He hadn’t had the dream in years, yet there he was, gangly, twelve years old, running the third leg of the relay in the track meet at summer camp, the battle between the Blue and the Gray squarely on the line. The sky was a brilliant blue, the crowd jumping up and down—crew-cut, red-cheeked faces he would never see again, except here. His teammate, Kyle Bregman, running the preceding leg, was bearing down on him, holding on to a slim lead, cheeks puffing with everything he had.

Reach….

Charles readied himself, set to take off at the touch of the baton. He felt his fingers twitch, awaiting the slap of the stick in his palm.

There it was! Now!
He took off.

Suddenly there was a crushing groan.

Charles stopped, looked down in horror. The baton lay on the ground. The Gray Team completed the exchange, sprinting past
him to an improbable victory, their supporters jumping in glee. Cheers of jubilation mixed with jeers of disappointment echoed in Charles’s ears.

That’s when he woke up. As he always did. Breathing heavily, sheets damp with sweat. Charles glanced at his hands—empty. He patted the covers as if the baton were somehow still there, after thirty years.

But it was only Tobey, their white West Highland terrier, staring wide-eyed and expectantly, straddled turkey-legged on his chest.

Charles let his head fall back with a sigh.

He glanced at the clock: 6:10
A.M.
Ten minutes before the alarm. His wife, Karen, lay curled up next to him. He hadn’t slept much at all. He’d been wide awake from 3:00 to 4:00
A.M.
, staring at the World’s Strongest Female Championship on ESPN2 without the sound, not wanting to disturb her. Something was weighing heavily on Charles’s mind.

Maybe it was the large position he had taken in Canadian oil sands last Thursday and had kept through the weekend—highly risky with the price of oil leaking the other way. Or how he had bet up the six-month natural-gas contracts, at the same time going short against the one-years. Friday the energy index had continued to decline. He was scared to get out of bed, scared to look at the screen this morning and see what he’d find.

Or was it Sasha?

For the past ten years, Charles had run his own energy hedge fund in Manhattan, leveraged up eight to one. On the outside—his sandy brown hair, the horn-rim glasses, his bookish calm—he seemed more the estate-planner type or a tax consultant than someone whose bowels (and now his dreams as well!) attested to the fact that he was living in high-beta hell.

Charles pushed himself up in his boxers and paused, elbows on knees. Tobey leaped off the bed ahead of him, scratching feverishly at the door.

“Let him out.” Karen stirred, rolling over, yanking the covers over her head.

“You’re sure?” Charles checked out the dog, ears pinned back, tail quivering, jumping on his hind legs in anticipation, as if he could turn the knob with his teeth. “You know what’s going to happen.”

“C’mon, Charlie, it’s your turn this morning. Just let the little bastard out.”

“Famous last words…”

Charles got up and opened the door leading to their fenced-in half-acre yard, a block from the sound in Old Greenwich. In a flash Tobey bolted out onto the patio, his nose fixed to the scent of some unsuspecting rabbit or squirrel.

Immediately the dog began his high-pitched yelp.

Karen scrunched the pillow over her head and growled.
“Rrrrggg…”

That’s how every day began, Charles trudging into the kitchen, turning on CNN and a pot of coffee, the dog barking outside. Then going into his study and checking the European spots online before hopping into the shower.

That morning the spots didn’t offer much cheer—$72.10. They had continued to decline. Charles did a quick calculation in his head. Three more contracts he’d be forced to sell out. Another couple of million—gone. It was a little after 6:00
A.M.
, and he was already underwater.

Outside, Tobey was in the middle of a nonstop three-minute barrage.

In the shower, Charles went over his day. He had to reverse his positions. He had these oil-sand contracts to clear up, then a meeting with one of his lenders.
Was it time for him to come clean?
He had a transfer to make into his daughter Sam’s college account; she’d be a senior at the high school in the fall.

That’s when it hit him.
Shit!

He had to take in the goddamn car this morning.

The fifteen-thousand-mile service on the Merc. Karen had finally badgered him into making the appointment last week. That meant he’d have to take the train in. It would set him back a bit. He’d hoped to be at his desk by seven-thirty to deal with those positions. Now Karen would have to pick him up at the station later that afternoon.

Dressed, Charles was usually in rush mode by now. The six-thirty wake-up shout to Karen, a knock on Alex’s and Samantha’s doors to get them rolling for school. Looking over the
Wall Street Journal
’s headlines at the front door.

This morning, thanks to the car, he had a moment to sip his coffee.

They lived in a warm, refurbished Colonial on an affluent tree-lined street in the town of Old Greenwich, a block off the sound. Fully paid for, the damned thing was probably worth more than Charles’s father, a tie salesman from Scranton, had earned in his entire life. Maybe he couldn’t show it like some of their big-time friends in their megahomes out on North Street, but he’d done well. He’d fought to get himself into Penn from a high-school class of seven hundred, distinguished himself at the energy desk at Morgan Stanley, steered a few private clients away when he’d opened his own firm, Harbor Capital. They had the ski house in Vermont, the kids’ college paid for, took fancy vacations.

So what the hell had he done wrong?

Outside, Tobey was scratching at the kitchen’s French doors, trying to get back in.
All right, all right.
Charles sighed.

Last week their other Westie, Sasha, had been run over. Right on their quiet street, directly in front of their house. It had been Charles who’d found her, bloodied, inert. Everyone was still upset. And then the note. The note that came to his office in a basket of flowers the very next day. That had left him in such a sweat. And brought on these dreams.

Sorry about the pooch, Charles. Could your kids be next?

How the hell had it gotten this far?

He stood up and checked the clock on the stove: 6:45. With any luck, he figured, he could be out of the dealership by 7:30, catch a ride to the 7:51, be at his desk at Forty-ninth Street and Third Avenue fifty minutes after that. Figure out what to do. He let in the dog, who immediately darted past him into the living room with a yelp and out the front door, which Charles had absentmindedly failed to shut. Now he was waking up the entire neighborhood.

The little bastard was more work than the kids!

“Karen, I’m leaving!” he yelled, grabbing his briefcase and tucking the
Journal
under his arm.

“Kiss, kiss,”
she called back, wrapped in her robe, dashing out of the shower.

She still looked sexy to him, her caramel-colored hair wet and a little tangled from the shower. Karen was nothing if not beautiful. She had kept her figure toned and inviting from years of yoga, her skin was still smooth, and she had those dreamy, grab-you-and-never-let-go hazel eyes. For a moment Charles regretted not rolling over to her back in bed once Tobey had flown the coop and given them the unexpected opportunity.

But instead he just yelled up something about the car—that he’d be taking in the Metro-North. That maybe he’d call her later and have her meet him on the way home to pick it up.

“Love you!” Karen called over the hum of the hair dryer.

“You, too!”

“After Alex’s game we’ll go out….”

Damn, that was right,
Alex’s lacrosse game, his first of the season. Charles went back and scratched out a note to him that he left on the kitchen counter.

To our #1 attacker! Knock ’em dead, champ! BEST OF LUCK!!!

He signed his initials, then crossed it out and wrote
Dad.
He stared at the note for a second. He had to stop this. Whatever was going on, he’d never let anything happen to them.

Then he headed for the garage, and over the sound of the automatic door opening and the dog’s barking in the yard, he heard his wife yell above the hair dryer,
“Charlie, would you please let in the goddamn dog!”

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