Johnny flashed him one final glare. Challenge, as if toremind Tony who belonged in this place and who didn’t. ButTony saw the fear, too, the young boy too afraid to ask whatmight have really happened to his mother. And then he justturned and left.
“But she didn’t go to work,” Nadine said as the backdoor banged shut. “I just came that way.”
“I know,” Tony said, pulling out his own keys. “But Idon’t want him to be the one to find her.”
“Well, somebody better find her,” Nadine declared. “Ifnothin’ else, her job’s on the line. Administration’s crackin’down on unplanned holidays, if you know what I mean.”
Tony didn’t bother to answer. Claire’s job was the least ofhis worries.
“Listen to me,” Peaches said as Tony turned to followJohnny out. Tony had no choice but to listen. To see the intent behind Peaches’s words. “Anything happens to her. Anything.” A pause, pregnant, more of a threat than thewords themselves. “I got no problem with doin’ more time.You hear me?”
Tony nodded. “I hear you. Stay by the phone.”
And then he left, because it wouldn’t do any good to tellPeaches that if anything happened to Claire, Peachescouldn’t inflict any worse harm on Tony than Tony couldhimself.
He didn’t go north. There were no beaches north. Nothing at all in the direction she would have headed to work. He did follow the back roads. If Claire was anything like he waswhen she needed her car, she wouldn’t go near a highway.Two lanes, swooping over the hills and meandering throughfarms and marshes and meadows. Those were the roadsshe’d take no matter where she was going.
Tony followed them.
He followed them to every spit of land he could find thathad some kind of marking on it on the map. Any strip ofsand that overlooked appreciable water. He drove and heprayed and he kept looking for a hot little red sports cartumbled into a ditch, because he was really afraid that waswhere he’d find it. He called Peaches and called the vetcenter and kept driving.
“Come on, damn it, Claire. Come on...”
Finally he had no idea where he was. Somewhere along Chesapeake Bay, one of the fingers of land that had managed to stretch past rivers and marshes and housing developments. An empty place on a busy seashore where the birdswheeled in the morning sun and the ships passed in the distance.
Barely enough sand to call it a beach. Right off the end ofa road so small the only way he’d seen it on the map hadbeen Claire’s tracing it in red.
Quiet. Isolated. Empty.
Just enough room for one hot red little sports car to pausein the turnaround above the water and watch the waves.
Tony saw the car just sitting there, saw the fall of her hairaround the headrest, and fought the urge to panic. He’dfound her. He didn’t know if he’d found her in time.
She didn’t move at the sound of his car pulling up behind her. She didn’t move as he shut off the engine andopened the door and stepped out. The doors of her car wereclosed, the windows rolled up. Everything was as still asdeath beneath the gliding, shrieking birds.
Tony’s hands were shaking as he approached. He didn’tsee blood. He didn’t see movement, either.
“Claire?” At least the door was unlocked. He opened itand crouched alongside the car.
She was in her scrubs, her hair down around her, perspiration pearling on her lip and forehead. She was staringahead at the water with eyes that didn’t seem alive.
They were, though.
Tony breathed a sigh of relief. He reached out to take herhand. “Claire, it’s me, Tony. Honey, you made a lot ofpeople nervous this morning.”
They owned the night. Stealthy, silent, deadly, they crept through the darkness where an American couldn’t see andthey created havoc. Claire wasn’t sleeping at night anymore. She was working. Better than trying to sleep when you didn’t know when the rockets would start up again,screaming overhead and slamming into the earth to makethe windows shatter and the night disintegrate. Rockets andsappers and gunfire were easier to take in the daylight. Atleast the lightning wasn’t such a terrible surprise. At least itdidn’t feed your nightmares.
It was night, and it was hot, so hot you couldn’t breathe,even the ocean was still beyond the beach. It wasn’t quiet.It was never quiet, with crickets and geckos filling the trees.Tonight, though, the night shuddered and bellowed. Jets screamed off like outraged women, and sirens whooped indelight. Throughout the complex, voices rose in anxiousdiscord, and beyond them the hills rumbled with the attentions of the VC.
They owned the night and they were coming.
Claire didn’t have time to worry about it. She was fighting another battle. The same battle she’d been fighting sinceshe’d arrived, with her hands and the glistening metal clawsof her instruments and the acrid jump of her drugs. She wasfighting a battle she was losing, but Claire refused to giveup.
“Get under cover, Lieutenant!”
Heads ducked as a whistle arced through the sky and disappeared. Seconds later the windows blew in, and the lightsflickered off and on. Bent over the form on the cot to protect it from further injury, Claire furiously packed the terrible wounds with lap sponges, just as she’d been doing forhours. There was blood all up her arms, blood on her boots,blood on her dog tags where they kept swinging into the fieldas she worked.
“I need more fluids!” she yelled furiously, her eyes on herwork instead of the terrified eyes at her hands. “Humbug,where the hell are you?”
