RYDER WOKE COLD to the bone, with his throat burning dry and his heart at a gallop. Beside the bed, D.A. shoved his nose against Ryder’s hand, let out a nervous whine.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “I’m okay.”

But in fact he didn’t know what the hell he was.

Everybody has dreams, he told himself. Good ones, bad ones, weird ones, wet ones.

So he’d dreamed about Billy Ryder. They’d just found the guy’s grave. It wasn’t such a stretch to dream about him, about dying at Antietam.

A soldier who dies on September 17, 1862? Odds were pretty damn good he’d bought it on the battlefield on that bloodiest day of the war.

Billy Ryder had been on his mind, that’s all.

And that was bullshit. Stop being an idiot, he ordered himself.

He’d felt something at that grave site, and he felt it now. Something off, something he couldn’t quite get a grasp on.

Sleep hadn’t helped, obviously. He glanced at the clock, saw it was still shy of five. He wasn’t going to get any more sleep, and wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it anyway.

The dream, vivid as life—and death—left him unsteady.

He’d stood on that battlefield. He’d walked the sunken road of Bloody Lane. And though he considered himself a practical, grounded man, he’d felt the pull of the place, the power of it. He’d read books on Antietam—he lived here, after all. He’d studied it in school, taken visiting friends and relations on the tour.

But until tonight he’d never imagined it—no, he corrected, felt it so vividly.

The smells of it, the sounds. Stinging smoke, fresh blood, burned flesh, the raging storm of artillery fire that filled the world above the cries of dying men.

If he’d been a fanciful man he’d have said through the dream he’d lived in it, and died in it.

As Billy Ryder had.

Put it away, he told himself. Beside him Hope stirred a little, and the warmth of her layered over that cold he couldn’t quite shake. He thought about just rolling over, onto her, clearing his mind with that slim, soft body.

He considered the hour, deemed it pretty damn unfair to wake her before dawn, even though he figured he could make it worth her while.

He rolled out of bed instead, then just walked to the glass doors, pulled them open and stepped out on the bedroom deck.

Maybe he just needed some air.

He liked the quiet of this hour, and the way the slice of moon, not quite finished with the night, showed itself through the trees. He wished fleetingly that he’d gotten water before he’d come out, then just stood pulling in the peace.