johnny? Jan wanted to ask him about it, wanted him to tell her that the mark was only henna.
She invited him in instead. Offered to make some coffee.
“I can’t stay.” Johnny held his shiny black-and-white helmet between his hands as he stepped through the door. “I’m back on the road on Monday and I have a load of things to do before then. I just wanted to talk to you for a second.” He glanced down, almost sheepishly, his longish dark hair falling over his forehead. Jan’s heart melted, as it always did when her brother needed something.
“What’s up?” Johnny’s visits and his requests were few. She’d do anything she could for him.
“I was kind of wired when I got in last night,” he said, and she wondered if he was still in the apartment by the university, where he’d lived the previous summer. Last she’d heard from their mother, he’d been planning to move to a new place out by the Woodlands. “I looked through the week’s papers, catching up, and noticed the article about you and that Hall dude.”
Jan warmed beneath his concerned stare and nodded.
“He sounds dangerous, sis.” Sis. He hardly called her that anymore.
“Which is why he’s safely in custody.”
“I don’t know.” He bowed his head again and then glanced back at her, his dark eyes serious. “I don’t like the idea of you out there digging up stuff on him. He might be locked up, but what if he does have people—and money—on the outside?”
Fear shot through her chest. Jan took a deep breath, quelled the emotion—left over from her bad night, she told herself—and smiled. “I’ve been at this job a long time, little brother,” she reminded him. “And I’m still here.”
“So why chance it? Drop the case, sis. Give it to someone else.”
“I can’t,” she told him, torn between exasperation that the one time he came to see her it was to ask her to do something she couldn’t possibly do and happiness that he still cared. “I’ve been following this guy for years. The history’s convoluted, complicated, and I’m the only one who knows it all. If I don’t argue this, he’s going to get off again, and we’re not safe with him out there.”
Johnny frowned, dropping his arm, his helmet resting against the side of his black jeans. “It says he’s in for identity theft. That’s not a matter of life and death for the citizens of Flagstaff.”
No, but the longtime white supremacist was guilty of more than fraud. She was sure of it. She decided now was not the time, however, to let her worried little brother in on that fact.
“It’s my job, Johnny,” she said instead. “The police arrest them, and we prosecute them. Someone has to, or the entire judicial system goes down the tubes and chaos reigns.”
“Just this once, sis. Can’t you let go of the responsibility just this once? Lighten up. Take a vacation. I’ll spring for it. Hell,” he said, grinning, rubbing his knuckles against the side of her cheek, “I’ll even go with you, if that’ll get you out of town.”
Tears welled at the back of her eyes. They’d been so close when they were younger. He’d been her best friend, in spite of the four-year difference in their ages. How many nights had he come to her room when he’d heard her cry out from a nightmare? How many nights had he sat there with her, telling her stupid jokes, making her smile, until he’d fallen asleep at the end of her bed and she’d covered him with her comforter and fallen back to sleep herself?
“Now, that’s tempting, Johnny,” she said softly, even knowing that she couldn’t run out on her job—not on this case. There was too much at stake. “Where would we go?”
It didn’t hurt to fantasize for a moment.
“Anywhere you want,” he surprised her by saying. “You name the time, the place, and I’ll be there.”
“What about your job?”
“I have vacation coming.”
“Johnny…” She hated to disappoint him.
“Name the time and place, sis,” he repeated, his voice intent as he bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be waiting to hear.”
“Johnny!” she called after him, as he spun out the door and headed down the walk without letting her tell him she couldn’t go. He climbed on his motorcycle, slid the helmet down over his ears, and without looking her way, sped off.
2
Flagstaff, Arizona, was a unique place. A little too big, too spread out, to maintain the small-town feel—and too small and secluded to attract big-city folks. Simon drove along old Route 66 toward the town’s one indoor shopping mall, agreeing with FBI Special Agent Scott Olsen’s assertion that this city, with Northern Arizona University’s rambling campus in the middle and a train station not far from the center of town, was a perfect terrorist training depot.
Entering the mall, he located the directory and the store he sought. A potential terrorist could find anything he needed here—and once outside the city limits, on any side, he’d disappear in the miles and miles of undeveloped land, woods, mountains, desert, Indian reservation. Places to get lost—forever if need be.
“Hi, Bettina, show me the best mediocre snow gear you’ve got on sale.” Simon read her name tag and then met the salesgirl’s eyes.
“What do you need it for?” She asked. “Skiing? Snowboarding? Snowmobiling? Or just building a snowman?”
Building a snowman. The last Christmas Sam had been alive, Simon had dragged him away from the half-finished economics textbook his twin had written by hand and was in the process of entering on his computer, and while consuming a six-pack of beer, the two of them had built a snow monstrosity worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records.
“Skiing,” he said belatedly, realizing too much time had passed. He focused on the smiling young face in front of him, his vision clearing, until he was once again seeing a stranger named Bettina in the Flagstaff Mall.
She was nodding. “Too early for the good sales,” she said, walking him over to a group of shelves along the side wall. “Snowbowl’s season doesn’t start until the holidays.” She pointed up. “These are your best bet for now.”
Simon grabbed a set of thermal underwear, then plopped waterproof insulated pants and a matching jacket on top.
“Where you going? Utah? Montana?” Bettina hung around watching.
Hopefully nowhere. “Where would you suggest?” he asked, adding thick socks and toe-warmers, a fleece hat with earflaps and down-lined leather gloves to the stack in his arms. He had to be prepared. Snow-bowl might not have snow yet, but the resort just miles from Flagstaff was open year round and was currently drawing FBI suspicion.
Hands in her back pockets, she ran her gaze along his body. “How good are you?”
Champion quality when he’d left Philadelphia almost eight years before. “Good enough,” he told the slender young woman standing before him. Good enough for anything she might have in mind.
But “in mind” was as far as it went with him.
“Hey, Ma, how you doing?” Turning on lights as she let herself into the living room of her mother’s prefabricated home, Jan quickly took stock of the pulled blinds, the pillow and blanket on the couch.
“Good, sweetie, really good.” Grace McNeil stood, finger-combed her scattered hair and gave Jan a hug.
“You didn’t go to church this morning?”
“I forgot I was out of gas until it was too late.”
Grace’s clothes were wrinkled, the beige slacks and colorful blouse Jan had bought for her birthday resembling something from a secondhand shop rather than the designer outfit it was.
“How was bingo last night?”
Grace shrugged.
“You didn’t go?”
“How was your week, dear?” Dropping back onto the couch on which, Jan suspected, her mother had recently been sound asleep, Grace picked at her fingernails.
“Ma, Saturday night bingo was one of our deals. Remember? I’d help out, and you’d stay busy. You promised.” Her mother had been so adamant about moving to the Sedona resort.
Grace’s face was lined with pain. “I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” she offered Jan as an explanation.
Jan wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. “What about Thursday’s mah-jongg game?”
“Didn’t do so good at first, but then I had Thirteen Orphans.” Grace’s face lit up. “That was the first time any of us saw it happen.”
Jan had never played mah-jongg—she found the tiles and flowers and dragons confusing—but her mother had a passion for the game. And after her most recent suicide scare a couple of years before, Grace’s passion for anything was a blessing.
“Did you play here?” she asked, glancing around the room, which was neat and spotlessly clean—except for the blanket and pillow.
“Yeah, it was my turn. Sara couldn’t make it, but Belle had a friend staying with her who wanted to come. And Jean was here.”
Jean lived in the modular next door—about twelve feet away from the aluminum side of her mother’s two-year-old home.
“Have you seen her since then?”
“We had lunch on Friday. And she stopped by last night, on her way to bingo. We were going to ride up to the clubhouse together.”
So…maybe her mother really had just had a stomachache. At sixty-two and with Crohn’s disease, she was certainly entitled. Settling back into the reclining chair adjacent to the couch, Jan kicked off her clogs and pulled her feet up, cross-legged, on jean-clad thighs.
“How are you feeling now?”
“My stomach’s fine,” Grace said with a chuckle. “My pride would’ve preferred that I slept in my bed last night rather than in my clothes on the couch. Or at least to have woken with enough time to shower and change before you got here.”
Jan released a long breath. Grinned. Everything was normal.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” she asked. Her mother hadn’t sunk back into the darkness of depression that had almost killed her ten years ago and again more recently.
But that had been before Sedona. Before her mother had daily activities and friends to keep her mind occupied.
Since the move, the anti-depressants had been more successful.
Jan really needed to learn to quit worrying so much. To relax.
“I thought I’d make a meat loaf, since it’s your favorite, and I bought fresh peaches to make cobbler…”
Jan was lucky her mother put up with her. She probably would’ve lost patience with such nagging years ago.
“I had one of my nightmares the other night,” Jan told her mother later that day, as she finished off the last bite of peach cobbler. They’d already talked about Johnny, who’d called, but hadn’t come by yet. And Hailey— Grace was anxious to meet the troubled eight-year-old Jan was trying to adopt, completely supporting Jan’s need to start her own family in this untraditional way.
Grace, who’d showered, put on makeup and was now wearing a soft green pantsuit, scraped her spoon across her plate, cleaning up every remaining morsel of dessert. “Tell me about the dream,” she said.
Jan did. In all the vivid detail she could remember. “I’m afraid I’m going crazy,” she said softly, as she glanced at her mother.
“Of course you aren’t,” Grace replied, rising to stack their plates. She carried them over to the small dishwasher on the other side of the half wall that separated the living and dining area from the kitchen. “How many professionals have to reassure you before you start believing, girl?”
A million and one, Jan supposed. Since she’d already seen what seemed like a million.
“The nightmares are so real. And the feelings stay long after I’m awake. It scares me, Ma.”
Drying her hands on her apron, Grace returned with a pot of coffee and filled both their cups. “I know they do, sweetie,” she said, covering Jan’s hand.
Jan soaked up the closeness. The security found in the touch of her mother’s hands.
“The fear is what makes them nightmares,” Grace continued. “But that’s all they are, honey. Bad dreams. They simply mean that you have an active imagination.”
She’d heard the words so many times before. And still she listened intently.
