Page 100 of Hidden Nature

“Did Drea tell you Sloan was shot several months ago?”

“What?” Theo’s jaw dropped. “Shot? What?”

“Obviously not.”

“Like with a gun, shot? On purpose?”

“Rita just dropped that, yeah, with a gun, on purpose. Twice. A few weeks before Thanksgiving. She walked into some mini-mart. Sounds like this asshole was robbing it at gunpoint, and shot her.”

“Bad? It’s always bad, but I mean bad-bad?”

“Sounds like it, yeah. Hospital, then here, with her parents. We saw her, remember, walking with the dog.”

“Yeah, yeah.” At Tic’s whine for attention, Theo stroked absently. “I forgot about that. I remember now. We saw her walking with Mop, and like she was ninety. Drea’s never said anything about this. Holy shit. She’s okay now? She looks okay, and she’s working and all, got her own place.”

“She seems okay.”

“That’s a hell of a thing, Nash.”

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Nash agreed, and made the turn toward home.

The next morning, Nash drank his coffee, standing in what had been the kitchen. And would be again, he thought. New and vastly improved.

They’d added that space on sometime in the last fifty years or so. Now he’d taken it down to the studs, and the ceiling down to the beams.

Then they boxed up the newspapers and magazines they’d found behind the drywall.

He now knew John Sirica had beenTime’s Man of the Year in 1973 and Woodward and Bernstein wrote their first Watergate article in June of ’72.

Seeing the space now, Nash decided to leave the beams exposed. They’d clean them up, sand them, seal them. When the weather allowed, they’d add the skylights.

They could start there while the electrician he’d contracted worked on updating the wiring, and CJ dealt with the plumbing.

Inspection, he thought, insulation, drywall.

Tic loped over to him carrying a sock.

“What is this obsession?” But remembering the routine, Nash grabbed a dog toy. “This isn’t yours.” With some tugging on both sides, he retrieved the sock. “This is yours.” And gave Tic the toy.

As he did, Theo came in the front door.

“He’s been out, had breakfast.”

“Thanks. Sorry. Hey, pal, hey, Tic.” He crouched to rub the dog all over. “I wasn’t going to stay over last night, but—let me get some coffee.”

They’d set up a kind of kitchenette in the living room. The refrigerator, the microwave, coffeemaker, toaster, the door table.

“I asked Drea about Sloan. She and the guy she was working with stopped to gas up. They’d been up this way, a little south of Deep Creek. These three guys had been robbing hikers, stealing from campsites, even roughing some people up. They tracked them down. I didn’t really get they did stuff like that.”

Because the dog wanted more, Theo sat on the floor, drinking coffee with one hand, rubbing Tic with the other.

“Anyway, they got them. Drea said Sloan didn’t tell her, but the guy she was with, Joe—no, no, Joel. Anyway, these guys were armed and everything. He told Drea, Sloan took one of them down herself. Can you beat that?”

“I can’t.” Looked fragile, he thought again. But wasn’t.

“So they’re on their way back, and stop to gas up. She goes in to get some drinks, and Jesus, Nash. The first shot grazed her head, and the second hit her right in the chest. He ran, shot at the Joel guy, but missed, so Joel ran in, called for an ambulance.

“She started crying. Drea. Said how Joel probably saved Sloan’s life. Pressure on the wound, all that. And in surgery—man—her heart stopped and they had to like shock her back. Drea said Sloan didn’t tell them about it, but the doctor did. They put her in a coma for a couple days because it was pretty dicey.”

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