Rachel put on a pair of blue sweatpants and a comfy old fleece. Then she removed Reginald Bartek’s driver’s license from her wallet. Examined it. It was a good photo. He was smiling. Freshly shaven. Kind eyes. He looked like a decent man. A family man.
Sometimes behind the kindest eyes lay the darkest hearts.
A lawyer had said those words to Rachel once, as she’d sat in a courtroom staring across the aisle at another man who’d also had kind eyes.
Rachel flipped the license over and reread her words.
Attempted Robbery. Attempted Rape.
She opened the closet and pushed aside a row of blouses and blazers. A large black safe was mounted to the wall. She entered the combination and opened the metal door. Inside was some jewelry, her passport, an engagement ring, a wedding band, her children’s birth certificates (real and fake), and a loaded Mossberg 500 shotgun with four boxes of double-aught buckshot shells.
The diamond on the engagement ring was about the size of a caper and set in a sterling silver band. It wasn’t worth more than $1,500, but when it had sat on her finger, Rachel had felt like the richest woman alive. She used to remove it only when exercising or showering. But now, every time she opened the safe, she regretted each moment she had left her finger bare.
Rachel picked up a small brown cardboard box bound tight with rubber bands and opened it. The box held half a dozen driver’s licenses, passports, and various government-issued ID cards. She’d had some of the licenses for so long they’d expired. One of them had a reddish-brown smudge obscuring half the man’s smirking face.
There was a small plastic bag at the bottom of the box. It contained a single piece of jewelry. A bracelet. It did not belong to her. Rachel stared at the piece for a moment, then placed Reginald Bartek’s license inside the box, closed the lid, and wound the bands back around the box.
“Mommy!”
Megan was awake and calling for her.
“Just a second, sweetie!” she shouted.
Rachel locked the safe and went to put her daughter back to sleep.
Two hours later, after checking the front porch for Eric, Rachel turned on the television in her bedroom and flipped the input to HDMI-8. The split screen feeds came through in sharp high-def black and white.
The left feed displayed Megan’s room. The right feed, Eric’s room.
She’d mounted the CCTV cameras herself. Nearly a dozen others were installed throughout the house, hidden well.
She ran through the different cameras. Megan’s bed. Megan’s door. Megan’s window. Eric’s bed. Eric’s door. Eric’s window. Front door. Back door. Kitchen. Living room. Her own bedroom.
Rachel watched the feeds for a few minutes until she was certain she was alone and the children were fast asleep. She listened to them breathing. Knew their rhythms. Then, Rachel tiptoed to the basement door.
She entered a six-digit code on a silent keypad. The door unlocked. She’d told her children that under no circumstances could they ever go downstairs. She’d said the basement had asbestos and the lock was for their protection. The first part was a lie.
Rachel crept downstairs while her children slept. Her adrenaline began to surge.
She had work to do.
CHAPTER 3
“Dispatch says the scene is a mess,” said Detective John Serrano. “Lieutenant George says the body was found on top of the frozen river. Forensics is on scene. Bridge is closed down. Harbor patrol has a boat out.”
“A boat? Isn’t the river frozen?” replied Detective Leslie Tally.
“Solid,” Serrano said. “I can’t imagine many worse ways to go.”
It was just after 2:00 a.m., and the roads around Ashby were nearly empty. The Crown Victoria was silent aside from the hum of the road and the wipers brushing away snow.
Detective Serrano held a paperback book on his lap. He thumbed the cover, opened it, read a few pages, and closed it again.
“Life would suck if you were an orc,” said Serrano. “You’re born ugly. You grow up ugly. There are a billion of you, and you’re all ugly. Has there ever been an attractive orc? Like, has a boy orc ever looked at a girl orc and said, ‘Whoa, that is one fine-looking orc lady’? And then what do you do to pay the bills? Your whole life is spent either dragging heavy stuff around to build massive weapons of death or in battle, where you’re basically just cannon fodder for your bosses, who would feed you to a troll before giving you the time of day. So basically you’re born ugly, with bad breath and terrible skin, and then die having never been laid, ever.”
“I don’t know how you can read in the car with no light without throwing up,” Tally said. “Even the tiny-ass text on the GPS makes me queasy.”
“My eyes adjust,” Serrano said. “Makes you thankful, doesn’t it? We’re pretty lucky to be human. We could have been born orcs.”
Tally took her eyes off the road for a moment to roll her eyes at her partner. “You have problems, John. Deep-seated problems. You should see a therapist about this goblin stuff.”
“Orcs,” Serrano said. “Not goblins. Anyway, this stuff helps me think.”
“If you don’t stop talking about orcs while I’m driving, I’m going to think us right into the river.”
“You know, I’m willing to bet that Claire and the kids would love these books,” Serrano said. “At least you were smart enough to marry someone who’s open minded, even if her good traits don’t rub off on you.”
“Claire is open minded about Spanish wines and British sitcoms. Books where the main characters have hairy feet and don’t wear shoes? Hell no. And why don’t they wear shoes? They wear clothes, don’t they? So why no shoes? There are rocks in Central-earth, right?”
“It’s Middle-earth,” Serrano said. “But I’ll give you points for trying.”
“Spending twelve hours a day chained to your goofy ass doesn’t give me a choice but to pick up some of your nonsense. Read a real book.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”
“Enough of this crap,” Tally said. “We’re almost there. Dispatch says word from Lieutenant George is that it looks like a suicide.”
“Wouldn’t be the first to go off this bridge,” Serrano said, “and probably won’t be the last.”
Snowflakes drifted onto the windshield like powdered sugar and disappeared beneath the wiper blades. The sky was a rich tapestry of inky black with hues of dark blue. Serrano listened to the wind. Gentle, calming.
Ashby winters could be brutal, but Serrano relished the frigid months. While some people came down with seasonal affective disorder, the cold made Serrano feel alive. Summers sapped his energy. Gorgeous, sun-dappled days brought back memories he had tried long—and unsuccessfully—to forget.
Partnering with Detective Leslie Tally had been a blessing. It was more than a partnership to Serrano. She was his family. Tally had brought him back from the brink on more than one occasion. And if you’d told twenty-two-year-old recruit John Serrano that he’d one day be reading thousand-page fantasy novels and his best friend and only family would be a younger, black, gay detective with three stepchildren, he would have laughed.