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The thought was chilling. She knew she'd drunk too much last night, popped a few too many pills?neither of which she'd done in years. She'd tried so hard to stay on the straight and narrow path recently, but God knew, even though she did her best to be responsible, she failed at almost everything in her personal life. Any-thing's possible with you....
No. She'd come so far since her zone days. She wouldn't have lapsed so easily back into that trap. She couldn't have. And no matter how much sense it made, no matter how precisely it matched her image of herself, she refused to believe it.
"Damn," she cursed, shoving a dirty hand through her cropped hair. Wishing like hell she had a cigarette, she glanced again down the street.
There were people in the street, people and horses and buggies. Everything you'd expect in a scene from Young Guns .. . except they weren't moving.
Horses were poised at hitching rails, completely still. In the middle of the street, a wagon was at a dead stop, the horse's hoof frozen an inch above the ground. In the buckboard's seat, two men were looking at each other, faces arrested in masks of anger?eyebrows furrowed, mouths open, eyes narrowed. The boardwalk was dotted with people, everyone motionless and silent.
She brushed her dirty hands on her jeans and got to her feet, cramming her fists in her baggy pockets. Across the street, like a crowned tooth amidst a decaying mouth, sat a brick building?the only one in town, and obviously built to last. It was large and square with perfectly matched windows that flanked twin oak doors. Above the doors, in huge, ornate letters, were the words
FORTUNE FLATS BANK.
Relief rushed through Lainie. She should have
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known. This wasn't real. None of this was real. She was still asleep at her computer. This was all a dream.
It had to be because this town didn't exist. She'd created Fortune Flats, designed and named the buildings, even imagined the dirty, dusty road. It was the fictional town where her current book was set.
She was looking at chapter one?she could tell by the four horses clustered in front of the bank. The bank was being robbed right now, and Skeeter Johnson?the dim-witted lookout?was standing frozen on the boardwalk, clutching the coil of reins. Waiting, watching.
She grinned. She was dreaming about her book. It was only natural, since she'd gone to sleep working on it.
Suddenly she was excited. She looked up and down the street, trying to soak in as much information as she could. This wasn't exactly as she'd imagined the town; the detail was too perfect. Her subconscious was obviously kicking in, supplying tidbits of information from her extensive research.
What an opportunity! She'd never dreamt in this level of detail before, never actually learned anything from her dreams. But now she saw the possibilities. She could meander through the buildings, see the setting, feel the desert heat, meet the people. It would give her book a verisimilitude unlike any she'd achieved before.
Damn, she hoped she remembered this in the morning.
She headed to the bank first?and why not? It was where the book began.
Killian pointed his Winchester at the teller.
The small, pointy-faced man behind the brass bars blanched. Two nickel-sized spots of color seeped through his pale cheeks. "I-I don't think I oughta give you no money. I-It wunt be right. M-Mr. Harold Springs
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s-said I w-was responsible for all the funds in this bank."
"Uh-huh."
The teller swallowed so hard, his Adam's apple slid up and down his knobby throat. "I'm-mean, / wunt mind givin' it to you, but it ain't my money. You u-understand how it is...."
"Shoot him, boss," Mose said in his gravel-stained voice. "We don't got time fer this shit." He spun toward the teller and pointed his pearl-handled pistol at the man's balding head.
"Yeah," Purty chimed from the corner, where three people lay facedown on the floor in front of him.
Killian lifted a gloved hand for silence. "See, Mr.. .." He glanced at the brass plate along the teller's cage. "Mr. Ernest Lubb, you're trying to be a hero now."
Ernest looked for a moment as if he were going to smile. His pencil-thin lips wobbled uncertainly. The color on his cheeks darkened a shade. "Well, I wouldn't say?"
" 'Cept you got yourself a problem."
The teller choked on the end of his sentence and blinked at Killian. "Wh-What's that?"