Dave scooted to the edge of the bed. He lowered his feet to the floor, but didn’t stand up.
Instead, he watched Joan slide into one of the dark blue vests he had picked up at the station that afternoon. She fastened it shut around her torso with Velcro straps. “You look like you’re ready to go water-skiing,” he said.
“Wishful thinking.” Squatting beside the grocery bag, she took out a shoulder harness. She slipped into it, and tucked her S&W .38 into the holster below her left armpit. A smaller holster went around her right ankle. She filled it with a chrome-plated semiauto. Still another harness came out of her sack. Dave shook his head as she got into it. She straightened the leather sheath against the right side of her rib cage and slid a long double-edged knife into it.
“God Almighty,” Dave said. “Where do you get your stuff, from Soldier of Fortune magazine?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Anything else? Have you got an Uzi in there?”
“This about does it.” When she reached into the sack again, she came out with a pair of gray sweatpants that looked as if they’d been dabbed with shoe polish.
Dave got up from the bed. He took fresh underwear and socks from his dresser and put them on while Joan covered the top part of her arsenal with a baggy sweatshirt. The shirt had rips in it that showed the blue of her Kevlar vest. The tears in her pants showed bare leg.
“My sexy Rambo,” Dave said. Like Joan, he put on a T-shirt to keep the vest away from his skin. Then he got into his jeans and vest and running shoes. He went to the closet for his own weapons: a snub-nosed .38 with a clip-on holster that he fastened to his belt on the right, and a 9mm Beretta with a shoulder harness.
“You don’t travel exactly light yourself,” Joan said, nodding at the Beretta.
“We oughta be able to take on an army,” Dave said.
“Debbie thinks we may have to.”
“You told her, huh?” Dave slipped into a heavy plaid shirt and watched Joan knot a red bandanna around her thigh. “What’s that for?”
“Style. Yeah, I told her. Probably should’ve kept it to myself, but I don’t like to do that. She was not pleased, to say the least. She’s afraid I won’t come back.”
Joan’s words made a cold knot in Dave’s belly. “I don’t blame her,” he said.
“She’s more worried about trolls than the teenagers. Still thinks they had something to do with Mom.” Joan carried her socks and a ratty old pair of running shoes to the bed, sat on its edge, and tried to hunch over to put them on. “Damn,” she muttered, having trouble because of her vest and harnesses.
“Allow me,” Dave said.
“My knight. So chivalrous.”
Kneeling in front of her, he started to put the socks on her feet.
“You’re pretty good at this,” she said, ruffling his hair. “You can be the official sock-putter-onner for our kids.”
He smiled up at her. “Our kids?”
“Or don’t you want any?”
“Of course I do.”
“How many?”
“As many as you want,” he said, and suddenly wished she hadn’t mentioned kids, hadn’t touched him with dreams of the future. A future that might not be there. The night ahead loomed in front of Dave like a black wall, and he feared there might be nothing beyond it.
That’s ridiculous, he told himself.
But they got Gloria.
Gloria was alone. She wasn’t armed. This is a whole different ball game.
He finished tying the shoes, and rubbed Joan’s thighs through the soft fabric of the sweatpants. He slipped a hand inside one of the rips. “Maybe we should check Gloria’s place on the way over,” he said.
“What’s the point? She won’t be there, we both know that.”
“Couldn’t hurt to check one more time. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Her eyes darkened. “I don’t want to go in there again.”
“You can wait in the car,” Dave said. They’d driven over after dinner. Joan had gone in with him, and the experience had obviously upset her. She’d walked stiffly through the house, clutching Dave’s hand, a grim look on her face. He couldn’t blame her. It was the home of his former lover, a woman who had probably been murdered last night, whose ruined body had likely been discarded in some lonely place where the killers hoped she would never be found.
When Dave started showing Gloria’s cast-off clothes to her, she’d shaken her head sharply, blurted, “I don’t want to see that