Snowbound - Harlequin.com

JANICE KAY JOHNSON 127
not being careful because why should they? This town
is ours. They’re joking, shoving. One turns to share the
joke when he sees something. He lifts his weapon and
his mouth opens. Shouting a warning? Crack. His blood
spurts, a fountain that says an artery has been hit.
His shock at dying like that, the fact that he knew he
was dying, kept his face vivid in John’s memory. What
sickened him most then and now was how young the
boy was. Eighteen? Nineteen?
Rat-a-tat-tat. They’d answered fire with fire, and an
Iraqi tumbled in grotesque slow-motion from a rooftop
where he had been crouched. As dead as the young
National Guardsman who now sprawled in the street,
blood staining the packed earth.
There it was, simple. Images superimposing. He had
an explanation that still added up to crazy. Can’t tell
then from now. Counseling. Medications.
John seemed to hear a reassuring voice. He’d be fine
if he took his pills and bared his soul upon request to a
psychologist and in group sessions. The anger choked
him now as it had then. He didn’t want to remember.
He needed to do some old-fashioned grieving, needed
to adapt to an everyday reality that now seemed as
bizarre as the one he’d just left. Returning Civil War
veterans hadn’t had serotonin uptake inhibitors. They’d
just gone back to their farms, spent time outside staring
at the spangled night sky, letting earth that wasn’t bloodstained
sift through their hands. John wasn’t a farmer,
but the lodge had been working for him. What was
wrong with that?
Fiona and the two remaining girls went in at last,