Free Winter Moon by Dean Koontz Page A

without shoes and weighed maybe a hundred and five pounds dripping wet, Gina always seemed bigger than anyone around her. As she walked along the hospital corridors with Heather, her footsteps were louder than those of a man twice her size, and nurses turned to frown disapprovingly at the
tock-tock-tock
of her high heels on the tile floors.
    “You okay, Heth?” Gina asked as they headed for the four-story parking garage attached to the hospital.
    “Yeah.”
    “I mean really.”
    “I’ll make it.”
    At the end of a corridor they went through a green metal door into the parking garage. It was bare gray concrete, chilly, with low ceilings. A third of the fluorescent lights were broken in spite of the wire cages that protected them, and the shadows among the cars offered countless places of concealment.
    Gina fished a small aerosol can from her purse, holding it with her index finger on the trigger, and Heather said, “What’s that?”
    “Red-pepper Mace. You don’t carry?”
    “No.”
    “Where you think you’re living, girl—Disneyland?”
    As they walked up a concrete ramp with cars parked on both sides, Heather said, “Maybe I should buy some.”
    “Can’t. The bastard politicians made it illegal. Wouldn’t want to give some poor misguided rapist a skin rash, would you? Ask Jack or one of the guys—they can still get it for you.”
    Gina was driving an inexpensive blue Ford compact, but it had an alarm system, which she disengaged from a distance with a remote-control device on her key ring. The headlights flashed, the alarm beeped once, and the doors unlocked.
    Looking around at the shadows, they got in and immediately locked up again.
    After starting the car, Gina hesitated before putting it in gear. “You know, Heth, you want to cry on my shoulder, my clothes are all drip-dry.”
    “I’m all right. I really am.”
    “Sure you’re not into denial?”
    “He’s alive, Gina. I can handle anything else.”
    “Forty years, Jack in a wheelchair?”
    “Doesn’t matter if it comes to that, as long as I have him to talk to, hold him at night.”
    Gina stared hard at her for long seconds. Then: “You mean it. You know what it’s gonna be like, but you still mean it. Good. I always figured you for one, but it’s good to know I was right.”
    “One what?”
    Popping the hand brake and shifting the Ford into reverse, Gina said, “One tough damned bitch.”
    Heather laughed. “I guess that’s a compliment.”
    “Fuckin’ A, it’s a compliment.”
    When Gina paid the parking fee at the exit booth and pulled out of the garage, a glorious gold-and-orange sunset gilded the patchy clouds to the west. However, as they crossed the metropolis through lengthening shadows and a twilight that gradually filled with blood red light, the familiar streets and buildings were as alien as any on a distant planet. She had lived her entire adult life in Los Angeles, but Heather McGarvey felt like a stranger in a strange land.

    The Brysons’ two-story Spanish house was in the Valley, on the edge of Burbank, lucky number 777 on a street lined with sycamores. The leafless limbs of the big trees made spiky arachnid patterns against the muddy yellow-black night sky, which was filled with too much ambient light from the urban sprawl ever to be perfectly inky. Cars were clustered in the driveway and street in front of 777, including one black-and-white.
    The house was filled with relatives and friends of the Brysons. A few of the former and most of the latter were cops in uniforms or civilian clothes. Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians had come together in companionship and mutual support in a way they seldom seemed capable of associating in the larger community any more.
    Heather felt at home the moment she crossed the threshold, so much safer than she had felt in the world outside. As she made her way through the living room and dining room, seeking Alma, she paused to speak briefly with old friends—and discovered