WOULDN’T it be nice if life were like one of those cheap dime novels about harmless adventures and gun slinging heroes? The kind where everything works out and you can tuck the story away when you‘re done?
That was the thing about dime novels, they had an end. Did the fellow reading the book ever fret over what the people inside did after he put them back on the shelf? Did he worry about their lives? Well, did he? Of course not. It was over. It was finished.
And it was not real.
Real life, on the other hand, just keeps rolling along whether you like it or not. It has exciting moments and then some lulls in between, which is the sort of thing most books don’t bother going on about. Everyone knows nothing interesting happens in between. Any idiot could have a nothing-in-between, it takes a hero to have an ‘Adventure’. Life isn’t like that. It isn’t tidy and it is never over.
And it is always real.
Gideon Fletcher’s nothing-in-between appeared to have come to an abrupt end, because the man he had seen across the street was entirely too real for anything as laidback as ‘nothing’ to stand a chance.
Pushed-down, packed-tight fury battled with disbelief. The thought that had stayed right there on his back trail was alive and well in Caswell Crossing. It was like one of those dreams where you keep running without actually gaining any ground.
Gideon elbowed farther into the gloom as footsteps echoed overhead. Had he been much bigger, the patchwork beams under the boardinghouse would never have held him. Who knew why such a haphazard space existed, but Gideon gave thanks to the maladroit carpenter who had created it. There in the damp and the dark, he tried to slow his breathing, rein in his pounding heart. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he hadn’t seen—