Lake Country Read Free Page B

and the moon looked like a puddle of silver on the water. The tangy spring air felt good on his face.
    Mike breathed it in. Limping around the car, he checked up and down the empty street, hoping nobody happened to look out the window at a quarter of four in the morning, see two guys casing houses in a rust-bucket Skylark, and call the cops.
    As he rounded the front bumper, he glanced through the cracked windshield and saw Darryl, already shoved over into the passenger seat, washed in the light from the overhead dome. Darryl’s eyes lookedred and his hair stood on end. If Mike had been closer to sober and more than half awake himself, it might have occurred to him to ask how the guy had known where the architect lived in the first place. But he didn’t think about that until later.

CITIZEN CON

1
    For the first time in as long as he could remember, Mike Barlowe woke up from one of the old dreams.
    He’d been sighting down his rifle from the edge of a rooftop, unable to see the ground below. A hot wind blew in from the desert, obscuring his view. He could feel the tension mounting beneath his trigger finger. He couldn’t make out his target in the void.
    The moment he fired, Mike bolted up in a clench of panic, heart hammering, unaware of his position.
    Then, little by little, the hollow, scouring sound of sand blowing against his helmet resolved itself into the soft patter of rain on the bedroom window. Gray daylight seeped in through the curtains. As his surroundings slowly came into focus, so did the real-world noise that had roused him:
    Somebody banging on the front door.
    Mike dragged in a rattling breath, dimly recalling the echo of distant artillery as the last of the dream fell away. He looked around and found himself on top of his own unmade covers, still in his clothes. He glanced at the clock beside the bed and saw that Wednesday morning had already come and gone. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon.
    A fresh barrage thudded through the walls while he sat there, still blinking away the fog. Mike hauled himself out of the rack and shambled down the hall in his stocking feet, thinking,
All right, already. Don’t break it down
.
    He was halfway across the living room when the door fell silent, then thundered once in reply.
    Mike stopped in his tracks as the jamb splintered. For a moment, standing there frozen, watching the door burst inward on its hinges, he wondered if he was still dreaming after all.
    A guy Mike had never seen before came strolling into the house like he had an invitation: Mid thirties, dressed in jeans, a leather sport-bike jacket, and lug boots. He was built low and lean, with a Kevlar bulge under a black nylon T-shirt and a face that looked like it had been broken and healed wrong. Seeing Mike, the guy’s eyes went hard. “Got him,” he yelled over his shoulder.
    “Really?” another voice said from out on the stoop.
    A new face appeared in the doorway, and this one Mike recognized. The expression on this face changed from relieved to surprised to disappointed, all in a few seconds.
    “Oh, crap,” the newcomer said. “Mike. Sorry, man. We sort of thought nobody was home.”
    Mike stood in his spot, flat-footed, still scrambling to assess the situation in front of him. He couldn’t seem to untangle his reflexes. It occurred to him that if the dream had been real and he’d been back in the desert, he’d have had his ass shot off by now.
    “Toby,” he said. It came out like a croak.
    The first guy through the door rolled his eyes.
    Toby Lunden shook rainwater from the sleeves of his windbreaker. He looked embarrassed. “We tried knocking.”
    “Oh,” Mike said. He released the breath he’d been holding, still waiting for his pulse to settle. “In that case, come on in.”
    Mike wasn’t a gambler, but he’d known a few bookies, and Toby Lunden wasn’t like any of them.
    He was a kid, for one thing, barely twenty years old, with bad eyes and thin bones and a