1.

T.

rey stood with his back to the room, staring through the slats in the blinds. He saw nothing out there; he was too busy listening to the breathing behind him. Jude and the girls sat on the couch, and once he had finished they hadn't said a word. He knew, however, that Jude believed him. She had to, or she wouldn't have planned on going to see Eula. The kids, on the other hand, hadn't given him a clue, and halfway through his story he had turned to the window so he wouldn't see their faces', shimmering in the faint light drifting from bedroom and kitchen. Starshine clearly skeptical, Moonbow clearly afraid.

Belief or not, putting it all together aloud had convinced him of one thing-he had no intention of taking on Eula Korrey. He was a guy, nothing more; he wasn't a superman or superhuman. Just a guy with a weird talent, and that definitely did not include taking on part of the end of the world.

Finally he said, "The sun's almost here."

Across the street he could just make out the outline of Stephanie's house, the front windows taking shape as if the building were waking up, getting ready to open its eyes.

"You're gonna leave," Starshine said, flat and accusing.

"Not alone if I can help it," he answered.

Jude cleared her throat with a quick harsh cough. "If ... if we go with you, where will we go?"

"As far away as we can get before she knows we're gone."

"And when she does?"

"I don't know."

"The girls, Trey."

He put his back to the window, saw them looking at him. Jude's eyes were invisible above the veil, Starshine's were narrow, Moonbow's were wide and shining. They were all holding hands, and he did his best not to grin when he understood they weren't questioning the truth of the story; they wanted to know how he planned to protect them.

He glanced down at his feet, shook his head, looked up again. "Listen, this isn't something my mother prepared me for, you have to understand that." A hand brushed nervously across his chest. "I guess this kind of thing isn't in the Mother's Handbook."

"No," Jude said, voice telling him she was smiling. "If it is, I missed that page."

"So what I'm saying is...what I..." His fingers brushed his shirt again, and stopped when they felt the gold chip inside. A weak wavering smile that folded into a frown when he pulled it out and stared at it, turning it over, turning it back. A sound in his throat, a laugh stillborn. "No." He slipped it back under his shirt. "No, that's too much even for this." He patted his chest and brushed the absurdity away, then checked over his shoulder. "I'm going to get the truck. You've got that long to throw some things into a suitcase."

Moonbow pushed off the couch and looked at her sister, who didn't move until Jude nudged her. Then she too stood, but instead of following Moonbow into the bedroom, she crossed the room and stood in front of him. She's too old, he thought; much too old for a child her age.

"You know you're gonna get hurt if we go," she said, arms stiff at her sides, lips barely moving.

"I've been hurt before, Star."

"We could use the gun."

"Honey," Jude said from the couch.

He leaned over and, before she could move, cupped a cheek with his hand, gratitude for her concern. "We'll need the gun for someone it'll hurt. I don't think she's it."

"But-"

"No, Star, we have to go." He pulled his hand down the cheek and away, and poked her shoulder. "Now git. There's not much time."

She nodded and ran from the room.

Trey blew out slowly. "This wasn't exactly how I planned to sweep you and the girls off your feet, you know."

Jude nodded. "I know."

He wanted to say something else, something clever, something to mark this time in memory, but there were no words, only a sad shrug before he headed for the door. When she didn't stop him, didn't offer words of her own, he went to the porch and checked the street. It was empty, but he could see the houses now, brightening, growing out of the dark as the dark drained away.

Not much time, and he ran to the house, to the bedroom where he pulled the metal strongbox from under the bed. Tucking it under his arm, he walked quickly up the hall and into the kitchen, saw nothing he needed, and checked the living room.

Nothing.

He had nothing to take with him.

He grabbed his jacket, the keys, and closed the door and locked it, more out of habit than a belief that he would ever return. Once done, he felt strange, free and confined at the same time, but he refused to think about it as he crossed the porch and stepped down under the carport. He tossed the strongbox and the jacket into the gap behind the seats and, keeping a watch on the street, he bent down to climb in, and whacked his brow against the frame.

"Damn," he muttered, standing again, swaying a little as he rubbed the injured spot and checking his fingers to be sure there was no blood, positive he had hit the edge hard enough to break the skin. This time he braced a palm against the frame, but this time he didn't get in because he knew he'd hit his head because the frame was too low. Getting into a vehicle was virtually automatic; you knew how high it was, how low you had to duck to get in without taking half your head off.

The gap between house and truck was too narrow to crouch comfortably in so he moved to the front, stood back a step, and saw all four tires bulging and flat to the ground. He only checked the right front, running his hand around the rubber until he found the gash. The others would be the same.

Running footsteps, and the girls raced by him to open the passenger door.

Hushed whispers: "Put them in the back."

"We'll get squished, 'bow. There's not enough room. We'll stick them in the bed."

"But they'll bounce out!"

"He's got rope there, remember? We'll tie them down."

Trey put a hand on the hood to help him to his feet, then leaned against it, head down as though packed with lead.

"I can't tie ropes, you jerk."

"I can, you dip."

Softer footsteps, scuffing over the ground, and a hand on his spine. "Something wrong?"

He was too weary to nod. "The tires." He pushed upright and turned to her. "The goddamn tires are slashed."

Jude stepped to one side and squinted into the half-light, one hand at her throat. "Who?"

He gestured vaguely up the street. "Who the hell knows?" He punched the air. "Who the hell cares, it's done."

A squeal, and Moonbow skidded around the truck. "Trey, the tires!"

"I know." He sniffed, put his hands on his hips, lifted his face to the sky. "I know."

"What're we gonna do?"

Starshine joined mem, swinging her arms nervously. "We can take Cable's car, maybe. Or Ricardo's."

"You have keys?" Moonbow asked her derisively.

"No."

"Oh. So you can hot-wire a car, huh?"

"Very funny, dip, very funny."

"Well, you're the one who said-"

"Stop it," Trey said, so firmly and quietly they backed off quickly, then eased around him to stand beside their mother. When Starshine started to ask a question, he added, "Hush. I need to think."

As he watched the morning's soft blue nudge the dark west, he wondered why they had gone to all this trouble. Eula knew what would happen to him if he left town, so why didn't she just let him go? Keeping him here served no purpose, made no sense. Unless . . .

He walked slowly down the drive to the street and looked south, toward her house.

Unless she couldn't let him go. Unless she couldn't take the chance that he'd survive long enough to join up with those two other men. What might happen then he had no idea, couldn't even begin to guess, but it was clear, now, that simply keeping him safe so she could keep an eye on him was no longer one of her options.

The notion that he, somehow, was a threat almost made him laugh aloud. He was a gambler, for crying out loud. Worse, he played the slots, quarter in, pull the arm, what the hell kind of gambling was that?

A morning breeze slipped through his hair, across his face; warm, and promising heat.

A tiny dust devil tottered drunkenly through the empty lot across the street.

"Keys," Jude said.

He frowned. "What?"

"Give me your keys, I'll go inside and call a cab."

Without waiting for an answer, Moonbow raced over and snatched them from his pocket, ran to the door and was inside before he could tell her it was a stupid idea, he didn't think Eula would wait that long. But the look Jude gave him, the expression on Starshine's face, kept him quiet. They were grasping for the straws that would build them a way out, and he wasn't about to stop them. He didn't have the heart. He didn't have the courage.

Starshine wandered down the length of the pickup, examining the tires, searching for a miracle. Jude stayed where she was, hands clasped in front of her, a small travel bag at her feet.

"She's going to be angry, you know," he said, loud enough for her to hear, hopefully not loud enough for Starshine.

"I know."

"I should have left when I had the chance. Bring you into this . . ." He shook his head.

"Karma," she said.

"Bullshit," he told her. And grinned when she made a gesture and a sound that told him he hadn't learned a thing after all this time, that she wasn't as off the wall as he believed.

But she was, and that was one of the reasons why he loved her.

Well, damn, he thought as he looked away, suddenly embarrassed; this is a hell of a time to figure that out, you jerk.

Then Starshine called his name just as her sister left the house. The look on Moonbow's face told him all he needed to know about the time it would take for a cab to fetch them, but he smiled anyway and hurried to the backyard when Starshine called him again.

"Look," and she pointed toward the mountains, shading her eyes against a slow steady wind that had kicked out of the breeze.

"What?" Moonbow demanded. "I don't see anything. What are you talking about?"

Trey saw it without help.

It seemed at first to be nothing more than a morning haze that blurred the distant range and the desert floor. But there was no water out there, no man-made lake or natural stream.

It wasn't a haze; it was a cloud.

Although it was still several miles away, Jude touched the girls' shoulders to pull them back, then turned them and pushed them toward the street. "Inside," he heard her tell them. "We have to get inside."

He didn't move.

A long time ago, he had been on the banks of Lake Superior, watching a thunderstorm make its way toward him from the west. Black clouds gliding effortlessly across the blue turned the land and water beneath them to hazy midnight, and he could feel the storm's cold wind, see the rain making its way over the water. He had been so fascinated by the sight that it had taken a crackling bolt of lightning to make him sprint for the nearest shelter before he was drenched.

The storm, as intense and violent as it turned out to be, didn't last as long as its approach. At least in his memory, where the clouds and the rain took their own sweet time. The better, he had thought then, to scare him half to death before it crushed him.

Here, the sky didn't change from its gentle early blue, and the wind wasn't cold, and there was no rain.

Only sand, and dust, and bits and pieces of brittle grass and dead cactus and whatever else it found lying loose on the stark desert floor. Only browns and tans and an occasional black stripe, darker in its huge long center, throwing twisting pale tendrils of itself at the rising sun and the land around it.

The storm on Lake Superior had a beauty about it, dark and powerful; this storm had no beauty at all, just the browns and the tans and the swirling black stripes and bands he knew would vanish when it was close enough and became a solid grinding fog.

The way it moved, its direction and speed, told him it would bypass the development a good distance to the south, and probably wouldn't even reach the city. Tempting, then, to consider it an omen of some kind, but he couldn't figure out what it might mean, so he returned to the street, rubbed his chest, and started walking.

Jude called from his front door.

He didn't look back. He wanted to know where everyone was, and he figured getting them up this early would give him some advantage in case they had aligned themselves with Eula, the only conclusion he could reach after hearing about the festivities Jude hadn't attended last night. Not that he was all that concerned. The only one who might give him serious trouble was Cable, who was bigger and heavier and definitely meaner.

Unless, he realized as he stepped onto the Olins' porch, they all brought their guns.

He froze.

You are, he thought, just too stupid to live.

A snap of his fingers, and he ran back to Jude, still waiting on the porch. He said, "Your gun," and she pulled it out from behind her back, a small nickel-plate revolver she told him was already loaded.

"I was hoping," she said, smiling and scolding at the same time.

"The storm's not coming this way. How long for the cab?"

"They told me an hour," Moonbow answered from the doorway, saw the gun in his hand, and turned so pale he feared she would pass out. Jude saw the reaction and wrapped her arms around her, hugging her tightly while her frown told him to get on with it, you're wasting time you don't have anymore.

A nod, and he ran easily, a lope, not going full-out because he didn't want to be winded when he reached Steph's house.