Thank God…

The assailant, his face red with rage, let go and stood frozen for a moment, as if he was wondering what else he could do to Vaughn. He settled for repeating, “You prick,” and ran back to his car. He spun the wheels in reverse, disappearing around the corner. Vaughn strained his neck looking back but he couldn’t see the license plate.

Hands shaking, breath ticking with the fright, Vaughn felt weak with fear and dread.

The police arrived and took a statement, made a note of the incident and the damage to the car. Vaughn was giving them what information he could remember when another thought occurred to him. His voice faded.

“What, sir?” an officer asked, noticing the businessman’s troubled face.

“He heard me give nine-one-one my name. And where I lived. The town, I mean. Do you think he’ll try to find me to get even?”

The police didn’t seem concerned. “Road rage, or parking rage, whatever, it never lasts very long. I don’t think you’re in any danger.”

“Besides,” one officer added, nodding at the damage to the paint, “looks like he already did get even.”

The police talked to passersby-with less enthusiasm than Vaughn would have liked-but nobody had gotten the man’s tag number-or was willing to admit it if they had. Then another call came in on their radio-another fight in progress.

“St. Paddy’s Day,” one of the officers spat out, shaking his head. They hurried off.

“You okay?” one of the bystanders asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” Vaughn said, not feeling the least bit okay. He ran his hand across the long scratch in the paint. He kept replaying the incident. Had it been his fault? Should he have given the guy the space? Of course not. But how had he sounded? Was he abrupt, insulting? He hadn’t thought so, certainly hadn’t meant to be.

Finally his wife and daughter returned from the hall, toting several small bags. They noticed the damage to the car and the pieces of Vaughn’s cell phone sitting in the backseat.

“What happened, honey?”

He explained to them.

“Oh, Dad, no! Are you all right?”

“Fine. Just get in.”

He locked the doors and drove away fast. On the turnpike Vaughn checked the rearview mirror every few seconds. But he saw no sign of the attacker’s car. His wife and daughter chatted away as if nothing had happened. Vaughn was quiet, upset about the incident. And the anger-at them and at himself-wasn’t going away.

When they were a few miles from home Judy asked, “Something wrong, honey? You’re not still bothered by that crazy man, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m just a little tired.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s just paint. They can fix it up like new.”

Sometimes women just didn’t get it at all.

“Oh, Dad,” his daughter said urgently, “can we stop at Beth’s? I want to give her the necklace.”

“No.”

“But it’s right up there.”

“I said no.”

“But-”

“No,” he snapped. “You’ll see her at school tomorrow.”

The girl wasn’t happy-the friend’s house was, after all, on the way home-but Vaughn wouldn’t change his mind.

When they arrived at home he pulled his wife aside and told her his big concern-that the man had heard Vaughn mention his name and the town they lived in.

“Oh.” Now Judy seemed miffed. His impression was that she was upset he’d gotten into the fight in the first place and hadn’t just given the guy the parking space, then double-parked to wait for them. As if it was male ego that’d caused the problem.

He came a millisecond away from reminding her that their last-minute shopping spree was the ultimate cause of the whole thing, but self-preservation kicked in and he managed to restrain himself. He said, “The police don’t think it’s anything to worry about. But just keep an eye out.” He described the man.

“Keep an eye out,” she muttered, and walked off silently to make dinner.

Vaughn didn’t eat much that night (his excuse was that his stomach was upset from the fast food they’d had for lunch, which his wife had ordered-a fact he managed to work into his explanation, with some petty satisfaction).

After his family went to bed that night, Vaughn climbed the stairs to the study above the garage and stayed awake for a long time, keeping a vigil, staring out at the street, looking for any sign of the assailant.

At three A.M. or so he fell asleep with the Memory prominently sitting in his thoughts.

And the next morning he awoke with it.

Vaughn forced himself to relax and, even though he was groggy from lack of sleep, he made breakfast for the family, spent a cheerful half-hour with them, and then headed off to work.

But the good mood didn’t last. The Memory kept coming back. He replayed the incident a hundred times that day. He regretted not fighting back, not grabbing the man and wrestling him to the ground, pinning him there until the cops arrived. He felt he was a coward, a failure.

He was so distracted he missed the lunch he’d set up to woo the big client that his rival was after.

Over the next six weeks things grew worse. Several times on the way to work he spotted cars that might have been the assailant’s, and skidded off the highway, desperate to escape. Two weeks ago he’d nearly slammed into a woman’s SUV in a grocery store parking lot while staring at a car behind him. And another time, leaving a local bar, he’d seen a man in sunglasses across the street; Vaughn believed he looked like the assailant. Panicked, the businessman leapt back inside the bar, knocking into several people and spilling drinks. He nearly tripped down the back stairs of the bar as he fled.

All of these incidents turned out to be false alarms-the men he’d seen were not the attacker-but he couldn’t shake the fear that consumed him.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. One morning Vaughn canceled a meeting at work and drove to a building outside of town, a place he’d found in the Yellow Pages, a gun shop and shooting range. There he bought a 9mm semiautomatic Glock pistol and enrolled in the course that would give him a Class A firearm permit, allowing him to carry a concealed weapon.

Today, at lunch, he was going to complete the course and get the license. From now on he could carry the gun wherever he wanted to.

Jamie Feldon woke up at nine on Friday, well rested and ready to get started on his new life.

Unlike the typical evening from his past, last night he’d slept in his bed, under clean sheets, wearing clean pajamas, and, even though he’d had a beer with dinner, he’d gone to sleep sober. He’d also stuck to his rule of only two cigarettes for the entire evening. He brushed his teeth for a full minute.

Now, eating a modest breakfast, he looked over the notes he’d taken about Charles Vaughn. The businessman lived in Lincoln. But Jamie wanted to see him without his family around, so he’d Googled the name and found him mentioned on some computer industry websites. He learned where the man worked, an Internet company about ten miles away.

Jamie decided to take something along with him, and after some thinking he had a brainstorm: Champagne. Vaughn, he recalled, was a man who dressed well and would probably have good taste.

After washing his breakfast dishes, Jamie jumped in his car and headed off to the nearest wine store, figuring he’d spend some serious money on the bottle. You can’t scrimp when you’re working on a new life.

“Good shooting,” the man said.

He was a well-toned fifty-year-old with cropped gray hair. Tendons and muscles were prominent in his arms and neck. His name was Larry Bolling, and he was the senior instructor at Patriot Guns and Shooting Range, where Charles Vaughn had been taking his lessons.

Vaughn pulled his ear protectors off. “What?”