The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding Page A

was different. That was war. Different rules applied. You had to act quickly. You couldn’t afford to second-guess yourself. Everyone was a potential suicide bomber. And Jeff was convinced the man had been reaching for a weapon, not lifting his arms in surrender, as his distraught wife later claimed.
    Even now Jeff felt the sand in his eyes and the weight of the rifle in his hands. He heard the click of a trigger, followed by a woman’s hysterical screams, and saw the look of disbelief in the man’s dark eyes as an explosion of red circles suddenly splattered across the front of his white robe, like a pattern on one of his stepmother’s quilts.
    Yes, he was capable of killing.
    But deliberate, cold-blooded murder?
    Had he really tried to smother Will?
    And later, when Will was three years old and Jeff was pushing him so high on the backyard swing set that his stepmother had come running out of the house and snatched him off, screaming, “What are you trying to do? Kill him?” Had that been his intent?
    Or had he merely been trying to get her attention?
    Whatever his goal, it hadn’t worked. Will continued to thrive, no matter how nasty Jeff was to him. His father continued to ignore him, no matter how hard Jeff tried to please him. His mother never did get her act together or come back to claim him. His stepmother continued to shoo him out of her way.
    And then, when he was fourteen, he’d met a tall, lanky bundle of angry energy by the name of Tom Whitman, a natural follower looking for someone to show him the way, and a lifelong friendship was born.
    By the time Jeff was eighteen, rigorous daily workouts had added twenty pounds of well-sculpted muscle to his almost six-foot frame. The handsome face he’d inherited from his dad ensured that girls were as constant as they were easy. It seemed that all Jeff had to do was smile lazily in their general direction, and they came running.
    Jeff grinned at the memory of those early conquests, opening his eyes to the warm sun pushing through the heavy blue drapes of his bedroom window. “Krissie?” he asked, feeling the empty space next to him in bed and glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Two o’clock? In the afternoon? Could that possibly be right? “Krissie?” he called again, louder this time.
    The bedroom door opened. A man appeared in silhouette. “She went out,” Will said.
    Jeff pushed himself into a sitting position, flicked a wayward lock of blond hair away from his eyes. “Where’d she go?”
    “Publix. Apparently we’re out of toilet paper.”
    “No shit,” Jeff said, laughing at his own joke.
    Will laughed as well, although in truth, he didn’t find the joke that funny. “You feeling okay?” he asked.
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “I don’t know. You were pretty drunk last night. And it is the middle of the afternoon.”
    “It’s Saturday,” Jeff reminded him testily. “I get to sleep in.”
    “People don’t need personal trainers on Saturday?” Will tried to keep his voice light. He hadn’t meant to sound judgmental.
    “I don’t need them. ” Jeff climbed out of bed, not bothering to cover his nakedness as he headed for the bathroom, chuckling as Will averted his eyes. He relieved himself, washed his hands, threw some water over his face, and was back a minute later. “I don’t suppose there’s any coffee,” he said, standing at the side of the bed and arching his back, stretching well-cut arms above his head. If Will was uncomfortable with this seemingly casual display of nudity, too bad, Jeff thought. It never hurt to let the competition know what they were dealing with. A little subtle intimidation could go a long way. Jeff grabbed his jeans from the edge of the bed and pulled them up over his bare hips.
    “I think Kristin made a fresh pot before she went out,” Will said, his eyes resolutely on the floor as he answered the question. He didn’t want Jeff to think he was staring.
    Jeff walked past Will through the