Free Unforced Error by Michael Bowen Page B

trouble imagining a fragment of broken bolt flying unnoticed into Quinlan’s pant-cuff as he caught his keys. And she could easily picture his prurient delight later on as he tied stray locks of Linda’s hair around the thing to turn it into a love trophy.
    Had Peter seen this while Linda was blowing lunch and figured out what it meant? She didn’t know.
    Should she tell Linda about it? Not yet.
    â€œSnap out of it,” Melissa said to Linda instead, with a tough-love sharpness. “You’re jumping to conclusions. We don’t know what sent Peter hurrying away. His comments to Rep certainly didn’t sound like a jealous husband furious over infidelity.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Linda said, shaking her head with spunky determination. “You’re doing everything you can to help, and I’m acting like a sniveling wimp. You must feel like slapping me silly.”
    â€œOf course not,” Melissa said.
Not silly
. “Now, let’s get going.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œWherever we think Peter is.”

Chapter 10
    You wake up earlier when you’re sleeping in a bedroll under a tent than you do on a soft bed under a roof, Rep reflected, a little after five-thirty on Wednesday morning. You hear morning sounds that you don’t hear indoors. Metal cups clanging against metal plates. Canvas rustling. Predatory songbirds warbling in melodic triumph over lesser fauna that they’ve turned into breakfast. Rain dripping on the forage cap you’d put over your face.
    Right
, Rep thought.
Now I remember. The Port-A-Potties
.
    He pulled himself stiffly from his bedroll and found his boots stowed upside down on sticks stuck in the spongy earth. Peter’s bedroll a few feet away lay snugly tied and clearly unused. Had Peter shown up, Rep’s instructions were not to let him out of his sight pending contact with Melissa or Linda.
So much for that
, Rep thought—with relief rather than anxiety, for he didn’t share the wives’ edginess about Peter’s exit. He viewed it, in fact, as gender-specific overreaction. Stuff happens, for crying out loud.
    Rep hesitated about wearing his saber to the john, then decided that he felt less ridiculous with it than without it. Ducking under the tent flap into a fine mist, he gratefully accepted a cup of coffee offered by a trooper next to a bravely flickering campfire. Nothing in urban life matches the taste of coffee boiled in a covered pan over a campfire.
And if anything did
, Rep thought as he choked the stuff down,
it would be a Class B misdemeanor to sell it.
    He made his way toward the target range and the modern conveniences that Peter had said lay beyond it. He glanced in the general direction of Jackrabbit Press, shaking his head at the remnants of a dark gray ash-cloud that hung languidly in the air over an outbuilding chimney.
Who would have had an indoor fire last night in this heat?
he wondered.
    As he walked through the pale, post-dawn light, he realized with some surprise that he didn’t really have any enthusiasm for the legal project Lawrence had dangled in front of him. He didn’t want Lawrence’s shiny, spiffed up, video-game, Power Ranger Union soldiers wandering around a camp like this in their custom-designed, operetta-pretty, combed cotton uniforms. He didn’t want Lawrence to sell a few more bodice-rippers by co-opting the reverence to memory and history that the re-enactors were offering here. He didn’t blame Lawrence, who had a mass-market business to run. But Rep couldn’t generate much excitement about contributing to it. It would be like helping someone use a classic rock anthem to sell laxatives.
No, wait a minute,
Rep thought,
I DID that. This would be worse.
    Rep’s pace quickened as he came within sight of his objective.
    â€œLooks like we’re headed for the same place.”
    Startled, Rep glanced over at the man who’d come out of nowhere to