“Rebecca!” Lane yelled and reached out to grab her back, but his words were drowned out by the sound of two gunshots.
Rebecca jerked backwards twice in quick succession and fell to the ground dreamlike, just as gracefully as if she had been doing one of her dances.
Lane pulled his own gun and fired as his daughter screamed, “Mommy!”
Lane sat up quickly, his heart racing at the scene he expected to see before him. The long, dark hallway lit only by torches every twenty feet. The man at the end with his daughter’s arm gripped in one hand and a gun gripped in the other. Amy standing back, not knowing what could be done as the gun smoked and Rebecca, Lane’s precious Rebecca, fell fluidly to the floor, two large red stains growing quickly on her tunic.
Lane, who had better aim than his wife, shot the man as his daughter screamed. He didn’t need to keep the man alive; the Balesi already knew why he was there and what he was after. And he had gotten exactly what he had wanted – Veriss’ man had finally been successful at taking out Rebecca Morgan; not because she posed a threat, but solely because of a grudge that hadn’t died with Veriss himself.
And now Rebecca Morgan, who had once been known as Robert Baine, was lying in a puddle of her own blood while her six year old daughter screamed and her husband rushed forward in vain to save her.
"Daddy?" There was a tug on his arm and Lane looked down to the blonde child next to his bed. "Daddy," she whispered, as if speaking any louder would wake the dream back up, "I had the nightmare again." Her brown eyes were wet with tears as she looked up at him.
Lane gathered his daughter into his arms and hugged her tight, rocking her back and forth while she cried into his shoulder. "I know you did, Mika," he said softly as he smoothed her hair, "its ok, it was just a dream, it’s over now."
She shook her head no and looked up into her father’s brown eyes. "No. It was real."
"It’s in the past now, Mika." He meant both the dream and the actual death of Rebecca. "Do you want to sleep in here tonight?"
The girl sniffled back her tears and nodded, climbing under the covers in the middle of the bed. Lane already knew better than to ask her to move over – that was "mommy’s spot" and Mika wouldn’t sleep there.
Pressing up as close as she could to her father, Mika popped her thumb into her mouth. It was a habit Rebecca and Lane had tried to break her of, and they had managed to get her down to only sucking her thumb at night, but since Rebecca’s death Lane hadn’t been strict about it. If it helped her sleep through the night let her suck her thumb.
"I love you, Mika," he whispered as he put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
"I love you, Daddy," she whispered back and clutched his nightshirt with the hand she had just been sucking on. He didn’t always have to reprimand her to keep Mika from her bad habits.