Read Trial by Fire for Free Online

tomatoes this year? He hoped so. Mommy used them in salsa and spaghetti sauce.
    Shouting, angry voices, reached his ears.
    Who was in his garden? The magic dust didn’t work!
    A muffled thump. A very bad swear word.
    He stopped, peering down the long row of plants, heart pounding in his thin chest. The beam of a flashlight swept back and forth, searching. Instinctively, he stepped off the path, hiding himself among the leaves.
    In the glow of the flashlight, he saw a pair of legs and—
    His eyes rounded. Fear clogged his throat, preventing him from screaming.
    He backed away. Tripped and went sprawling on his rear. Bolted to his feet and ran.
    No! Get away!
    No, no, no . . .
    “Ahhh!”
    Howard jerked awake, panting, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. The storm raging in his brain slowly quieted as the terror of the dream receded.
    “God,” he rasped. “What the hell is that?” Hand shaking, he wiped a trickle of sweat off his brow and shook his head to clear the sticky tendrils of fear. Calm his thundering heart. Again.
    Months of this weird nightly film reel attacking his sleep was getting to him. He had no freaking idea what the dream-turned-nightmare meant, beyond the hellish, scattered recollections of his childhood.
    Okay, so the nightmare wasn’t all fragmented nonsense, if he admitted the truth. The abuse had been real enough, as had his mother’s garden. His haven. He vaguely remembered how, as a small boy, he’d loved the plants, the smell of fresh soil.
    The garden was one of only two positive memories he had of his first home, the one he’d shared with his biological parents. The other was how much his mother had loved him—before she’d run off for parts unknown, leaving him to suffer at the hands of a violent man. But not for long. His father had been dead and buried for over thirty years. Thank God Bentley and Georgeanne Mitchell had swooped in to rescue a half-dead little boy from a hellish existence.
    As for the recurring terror, he’d told no one about the onslaught. Bentley and Georgie would understand and want to help, but he’d held back from worrying them. He couldn’t do that to Sean, either. The poor guy had a real-life horror to survive. He didn’t need to deal with a best friend who just might be going crazy.
    With a groan, Howard rolled onto his side and peered at the digital clock on the nightstand. Two thirty in the afternoon? What a shameful waste of a nice Sunday. On the bright side, he’d managed nearly six hours of blessed sleep before the rude awakening.
    Untangling himself from the sheets, he pushed out of bed and padded for the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker. No matter the time of day, becoming conscious called for java. The juice of life, and his worst vice. Yes, he worshipped the god of Starbucks. Too bad he hadn’t invested early.
    The coffee brewing, he headed for the bathroom to shave and shower. Twenty minutes later, he was dressed in clean jeans and a black T-shirt, sipping his brew at the kitchen table.
    And eyeballing the phone on the counter. To call or not to call? His stomach knotted. Jesus, he sucked at the boy-meets-girl thing, and his track record with sustaining a long-term relationship blew. Call it a catch-22 brought about by his own choice of company. Most of the women he’d dated in recent years wanted to sleep with him, period. Minus the sleeping part. The ones who started talking his and hers toothbrushes, he broke things off with quick. And yeah, for a while he’d let his happy cock do all the thinking. He was a man with intense sexual desires, after all.
    Eventually, however, the casual sex left him feeling lonely and used. Yet the thought of being emotionally vulnerable to a woman, depending on her for his happiness? The idea congealed a ball of cold, greasy nausea in his belly.
    He’d abstained from women for about a year, trying to figure out a solution to his problem. Julian, incredulous, had said he’d lost his effing mind. Why