Niceville

out at the traffic, very aware of Beau in the seat beside him, holding the cat as if she were about to bite him. For her part, the cat seemed pretty calm. She had curled up in Beau’s lap and gone straight to sleep.
    “I mean, women in burkas, that’s what they look like, just shapes in black. So it makes sense that you might interpret a black reflection that way.”
    “True,” said Nick, hoping she’d leave it there.
    “But you think there’s more, don’t you?”
    “Like what?”
    “From the sound of your voice, I’d say you think the house itself was to blame. That the house was making you see things from your past, things that upset you.”
    Nick was quiet for a time.
    “Yeah. That’s what it felt like.”
    “Is there anything about a figure in a burka that would upset you?” Silence.
    “Yes. There is.”
    The Wadi Doan, a leafy little gorge carved out of the horny brown hide of central Yemen, a chain of villages as old as the world. Three figures in head-to-toe burkas, walking all wrong, shoes all wrong, stumbling on the stones, eyes fixed on the middle distance, heedless staring robots, coming closer and closer to their idling Humvee
.
    Exactly the profile of suicide bombers
.
    The Wadi Doan
.
    “I’m not going to ask you about it—”
    “Thanks, Kate. Just the war, I guess. We used to call them BMOs. Black Moving Objects.”
    This unknown thing that had happened back in the war, it was still the one unsayable thing between them. Maybe someday Nick would talk about it. Tig had said so himself, when she was plying him with multiple mojitos at the Moot Court bar.
    She doubted it, and it was true that part of her didn’t really want to know about it in the first place.
    “But this BMO thing, it does explain how a reflection like that would get to you, especially if you’re all keyed up, looking for a missing woman. Did Beau see anything?”
    Nick looked over at Beau, asked him the question. Beau shook his head.
    “No. Not Beau. Just me. Mavis Crossfire said she saw something; but she wouldn’t say what. And there was a guard there, Dale Jonquil; he said he saw a young woman in a green dress, holding a cat.”
    That shook Kate.
    She remembered her dream, the young woman in a green dress. Holding a cat.
    So did Nick.
    “Didn’t you have a dream last night about a girl in a green dress and a cat?”
    She hesitated.
    There was no point in saying no.
    “Yes. I did.”
    “Okay. Now
that’s
a tad freaky, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. It is. Did the guard, this Dale Jonquil guy, did he see the cat you have with you?”
    “Yes. We showed it to him on the way out. It’s the same one he saw in the mirror. But then he knew the cat from before. Her name is Mildred Pierce. She’s Delia’s cat, and Dale works security in her neighborhood, so that makes sense. But he doesn’t like Delia’s house much either.”
    He glanced across at Beau, checking him out, seeing the expression on his face.
    “Neither does Beau.”
    “Did Beau see a girl with a cat?”
    “You see a girl with a cat?”
    Beau shook his head.
    “No.”
    “But he did see the image on the basement wall. Did you try to take a picture of it?”
    “Yes. Beau took some shots with his cell phone camera.”
    “Did he get anything?”
    “Yeah. A short video.”
    “Can you make anything out of it?”
    “We haven’t tried yet. Beau’s going to transfer it to a computer and pull off an mpeg.”
    “But you both saw it?”
    “Yeah. Both of us.”
    “What did you see?”
    Nick hesitated.
    People working in a field
.
    Coffins
.
    Skulls
.
    “The picture shifted. First a farm, and then it turned into the street outside the Cotton place.”
    “I’d love to see it.”
    “I’ll get a copy and bring it home.”
    Silence.
    “Kate, I have to say, that house is …”
    “Weird?”
    “No. More like insane.”
    They were at the lab.
    “We’re here, Kate. Gotta go. Love you.”
    “Love you too, babe.”
    She was turning into her driveway, into the home her father and mother had lived in for thirty years.
    Dillon and Lenore
.
    Niceville
.
    She climbed out of the SUV, remembering to take her Glock out of the glove box. The house was warm and musty, and the clouds were breaking up. The house was dim but pierced everywhere with afternoon light shining in through the tall sash windows.
    She thought about Nick’s experiences at Delia’s mansion in The Chase for a while, looked at the clock. It was the middle of the afternoon, a Saturday. Her