"I'm not gay, Fred. Some of my DARE kids say this guy's selling dope."

"So why don't you just kick it over to vice?"

"'Cause they'd just put it on a back burner, and if I find out this guy is really selling drugs to my kids, I'm going to hunt him down and kill him."

"That's different, then. Why didn't you just say so?" Spinoza moved in closer to the keyboard. "So you got a plate number?"

***

FOR THE FIRST TIME since he'd left Walter Reed, Evan felt he needed to talk to his therapist, Stephan Ray. He didn't know if there was a technical term for what he was experiencing, but subjectively it felt somewhat similar to his inability to recall the names for things in the first months after his surgery. Except that now, and several other times in the past few days, he had found himself in the middle of some activity, or in the grip of some emotional reaction, and didn't seem to have a memory of how he'd come to be there. Or any control over his actions.

Earlier tonight by the Corvette with the gun, for example.

What did he think he was going to do with the gun? What did he want to do with the gun? He didn't know, didn't recall any moment of actual decision. First he was sitting in his car, waiting for Tara to come home so he could have a reasonable discussion with her. And the next thing he knew-the next thing he remembered-he was standing by the Corvette in the parking lot with his gun in his hand. Wondering why his gun was in his hand.

Surely he wasn't planning to shoot Nolan. Or Tara. Or, God forbid, both of them. Maybe he'd decided to shoot out one or more of Nolan's fancy-rimmed tires. In the dim light of early evening, that at least seemed like a semibaked idea. But his sentient mind realized that this would produce a loud noise and the very likely possibility that he'd at least be seen and possibly be recognized. It would also-perhaps-announce himself as interested in Nolan's activities in a way that he'd rather keep to himself, until he made some rational decisions about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

With Tara.

The stop at the police station had been a rational decision. He knew what he wanted there, though he wasn't sure why he wanted it, and he knew how to get it.

But now, having learned where Nolan lived and having driven up there, he found himself sitting in his car, parked curbside, again with his gun in his hand. If Nolan came home alone, it wouldn't be the same situation at all as it had been when Tara was with him. This was a quiet street, far less traveled than Tara's, lined with mature trees.

The address was a nice-looking, stand-alone townhome with attached garage amid a cluster of similar units. Separate, yet somewhat isolated. Perfect for…

For what? he asked himself.

And suddenly, again, the awareness of where he was, of what he was doing, flooded back. He was doing something here-figuratively staring at a drawing of a reindeer and wondering what the name of it was-but the exact nature of what he hoped to accomplish continued to elude him.

Looking down at the gun, he reached over and placed it back into the still-open glove compartment, then closed the door behind it, turned the key to lock it up. Then, the keys in his hand, he realized that he had to get out of here before he did something stupid. Something that he couldn't even explain to himself.

So he hit the ignition. The dashboard clock read ten forty-two.

Putting the car into gear, he pulled out from the curb and hadn't gone twenty feet when he jammed his foot on the brakes enough to make the tires squeal. His windows were down, he hadn't turned his headlights on, and running dark with a warm breeze over him sparked a jolt of familiarity.

In the months since he'd been injured, it had left the forefront of his memory, but now, suddenly, all the elements of this night rekindled a vision of the episode with Nolan when they'd raided the insurgents' lair in the neighborhood close to BIAP. The bright light and the terrific explosion blowing out the windows; the flames licking into the night as gunfire erupted behind him.

A mercenary mission to kill.

An explosion and then a fire.

A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood.

Evan let out the breath he'd been holding, turned on his headlights, and eased his foot off the brake.

13

"WELL, MY SON, the latest theory, which might still be wrong," Spinoza said, "is that it was a thing called a fragmentation grenade. You ought to know about them. They're evidently using ' em in Iraq right now. Blow the shit out of everything so you need a snow shovel to pick up the pieces. Which pretty much fits what happened here, by the way." He sat back in his chair and picked up his sandwich. Putting his feet up on the desk, he took a bite. "So why do you want to know? You teaching execution techniques in DARE to the little fuckers?"