Please don’t hate me for dying, she begs her children. Mom loves you.
Sirens rip the night as her vision turns black. The dark envelopes her body and pulls her into its clutches.
CHAPTER TWO
THREE YEARS LATER
Genoa Cove, North Carolina
Arms snake around Darcy’s throat and cut off her oxygen.
“Fight him.”
She twists her hips and rolls, but her captor holds her firm. The man’s breath is hot on her neck, the veins standing out on his arms as he pulls her chin back. The instructor, Bronson Severson, yells advice she can’t discern over the shouting spectators.
During sparring sessions choke holds are illegal. Why the instructor allows the holds this time Darcy doesn’t know, but if she doesn’t make a move soon, she’ll lose consciousness.
She feels her muscles weaken as the man strains to control her. Scrambling to slip her hands free, she drives her palm against his forearm. The momentary break of his grip is all she needs. Darcy twists and drives the point of her elbow toward his temple, pulling back at the last second so she doesn’t injure him.
“Stop.”
At the instructor’s command, Darcy rolls out of the man’s arms and jumps to her feet. Her opponent, a forty-something policeman with a shaved head and a black and gray beard, shakes the cobwebs out of his head. He blinks at Darcy, knowing she could have knocked him cold if she struck him flush. Darcy offers her hand, but the cop pushes himself up and stands against the wall, catching his breath.
Six women ranging in age from young housewife to golden years circle the mat. Bronson, an ex-cop with the Charlotte Police Department, jots a note on his clipboard. He has a neck like a linebacker’s, his skin tanned and weathered from life beside the ocean. His chin is strong, arms chiseled from years of weight training. The fifty-five-year-old doesn’t look a day over forty.
“I trust everyone observed Ms. Gellar’s technique for breaking the grip of a stronger male.”
Darcy isn’t used to compliments. Usually Bronson spends half the class critiquing her mistakes. The man would have made an excellent drill sergeant.
“That’s why I continuously stress that you keep your hands free when someone grabs you from behind. I don’t care if you’re sixteen or sixty-five. Drive the point of your elbow into an enemy’s temple with speed and precision, and he’ll give up his grip.” His eyes sweep the class. When they come to rest upon Darcy, they narrow. “But hopefully the rest of you won’t make the critical mistake of rolling into a choke hold in the first place. That’s an amateur move, one that will get you killed in a life or death struggle.”
Ah, that’s more like it.
She collects her backpack and slides on her socks and sneakers as the other women file past. Using a hair tie, she works her long, dark locks into a ponytail, identical to how her daughter, Jennifer, wears her hair.
“Thanks for agreeing to be a punching bag, Julian,” Bronson says, slapping the officer on the shoulder. “Tell the boys down at the office I said hi.”
Julian gives Bronson a sidelong glance Darcy doesn’t understand. She didn’t mean to embarrass Julian, and Bronson’s good-natured jabs make it worse. All she wanted to do was escape the choke hold. As the police officer changes out of his training shirt and stuffs it into his gym bag, she considers apologizing. Too late. The officer throws the bag over his shoulder and shoves the double doors open.
Darcy follows Julian outside when Bronson stops her.
“That was a dumb move, leaning back into his chest like that. You practically invited him to choke you out.”
“I panicked.”
“Obviously.”
“Since when is a rear naked choke legal during sparring sessions?”
“It isn’t.”
Darcy switches the backpack to her other shoulder.
“Yet you allowed it today,” she says, darting her eyes to the ring finger on his left hand.
There’s no band there, but he keeps rubbing the finger as though searching for a missing item. He’s recently divorced, she thinks. Three years removed from her profiler position, and she still assesses everyone she meets based on their mannerisms. There’s no turning it off.
“You handled it, so no harm, no foul. I would have stepped in if you were in danger. Trust me?” He grins, and she nods. “You’re showing improvement. Keep coming to class, clean up the mistakes, and soon you’ll be teaching beside me.”
“I doubt that,” Darcy says, smiling. “But thank you.”
“It makes me think you’ve had similar training in the past.”
He raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t take the bait. Seems she isn’t the only profiler in the room. Better he knows her as a single mother new to Genoa Cove and not the FBI agent who accepted an early retirement after a serial killer came within inches of murdering her. It’s difficult enough to stay below the media’s radar and keep reporters from hounding her children. But anyone with a search engine can find out all they wish to know about Darcy Gellar’s past.
She says goodbye and exits the dojo before Bronson can probe further. In the parking lot, she unlocks her Prius when her phone rings. It’s Hunter. This can’t be good. Her son only calls when something bad happens.
“Hunter?”
“Can you come get me?”
His voice is shaky as though he’s gotten into an altercation or just finished crying.
“Sure, but I thought Michael was driving you home today.”
Michael, who lives two blocks from their house, plays on the football team with Hunter and brings him home after practice.
“Just come, all right?”
“What did you do?”
Hunter ends the call, and she regrets her accusatory tone. It’s difficult to maintain neutrality. They’ve only lived in Genoa Cove for three months, and during the first weeks at his new school, Hunter has been in the principal’s office twice, and last week a pair of teachers pulled Hunter away before he fought another boy.
Despite her best intentions, she’s failed her children. She knows this. Between the therapy sessions and the anti-anxiety medications, she’s been a hollow reflection of herself since the stabbing. What good is a guardian who is afraid of the dark? Now Jennifer is a freshman, and Hunter, whose previous school in Virginia held him back, is twenty months from graduation. Time moves without her. She’s losing her kids.
Darcy kicks the accelerator, and the Prius lurches forward as she turns off the coast road onto the highway. It takes ten minutes to reach Genoa Cove High School, the gray brick building planted on a hill overlooking the village. The marching band practices on the lower field, and she hears the horn section blare as she coasts through the parking lot, searching for Hunter.
Members of the football team congregate outside the side exit, boys sitting on helmets, others shoving each other and laughing while a hip-hop song thumps from car speakers. A few of the players stop what they’re doing and stare as Darcy drives past. Hunter isn’t with them.
She spots her son in the parking lot beside a boy she doesn’t recognize. Hunter’s hair is dry, a sign he didn’t shower. Did he even practice with the team? His heavy metal t-shirt depicts a demon-like creature breathing fire upon a city. The unknown boy beside Hunter wears dreadlocks, his face punctured by multiple piercings, a chain drooping off his belt loop. Hunter spots Darcy and bumps fists with the unknown boy. The kid vanishes into a Ford Fusion with tinted windows as Hunter drags his feet to the Prius. The door opens, and Darcy hears the words pussy and scumbag shouted in their direction. One of the football players, a barrel-chested boy with red hair, raises a middle finger. He doesn’t care that Darcy sees.