Free The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding

enlisted, then turned around and bet Jeff that same hundred bucks he lacked the cojones to do the same. What the hell? they’d reasoned, signing on the dotted line. It was an adventure, an opportunity to see the world, a chance to shoot the big guns. Besides, the war was only going to last a few months, right?
    “Right this way, gentlemen,” the recruiting officer had said with a smile.
    “Next stop, purgatory,” Tom said now, pushing his way through the humidity to his front door, painted a noxious shade of purple. His mind returned to the tasteful, tan-colored bungalow in Coral Gables as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. Who paints a front door purple? he wondered, listening to the key twist in the lock.
    “Purple’s supposed to be good luck,” he heard Lainey say, bracing himself as he stepped over the threshold. Lainey wasn’t above jumping out at him in the dark, accusations, like bullets, raining down on his head as she pursued him from room to room, her voice like the whine of a guided missile, mercilessly honing in on its target.
    But there was no one lurking when he stepped into the tiny front foyer, no one waiting to chop off his head when he peeked, turtle-like, into the dark living room. He sank into the nearest chair, staring at the empty space where the plasma TV used to sit. After several minutes of trying—and failing—to get comfortable in the too-small flower-patterned chair, he got up. He’d never liked this room, never adjusted to Lainey’s parents’ castoffs.
    He headed up the stairs, wincing with each creak in the wood.
    Something was wrong, he realized when he reached the top of the landing, and he stood there for several seconds, not moving, barely breathing, his muscles on full alert, trying to figure out what it was. And then he knew—it was too quiet.
    His eyes shot to the ceiling, as if he half expected a bomb to drop suddenly out of the sky. He reached for his gun, pulling it from his belt and holding it out in front of him as he proceeded down the narrow hallway, sidestepping invisible land mines as rockets exploded silently behind him.
    The doors to the kids’ bedrooms were open, which was unusual. Didn’t Lainey prefer them to be closed? He tiptoed into Cody’s room, approaching his crib slowly, listening for the soothing sound of his son’s breathing.
    He heard nothing.
    Saw nothing.
    Even in the dark, he could see his son wasn’t there.
    What’s going on? Tom thought, rushing into the next room, his eyes immediately absorbing his daughter’s empty bed, the imprint of her little body clearly visible on the pink-striped sheets, as if someone had awakened her in the night and spirited her off.
    Racing down the hall into his bedroom, Tom reached up and flipped on the overhead light, his breath freezing in his lungs at the sight of the neatly made bed. He slammed his fist against the pale purple wall, finally forced to admit what instinctively he’d known all along.
    Lainey had taken the kids and left him. She was gone.
    And if he hadn’t spent the better part of two hours trailing after that stupid bitch from the bar, he might have been home in time to stop his wife from leaving. Damn that Suzy anyway, he thought, watching her in his mind’s eye as she slowly approached the man waiting ominously at her front door.
    This was all her fault.
    “ COME HERE,” DAVE said tenderly, smiling at Suzy and patting the space beside him in their king-size bed as he drew back the crisp, white sheets to allow her entry. He was naked from the waist up, his tanned chest lifting up and down with the regularity of his breathing.
    Suzy swayed in the doorway, damp hair falling on the shoulders of her pale pink terry-cloth bathrobe, her toes gripping the thick, white broadloom, reluctant to let go.
    “Come on,” he said, his voice soft and reassuring, full of forgiveness, as if she were the one who’d done something wrong.
    She took several tentative steps forward.
    “Did you bring