The wind did not wake him. It was the dream. He heard the buffeting wind before he opened his eyes, but the dream was what woke him on that dark early morning. A cat was his witness. Hunkered at the end of the bed, ears down, a low growl in its chest, a ragged black cat was staring at him when Elvis Cole opened his eyes. Its warrior face was angry, and, in that moment, Cole knew they had shared the nightmare.
Cole woke on the bed in his loft bathed in soft moonlight, feeling his A-frame shudder as the wind tried to push it from its perch high in the Hollywood Hills. A freak weather system in the Midwest was pulling fifty- to seventy-knot winds from the sea that had hammered Los Angeles for days.
Cole sat up, awake now and wanting to shake off the dream-an ugly nightmare that left him feeling unsettled and depressed. The cat's ears stayed down. Cole held out his hand, but the cat poured off the bed like a pool of black ink.
Cole said, "Me, too."
He checked the time. Habit. Three-twelve in the A.M. He reached toward the nightstand to check his gun-habit-but stopped himself when he realized what he was doing.
"C'mon, what's the point?"
The gun was there because it was always there, sometimes needed but most times not. Living alone with only an angry cat for company, there seemed no reason to move it. Now, at three-twelve in the middle of a windtorched night, it was a reminder of what he had lost.
Cole realized he was trembling, and pushed out of bed. The dream scared him. Muzzle flash so bright it sparkled his eyes; the charcoal smell of smokeless powder; a glittery red mist that dappled his skin; shattered sunglasses that arced through the air-images so vivid they shocked him awake.
Now he shook as his body burned off the fear.
The back of Cole's house was an A-shaped glass steeple, giving him a view of the canyon behind his house and a diamond-dust glimpse of the city beyond. Now, the canyon was blue with bright moonlight. The sleeping houses below were surrounded by blue-and-gray trees that shivered and danced in the St. Vitus wind. Cole wondered if someone down there had awakened like him. He wondered if they had suffered a similar nightmare-seeing their best friend shot to death in the dark.
Violence was part of him.
Elvis Cole did not want it, seek it, or enjoy it, but maybe these were only things he told himself in cold moments like now. The nature of his life had cost him the woman he loved and the little boy he had grown to love, and left him alone in this house with nothing but an angry cat for company and a pistol that did not need to be put away.
Now here was this dream that left his skin crawling-so real it felt like a premonition. He looked at the phone and told himself no-no, that's silly, it's stupid, it's three in the morning.
Cole made the call.
One ring, and his call was answered. At three in the morning.
"Pike."
"Hey, man."
Cole didn't know what to say after that, feeling so stupid.
"You good?"
Pike said, "Good. You?"
"Yeah. Sorry, man, it's late."
"You okay?"
"Yeah. Just a bad feeling is all."
They lapsed into a silence Cole found embarrassing, but it was Pike who spoke first.
"You need me, I'm there."
"It's the wind. This wind is crazy."
"Uh-huh."
"Watch yourself."
He told Pike he would call again soon, then put down the phone.
Cole felt no relief after the call. He told himself he should, but he didn't. The dream should have faded, but it did not. Talking to Pike now made it feel even more real.
You need me, I'm there.
How many times had Joe Pike placed himself in harm's way to save him?
They had fought the good fight together, and won, and sometimes lost. They had shot people who had harmed or were doing harm, and been shot, and Joe Pike had saved Cole's life more than a few times like an archangel from Heaven.
Yet here was the dream and the dream did not fade- Muzzle flashes in a dingy room. A woman's shadow cast on the wall. Dark glasses spinning into space. Joe Pike falling through a terrible red mist.
Cole crept downstairs through the dark house and stepped out onto his deck. Leaves and debris stung his face like sand on a windswept beach. Lights from the houses below glittered like fallen stars.
In low moments on nights like this when Elvis Cole thought of the woman and the boy, he told himself the violence in his life had cost him everything, but he knew that was not true. As lonely as he sometimes felt, he still had more to lose.
He could lose his best friend.
Or himself.