“Yeah, I know what to do.” The troubled kid managed a fleeting smile. “And thanks.”
After a long moment burdened by the silence between two strangers, the girl looked at her plane ticket, then opened the car door and got her belongings from the backseat. While she did, Claire searched her mind for something to say. Anything to make one last connection. She wanted nothing more than to ask the girl to call her when she got where she was going—a mother’s instinct. But she had no right to ask that. She knew this would be the last time she’d see her.
Knowing she’d done the right thing had to be enough.
After the car doors slammed, the girl walked into the airport terminal looking small and unprepared, lugging her big duffel bag. A breath caught in Claire’s throat when the girl turned to look over her shoulder and waved. At that moment—for the first time—she felt a twinge of doubt.
If she had done the right thing, why did it feel so wrong?
Nikki had wanted to tell the woman not to worry, but Ivana had warned her not to talk to her. Her father had made the arrangements and could get into a lot of trouble if she did. Best friends don’t rat each other out, she’d told her. Besides, Ivana and her father were only trying to help.
Despite what she’d been told, Nikki couldn’t help but make one final gesture to the woman who had driven her to Anchorage. She turned to catch a glimpse of Claire through
the huge airport window and waved one last time. Red taillights disappeared down a departure ramp against the backdrop of a pale gray morning. A part of her felt rooted to the spot, yet another part yearned to make her first step toward a new beginning.
Finally, she slung the duffel bag over her shoulder and headed for the airline check-in counter. Soon she’d be in Chicago to meet her friend Ivana Noskova and her father. When she walked by a bank of public pay phones, she stopped and glanced down at her watch. She checked her plane ticket once again and knew she’d have time before her flight took off.
Nikki tossed down her bag and pulled out some coins, but not before she retrieved a special remembrance from her fanny pack. The photo off her desk. It was from her thirteenth birthday, one of the last days she’d been truly happy. She couldn’t leave it behind.
She gazed at the photo and placed the call.
She knew that receiving a call at this time of morning would trigger a sense of panic in most people that something bad had happened—but not Uncle Payton. With him, there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d be home at all. He lived on the lunatic fringe of humanity. A restless soul. Nikki couldn’t resist reaching out to him. She knew why she split from her mother, but Uncle Payton was another story. She hoped he would understand that she had to do this.
As the phone rang, she held her breath. If he answered, she wasn’t sure what she’d say. Mostly, she just wanted to hear his voice, and she wasn’t disappointed.
“I’m screening my calls to avoid someone. Leave a message, but if I don’t call you back, then it’s you.”
A long beep followed Uncle Payton’s gravelly voice. Despite her situation, Nikki smiled at his latest message. And his voice sounded so good. But with a lump in her throat, she clutched the receiver, barely able to speak. A tear slid down her cheek.
She left Payton a message, the only words she could manage. And after a long moment, she hung up the phone and stared at the family photo in her hand.
Even amidst a crowd, she had never felt so alone.
Chicago
6:35
A.M.
CST
With the veil of night lifted, the overcast sky shed its dull pewter glow along a landscape of urban sprawl. The dismal smell of rain made the air muggy. Normally, mornings like this would have challenged Sam to leave the comfort of her bed—an everyday occurrence if she lived in Jess’s hood. She turned off the Stevenson Expressway onto Cicero Avenue going south. Jess had barely said a word the whole trip, no doubt her mind entrenched in her next moves, if Sam knew her friend.
And she did.
“Did you hear what I said about Baker? He’s a snitch for one of the detectives in Vice. Unless he blatantly breaks the law and gets caught doing it, we won’t be able to touch him, Jessie.”
Sam heard the word “we” come out of her own mouth and hoped Jess would ignore it. Too much to hope for.
“Don’t worry, Sam.
We
won’t, but I might feel the urge to reach out and touch the bastard in my own special way.”
After a long moment of silence, Jessie added, “He’s probably only getting rid of his competition by ratting them out. I’d say the guy is vermin on two legs, but I wouldn’t want to insult the rat population.”
Sam had to agree with her assessment. No way she’d have someone like Baker as a snitch. She would have picked another way to obtain information off the streets. The guy didn’t deserve the Get Out of Jail card the CPD had reluctantly granted him. She gripped the steering wheel and stared out the windshield, unsure what to say next.
Under the rumble of Midway Airport, just southwest of downtown, the normally bustling thoroughfare was quiet by comparison to what it would be in an hour. Commercial fast food, gas stations, and minimarts lined the avenue, crammed in and competing for space. In her mind, the exhaust fumes of the heavily traveled street and the annoying roar of the flight path of a busy airport created a mix of sights and sounds that had all the aesthetic appeal of a greasy oil slick. The marginal businesses choked out the small homes and apartment complexes, casting a dingy pallor across the older residential neighborhood.
Totally depressing.
“Things never change here in paradise.”
Sam couldn’t resist the jab as she pulled into an apartment parking lot off the main drag and headed for an empty slot marked for visitors near the rental office. A small two-story complex had been converted from an old motel into apartments. Oatmeal gray paint peeled off the exterior walls, suffering from an overdose of neglect. The only color in a sea of apathy, gang signs were painted across the rusted metal mailboxes located near the door of the rental office, right under the nose of an indifferent management.
“Yeah, I pinch myself every day.”
“What? Hoping you wake up from your self-inflicted nightmare?”
Her sarcasm didn’t get a rise out of Jess, but they’d had this argument before. And she was in no mood to rehash it.
“You okay for money? ’Cause I can—”
“Don’t…” Jess interrupted. “Please don’t say it. I don’t need money.”
Sam caught the flinch of her jaw, and Jess crossed her arms, looking as if she hurt, on the outside and in.
“It’s just that Baker is not a bail jumper. Unless you know something I don’t, you won’t earn a dime from chasing his miserable ass. You’re fixated on him, and I’m…I’m worried about you, that’s all.”
“I’ve got my reasons, Sam. And sometimes it’s not about money. I thought you got that.”
She definitely got it. She wasn’t going to retire early on what she made as a cop, but she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“I do, Jessie,” she muttered under her breath. “I do get it.”
She parked the car but kept the engine running, figuring Jess had seen enough of her company. She often wondered why Jess had chosen an apartment in this neighborhood when she could afford to live elsewhere. If pressed for an answer, she believed her friend had convinced herself she didn’t deserve better. A reflection of a low self-esteem that had been thrust upon her, a feeling that Jess couldn’t outrun or overcome.
Maybe her choice had been a form of penance, a self-inflicted punishment because she thought she didn’t deserve any better. Or her matchbox existence provided the bare minimum roof over her head at a cheap price. Either way, Sam knew that living here would be a self-fulfilling prophecy for Jess. Her surroundings would wear her down, whether she realized it or not, like a hostile subliminal message.
To live with the dark memories of the abuse she had survived, Jess focused on eradicating those who preyed on the weak, one two-legged vermin at a time. Sam understood this, but some days her friend’s antics were harder to accept, like living in a low rent dump and shunning anyone who got too close. And even though Jess invested all her energy into the pursuit of her worthy mission in life, she lived in complete denial that she was part of the walking wounded.
“Why are you still living here?” Sam asked. “This place is a dump.”
“You know me. The price was right. I’m saving up for that summer home on the lake.” Jess opened the car door, a sad, distant smile on her face, but she didn’t move. Instead, she turned toward Sam as if she read her thoughts. “Besides, you know how much I love the cozy atmosphere.”
To punctuate her cynicism, a jet bellowed overhead, nearly drowning out her words.
“Yeah, this place is a real gem.” Sam smirked and raised an eyebrow.
Even as tired as Jess looked, she broke down into a smile that turned to a soft chuckle, her unfailing humor another quality Sam admired.
“Come up for coffee, sista,” her friend offered. “Being grilled by the cops always makes me hungry. If you sweet-talk me, I might rustle up some breakfast for both of us.”
“No sweet-talking required. Somebody’s got to patch you up.” Sam grimaced. “Of course, all this comes after you take a shower. Did I say you smell like a college frat house?”
“Now I
know
you’re being kind.”
With a grin, Sam turned off the ignition and followed Jess to a place she knew all too well. Her friend trudged up metal stairs to the second floor landing and headed toward the back of the complex. Her apartment was down and to the right, a unit overlooking a narrow alley and a commercial storage enterprise. She wondered if Jess got a discount for the crappy view.
But as they rounded the corner, Jess stopped Sam cold, thrusting a hand across her body, holding her back.
Her front door gaped wide, busted open, splintered at the lock. Jess nodded and kept her silence as she reached for the gun she kept holstered at the small of her back.
Sam pulled her Glock 17 and shoved Jess behind her, a cop performing her duty. The move irritated her friend, but there would be no argument. Sam inched closer to the doorway and peered into the dark with weapon raised. She listened for any noise that told her the intruder was still inside, but the damned airport and traffic along Cicero Avenue made that impossible.
Staying low, Sam made a quick move across the threshold to get to the other side of the doorway. Facing Jess, she
caught her friend’s eye and gave her silent instructions, letting her know she’d take the lead and Jess would follow.
Peering into the shadows inside, Sam rushed through the door with weapon drawn and Jess at her shoulder. But the sight of the room snatched her next breath.
A shambles.
Nothing remained unscathed.
An overturned bookshelf had its contents scattered around the room, picture frames lay shattered on the carpet with photos torn apart. Her bills and personal mail had been strewn over the floor. And a knife had shredded her small sofa, tufts of foam yanked out and thrown across the room. Her possessions were piled high, touched by the stranger who had invaded her home. And the carpet smelled of urine. Nothing would be salvageable. Jess knew the malicious break-in was more than a mere robbery the moment she saw it. This was an act of sheer rage.
Lucas Baker had left her a message.
She was aware of Sam staring at her, expecting a reaction. But she couldn’t move. And nothing came from her mouth, although inside she felt like screaming. Eventually, Sam left her side and continued her search through the tiny apartment, checking for intruders. It wouldn’t take long. She remained behind in the living room, completely stunned.
Her body ached from the fresh bruises, but nothing hurt worse than this cold violation of her privacy. Her eyes began
to water, but she choked back the emotion. She didn’t have much to her name, but what she owned now lay in tatters, a lifetime ripped to shreds in a matter of minutes. The degradation only brought back the fear—the mind-numbing fear she despised.
When Sam rejoined her, Jess barely heard what she said. She crossed her arms to stop from shaking.
“I’ll call it in if you want, but there’s something you gotta see first. In your bedroom.”
Sam touched her arm, forcing her to finally move. By the time she got back to her bedroom, she was numb with loss. It looked the same as her living room. None of her possessions were recognizable, heaped in piles like so much garbage. And insult to injury, the bastard had taken her backup gun. A sweet .45-caliber Glock 21 with thirteen ACP rounds in the mag and one more in the chamber. Angry words were smeared across the walls in her lipstick, mixed with death threats. If there was any doubt of the intruder’s intentions, Baker’s coercion became perfectly clear with the harsh words scrawled across her dresser mirror.
YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT!!!
Written all in caps, she could hear him screaming in her head, a replay of what happened hours before. The sound mixed with other voices from her past, a paralyzing recollection. And with haunted eyes and her face bruised and cut, Jess stared at her own reflection in the mirror through the scrawl, feeling lost and alone. The rage of a lifetime swelled inside her, on the brink of breaking loose. She’d worked so hard to keep the past behind her. To control it. But now it glared at her through accusing eyes. Her eyes.
While the police held her for questioning, the scum bucket had plenty of time to rip apart her life. The anger threatened to burst inside her, a seething pool of heat. The urge to cower in a corner like a lost child waged its quiet war
against grabbing her Python to hunt Baker down like a crazed vigilante.
Jess gritted her teeth, fighting off the itch to nail Baker—now.
“He stole my backup gun. A Glock 21,” she muttered.
“Do you know what he wants?” Sam asked. When Jess didn’t answer right away, Sam grabbed the cell phone clipped to her belt. “I’m gonna call this in. Get a team over here to dust for prints.”
Jess held out her hand to stop her overzealous friend.
“No, don’t. Let me handle this, my way.” She locked her gaze on Sam, but turned away the minute her friend opened her mouth.
“You know more than you’re letting on. I know you. What’s this all about, Jessie?”
Sam didn’t stop there. She ranted on about reporting her stolen weapon and about not taking the law into her own hands, but Jess stayed focused on the problem at hand, struggling to regain her composure. Baker wanted his property back, but she couldn’t tell Sam everything about her recent skirmish with the bastard. At least not yet. She had to respect Sam’s position as law enforcement. And her friend had done too much already, risking her job to tell her about Baker. This was her problem, and she’d deal with it her way.
With Seth’s help, she’d get her shot at Baker’s computer. By the looks of her place, she’d paid a hefty price for the right to invade his privacy, returning the favor he’d just bestowed on her. But she had no intention of getting Seth more involved than he already was. With Baker acting as an informant to the cops—a fact she hadn’t known until today—one of them might have leaked the information on her address. And that thought scared the hell out of her. She didn’t have the heart to tell Sam what she suspected. And no way would she drag Seth into this cesspool. After the kid dissected Baker’s laptop, he’d be out.
“Aw, Jessie.” With her voice laden with disappointment, Sam shook her head. Her eyes filled with the sympathy of a friend—absent the judgmental glare of a jaded cop who knew better. “What have you gotten into now?”
Getting in hadn’t been the problem. Walking away in one piece would be the real challenge. She always figured that if you’re gonna walk on thin ice, you may as well dance. And she and Baker weren’t done with their time on the dance floor.
Outside Talkeetna, Alaska
Mid-morning
Warm sheets felt good against his bare skin, especially with the soft patter of rain tapping its sweet music along his rooftop and windowpanes. He’d always been a sucker for rain, Nature’s version of a lullaby. Behind closed eyelids, Payton Archer pictured a steel gray morning, heavy with the smell of rain, commonplace in Alaska this time of year. The summer sun rarely made an appearance through the constant and dense cloud cover, even with the longer daylight hours.
With eyes shut, Payton could imagine his world a different place. Rapt in the last vestiges of sleep, he lay perfectly still, clinging to the twilight before he opened his eyes to the reality of his life. He listened to the sound of his breaths as if they came from someone else. A slow steady rhythm. The simple ebb and flow of a man who didn’t know failure.
Today, things might be different. Maybe
he’d
changed.
Like hell.
The serene moment of complete denial didn’t last long. When he rolled to one side, the top of his head nearly exploded. Shooting pain charged up his shoulders and neck, burrowing behind his eyes like it had a perfect right to be there. And who was he to argue? Hell, his brain took up
prime real estate in his skull and certainly wasn’t working hard enough to pay its own way.
“Shit.” His rumbling baritone vibrated through his aching head with all the finesse of a shrill air horn at close range.
Bleary-eyed, he squinted across his small cabin, propped on an elbow. Every detail rolled in and out of focus—clothes strewn along the floor, an old liquor bottle with its spilled contents, and his bed pillows, which had migrated across the room. Strands of his dark blond hair hung over his eyes, masking much of the upheaval from last night. A good thing. He’d never get high marks from
Good Housekeeping
, even on his best day.
To clear the haze, Payton ran a hand over his face and scratched the stubble on his chin. Every bone in his head throbbed with a dull pain. Even his teeth hurt. And his throat felt like someone had jammed an old sock down it, foot and all.
“You’re up. Good. I thought you might be dead.”
Payton jerked his head when he heard the man’s voice. The sudden move punished him. A shadow stirred, a dark shape sitting at a wooden table next to his stove. A blur of red flannel and a slick navy windbreaker beaded with rain.
Gradually, the deadpan expression of Joseph Tanu emerged from Payton’s self-induced fog. Oval face with dark skin and long black hair streaked with gray. Joe’s deep-set eyes looked like dense volcanic glass, shiny obsidian reflecting the man’s ancient Haida lineage. Age lines furrowed his face, but Payton had no idea how old Joe was. He never asked; it never seemed important. He’d known the Native Alaskan since his early teens. Being a local trooper at the time, Joe had been the one who told him and his sister Susannah about their parents—right after his father’s Cessna slammed into the mountain range outside Juneau. The worst day of his life. And that was saying something.
“Thanks for the concern,” Payton grumbled. He sat up in
bed and raked fingers through his hair. Every muscle and joint bellyached from old gridiron war wounds, a persistent pang made worse by his self-inflicted booze bullet to the brain.
When Joe shoveled a fork full of eggs into his mouth—
his eggs
—Payton put two and two together.
“Hey, you eating my food?”
“I was out of bacon.” Joe shrugged without contrition. “And if you woke up dead, I wanted dibs on your stuff. Bacon and eggs seemed like a good place to start.”
Payton scrunched his face. “Can’t argue with
that
flawless logic, but I’ve seen bag ladies with better shit than me.”
Joe leaned back in his chair and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time.
“You’ve got a point.” He nodded, pursing his lips. “Guess I better raise my standards.”
“You don’t have any. That’s why we’re friends.”
A rare smirk flashed across Joe’s face. “I made you breakfast. Get your sorry ass over here.”
“Not hungry. It’s too early.”
Payton stood on wobbly legs in his boxers and trudged to the bathroom. Not bothering to close the door, he took care of business.
“In some countries, you might be right. But here, the morning’s already come and gone.”
Thinking over the vague memories of last night, Payton flushed and washed his hands and face, then looked over his shoulder as he toweled off.
“Hey, how did I get home last night? You took my truck keys, right?”
Joe chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “You were in no condition to drive. Your truck’s out front. You gotta gimme a ride home. But last night, that Jessica Alba look-alike offered to tuck you in bed personally.”
“Sandy Kirkwood? I must have been drunk…
and
out of my mind.”
For a woman, Alaska was a target rich environment, with the male to female ratio nearly four-to-one. With her looks, Sandy could have her pick. Yet for some bizarre reason, she had culled him out of the herd, targeting her red hot brand on his hindquarter. The feeling wasn’t mutual.
“She’s got all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I didn’t get married last night, did I?” He quickly brushed his teeth.
“No, you turned her down flat and walked home. That really pissed her off, but I got a feeling she considered it foreplay.” Joe narrowed his eyes and crooked a lip. “Playing hard to get, that’s not a maneuver most guys can pull off. And Sandy’s not the kind of gal who hears no too often. You’ve got balls of brass, boy. Speaking of an overdose of testosterone, what got into you last night? You nearly tore my place apart.”
The brawl at The Moose Nugget nudged his conscience. Joe’s bar and grill, his pride and joy. After rinsing his mouth, Payton stood in front of the sink and stared at the stranger in the mirror. The harsh light made the dark circles under his blue eyes worse. And the bruises on his jaw were raw and swollen.
Nice, real nice.
“Sorry about that.” Payton winced. “I’ll pay for everything.”
“Yes, you will, but that doesn’t answer my question.” Joe walked over and leaned against the doorjamb to the bathroom, his face reflected in the mirror over Payton’s shoulder. “You let that loudmouth jackass get to you. What happened to the Iceman?”
Joe referred to the nickname he’d been given when he played pro football for the Dallas Cowboys. Folks in Texas thought everyone from Alaska lived in friggin’ igloos and mushed dogs, so the name stuck through the end of his career. His last stop had been with the Chicago Bears, a period of his life that had gone from bad to worse in a hurry. After Chicago, he wanted to crawl into a hole and forget he ever played the game.
But he’d been dubbed the Iceman mainly for his nerves of steel in the pocket, in the face of a fierce blitz. A quarterback who could take the punishment of a linebacker freight train. Those days were long gone. He’d pissed them all away, with no one to blame except the man in the mirror.
“The Iceman is nothing but urban myth. The agony of defeat replayed over and over on some TV sports channels.” Payton grimaced in the mirror, his blue eyes turning stormy gray.
His gut gnarled. And it had nothing to do with “the morning after” or the nauseating smell of bacon and eggs lingering in the air like a hostile cloud. He was a has been at the ripe old age of thirty-two. Natural athletic ability, scholarships, and prime opportunity, he’d been handed keys to the gates of heaven—to make something of his life after the tragedy of his parents’ death. But he’d fucked it up, for him and for his sister Susannah. And every day he looked in the mirror, it reminded him of the betrayal to his parents’ memory. Utterly pathetic.
“You were always hardest on yourself, Payton. Even growing up, you always set the bar so high. That attitude kept you reaching for the impossible. But when you fell, you fell hard, boy. I never wanted that for you. I wish—”
“I know, Joe.” He brushed by the old man and reached into a trunk to pick out a T-shirt, jeans, and an oversized blue flannel shirt. Mostly, he couldn’t look Joe in the eye.
As Payton dressed, Joe talked.
“You’re alone even in a crowd. I can see it in your eyes, you’ve tossed in the towel. Your whole life is in front of you and you act like it doesn’t count.” Joe stuffed his hands into his pockets but kept his eyes on Payton. “You need to come out of the locker room with a second half, son. Don’t make it about your parents or anybody else. Make it about you, what you want.”
“Hell, what if this is all I’ve got, Joe? Livin’ day-to-day off the bankroll of my glory days. Maybe I’m fresh out of
comebacks and you’re the one who needs to adjust his thinking.” Payton poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip and muttered, “Get used to it. I have.”
Bitterness tainted his mouth, and it had nothing to do with lousy coffee. For a long moment Joe stared in silence. But when the man opened his mouth to speak, Payton’s phone rang, saving him from round two.