Niceville

for him.And last night, there he was, large as life, in a track suit, squatting in the bushes a few feet off the running path, waiting for a victim.
    He never saw Nick coming.
    Afterwards, something very strange—while Nick was running homeward along the narrow track that ran through the woods by the Tulip, he had been overtaken and nearly knocked down by a huge runaway horse.
    In the brief glance he got as it flashed through the pools of lamplight along the path, it looked like some kind of workhorse, a Clyde or a Belgian, anyway a gigantic animal, golden brown, with a long pale mane and four massive white hooves.
    A horse big enough to shake the ground as it thundered past him in the dark, snorting and chuffing, its harness jingling and heavy hooves pounding the earth. It had disappeared into the night, hoofbeats fading into silence, and then, as he stood there in shock, staring after it, a sudden cold wind off the river had chilled him to the core.
    Later he’d wondered if it had happened at all. Either way, he wasn’t telling Kate about any of it. She hated Patton’s Hard, seeing it as nothing but a dark and dangerous path through a dense forest of hanging willows, a place that she avoided even in the daylight.
    Kate frowned.
    “I wish you wouldn’t run along the river late at night. It’s not safe. You know what happened there last month, those two poor girls.”
    Nick gave her a look.
    “Kate—”
    “I know. Hoo-Rah and Gitter Dun and Semper Fi and all that manly horseshit.”
    “Gitter Dun is Larry the Cable Guy and Semper Fi is Corps, babe. I was Army, remember? Special Forces is Army?”
    Kate knew that Nick craved the Special Forces the way a lifelong smoker craved his cigarette. It was a mystery to her how a man who already had eight years of front-line combat still hadn’t gotten himself enough war. But now that he was here in Niceville—by his own choice—it was time for him to show up and be
present
in their life together. She was going to bring him all the way back, one way or another.
    The moon clock on the bedside table began to flash, lighting up the dark attic room with a vivid yellow flare.
    She sat up, naked, tapped the SLEEP button, and turned to kiss him, a deep, searching kiss. She felt him respond, felt his heat, and smiled to herself.
    One way or another
.
    Breakfast, a while later, was toast and juice and black coffee, and over the litter of toast bits and jam and cutlery Kate, dressed in a tight blue skirt and crisp white blouse and ready for work—she had a meeting with a Belfair County social worker—caught Nick’s hand as he raised his cup.
    “I almost forgot. I ran into Lacy Steinert at the courthouse. She wants you to go see her.”
    Nick set the cup down, ran a hand through his short black hair in that way he had. Kate thought he looked like a man with something on his mind. She had no idea what it was, but it was eating away at him. Maybe he’d get around to telling her what it was sometime soon.
    “What’s she want?” he said, a wary tone.
    Kate’s expression shifted, the humor and the light leaving it. Outside, the rain was sheeting down and a thick gray fog was lifting in the street, rising up to the treetops like a flood. There was a short silence while she listened to the thunder of rain on their roof and looked at her husband across their breakfast table.
    “Rainey Teague,” she said softly.
    Nick flinched, as she’d known he would, his gray eyes lowering for a second. The Rainey Teague case had put a large hole in Nick’s heart. Kate knew this as well as anyone and that’s why she had questioned Lacy pretty hard, and then thought long and deep about it before she brought it up with Nick this morning.
    “Did Lacy say what she had?”
    Kate shrugged, tried for a light touch.
    “You know Lacy. Always working the system.”
    Lacy Steinert was a parole and probation officer with County Corrections, a stand-up and a fine woman, but she was also a hustler for her clients and was always looking for pleas and deals for one hard-done-by perp or another.
    “I know her,” said Nick, his face still tight.
    Kate took a breath, then the plunge.
    “It’s about Lemon Featherlight—”
    “I know him. Ex-Corps. Two tours, Bronze with a Vee, Purple Heart, a war hero. Honorable discharge and it all goes south. Now he’s a confidential informant for Tony Branko at Niceville PD Drug Squad. He’s a Seminole from Islamorada, down in the Keys. Hangs around the