Chapter Seven

If Jodie hadn’t heard the weather report warning of a second storm front, she would have easily believed the worst was over. Plows had been out before dawn to clear the streets. Kids and even some adults were playing in the resulting mountain ranges that stood on each sidewalk. The businesses which had seemed so abandoned the past few days were now thriving, and she regretted there wasn’t time to run in the general store to get some supplies.

When she got to the garage, there were already cars parked in front of all three bays. The doors were up and she saw Travis wave in the next customer as she pulled around to the employee parking lot. She hadn’t been looking to run a garage when they moved to the island. She would’ve been happy to just be one of the greasers down in the maintenance floor, and that was what she was hired for. But then the guy who hired her started getting lazy. He saw how good she was at the job and started giving her more and more of his responsibilities. Eventually she was doing ninety percent of his job without any of the benefits.

Fortunately, the other employees saw what was happening and took action. She thought “coup” was too strong a word, but they joined together and told the owner that if he didn’t resign so Jodie could have the job she deserved, they would all walk out and never return. He wisely chose to leave, and Jodie took over with one stipulation: she would be co-manager, and whoever shared the title took over the paperwork part of the job so she could keep her hands in the engines.

Kevin, the man who had agreed to share the manager title, walked out to meet her, turning to walk beside her as she came into the garage. “How’s the missus?” he asked.

“Finally listening to reason,” she said. “How are things here?”

“Barely-managed chaos. Everyone wants their shit checked out ‘fore the big storm hits. They want to make sure the engines don’t freeze to death sitting in the garages.”

Jodie said, “Always nice to keep up with maintenance checks. Where do you need me the most?”

“Pinch-hitting,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty good rhythm going, but keep your eye out for anyone who might be falling behind, lend a hand where it’s needed.”

“You got it, chief,” she said.

Over the next hour, she helped with two engine checks and changed the oil on Cheryl Paxton’s car. She had just finished putting a set of snow tires on Sara Tamirova’s Jeep when she spotted a guy loitering outside on the grass, just next to the bay doors. He was wearing a heavy black jacket, but his bald head was exposed to the cold. He gave a nervous smile and lifted one hand when he realized she’d seen him. She slipped the lug wrench into the pocket of her overalls and made her way over to him.

“Hi. Can I help you?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “My car literally just crapped out on me. I know you’ve got a ton of customers here, and I’m not trying to jump the line, but it’s honestly not moving an inch. If you could come take a look and at least give me an idea what’s going on... My family is in the car and it’s freezing, and--”

Jodie was already nodding. “Sure, it’s no problem. I can take a look.” She indicated for him to lead the way, and he walked beside her.

“Really?” He looked utterly relieved. “Thank you so much.”

“No problem.”

He pointed to the street that ran alongside the garage. She saw a car parked at the curb, the only vehicle on this particular street, but it was idling. It was also occupied by at least three adult men, two of which were in the backseat on the driver’s side. The third man was at the wheel, his hand wrapped around the twelve o’clock position.

Jodie slowed and backed up a step. “Oh, actually, I should tell my boss I’m stepping out for a second.”

The man grabbed her bicep and squeezed hard. All kindness was gone from his voice as he yanked her forward again.

“I think they’ll be fine,” he grunted.

There were certain benefits to being married to a cop. The pertinent one, in this moment, was that she knew having him grab her arm meant that anything she did now could reasonably be claimed as self-defense. She went limp and let herself slump to one side, which forced him to compensate by putting all his weight on one leg. He’d been walking on her left so he could grab her with his dominant hand. The downside was that it left her dominant hand free. She pulled the curved metal lug wrench from her pocket.

Another perk of marrying a cop: she knew to make contact on the upswing, putting all the energy into the blow. The circular end of the wrench came up quick and cracked off his chin loud enough to echo. She tensed her legs again, planted one foot on the snowy ground, and stomped the other down on the ankle he’d just shifted his weight to. It bent in a way that was very, very wrong, and he shrieked.

He was still holding onto her arm as he fell, so she smacked his fingers with the wrench. The way the middle one bent, she was positive it was broken, but she didn’t care much about that.

“Travis!”

He was already running toward her, alerted by the goon’s scream. She pointed at the man with her wrench. “Watch this asshole!” Then she turned and ran full-speed toward the car.

The driver pulled away fast enough to squeal the tires. Jodie changed her angle, pumping her arms, the metal of the wrench glinting each time it came up into her line of sight. She leapt over a snow dune and skidded a little when she hit the other side, but she stayed on her feet. The car was too far ahead for her to catch it, but she saw enough of the license plate before they screeched around a corner to hopefully make a difference.

She stopped chasing, knowing it would be a wasted effort, and reluctantly turned to go back. Travis had gotten the would-be kidnapper into a seated position, but he didn’t seem to be attempting any sort of comfort. A group of customers and mechanics had gathered at the bay doors and seemed to be trying to make sense of what had just happened. Travis looked up when he heard Jodie approaching and smiled widely.

“Gah-damn, boss, you fucked this dude up!”

“Remember that the next time you’re late, Travis.” The adrenaline was starting to wear off, so she put the wrench back in her pocket so her shaking hands would be less noticeable. To the gawkers, she shouted, “Has anyone called the police?”

Kevin called back, “We thought we’d leave that up to you. Seeing as you have the personal connection and all.”

Travis held out his phone to her, and she took it. “Yeah... nice to have connections with the local law enforcement.”

***

“I just don’t understand why Claire isn’t here,” Randall said.

They were seated on the couch in the cramped office she shared with Kevin. Harvey Moses had climbed into the ambulance with the attempted kidnapper. She was holding a cup of coffee with both hands, watching the buzz of activity outside through the open door. The excitement of the attempted abduction was already forgotten by everyone else, and she really just wanted to get back to work.

“I literally just got her to bed, and I’m not about to be the one who wakes her up. She was still asleep when you left?” He nodded. “Okay. You’re good enough to handle this.”

He put a hand over his heart. “Your confidence in me is so overwhelming, I might cry.” He removed his hand, put it on her shoulder. “Seriously, though. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. All he did was grab my arm. He’s the one who had to be taken away in an ambulance. Did I really break his ankle?”

“Uh, the word the medic actually used was ‘shatter,’ so yeah, I’d say you broke it. I didn’t like the way that finger was swelling, either. You kicked some solid ass today, Mrs. Boss, well done.”

Jodie grunted. “I just wish I’d been able to get more of the license plate.”

Randall looked down at his notepad. “Four digits with a make and model isn’t nothing. We’ll see what we can get on it.”

“You mean you’ll see.”

He stared at her. “You have to tell Claire about this.”

“I’m... I don’t...”

He lowered his voice. “Whatever is going on here, whatever big case Rucker was working on and whatever has Claire staying up for three days straight, those guys are definitely connected to it somehow. Even if they weren’t, and even if you weren’t Claire’s wife, there’s no way I could keep something like this from the sheriff.”

“I know.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “She’s going to freak out.”

Randall shook his head. “She’s going to worry. That’s not necessarily a bad thing to get from a partner.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Don’t let her do anything insane, Randall. If she finds out they came after me, she might take the gloves off.”

“I’ll watch out for her. You have my word.”

“Thank you.” She stood up and went to the desk. “What’s going to happen with the guy who went to the hospital?”

Randall said, “He had ID on him. Teddy Packard. Harvey Moses is going to stay with him while he’s at the hospital. I don’t know what we’ll do after that. I don’t really like the idea of putting him in the same cell as his buddy, but there’s nowhere else to put him. If we start arresting more people, we’re going to have to deputize more people just to stand guard.”

“Claire will figure something out,” Jodie said.

“I hope.” Randall stood and patted the notebook against his hip. “I’ll take this back, see what I find. But Jodie...”

She nodded. “I know. You have to. But try to break it to her easy, all right?”

“Kind of like, ‘hope you had a nice nap, boss, let’s see, there was a fender bender, a slip and fall outside the library, your wife almost got abducted, and Dan Porter ran a stop sign. Nice quiet morning.’”

“Sounds right to me.”

He chuckled and waved as he left the office. Jodie stood up and closed the door behind him. She rested her head against the wood, took a breath, and suffered a sudden and violent full-body shudder. She could still feel Packard’s grip on her arm. She rubbed the spot through her shirt and walked back toward the desk.

She fell in love with Claire Lance before she knew her real name. They met in a grungy little garage in Shepherd, Washington. At first Claire, then using the name Carmen Landry, was just another pair of hands to take some of the workload. Then she was a friend. When she became more, Claire revealed the truth. She was a fugitive, on the run for murder, a dangerous person to be around, let alone fall in love with. By that point, Jodie didn’t care. A part of her knew that even if Claire had been guilty of the crimes she was accused of committing, she still would have stuck by her side.

Claire put her freedom and her life on the line to protect Jodie. She took Jodie’s place in a bank robbery that went horribly wrong, and it could have ended with Claire being sent to prison for good. And still Jodie stayed. She stayed through Claire’s faked death, the long periods of silence when Claire was hiding out somewhere and couldn’t safely get in touch. She gave up the idea of being settled and spent weekends on Squire’s Isle, she moved to Alaska, and finally decided to join Claire on the run.

Jodie threw out ideas like safety and stability for the danger of always being on the move. If the wrong person recognized Claire, it would all be over. And Jodie probably would have gone down as well for aiding and abetting.

“I can’t promise you anything,” Claire said.

They were on the road. It was a little past one in the morning, but neither of them were tired. All they could see was a stretch of highway caught in their headlights. They were passing through a sleeping town, but it could literally have been any of a thousand American towns. Storage units, gas stations, big department stores, and the all-night shine of familiar fast foot logos.

“Literally, nothing,” Claire emphasized. “I can’t promise we’ll have enough money for gas tomorrow. Or that we’ll have both lunch and dinner tomorrow. I can’t promise that we won’t be doing this six months from now. Or... a year from now. This may be forever, Calico.”

“I know,” Jodie said.

Claire sounded exasperated. “Do you? Because really, the only way it stops is with one or both of us in prison. That’s not appealing, of course, but can you take roads like this for the rest of your life?”

Jodie sat up straighter. “Can you promise you’ll wait for me before you leave the next gas station?”

“What? Yeah, of course.”

“Can you promise that if we can only afford one shitty fast food meal, you’ll cut the burger in half and share the fries with me?”

“Jodie...”

“Promise, Ms. Lance.”

Claire flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I promise. Of course I do.”

Jodie looked out the car window. “This isn’t how I pictured my life. I didn’t imagine hotels, Goodwill clothes stuffed in the backseat, driving nine days out of ten.” She turned and looked at Claire, whose profile was lit by the console and passing streetlights. “But I didn’t imagine you, either. I didn’t imagine anything close to you. So it’s worth it, Claire. It’s worth it.”

She smiled at the memory. Uncertainty and danger were part of life with Claire Lance Curran. A few scary nights, some worry and stress, the need to be alert and aware of her surroundings sometimes. It was a small price to pay for the honor of waking up next to her every morning.

The pain in her arm had faded, and she patted her bicep as she pushed away from the desk. She would finish as much work as she could before Claire woke up and learned what had happened. She had a feeling that storm would be a lot more dangerous than anything Mother Nature had in store for them over the weekend.

***

The light coming in through the front windows had changed significantly when Claire emerged from the standby room. Minnie had arrived while she was asleep, and Randall had relocated to his usual desk. She saw two volunteers, Chip Ewing and Fred Hill, were also present. They were both wearing the dark brown polo shirts with SQUIRE’S ISLE POLICE stitched on the breast in gold thread. Both men were single and seemed likely candidates for camping out if necessary. They both nodded to her when she came into the bullpen.

“You guys here for the long haul?”

“As long as you need us, Cl-- Sheriff.”

She resisted the urge to sigh. “If you guys are more comfortable calling me Claire, I’m all for it. I know it’s weird for you to say, and it’s weird for me to hear.” She turned to Randall, who had jumped up to stand next to her like an excited child. “What’s going on with you?”

He gestured toward her office. Chip and Fred looked down, suddenly interested in nonexistent paperwork. Claire led the way, and Randall closed the office door behind them. He turned to face her.

“Did you ever see Memento?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s this movie that tells the story backward. Like, it starts at the end, and each scene is actually what happened before what you just saw.”

Claire raised her eyebrows. “That sounds stupid.”

“No, it was great. It’s, um, not relevant. I’m going to tell you what happened today, but I’m going to start with the end, then work my way backward. Okay?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay.”

“We have another one of Wyman’s guys in custody.”

“That’s fantastic. Is he here now? Who’s watching him?”

Randall said, “Harvey Moses is watching him. The reason he’s not in one of our cells is because he’s in the hospital.”

“What’s he doing in the hospital?”

“Shattered ankle and broken jaw.”

Claire furrowed her brow. “Who the hell did that?”

“Jodie.”

“Jodie?” She advanced on him. “What the hell was... How’d...”

Randall held his hands up. “Okay. Okay. It’s okay, Jodie is fine. The guy, Teddy Packard, tried to grab Jodie at the garage. She stomped on his ankle and used a lug wrench to break his face.” He couldn’t resist a little smile. “All the witnesses said it was pretty badass. She got a partial license plate, but it’s just another rental car registered to Wyman. She said there were three guys in the car, but she didn’t get a good look at any of them.”

Claire pointed at the pictures from Rucker’s file. “I imagine they looked just like that.” The rage was still boiling at the back of her mind, but she held it back. “Which one is Packard?”

“Oh.” Randall picked up a Sharpie and identified the proper photo. “So that’s good news. We have names for three out of the six.”

“Names doesn’t do us much good, and it doesn’t help the women they’re holding right now. Where is Jodie?”

“She stayed at work.” Sensing her reaction, he quickly added, “It was her decision. Tell me I would’ve had a shot of talking her out of it.”

Claire sighed. “Right.” She paced toward the window. “We need to tell Mayor Hood-Colby about this while we have the chance. We don’t need any kind of search warrant because there’s no way Wyman is the legal owner of those houses, but I want an official okay before we start stomping all over the land. Without a judge, the mayor is the most authority we can hope for. You said Jodie was okay?”

“She’s absolutely fine, Claire. You have my word.”

“All right. Okay. I’ll go talk to the mayor right now.”

“Uh, boss? In a way, we’re pretty lucky that Packard got hurt. If he weren’t in the hospital, we’d have to stick him in one of the cells right alongside George. If we start arresting more of these guys, we’re going to have an overcrowding issue.”

It was a concern she’d had in the back of her mind, but not one she’d come up with a solution for. “We’ll worry about that when we catch more of them,” she said. “Thanks, Randall.”

“You got it. Boss?” Claire turned to look at him. “You should watch Memento. It really is a good movie.”

She rolled her eyes and couldn’t stop herself from chuckling.

Claire put on her coat and the Stetson. As she left the building, she took out her cell phone and dialed Jodie’s number. It buzzed once.

“I had a feeling you might call.”

“Are you positive you’re--”

“I’m okay, Claire. Honest.” The sound of engine work was suddenly muted, and Claire assumed she had stepped into the office. “I’m a little buzzed on adrenaline, but once that wears off...”

Claire paused at the doors of City Hall. “Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m good. Can I put a hug on layaway, though?”

“It’ll be waiting the next time I see you.”

Jodie chuckled. “That’s what I need. I should go. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She hung up, took a breath to settle herself, then went inside. The lobby was almost stifling after the cold air of outside. The heat was on full blast, and the combined body heat of people paying fines and water bills made it feel like a sauna. The people talked loudly to be heard over other people talking loudly as they all tried to make sure everything was settled just in case they were snowed in. She headed upstairs and found the mayor’s secretary was gone but the office door was open. She knocked as she went inside, taking off her hat.

“Mayor?”

Patricia was standing at the desk. She looked up to see who it was, then went back to gathering the papers on her blotter.

“Sheriff Curran. Do you mind walking and talking? I’m embarrassingly late for a meeting.”

“Can you be very late for it?”

Patricia paused. “That depends. What’s going on?”

“I think someone is using the island for human trafficking. The girls arrive on the western shore, our guy grabs them up, and he takes them to the mainland one by one to avoid suspicion.”

“Shit.” Patricia took off her glasses and put the papers back down. She picked up her phone, punched an extension, and tapped her finger against the receiver as it rang. “Toby? Hi. I won’t be there. You can take over as my proxy. Yes. Thank you.” She hung up and sat down, gesturing for Claire to do the same. “Okay, Sheriff. Tell me what you know.”

Claire took a seat and put the Stetson on the arm of the chair. Patricia listened silently as she carefully explained everything she’d learned since Rucker’s death.

“I can’t prove any of this,” she admitted when she got to the end, “but the pieces fit. And even if I’m wrong about who those girls are in the photos, Wyman can’t be up to anything good in those abandoned houses.”

Patricia said, “I absolutely agree. And you’re positive your wife is okay?”

Claire tensed. “I haven’t seen her, but Randall said she’s fine. He wouldn’t sugarcoat it if she wasn’t. But I plan to go talk with her after I leave here.”

“And how are you doing? I don’t want to dredge up bad memories, but I... I know what happened to Elaine. It can’t be easy to have another bad person trying to use the woman you love against you.”

“I appreciate the concern, but I... I don’t...” She looked at the frost-covered window until she regained her composure. “I can’t afford to think like that right now, Patricia.”

Patricia nodded. “I only brought it up because we have a spare room. Jill and I, at the mayor’s residence. The property has a wall. And a gate. If you and Jodie want to camp out until this is all taken care of, we’re great hosts.”

Claire lowered her head to look at her shoes, completely stumped about why she was being so emotional. Finally she just nodded.

“We’re happy to do it. I don’t want to give these assholes the chance to try again.” She took out her cell phone. “I’ll call Jill and ask her to set up the room when she has a chance.”

“Thank you.”

“These guys tried to abduct a woman in broad daylight. And if your suspicions are right, they also killed Cal when he started making moves against them. I’m not losing anyone else, and I don’t want you pulling your punches.” She hit a button on her phone and put it to her ear. “I’ve heard the song they wrote about you, Claire, and I feel lucky to have you looking out for us here.”

Claire said, “For the record, I hate that song.”

“Yeah, we all hate it when people write songs about how awesome we are.” She winked and then reacted to her call being answered. “Jill... hey. Are you at home...?”

They arranged for the room to be ready for Jodie to move in that night, and Claire promised she would join her. It wasn’t hiding, she told herself. It was being smart, savvy, retreating behind the castle walls in order to regroup and come up with a strategy. She thanked Patricia again and stood to leave.

“One more thing, Sheriff,” Patricia said.

Claire turned around at the door.

Patricia smiled. “I love the hat.”

Claire looked at the Stetson, then self-consciously put it on. “Jodie’s idea. I’m sure it’ll grow on me.” She touched the brim. “Thank you again, Patricia.”

“This is our home. We’ve got to look out for each other. You go get ‘em, Lance.”

Claire usually corrected people when they called her that. It was an old name, a name that belonged to a folk hero, a celebrity, someone who didn’t exist anymore.

But just this once, she thought she’d let it slide.