War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (59 page)

“Malcolm, this is a little different—”

“You know I’m right,” he said.
“If not me, then someone else’ll go.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t know that someone else.”

He looked at me then.
His dark eyes were more open than I had ever seen
them
.
“You’re the one who always talks about living up to your responsibilities, no matter how tough they are.
That’s all I’m going to do.
I can’t live with myself otherwise.”

He had turned my own words on me.
I didn’t like how it felt.
But I didn’t try to argue with him anymore.
He knew the risks, and he was taking them.
It was his life to live, his choice to make.

I simply wished I could keep him from it — and I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t.

We were silent much of the rest of the trip.
But Jimmy grew happier and happier the closer we got to Chicago.
He didn’t realize how much had changed.

I was feeling nothing.
I was empty, just like I had when I returned from Korea.
Dislocated, distant, at a loss without really knowing why.

I was returning from a different war and, like the first, I didn’t entirely comprehend it.

The only thing I knew was that in some very fundamental ways, we had all lost.

About Kris Nelscott

Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by award-winning bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which she uses for historical mysteries. 

The first Smokey Dalton novel,
A Dangerous Road,
won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second,
Smoke-Filled Rooms
, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third,
Thin Walls
, was one of the
Chicago Tribune
’s best mysteries of the year.

Kirkus
chose
Days
of Rage
as one of the top ten mysteries of the year. 
Entertainment Weekly
says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler. 
Booklist
calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class crime series” and
Salon
says “
Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of de
tective novels now being written by an American author.”

The Smokey Dalton Series in order:

Novels

Dangerous Road

Smoke-Filled Rooms

Thin Walls

Stone Cribs

War At Home

Days of Rage

The Day After (Upcoming)

Short Stories

Guarding Lacey

Family Affair