Chapter Two

Val shoved the last box of her belongings into the passenger seat of her trusty 2005 Honda Civic. The door wouldn’t shut, though—too much stuff. Or had something rusted after sitting idle for five years in Dad’s garage? She slammed her hip into it to get it to latch and hoped it wouldn’t pop open on the drive to her father’s house.

She wiped her brow, a near-pointless exercise in the late June humidity. Only noon, and the temperature had already climbed into the 80s. Sweat soaked her long-sleeve cotton T-shirt and the elastic waistband of her running shorts, the last of her semi-clean clothes until she unpacked. One silver lining of moving into her father’s house: at least he had air conditioning.

She hated having to move back in with him. At 23 years old, the idea of living with her parents—or, in her case, parent, since her mother left without a trace almost a decade before—grated on her nerves. She had a good job she loved with a steady paycheck, had lived on her own for five years (counting two years in UConn dorms), and enjoyed the independence all of that brought her. But her recent rift with Beth, her longtime roommate and her oldest and dearest friend, was bringing that independent era to a close. Over a silly little thing like almost getting her killed by a psychopath Val had been pursuing. Some people had no sense of humor.

Val got in and turned the key in the ignition, relieved, as always, that the old Honda started on the first try. At least some things were reliable. She glanced up at the street-facing window of their living room, as if to say goodbye...except that she still needed to return with Dad’s SUV to get her bed.

He’d suggested she sleep in her old one. No way. Not in a million years. Too many terrible memories.

One, to be exact.

She also needed to come back to clean. Beth had offered to help, but Val turned her down. She’d rather avoid the thick tension and the inevitable messy goodbyes. Besides, Beth insisted this wasn’t goodbye—just a new chapter of their friendship.

Yeah, right.

On the drive to Dad’s, she reviewed her alternatives one last time. She’d tried to find an affordable place on her own, but those didn’t exist in Clayton. Not in any neighborhood safe enough for a single woman to live in—even a cop with martial arts skills.

She also considered finding another roommate. For about five seconds. The fact that she had damn near no other friends outside of work—and damn few at work, for that matter—meant living with a stranger, which she refused to do. She barely trusted the people she knew, for God’s sake.

The most attractive alternative to living with Dad—moving in with Gil Kryzinski, her former partner/boss and now boyfriend of six weeks—scared her even more than any of the serial killers, gang members, and drug dealers she’d faced in her nine months as a Clayton police officer. Scared her enough that neither of them mentioned it, even once. Gil and Val had agreed not to rush things, which for her meant not even sleeping together yet. As in, not even sleeping—sharing a bed overnight. Even though he’d almost completely recovered from the gunshot wound that shattered his hip, which meant he didn’t take up 90 percent of the bed anymore. So he claimed.

Still. Too soon for her.

Pulling up in front of her father’s house, a modest two-story Cape Cod on Clayton’s west side, reminded her of the most compelling reason to move back into Dad’s home: Michael David Dawes. AKA, Dad.

Not that she harbored any illusions about patching up their strained relationship. She and her dad fought almost every time they spoke. Which wasn’t often. Nor did Val harbor any nostalgia over moving back into the home in which she’d grown up. The opposite, in fact. She hated the place, especially her old upstairs bedroom. A little over ten years before, a family “friend” had raped her in that room, weeks before Val’s thirteenth birthday. In her own bed. Which nobody seemed willing to believe, other than her big brother Chad and her Uncle Val. Not her parents, the King and Queen of Denial.

No, the reason to move back home, other than pure economics, was to make sure that her father didn’t drink himself to death. Which he’d been well on the path to doing until he re-entered rehab six months before, shocked into it by Val’s own near-death experience at the hands of serial rapist Richard Harkins.

However, Chad, her only sibling and the only one who’d always had her back, had pleaded with her. “Dad’s slipping back into the darkness,” he’d said. “I don’t know what triggered it this time, but unless one of us does something, there won’t be a next time.”

Probably true. Certainly true that, between the two of them, Val had to be the one to step in. She lived closer and wasn’t married with two kids. Plus, Val’s skills at self-defense and, perhaps, Dad’s “never hit a girl” latent sexism—meant he wouldn’t, in one of his drunken rages, beat her with his fists the way he once tried to do to Chad.

They hoped. At least, it hadn’t happened yet.

Dad’s SUV sat in the driveway, meaning he’d be home to greet her. Hopefully sober. 174 days and counting. Every day, a risk that the count would reset to zero.

She weighed her options again. Driving away and never coming back seemed so much more attractive.

Fucking family responsibility!

She heaved a deep breath and began unloading the car.

***

A shrill bell rang—or rattled, more like it—emanating from the cheap plastic cordless phone on the pressboard desk at the end of the lumpy motel bed. Maggie McCloskey’s eyes creaked open, and she lay under the musty covers a few more moments, weighing her options. Almost nobody knew she was there, and she didn’t feel compelled to answer the call of the few that did. Sooner or later, they’d give up, and she could resume her fitful sleep.

She let it ring five, six more times, and, as expected, the clanging stopped. She let her eyes droop shut again, but the bright sunlight leaking in around the edges of the blinds in the room’s double windows cast a red glow through her eyelids. She looked around for her sleep mask. It must have fallen to the floor. She rolled to one side to scan the room, and nearly fell out of bed when the stupid phone rang again.

The digital clock blinked the time at her: 11:30. Almost noon, then. She had checked in well after midnight and hadn’t hit the sack until nearly 4:00 a.m. Whoever demanded her attention this morning clearly was unfamiliar with her night owl ways. At fifty years old, she couldn’t get by without at least eight hours sleep any more.

But they’d called twice now, which meant they’d call again, and again. Might as well get this over with.

“Yeah, what is it?” She sat up in bed, slid a cigarette between her lips, and readied her lighter, then remembered that she hadn’t yet disabled the smoke alarm. Dammit.

“Hey. It’s Tanner. Change of plans.” His oily voice rasped on the ancient phone’s terrible speaker.

But the words perked her up, better than coffee. “Next week’s plans? You’re calling things off? Why?”

“Not calling things off.” He chuckled, a humorless laugh, as forced as any kindness that ever emerged from him. “A shift of gears. We need you in Connecticut, ASAP.”

Maggie heaved a deep, frustrated breath, letting it fill Tanner’s ears all the way down to Florida. “What about Cleveland? I’m supposed to help them set up shop. They’re expecting me tomorrow.” She left unspoken that she really needed a day off. Today, in fact.

“Clayton’s more important.”

“Clayton!” The word spit out of her and launched her unlit cigarette onto the filthy carpet. “I’d rather eat glass than go there.”

Another mirthless chuckle. “Hope you’re stocked up on empty beer bottles, then. C’mon, Maggie. Clayton’s the linchpin of this whole op. We need our best person there, and that’s you.”

“Flattery,” she said, leaning over the edge of the bed to retrieve her now-broken cigarette, “will get you nowhere, and it sure as hell won’t get me back to that hell-hole.” She grunted and sat back up on the bed. A stray coil in the mattress poked her ass. How the hell do they expect people to sleep on shit like this?

“That’s why we pay you the big bucks,” Tanner said, with no apparent irony. “Listen, Maggie. The op there is going to shit. I got word that one of our girls got busted last night…someone not on the books.”

Maggie snapped back to attention. “Not on the books? Meaning…?”

“They’re running side jobs,” Tanner finished for her. “Which means, A, we can’t trust them. And B, they’re getting sloppy. We can’t afford either situation.”

Maggie slid her feet into worn, comfy slippers and paced the room, sucking on the broken cigarette. “That’s not exactly selling me on this grand opportunity, Tanner.” A flat-out lie, for negotiation’s sake. Maggie loved swooping in and fixing operations gone bad. In another life, she’d have been a top corporate raider, downsizing companies drowning in debt and bloated, old-school management.

“Listen, this job is perfect for you,” Tanner pleaded. “The infrastructure is there, but it needs new leadership. You know the area, you can work your old connections, get things back on track.”

“My connections there aren’t just old,” Maggie said. “They’re petrified. It’s been almost ten years, Tanner. Anyone I knew then would have jetted out of there long ago.” Well, almost anyone. She knew a few people had hung around.

A long silence. Maggie wondered if Tanner had hung up. Finally, he continued with an edge to his voice. “Put it this way,” Tanner said. “If Clayton flops, there’s no need for you in Cleveland. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

Maggie stopped pacing and bit clean through her cigarette’s gummy filter. “Are you saying if I don’t take Clayton, I’m fired?”

He sighed. “I’m saying, if you don’t go revive our Clayton ops, we might as well just shut down. The money dries up. Not just for you. For me, for Mac, for everyone.”

Maggie spit out the last bits of cigarette and sat on the bed again. She’d thought—hoped—that she’d seen the last of that ratty-ass town in her rear-view mirror a decade before. After working behind the scenes for years for reform of the town’s stubborn political correctness, she’d left, hoping that fresh opportunities awaited in greener pastures. Where no one knew her or her well-positioned husband, whose corporate success and family harmony would not be threatened by her politics.

Away from those constraints, she’d gained a deeper understanding of the ingrained moral corrosiveness of not just the left, but the so-called “moderates” and the “CINOs”—conservatives in name only, who compromised and frittered away golden opportunities for change. She’d grown to appreciate the value of bypassing conventional, “safe” routes such as elections, which changed nothing, in favor of direct action. Actions that, when successful, convinced the immoral left to cower and the once-quiet majority to rise up against immoral trends such as gay marriage and legalizing drugs.

Returning to the constraining environment of Clayton felt risky. But perhaps she could limit her visibility long enough to fix the local problems and get out. Barring that, maybe enough time had passed. Maybe enough bridges had burned…and maybe, just enough of them remained to build something new out of the ashes.

And maybe, just maybe, she might succeed in repairing a few of those burned bridges. Tap into a few of those old relations. Let the distance of years salve the ancient wounds. Start fresh. Maybe even bring those old relations over to her side.

“Okay,” she said, flipping open her suitcase on the bed and stuffing her belongings inside. “I’ll be there by nightfall.”