But he’d seen blood. A jet of it, spraying the snow
with red. God. Maybe not. More dazed than he usually
was when he snapped out of a flashback, he stared at
the face of the woman he held pinned down.
She saw something in his eyes and went still. “Are
you all right?” she whispered.
“No.Yes. Damn.” Voice guttural, he rolled to one side.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Just stand up. No one
noticed anything.”
Adrenaline still pumping, physically battle-ready,
he got up with her. All three boys were on their feet
laughing. They weren’t soldiers; they were kids. No
blood dyed the snow a shocking crimson. He reached
up and scrubbed a gloved hand over his face.
“Ms. Mac, we’re going in,” Erin said.
Fiona had been staring worriedly up at him. He
couldn’t make himself meet her eyes, but he felt her
gaze. Now she turned her head.
“Cold?”
“My feet are ice blocks,” one of the girls said.
“Mine, too.” Willow, he thought.
“I’m going in,” Amy declared.
His brain was moving sluggishly, but he realized
that Amy wore boots, and hadn’t taken a turn with the
snow shovel.
She’d have been useless anyway.
“Give me just a few minutes and I’ll be in as well,”
Fiona told them.
“First bath!” one of the voices claimed, as feet
thudded on the porch boards.
Had to be Amy. Who else?
Fiona laid a mittened hand on his arm. “I’ll organize
Tabitha and Kelli to start trampling a path toward the
shed. If you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” he said automatically. “It was just, uh…”
“Just? You had a flashback, didn’t you?” She shook
her head in warning and he heard the squeak of booted
feet coming toward them. “We’ll talk about it later,”
she murmured.
John could hardly look at the boys. They’d been
the cause of his episode. Okay, he didn’t do well with
loud noises, especially ones that sounded like gunfire.
But he didn’t usually lose it completely. Not like that.
But the boys, the way they pushed and shoved and
laughed… And, God, when the one went down…
He felt sick.
“This wide enough?” Dieter asked.
John pretended to study the path. “Looks fine. When
you get to the woodpile, we’ll all bring in some wood
for the night.”
“Yeah, sure.” He looked past John. “What happened
to the girls? Did they wimp out?”
“Without boots, their feet were getting cold.” He
sounded normal. Sane, he congratulated himself.
“Still wimps.” Dieter tromped away.
John turned to watch Fiona and the two girls, three
abreast, pushing forward through shoulder-high snow and
then stamping on what collapsed around them. The girls
in particular were giggling madly, and they looked like the
women he’d seen in a movie trampling grapes for wine.
Fiona’s laugh floated to his ears, lower-pitched than
the girls’s, a little husky. A woman’s laugh. But she
stomped with all the enthusiasm of the two girls, her
arm linked with one of them.
His stomach churned again. Would she think he was
crazy?
How could she not? He’d thought insurgents were
shooting at them and he’d knocked her to the ground.
He wanted to lie to himself and call it a life-saving
instinct that had to be retrained: the bang of a mortar,
the crack of a rifle, you hit the deck. Returning soldiers
from every war in the last century and in this one had
the same instinct, one that he assumed dulled with time
and then was forgotten.
But it hadn’t been just instinct. For a minute, he’d
been half there in Iraq, half here in Oregon. He’d known
snow was around them rather than sand. He’d known it
was Fiona he was throwing his body over. But the boys
had suddenly worn camouflage, and the blood… The
blood had been as real as his would be if he cut himself
open right now. He could still close his eyes and see the
moment, a snapshot to join the album full of others he
carried in his head.
Hopper’s face, mouth open in a soundless cry of
alarm as he tried to run toward them. The jerk as the