High Noon

fit—body, mind, heart.
    Maybe she was feeling sentimental and shaky, under siege and out of control. But she’d found someone who helped keep the ground steady under her feet. Someone else who could answer the questions or point the way—because, oh Jesus, she hadn’t realized how tired she’d been of carrying the whole load alone.
    “You make me feel sturdier, Duncan.”
    “Good. I think.”
    “It’s very good, for me.” She ran her hands down his back all the way to his ass and back again. “Very good. Maybe it’s just postcoital euphoria, but right now I feel like I can handle what’s happening, and what has to happen. It’s going to be all right because it has to be.”
    He said nothing for a moment, then trailed a finger over her shoulder. “I rehired Suicide Joe.”
    “You…Hmm.”
    “Phin’s going to be pissed, but it’s just part-time. A few hours a week. He’s not so crazy, and he’s getting therapy.” Duncan lifted his head, looked down at her. “You save lives, Phoebe—you saved his. That’s what you do. How many people can say that? That saving lives is what they do. Yeah, it’s going to be all right.”
    “I don’t know if I want to save his. Walken’s. I’ve never felt that way before, as if—even for a moment—I wouldn’t regret someone’s death. All these years, I’ve never drawn my weapon on anyone. I’ve never discharged it outside the range. But I know I could, I know I wouldn’t hesitate, if I walked out the door and he was there. It doesn’t even weigh on me, Duncan, the knowing that.”
    “Why should it?”
    “Because it’s not what I do. All those years ago, when Reuben had us, I thought if I could get a knife from the kitchen, or somehow get the gun away, I’d hurt him. Kill him if I could, for what he was doing to us. Keeping us scared and trapped, that blood on Mama’s face, and the fear on Carter’s. That’s the only other time in my life I felt like this. But when it was over, when it was done, I was so relieved he wasn’t dead. He’d go to prison, and that was good, that was just fine, but he wasn’t dead. No one died in that house. I don’t know, when this is over, if I’ll feel the same.”
    “I haven’t picked a fight in…well, that little scuffle with Jake’s stupid cousin doesn’t count, so in fifteen years or so. Haven’t cracked my fist into anyone’s face or gotten that rush of whipping someone good and proper. But if I had the chance, if I could get my hands on Walken, I’d beat him bloody. And when he was done, his eyes rolling back, I’d beat him some more.
    “It’s not what I do, Phoebe, but knowing I would doesn’t weigh on me, either.”
    She stared at him because however calm and easy his tone, she knew he meant it. He had that in him. “Well. Well. We’re just a couple of violent individuals, aren’t we?”
    “Somewhere in there. The difference is we don’t set out to be. Tell you what, if you get the chance, you draw on him, and you hold the gun on him till I get there. I’ll beat hell out of him, and when he’s down, you can give him a couple of good kicks.”
    She snorted out a laugh before she could stop it. “God, that shouldn’t be funny, and it sure as hell shouldn’t make me feel better. But it is, and it does. And with this current mood, I’m going to put that gun in the lockbox where it belongs.”
    She wiggled out from under him, picked up the gun from the nightstand. Then blinked against the sudden light when he switched on the bedside lamp.
    “Had to see.” He tracked his gaze over her, a lazy sweep of dusky blue. “Naked redhead with a gun. I believe that’s stirred me up enough I could go another round.”
    She only shook her head, walked to the closet. “A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could end the day here, like this. Life is a strange ride, as someone commented recently.”
    “I like the ups and downs of it. Which reminds me of something I was going to ask you. When this is done, how about taking a few days off, taking a little trip with me?”
    It was hopeful and human to project, to plan, Phoebe knew as she took down the lockbox. She smiled a little as she imagined Paris or Rome, Tahiti or Belize. “I might be able to swing that. Where’d you have in mind?”
    “Disney World.” She dropped the gun into the box with a little thud, then simply stood in the closet, staring at nothing.
    “You want to go to Disney World?”
    “Big dream of mine when I was a