‘Yeah. Understood. Whatever you say.’
The bar owner raised his arms in surrender and backed away. Serena saw emotions skipping like beach stones across Cat’s face. Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. Anger.
‘Fred’s a nice guy,’ the girl said finally. ‘You didn’t have to be mean to him.’
‘Does he serve you alcohol?’
‘No,’ Cat said, but Serena didn’t trust her face. She leaned closer to the girl, and although there was no booze on her breath, she smelled cigarette smoke like stale perfume on her beautiful hair.
‘You’ve been smoking.’
‘Just one.’
Serena wanted to scream at the girl, but she held her voice in check. ‘You’re pregnant. You can’t smoke. You can’t drink.’
‘I told you, it was just one.’
Serena didn’t answer. She couldn’t fight teenage logic. As a cop, she’d seen good girls make bad choices her entire life. She knew how easy it was to cross the line. At Cat’s age, she’d been a runaway herself, living with a girlfriend in Las Vegas after escaping the grip of a Phoenix drug dealer. Not a month had gone by in Vegas where she hadn’t fended off the temptation to gamble, buy drugs, steal, or sell herself for the money she needed. She felt lucky that the only serious vice she carried from those days was being a recovering alcoholic. But luck was all it was. A bad choice on a bad day, and her life would have taken a different turn.
Across the bar, Serena saw the young blond woman — the school cheerleader type — grab her phone suddenly and get to her feet. She was nervous and excited and couldn’t control her smile. She smoothed her long straight hair and moistened her lips. If there was a mirror, she would have checked her reflection in it. She took a breath, and her chest swelled. She headed for the bar door, but backtracked to retrieve a baby-blue suitcase from behind her table.
To Serena, it felt wrong. Visitors didn’t come to Duluth and wind up in this bar on their first night. Her instincts told her to stop the woman and ask questions. To intervene. To protect her.
‘Are you going to tell Stride?’ Cat asked.
Serena focused on the teenager again. She knew that Cat was afraid of Stride’s disapproval more than anything else in her life. He was like a father to her, and she was terrified of disappointing him.
‘Yes,’ Serena said. ‘You know I have to tell him.’
Cat’s eyes filled with tears. She was a typical teenage girl, using tears to get her way, and Serena worked hard to keep her own face as stern as stone. Meanwhile, the bar door opened and closed, letting in the patter of rain from outside.
The blond woman was gone.
‘It doesn’t matter what you tell him,’ Cat said, rubbing her nose on her sleeve. ‘He’s going to kick me out sooner or later.’
Her voice was choked with self-pity. She was smart and beautiful and eager to believe the worst about herself. She looked for any reason to believe that her life wasn’t worth saving. To sabotage the second chance she’d been given. That was part of her guilt over who she’d been.
‘It has nothing to do with that,’ Serena told her calmly, ‘and you know it.’
‘When he was married to Cindy, Stride didn’t want kids,’ Cat protested. ‘So why would he want me now?’
‘You’re wrong about that, but even if it were true, it doesn’t matter. He took you in, Cat. He wants you there. We both do. What happened in the past, what happened with Cindy, has nothing to do with who he is today.’
‘You wish,’ the girl snapped.
The words shot out of her like a poisoned arrow. Funny how teenagers could always find your weak spot and apply pressure. If there was anything in Serena’s life that made her feel like an insecure child, it was the thought of Cindy Stride. It was the suspicion that Jonny was still in love with his wife.
Still in love with the wife who died of cancer eight years ago.
Cat knew what she’d done. She looked upset now. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
But she did. And she was right.
‘Come on,’ Serena said, shoving down her own emotions. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
She took Cat’s arm in a tight grip, but then something made her freeze. A woman screamed. It came from the street, muffled by the clamor of the bar. She almost missed it. The cry stopped as quickly as it started, cutting off like the slamming of a window, but Serena knew exactly who it was. She cursed herself for not listening to her instincts when she had the chance.
Serena told Cat to stay where she was. She shoved through the crowd and broke out into the street. Outside, the drizzle had become a downpour, blown sideways by the wind. The Grand Am she’d spotted earlier was still parked half a block away, its headlights white and bright, steaming in the rain. Immediately in front of the sedan was the woman from the bar, her body flailing as she fought to free herself from a man who held her in a headlock.
Serena shouted, and the woman saw her. Soundlessly, in panic, she pleaded for rescue. Serena marched toward them to break up the assault, but she’d barely taken a step when a gun blew up the night. One shot. Loud and lethal. The blond woman’s pretty face, twisted in panic, became a spray of bone, brain, blood, and skin. Her knees buckled; her body slumped to the wet pavement. In shock, Serena threw herself sideways toward the outer wall of the bar.
The bar door opened, and Cat called out curiously, ‘What was that? What’s going on?’
Serena yelled with the protective fury of a mother. ‘Cat, get back inside right now!’
Then she was running. She saw a tall man in a hooded sweatshirt, his back to her as he escaped. The killer. She didn’t stop for the woman lying in the street. There was nothing she could do to help her. She charged after the man, struggling to match his steps, but the pain of the effort weighed on her chest. Rain soaked her black hair and blurred her eyes. The asphalt was slick. The man sped into the darkness of a side street that ended in dense trees, with Serena ten feet behind in pursuit. Matchbox houses on both sides bloomed with light as people crept to their windows.
Serena closed on the man when he slipped and lost a step. The woods loomed directly ahead of them. She knew where she was; the street ended in sharp steps that led down over a creek into the grassy fields of Irving Park. She took a chance, and she jumped. Her body hit the man in the square of the back, kicking him forward, bringing both of them down. He slid onto the moss-slick concrete steps. She scrambled to her feet and dove for him, but he was ready for her. He spun around in the blackness and hammered a fist into her stomach. He grabbed her head. His fingers drove her chin into the rusty railing bordering the steps, where bone struck metal. Her teeth rattled as if driven upward into her mouth. She collapsed to her knees.
He skidded on his heels and jumped down the rest of the steps. She heard his footsteps splashing into the creek below them. He was gone, breaking free into the wide-open land of the park. She hadn’t seen his face.
People from the bar ran toward her, shouting. Somewhere among them, Cat called her name over and over in fear. Serena tried to stand, but she was too dizzy, and she fell forward, tasting blood on her tongue. She was on all fours now. Her hands pushed blindly around the muddy steps, hunting for the railing to use as leverage as she stood up. She felt rocks and tree branches and bug-eaten leaves beneath her fingers, and then, finally, she brushed against the iron of the railing.
Except — no.
What she felt under the wet skin of her hand wasn’t the railing mounted beside the steps. It was something else. Something metal and lethal and still hot to the touch.
When her brain righted itself, she realized it was a gun.
Then