Snowbound

But he’d seen blood. A jet of it, spraying the snow

with red. God. Maybe not. More dazed than he usually

was when he snapped out of a flashback, he stared at

the face of the woman he held pinned down.

She saw something in his eyes and went still. “Are

you all right?” she whispered.

“No.Yes. Damn.” Voice guttural, he rolled to one side.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Just stand up. No one

noticed anything.”

Adrenaline still pumping, physically battle-ready,

he got up with her. All three boys were on their feet

laughing. They weren’t soldiers; they were kids. No

blood dyed the snow a shocking crimson. He reached

up and scrubbed a gloved hand over his face.

“Ms. Mac, we’re going in,” Erin said.

Fiona had been staring worriedly up at him. He

couldn’t make himself meet her eyes, but he felt her

gaze. Now she turned her head.

“Cold?”

“My feet are ice blocks,” one of the girls said.

“Mine, too.” Willow, he thought.

“I’m going in,” Amy declared.

His brain was moving sluggishly, but he realized

that Amy wore boots, and hadn’t taken a turn with the

snow shovel.

She’d have been useless anyway.

“Give me just a few minutes and I’ll be in as well,”

Fiona told them.

“First bath!” one of the voices claimed, as feet

thudded on the porch boards.

Had to be Amy. Who else?

Fiona laid a mittened hand on his arm. “I’ll organize

Tabitha and Kelli to start trampling a path toward the

shed. If you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically. “It was just, uh…”

“Just? You had a flashback, didn’t you?” She shook

her head in warning and he heard the squeak of booted

feet coming toward them. “We’ll talk about it later,”

she murmured.

John could hardly look at the boys. They’d been

the cause of his episode. Okay, he didn’t do well with

loud noises, especially ones that sounded like gunfire.

But he didn’t usually lose it completely. Not like that.

But the boys, the way they pushed and shoved and

laughed… And, God, when the one went down…

He felt sick.

“This wide enough?” Dieter asked.

John pretended to study the path. “Looks fine. When

you get to the woodpile, we’ll all bring in some wood

for the night.”

“Yeah, sure.” He looked past John. “What happened

to the girls? Did they wimp out?”

“Without boots, their feet were getting cold.” He

sounded normal. Sane, he congratulated himself.

“Still wimps.” Dieter tromped away.

John turned to watch Fiona and the two girls, three

abreast, pushing forward through shoulder-high snow and

then stamping on what collapsed around them. The girls

in particular were giggling madly, and they looked like the

women he’d seen in a movie trampling grapes for wine.

Fiona’s laugh floated to his ears, lower-pitched than

the girls’s, a little husky. A woman’s laugh. But she

stomped with all the enthusiasm of the two girls, her

arm linked with one of them.

His stomach churned again. Would she think he was

crazy?

How could she not? He’d thought insurgents were

shooting at them and he’d knocked her to the ground.

He wanted to lie to himself and call it a life-saving

instinct that had to be retrained: the bang of a mortar,

the crack of a rifle, you hit the deck. Returning soldiers

from every war in the last century and in this one had

the same instinct, one that he assumed dulled with time

and then was forgotten.

But it hadn’t been just instinct. For a minute, he’d

been half there in Iraq, half here in Oregon. He’d known

snow was around them rather than sand. He’d known it

was Fiona he was throwing his body over. But the boys

had suddenly worn camouflage, and the blood… The

blood had been as real as his would be if he cut himself

open right now. He could still close his eyes and see the

moment, a snapshot to join the album full of others he

carried in his head.

Hopper’s face, mouth open in a soundless cry of

alarm as he tried to run toward them. The jerk as the