The Last Hour Read online

“I’m older than you.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Seriously? I’m almost eighteen.”

  I smirked. “In what, eleven more months?”

  “Close enough.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I never wear stuff like this anymore.” She swept her eyes down the dress. “In fact, I recognize this dress ... and it doesn’t make sense, because it shouldn’t fit me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. She grimaced. “Mother used to dress us in matching clothes. Always. It’s not like we’re identical twins. It drove me nuts, because she insisted on it even as we got into middle school. She got us these dresses for Christmas in the eighth grade.”

  “So ... I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. Because I took it downstairs to the garage and poured bleach all over it.”

  “What?”

  She gave me a rueful look. “Mother threw a fit.”

  “Yeah, I bet. Dramatic much?”

  “You try growing up with no identity of your own.”

  I studied her. Before this visit, I’d only met Sarah twice. She was bold, assertive, and a little cynical. She reminded me a lot of a couple of the Goth girls I knew in high school. Nothing at all like her twin, Jessica, who was much more reserved.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve definitely got an identity.”

  She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Only because I carved it out myself. Now I’m stuck in this dream or whatever the hell it is, and I look like Jessica.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Sarah. This will be over soon, one way or another.”

  She was quiet, then said, “You don’t think we’re dead, do you?”

  I had to consider the question. This was so far out of my experience; I didn’t know what to think. Finally, I said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I do know that if we were dead, they wouldn’t be rushing us up to surgery.”

  “Yeah, but ... I mean, what the hell? Aren’t we supposed to be unconscious or something?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t they always say when you die, there’s a white light or a tunnel or something?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. I’ve never given it much thought.”

  I’d given it way too much thought. Couldn’t help it. Kowalski: blown up when he threw himself on a grenade. Dylan: leg torn all to hell, evacuated from the war zone. Roberts: not enough was left of him to fill up a body bag. Weber: shot by a sniper while he was taking a piss. By the time Weber died, I’d stopped making friends with the new guys. Then Sergeant Colton went off the edge. Martin shot himself, because of what I’d reported. I’d seen plenty of death. I’d seen nothing to convince me that God gave a crap about His creations. Seemed to me death was just as likely to be nothing more than oblivion than anything else.

  Yet, here I was. Here Sarah was. Unless she was right, and this was just a dream.

  “Wonder what happens next,” I said out loud.

  “I guess we go check out the operating rooms. Find out what’s going on.”

  “Don’t you think we should stay with Carrie and Jessica?” I asked.

  She gave me the kind of look a young mother might give an errant toddler. “They don’t know we’re here, Ray. ”

  I sighed. “Yeah, all right, whatever. We’ll go in a bit, when Carrie and Jessica go up. I don’t want to leave them. So while we’re doing all this sitting around waiting, I’ve got questions for you.”

  “You first. We’ve established that.”

  Right. The night Carrie and I met. “I’d just gotten home from Afghanistan and was hanging out with Dylan for a few days. Carrie was in town for the weekend to visit Alex, so they introduced us.”

  I gave Sarah an edited version of our first meeting. But in my mind, I remembered all the sharp-edged details. It was easy to recall the moment I first laid eyes on Carrie, because that memory was embedded in me permanently. Dylan and I had been walking across the green at Columbia, and I knew who the girls were immediately. I had been expecting to meet a reasonably attractive girl—I’d seen Alex’s picture—but I was not expecting the six foot two Amazon goddess who stood next to her.

  Carrie had shoulder-length brown hair framing a pert nose, blue-green eyes, and a long frame. She wore a perfectly fitting flowered dress that cut off just above the knees and gave enough of a view of her knockers to make me want to get a much closer look. Black ankle-high leather boots with three inch heels accentuated perfect calves and brought her almost eye to eye with me in height, which is pretty unusual and awesome.

  I’d only been home from Afghanistan a few days, and seeing women who weren’t in Army uniforms was still overwhelming. But Carrie was so much more than that. She would have caught my eye in any crowd, with the natural grace of her movements, her long willowy body, the arch of her eyebrows and those pale eyes—I was instantly in lust with her.

  Her eyes widened a little as we approached, and she said something to her sister I couldn’t quite hear.

  “Jesus, Dylan. You didn’t tell me Alex’s sister was a freaking model.”

  He smirked. “I think she’s a scientist or something, Weed. Smarter than either one of us.” I’m about a head taller than Dylan ... and pretty much everyone else ... so the guys in the platoon always called me Weed.

  We reached the girls a moment later, and Alex introduced us all. Carrie looked at me with kind of a half-smile on her face, hands at her sides. “So, um ... you were in the Army with Dylan?”

  I wanted her out of that dress right then. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I smiled at her, looked her in the eyes. “Yeah, I had to drop out of college in ‘09. Ended up enlisting.”

  “Oh? Where did you go?”

  She turned to walk beside me. About six inches away. “Stony Brook. It’s actually not so far from here, up on Long Island.”

  “How’d you end up in the Army?”

  “Eh ... my parents both worked for the same startup, got laid off at the end of 2008. They finally had to sell the house and there wasn’t any money for school, but the financial aid people didn’t see it that way. So ... off to the Army I went.”

  “Where are you from?”

  I was starting to feel off balance from the sudden barrage of questions. But I wanted to ask her questions too. Lots of them. This wasn’t love at first sight. This was pure, unadulterated lust. Everything about her, from the way her hair framed her face and the slight gloss on her lips to those legs just made me want to howl.

  “Burbs,” I replied. “Glen Cove. You?”

  “All over, really, but my family lives in San Francisco.”

  Ah. I remembered Dylan saying she was from a diplomatic family. “Your dad was foreign service, right? Dylan said you and your sisters come from a ... kind of an establishment sort of family.”

  She nodded. “Yeah ... I went to three different high schools.”

  “That must have sucked.”

  She shrugged. “You roll with the punches best you can. It wasn’t so bad. When did you get out of the Army?”

  “Week ago. I was already extended past my original discharge date because we were in Afghanistan. Got back from there two weeks ago and started processing out of the Army as soon as I could.”

  “So what are your plans?”

  We’d reached the curb by then. I looked at her and grinned. “Get drunk.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t mean right this minute.”

  “I did. We are going to a party, right?”

  Carrie shook her head, but I could see she thought I was funny. I needed to keep working that, because I was so getting into those panties. That’s when I noticed we’d left Dylan and Alex behind. I nodded my head in their direction. They were standing about fifty yards behind us, wrapped in each other’s arms. Oblivious of the fact that we’d left them behind.

  “We should leave them,” I said.

  Carrie bit her lip. “They’ll have each other’s clothes off in five more minut
es if we don’t interrupt.”

  I shrugged, trying to sound casual. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  She snickered. “I don’t think campus security would agree.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. I looked at her and gave a slight leer. “Let’s find out.”

  She laughed then slapped me on the shoulder. “Not so fast, soldier. We just met.”

  “There’s always hope,” I replied. Then, in my best Harrison Ford imitation, I said, “I don’t know, what do you think? You think a princess and a guy like me….”

  “Oh, no. You did not just do that.”

  I tried to look innocent. “Do what?”

  “Quote Han Solo at me! I’m not that big of a geek.”

  “I am. Let’s go get the lovebirds. And I did not quote Star Wars at you. If I was gonna, I’d be much smoother about it than that.” I winked at her, started to walk back toward Dylan and Alex, and said, “Come on, princess.”

  She muttered, perfectly mimicking Princess Leia, “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.”

  That made me laugh out loud.

  With a little bit of effort, we managed to pry Dylan and Alex apart long enough to get them to the curb so we could wave down a cab, and headed toward the party. The cab had one of those glass dividers you’d expect to find in a cop car, so the four of us had to cram into the back seat. Carrie and I were jammed pretty close to each other, a fact I was intensely aware of.

  Here’s the thing. I enlisted summer 2009, which is when Dylan and I met in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. God only knows why I picked Infantry, other than the fact there was a hell of a signing bonus, which combined with the GI Bill would easily pay for my last year of college when I got out. In any event, we spent our summer in the boonies in Georgia, then a year at Fort Drum, New York, which isn’t all that far from home for me, then it was off to Afghanistan, during which time my enlistment was involuntarily extended. That was all fine. Except for one thing. Here it was, the fall of 2012, and I hadn’t touched a girl since sometime in 2010. And here was this ... this goddess ... hip to hip with me ... and I was getting a raging hard on.

  I really didn’t want to embarrass myself, or freak her out, or anything else, but I had zero control over this. It’s not like I sat there and said, “Oh, I’m going to get a giant erection and maybe I can get her to —” Never mind. Best not to complete that thought. I tried thinking of baseball scores, but the truth is, that never worked for me. It just made me picture her, with me, all alone on a baseball field checking out third base. Okay, time to muster the big guns. I called up in my memory the day we went through the gas chamber at Fort Benning, when we ended up breathing in tear gas, and puked and cried all the way back to the barracks.

  Still no dice. My boner was bigger than ever. Visibly so. I shifted in the seat, hoping to make it at least less, um ... prominent, and that of course just produced a little friction between Carrie and me. Bad idea. Her skirt shifted when she got in the cab, riding up her hips, and this girl had fantastic legs. I was having a really hard time not touching them. I was having a hard time not making a complete ass of myself. I felt crazy self-conscious.

  She gave me a curious look, one eyebrow arched slightly higher than the other. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  I met her eyes. Nice eyes. “I’m trying to seduce you. If Star Wars references won’t work, I’m going to use my next strategy, which is to be tall, dark and mysterious.”

  She bit her lower lip and grinned. “Maybe you should try telling me about yourself?”

  “Not much to tell. Just a regular middle class guy who ran out of cash.”

  “What was it like in Afghanistan?”

  I had to fight off a grimace. One thing I was not talking about, with anyone, was the war. “Ask me something else. I don’t talk about that. You should tell me about you instead.”

  “Not much to tell,” she said, then gave a definitely snarky answer that echoed mine. “Just a regular middle class girl who didn’t run out of cash.”

  “I don’t buy that.”

  “Well, let’s see. I’m finishing my PhD at Rice, I teach undergraduate ecology courses—science geek. Always have been.”

  Alex chimed in, “Her senior year in high school, she was growing staph cultures under the sink in the bathroom we shared. In petri dishes.” She shuddered.

  I laughed. “And you like Star Wars?”

  “Like may be a weak word.” Her lips curled up in a grin, but she blushed a little too.

  “Even the new ones?”

  At that, her nose crinkled in disgust. “Well, not so much.”

  “What’s your doctorate in?”

  “Behavioral ecology.”

  I blinked. “What’s that?”

  “Basically, it has to do with animal behavior in response to ecological pressures. I spent a good chunk of last year doing field research. I’m studying mating habits and the migration pattern of cougars, and how that’s impacting the spread of some microorganisms.”

  That was intimidating. But the intimidation factor was overwhelmed by the curve of her jawline, which was fascinating and so close I wanted to reach out and take both sides of her face between my hands. But I grinned and said, “Mating habits of cougars?”

  She blushed. “Not that kind of cougar. Mountain lions.”

  “I’m intrigued. You know I spent most of the last year in the mountains?”

  “That doesn’t make you a lion.”

  I winked. “You’d be surprised.”

  When I looked back at that night, the night I met Carrie, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was fate. I wasn’t a superstitious type, or religious. I mean, my parents were Episcopalian. We had gone to church every Sunday when I was growing up. But like a lot of people, I’d not given a lot of deep thought to religious questions until I found my life in danger in Afghanistan. And after some of the hideous, savage things I saw and did over there? I won’t lie. My faith wasn’t shaken. It was eviscerated. I didn’t know if I wanted to believe in a God who would allow such things to happen. Especially to children. And even if I had believed in God, after that? Well, we weren’t on speaking terms any more.

  Anyway, we went to the party, and while it was a disaster for Dylan that night, Carrie and I had just ... clicked. Despite the chaos Alex and Dylan had gotten up to, Carrie and I had ended up finding ourselves alone late that night, and we didn’t sleep.

  As I finished telling the story to Sarah, minus my observations of her sister’s beauty, Sarah asked, “Where did you go?”

  I grinned. “Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “Um ... why?”

  I shrugged. “Believe it or not, neither of us had ever really been there. I mean, I grew up on Long Island, so it’s not like I hadn’t seen it. And she spent six years at Columbia. So we caught a cab down there, and found a bench, and hung out talking.”

  Sarah looked skeptical. “About?”

  “Just getting to know each other, you know?”

  I smiled and leaned back in the chair. I’d been impressed with how Carrie had handled herself after Dylan beat up that guy at the party. Impressed by how instinctively she’d moved to protect and take care of her sister. I wanted to get to know her a lot better. So we hung out, just talking, most of the night. Silly stuff: favorite movies and music. I was an only child. She had a whole tribe of sisters. Both of us loved science fiction, and I laughed when it turned out she was a huge Doctor Who fan. We spent at least half an hour arguing over which Doctor was the best: I insisted it was Tom Baker, the fifth Doctor, but she was a big fan of the newest one, and the whole Amy Pond storyline.

  “Come on,” I had said, “it’s not even Doctor Who any more. It’s all fluffy ‘love will save everything’ stuff.”

  She smiled, her eyes catching mine from behind hair that curtained across her face. It was so sexy I almost gasped. “That’s what I like about it.”

  At the end of that weekend, we exchanged contact information, and she’d returned to Texas. I
stayed in New York for a few more weeks, mostly watching out for Dylan and Alex, who were a mess, as usual. I wanted to knock Dylan upside the head. He’s a great guy, and my best friend. But he’s stubborn as hell, and has a martyr streak a mile wide. Major drama queen, and Alex is pretty much the same. Between the two of them, I was going out of my mind.

  So my outlet was chatting with Carrie over Facebook or on the phone. And that we did, a lot. It started out short and simple ... a comment here, a text message there. But on the third night after she left town, we chatted for almost two hours on Facebook, and the night after that, I called her, and we talked long into the night. By the end of the week, our calls were turning into goodnight calls, where I’d lay in bed chatting with Carrie until both of us were ready to sleep. In the mornings I’d send her text messages, and usually a couple hours later when she woke up, she’d text me right back.

  I don’t know if it was because the interaction was online and on the phone, but I found myself opening up more, and quicker, with Carrie than anyone I’d ever known. We talked about our families, our lives, and our ambitions. We talked about the people we’d dated, our hang-ups and insecurities. I told her things I’d never told anyone before. And as crazy as it sounds, I knew I was falling for her, over the phone of all things, weeks before we saw each other again.

  As I finished my story, Sarah said, “So … you just look like a soldier. Inside, you’re as big of a geek as my sister.”

  I laughed. “Pretty much.”

  She gave me a serious look. “You guys have had a tough year.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I replied, my voice low. She had no idea. Whatever the news had reported, the reality was a thousand times worse. The news might have reported on the trial, but they hadn’t reported the betrayals, the loss of faith, the closing of ranks of people I’d loved. The news hadn’t touched on the doubts I’d lived with, the questioning, the moments when I wished I’d just taken that report and tossed it in the burn pit instead of turning it over.

  Sarah looked over at Carrie. Carrie was just finishing the paperwork. She had a serious, exhausted expression on her face.

  “Carrie’s always been the one who watched out for us.”