WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

Force—the antiterrorist group—was formed, that’s where I finally landed. The

guys in Delta were tight, real buddies. They called me ‘The Mute’ and ‘Harpo’

because I wasn’t a talker, but in spite of myself I made friends. Then, on our

eleventh operation, my squad was flown into Athens to take the U.S. embassy back

from a group of Palestinian extremists who’d seized it. They’d killed eight

staff members and were still killing one an hour, wouldn’t negotiate. We hit

them quick and sneaky—and it was a fiasco. They’d booby-trapped the place. Nine

men in my squad died. I was the only survivor. A bullet in my thigh. Shrapnel in

my ass. But a survivor.”

Einstein raised his head from Travis’s lap.

Travis thought he saw sympathy in the dog’s eyes. Maybe because that was what he

wanted to see.

“That’s eight years ago, when I was twenty-eight. Left the army. Came home to

California. Got a real-estate license because my dad had sold real estate, and I

didn’t know what else to do. Did real well, maybe ‘cause I didn’t care if they

bought the houses I showed them, didn’t push, didn’t act like a salesman. Fact

is, I did so well that I became a broker, opened my own office, hired

salespeople.”

Which was how he had met Paula. She was a tall blond beauty, bright and amusing,

and she could sell real estate so well that she joked about having lived an

earlier life in which she had represented the Dutch colonists when they had

bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads and trinkets. She was smitten with

Travis. That’s what she’d told him: “Mr. Cornell, sir, I am smitten. I think

it’s your strong, silent act. Best Clint Eastwood imitation I’ve ever seen.”

Travis resisted her at first. He did not believe he would jinx Paula; at least,

he didn’t consciously believe it; he had not openly reverted to childhood

superstition. But he did not want to risk the pain of loss again. Undeterred by

his hesitancy, she pursued him, and in time he had to admit he Was in love with

her. So in love that he told her about his lifelong tag game With Death,

something of which he spoke to no one else. “Listen,” Paula said, “you won’t

have to mourn me. I’m going to outlive you because I’m not the type to bottle up

my feelings. I take out my frustrations on those around me, so I’m bound to

shave a decade off your life.”

They had been married in a simple courthouse ceremony four years ago,

the summer after Travis’s thirty-second birthday. He had loved her. Oh God, how

he had loved her.

To Einstein, he said, “We didn’t know it then, but she had cancer on our wedding

day. Ten months later, she was dead.”

The dog put its head down in his lap again.

For a while, Travis could not continue.

He drank some beer.

He stroked the dog’s head.

In time he said, “After that, I tried to go on as usual. Always prided myself in

going on, facing up to anything, keeping my chin up, all that bullshit. Kept the

real-estate office running another year. But none of it mattered any more. Sold

it two years ago. Cashed in all my investments, too. Turned everything into cash

and socked it in the bank. Rented this house. Spent the last two years . . .

well, brooding. And I got squirrelly. Hardly a surprise, huh? Squirrelly as

hell. Came full circle, you see, right back to what I believed when I was a kid.

That I was a danger to anyone who gets close to me. But you changed me,

Einstein. You turned me around in one day. I swear, it’s like you were sent to

show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders— and that only a

fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”

The dog was peering up at him again.

He lifted his beer can, but it was empty.

Einstein went to the fridge and got another Coors.

Taking the can from the dog, Travis said, “Now, after hearing the whole sorry

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