The Warning Read online

  Buddy walked straight over to where Thad was standing and said, “Can I have a word with you?”

  Thad was slow in turning. The movement was a silent warning that he was not in a mood to be disturbed. He had a lot of moves like this, tight looks and silent signals. The branch employees were frightened by this outsider and normally kept their distance. But Thad also possessed a remarkable magnetism. Thad’s gaze finally came around, and he said coolly, “It can wait, Korda.”

  But Buddy did not let him turn back around. He put an emphasis to his words, one he had not used since his boys had reached manhood. “Now, Thad.”

  Buddy walked back to his office. Passing Lorraine’s desk, he exchanged a glance. Her eyes still bore the pain and sadness of a woman betrayed. Buddy stiffened his resolve. Which was helpful, because Buddy was no good at confrontation. He hated it, in fact. He would go around the block backward to avoid an argument. Yet there he was, picking a quarrel with his own boss. Buddy stood by his desk and watched through the glass wall as Thad approached.

  Buddy’s office was in the corner of the bank, with two walls of waist-high oiled wood and then tall panes of glass rising to the ceiling. Only the manager’s office was completely enclosed. Yet Buddy loved the openness of his office, loved the way he could observe the entire operation. The glass, which had been put in when the bank was built, had beveled edges with hand-carved vines and flowers rising up each side. Over the past century and a half, the panes had gradually begun to warp. As Thad approached, his appearance waxed and waned, like a colorful apparition that was not entirely genuine.

  Thaddeus Dorsett was the picture of a modern-day buccaneer, and he told anyone willing to listen that he was wasting his life away in Aiden. He was twenty years younger than Buddy and on the bank’s fast track. His hair was dark and so thick it bunched and waved even when tightly slicked back. His face was angled and strong. His eyes were such a light green that in the morning sun they appeared flecked with gold. Thad had learned to use them well, and even now he opened them in a parody of innocence. “You had something that couldn’t wait?”

  Buddy had seen that innocent look before. It was Thad’s way of covering a fast-moving mind. Sunlight streamed through the back window and turned Thad’s eyes the color of a big cat’s. “The Valenti Bank has a strict policy against fraternization between managers and staff.”

  “Fraternization, what a quaint word.” He cast a wide-eyed gaze about the room. “It suits you, Korda.”

  “I want you to stop flirting with Sally, Thad. It’s a dangerous sport, and it disrupts the bank’s smooth running.”

  “My, my. Aren’t we on our moral high horse today?” Thad-deus Dorsett stepped closer, trying to use his superior height to intimidate. “In case you haven’t noticed, Korda, you’re speaking to your boss.”

  Buddy resisted the urge to step back. “If you don’t stop this now, I’m going to report the matter to the head office.”

  “Report what?” Thad sneered. “That I was taking time before the bank opened to be nice to our newest employee?”

  “I wasn’t planning to report Sally,” Buddy replied. “And I would substantiate my report with another one from Lorraine.”

  Like a veil dropping silently to the floor, Thad’s round-eyed innocence slipped away. In its place rose a silent rage. Thad took another step closer, until Buddy could smell the coffee on his breath. His gaze was feral, his tone furious. “That’s just the kind of spiteful attitude I’d expect from a backwater imbecile like you, Korda.”

  Buddy held to his course but could not keep the quaver from his voice. “Lorraine approached me last week about lodging a complaint, and I said—”

  “I don’t care what you’ve been sermonizing to your secretary.” Thad wheeled about, stalked to the door, and stopped long enough to throw back, “For your information, Korda, Lorraine was chasing me.”

  Thad slammed the door hard enough to make the panes rattle. Buddy said to the empty room, “That’s a lie. I was watching, you know.” Then his strength left him, and he slumped into his chair. He hated confrontations. He really did.

  A soft knock brought his head back up. Lorraine entered, her face wreathed in concern. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Not right now, thank you.” He glanced at his watch and rose to his feet. “I’ve got an appointment with some developers at their offices.”

  As he passed by Lorraine to reenter the main chamber, she patted his arm. “You did the right thing.”

  “I hope so,” he sighed.

  “Believe me, you did.”

  Something in her tone halted Buddy. He looked at his secretary and saw wounds that still had not healed. Lorraine went on, “He will do anything and say anything to get what he wants. Anything at all.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Buddy said quietly.

  “You know what they say.” Her mouth twisted in a sad smile. “Big-city ways and small-town girls are a terrible mix.”

  Buddy walked back through the bank and entered the day’s gathering heat. The developers’ offices were about two blocks away. When he had called that morning from home to say he was ready to sell the ridgeline, the developer had instantly replied that he would prepare the contract for him to sign. And the check. It was the smoothest real estate transaction Buddy had ever heard of. Odd how something like this could seem so strange and yet so right at the same time. As though his actions were guided by something far greater than himself.

  As he crossed the street, the nightmares that were behind his decision to sell the ridgeline struck him with the sunlight. The only words that had been clearly audible returned to him, as though the whispers had penetrated the day and his wakened state. Forty days.

  Buddy clasped his hand over his heart and hurried onward. He could not help but wonder how he had remained perfectly all right through such a confrontation with his boss yet now was being attacked by a dream.

  “Don’t even think about it,” the voice on the other end of the phone commanded. “Put it out of your head.”

  Thad Dorsett stared out his sunlit window. “But Keith—”

  “I’m telling you to forget it. Have you spoken about it with anyone else?”

  “Not yet.” The harsh tone confused him. Keith Wilkes was Thad Dorsett’s chief sponsor within the branch. He was also senior vice president and the man who had personally hired Thad away from Chicago Mercantile. “Why?”

  “Because you might as well shoot yourself in the foot as complain about Buddy Korda. Do you know how many branch managers he has ushered through since the original takeover?”

  “Keith, the guy is so far over the hill he’s sunk in the valley on the other side.”

  “Eleven. Eleven branch managers who are now senior executives. One of whom is now the bank’s executive vice president, and another is a member of the board. All of them remember their time with Buddy as a real training ground. Do you hear what I’m saying? This guy may be as aggressive as a bath towel and a throwback to the last century, but he is also very well connected.”

  Thad had not expected this. “Keith, you don’t have to work with the guy every day. He’s a total waste of time.”

  “And I’m telling you that complaints like this will earn you nothing but enemies! Do you have any idea how hard I had to fight to get you this post?” Keith had to take a moment to get his impatience back under control. “We’ve been through this how many times? It’s bank policy that every senior executive has to spend at least a year in a local branch. Buddy’s branch has the lowest level of bad debts and the highest return on dollars spent. Staff turnover is low, morale is high, and business is growing.”

  “It’s also like living in a crypt. This place has all the life of a funeral parlor.”

  “Then have yourself a few weekend trips to New York. I’m telling you, bank execs take a close look at your performance at the branch level. And being on Buddy’s team is almost a guarantee of success.”

  “It’s not Buddy’s tea
m, it’s mine. And I want to fire the guy.”

  Keith’s tone turned razor sharp. “You do that and the only way you’ll restart your career will be through reincarnation.”

  “Can you at least shorten my assignment here?”

  “I doubt it, but I’ll see. In the meantime, put up with the guy. Laugh at his small-town ways. Everybody else does. But don’t complain. It’s suicide, I’m telling you.”

  Thad Dorsett kept his calm until the phone was back in place. Then he allowed his rage to build, a flood that turned his vision red. He hated being told what to do. Hated even more having his plans thwarted, especially by some small-town wimp in a suit straight from the fifties. Buddy Korda, what a name. With his starched shirt and dark tie, he looked like an undertaker and talked like a pallbearer. Never raised his voice. Never spoke back to him, not once, until this morning.

  Thad was so angry he shook. A little fun never hurt anybody, and that’s all he was after with these small-town girls. A little fun. Something to spice up the time until he could be up and out of here.

  Thad bundled up the page he had been scribbling on, clenching it tighter and tighter until it was a solid ball the size of his thumb and threw it at the trash can. Nobody got in his way. Nobody. Especially not some assistant manager in Podunk, Delaware. He was trapped in a town nobody ever visited, much less called home. If he had known it was the bank’s plan to stick him out here in the boonies for a year he would never have taken the job. A year.

  Thad bounced from his chair and began stalking the floor. There had to be something he could do, someone who would understand. He stopped, staring sightlessly at the window. Perhaps he should contact Nathan Jones Turner’s office directly. Spell it out. Thad was a trader, used to a trader’s life. Cut him a break or risk losing one of their fast-track managers. Perhaps even talk to a couple of headhunters beforehand, make sure word got back to headquarters in New York. Something definitely had to happen. He was suffocating in this place.

  –|| FIVE ||–

  Buddy was so tired that evening he could scarcely finish dinner. When Molly shooed him away from the table and ordered him to bed he did not object, not even when he saw the clock on the mantel read seven-thirty.

  Buddy stopped to lean on the wall twice as he climbed the stairs. He undressed in a stupor. The doctor’s visit, the quarrel with Thad, the daily bank stresses and strains, two and a half weeks of bad dreams and not enough sleep, the talk with his family and having his concerns finally out in the open—all the recent strains left him exhausted. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

  There was no escaping the dream. Not this time. He was too tired. There was no normal drifting into the dream either. Buddy fell like a stone.

  And yet, and yet. The dream was different this time. Very different. Sharper. More carefully defined. So crystal clear it did not seem like a dream. His every sense was heightened above the norm.

  Not only that. The dream was no longer a nightmare. How he could be so certain the instant it began, he did not know. But it was not a nightmare anymore. At least, not a nightmare for him.

  Buddy stood in the bank’s central hall. Just like every other entry into the dream, he did a slow sweep of the grand old chamber. Only this time the scene was far more vivid. Dust motes danced lazy circles in the sunlight streaming through the top of the side windows. The blinds on the bottom halves of the tall windows were closed, as they always were until about a half hour before opening time.

  Old Carl, the bank’s morning guard, leaned against the wall just inside the main doors. He was no longer needed, what with the bank’s modern security system. But Buddy had insisted that Carl be kept on, a bastion of the service and the heritage the bank stood for. In his dream Buddy raised his hand in a half wave but was not surprised when Carl did not respond.

  What did surprise him, however, was the fact that Carl did not move at the sound of weeping. Generally he was on the spot whenever someone needed assistance, be it customer or clerk. But Carl just stood there, staring into space with a bemused expression, bemused and so shaken that his features made him look even more aged than he already was. His cap was pushed back on his balding head, and he stared across the chamber at nothing.

  Still the weeping went on. Buddy made a gradual revolution. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, as though an invisible hand were guiding him, silently urging him to take everything in deep.

  He saw that the wall clock showed ten minutes until opening time. Normally the venetian blinds would have been opened on all the windows by then. Yet the bank remained partly shrouded in shadows, while light through the windows’ top half-circles sent beams of brilliance lancing across the room.

  This was as far as he had ever continued in the dream. By this point, the sense of pressure had squeezed him from sleep like a seed shot out between thumb and forefinger. That tension was still there, but it was no longer directed at him. Which was very strange, for he could now sense a wrath behind the pressure.

  His turning continued until the back half of the bank came into view. Lorraine sat at her desk, her eyes pressed into a handkerchief, her shoulders shaking hard. Buddy remained unmoved by this sight. Normally he would have rushed over and demanded to know what was the matter. Now he only continued to turn. And he realized that it was not only Lorraine who cried. Every one of the tellers was weeping.

  The bank director’s door was wide open. No one was inside. Nor was anyone in Buddy’s office, which gave him a brief moment of relief. Even from within this protective cocoon, he would not have wanted to come face-to-face with himself in a dream, especially if he was to see himself crying. For somehow he knew a tragedy had struck. Not a dream affliction. Something real. Some cataclysmic event had buffeted the bank, and it was a genuine comfort not to find himself there sobbing with the others. It was very selfish. But it was also very true.

  The slow circle continued until he faced back toward the bank’s main doors just in time to hear the clock strike nine.

  Carl pulled himself together enough to fumble with the lock. Buddy wanted to remind them to open the blinds and get ready for business, but he could not speak. He could only watch as the locks were released and the door slammed back, sending Carl sprawling onto the floor. The old man did not move. He remained where he was as a flood of humanity streamed inside.

  Shouting, screaming, pushing, fighting, and clawing toward the teller windows. Hundreds and hundreds of people. People Buddy had known all his life, their faces distorted until they were strangers. Foreigners who were gripped by universal terror. They pounded fists upon the counter and teller windows, waved checkbooks and canes and papers in the air, screamed words that were lost in the crush as still more people pressed through the doors.

  Buddy wanted to stay. He wanted to help, to find some way to calm them. He had never felt so horrified in his entire life. And yet, and yet. It was no surprise. Somehow he had sensed this from the very beginning. As though the instant the very first nightmare had attacked him, he had known this was what was behind it all.

  Disaster.

  But the invisible hand did not allow him to linger. Instead, he rose and floated over the crowd, passing through the tall main doors. Over the heads of those still fighting to get inside, across the street filled with even more people, beyond those who stood weeping and watching on the opposite sidewalk. On into the heart of his little town.

  Aiden was as alien as its citizens. Gone was the cozy atmosphere he had known since childhood. Vanished was the feeling that here the world was a slower, kinder place. In its stead was an impression of burden.

  The pressure was clearer because it was directed away from him. The force seemed to begin directly behind him, shooting out over his shoulders and his head, filling the world with wrath. Yet it was more than anger. It was an all-powerful force, filled with unimaginable sorrow. A strength so overwhelming nothing could stand in its path. Wrath and sorrow. Determination and vengeance. And it was here. In Aiden.
/>   The roads were filled with cars that had simply stopped, as though the drivers had vanished and the cars had continued until something impeded their progress. Their doors were open and flapping in the hot autumn breeze. People clustered here and there, or moved aimlessly. In and out of doorways, up and down the sidewalks and the streets. Or they sat head-in-hand on the curb. Even from this height Buddy could see they were weeping.

  “Buddy? Honey?”

  He rose to a seated position and swung his legs to the floor. “It’s all right.”

  In the bed beside him, Molly lifted herself on one arm. “Sweetheart, are you crying?”

  He rose and shuffled toward the bathroom, wiping his streaming eyes with his sleeve. “It’s all right, Molly. Go back to sleep.”

  He closed the door but did not turn on the light. He leaned on the wall next to the sink. There was enough light from the window to show his outline in the mirror. The clock on the shelf glowed, but his eyes were still too blurred to read the time. It did not matter.

  He turned on the faucet and washed his face. There was no need to undress, for there had been no sweats with this dream. But it had not been a dream. Buddy did not know how he could be so certain about something like that. But he knew. This was no dream. It was a message.

  The whisper came then, no longer simply a memory from the vanished dream. He heard the words so clearly they might as well have been spoken aloud. Thirty-nine days.

  As he dried his face he knew what he had told his wife was totally, utterly wrong. Things were not all right. They never would be again.

  –|| SIX ||–