by Aimee Hix
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Dark Streets, Cold Suburbs: A Willa Pennington, PI Mystery © 2019 by Aimee Hix.
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First e-book edition © 2018
E-book ISBN: 9780738756004
Book format by Bob Gaul
Cover design by Shira Atakpu
Editing by Nicole Nugent
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hix, Aimee, author.
Title: Dark streets, cold suburbs / by Aimee Hix.
Description: Woodbury, Minnesota : Midnight Ink, [2019] | Series: A Willa
Pennington, PI mystery.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018044221 (print) | LCCN 2018046050 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738756004 () | ISBN 9780738754703 (alk. paper)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.I95 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.I95 D37 2019 (print) |
DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044221
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chapter
1
The windows were already fogged from the humidity inside the building clashing with the icy February night. I hesitated for only a second; out of the corner of my eye, an image, a reflection in the glass—two men coming at me too fast. I had just enough time to drop my bag and turn to block the blow. I wrapped my fingers around the first man’s wrist and twisted while pressing my thumb into his median nerve. He dropped a blade. Taking the offensive, still holding the first man immobile at the wrist, I stepped forward to kick the knee of the second man.
Block.
Hold.
Target.
Strike.
“Go, now,” I barked. “Call 911.”
I set my mind to the situation and felt the immediate shift. My adrenaline amped down. Not flight, fight. Letting go of the man’s wrist, I danced back two steps and put my hands up to block. Prizefighter stance.
Neither noticed my back leg planted and when I pivoted and slammed the taller of the two with a roundhouse kick to the ribs, he toppled. One attacker on the ground, I took a wider back turn to set my foot down and kept turning, throwing my elbow high into the shorter man’s face. Spinning the rest of the way, I grabbed the back of his neck, bringing his face down to my knee. I pushed him off me and turned my attention to the instigator.
The taller man scrambled to his feet and glanced briefly at his partner then eyed me angrily.
He was furious at being put down by a woman. I could see it in his eyes and knew it would cause him to make a mistake. He did. Instead of taking a moment to assess what to do, he just rushed me. He got within a foot of me and I sidestepped, punching him in the kidney as he passed. He fell forward. I took two steps over to him and kicked him in the sternum as he scrambled to his feet, knocking the air out of him.
I felt another attack coming and threw my arm up to protect my head.
“Stop.”
I looked at the instructor. He was smiling. “Great job, Willa.”
“I missed the third attacker.”
“You immobilized two armed men efficiently while urging your partner to flee and call for help,” Adam said. “I couldn’t expect you to do any better.”
“Clearly you could have or you wouldn’t have sent in the third attacker. I want to do it again.”
“I think we’re done for tonight.” He smiled, but it was firm. Adam turned to the men—boys, really—playing the attackers. “I appreciate you guys coming in tonight for this drill. It was extremely effective.”
“Your girl is a bruiser, Adam. I thought she was going to break my knee but she pulled it at the last second. You sending her to the ring?” the second attacker asked.
“I’m not his or anyone else’s girl, jackass,” I said.
“Sorry. Woman, female, lady, whatever,” he said. His tone made apparent that he didn’t understand, or care, why I was annoyed.
I grabbed my water and took a long drink. Putting it back, I turned to eye the teenage MMA students who’d been drafted as attackers. The other students sitting on the floor, most of them young women, watched us wide-eyed. I was the oldest woman in the class. A woman, not a girl.
“Listen, meathead, when you’re done playing at being a brawler with pads and headgear, ask me about the neo-Nazi I had to fight last year. Until then, keep your sexist, macho crap to yourself.”
“Bullshit,” said the guy with the fake knife. Adam frowned, possibly at the curse, but didn’t say anything or make a move to step in.
I nodded, biting my lip to keep the harsher expletive I wanted to say inside my mouth and dug my phone out of my bag. Pulling up the photo album, I tossed it to him.
“Talk to me about bullshit now, junior.”
They clustered around, looking at pictures that Seth had taken at my insistence. I was still in the hospital and the harsh, florescent lighting exacerbated the purple and blue. Butterfly tape on my eyebrow, stitches in my lip, blood in the white of my left eye, elastic bandages on my right arm and ribs, the machines all in full view. I looked at them when I was tired of training and felt like quitting. Nothing was more motivational than your own battered features staring back at you, reminding you what you were training for in the first place and it wasn’t a fucking trophy or belt.
Adam reached over and plucked my phone from the boys. “Well, with that lead-in, I guess it’s time for you to share your story, Willa.”
My gaze found the others in the room like me. The ones with watchful eyes, suspicious and appraising. The ones who had secrets they weren’t ready to share. Stories that were probably worse than the others even dreamed of. Stories like mine, of being attacked in their homes and brutalized. One looked me dead in the eye, her fragile smile encouraging.
Acid poured into my stomach. I wasn’t ready to go tonight. I wanted to sit in the back like every other time and listen. I wasn’t ready for these people to know
the details of what I had been through, but I’d mouthed off and gotten everyone curious. I slipped on my workout jacket as slowly as I could, debating a swift retreat. I didn’t care if it looked like I was stalling.
While the room was settling down after the drill and verbal altercation, I had a moment to get this fear under control or let it take me down.
“Hi. Welcome. I see we have a few new people tonight. I’m glad you’re here. The more, the merrier. I do want to reassure you that you won’t be expected to do a drill like you just saw. Willa isn’t one of the beginner students, as you may have realized, but I’ll let her tell you her story.”
I slowly walked to the front of the room, pulling the lightweight fleece fabric of the jacket tightly around me as if it could shield me from the looks I knew I’d be getting. Me and my stupid mouth. I needed training to get that under control.
“Like Adam said I’m Willa.”
“Hi, Willa.” Their expectant faces looked back at me.
“Wow, I never realized how much this looks like those AA meetings in the movies.”
That earned a mass chuckle.
“I’m a former LEO. Uh, that’s Law Enforcement Officer. And, I, um, well, I’m former because I quit about a year ago. My best friend was killed in Afghanistan and I decided that I didn’t have it in me to be the person on the porch telling someone their loved one wasn’t ever coming home again.”
It was so much harder than I’d feared. I was struggling to push down a quiver that was threatening to turn into shaking. Hand-to-hand with a bigot had been terrifying, but physical pain was a lot easier to deal with than letting people see what I had on the inside of me. It was hard enough with loved ones; strangers, some who had mocked me a moment before, was a mountain I wasn’t used to trudging. All the stuff I didn’t ever want to share with anyone was the top of the peak.
“So that was about nine months ago, Michael’s death. I kind of went into a tailspin after and bailed on my life for a while.”
I had gotten through talking about Michael without feeling like I’d swallowed a rock. My therapist would have been proud.
“My dad, former military intelligence, former cop, is now a private investigator. I decided to come back and work with him. While he was out of town I kind of ended up caught in a case and it got out of hand. Like crazy out of hand. I can’t really talk about the specifics because it’s an ongoing prosecution but … I mentioned a neo-Nazi a minute ago. He wasn’t a fan of mine, for obvious reasons.” I gestured vaguely to my mixed-race skin and female form.
I could hear muttering. Sweat poured down my back like I’d been exercising hard for hours. My heart raced and struggled to keep my breath even. I unzipped my jacket and stripped it off.
I had been babbling a little. I was definitely going to lose some eloquence points from the European judges. Oh well, I’d try to stick the landing.
“Sorry, public speaking’s not really my thing.”
Adam nodded encouragingly. I wasn’t done yet?
“Anyway, I ended up learning a lot of important lessons on that case. The most important is that as a woman, I couldn’t ever rely on brute strength like a man can. I don’t have the muscles for that. I needed to learn how to use what I did have. My brain. My training, definitely. But the training we received in the justice academy wasn’t enough. I mean, they gave us guns and tasers and batons. A uniform alone is a self-defense tool. Very few people walk up to a cop in uniform and start shit. That’s suicide. But I didn’t have the uniform anymore. I needed some new tools. So the second I got clearance from the doctors, I started training with Adam. Hard. I don’t let up. I can’t. Because the most important thing I learned is that sometimes it’s fight or die.”
I was done. I weaved my way through the stunned women wearing pink sweats and sorority t-shirts. In my gray ATF t-shirt and black leggings, from day one I had looked like a rock in a carton of Easter eggs.
I’d started in private lessons because, honestly, even weeks after I left the hospital I hadn’t been ready for a public class. Or a public anything.
Seth knew Adam Carson from the Army and wouldn’t stop bugging me until I agreed to meet him. He had an unexpectedly gentle and non-threatening nature for such a big guy. He’s like the human version of a Muppet.
We worked one-on-one for weeks; mornings before he opened the dojo, evenings after he closed, Sundays when there weren’t any classes. I needed the privacy. I was bruised and battered and scared shitless. Our first few sessions we just sat and talked about movies, dogs, anything but the incident that landed me in the hospital. The fourth day I walked in to find my brother, Ben, waiting for me.
Adam positioned Ben behind me and said, “Defend your brother.” He gave me no other warning before he lunged and I had less than a full breath to decide what to do. I fought back. My wrist, badly sprained still, screamed at me with every grapple or blow blocked, but picturing Ben bruised and beaten like I saw in the pictures of my own face spurred me on. Adam stopped the drill after a minute. I’d been gasping for breath within ten seconds.
As he iced my wrist, Adam asked me why fighting to protect Ben got me past my fear. I didn’t have an answer other than I loved him and I’d been protecting him for seventeen years. But I had gotten over the hill. I was in for another mountain, so I strapped in and started climbing hard. I left most of those sessions frustrated. I was impatient. It took too long to learn skills, I lagged in energy, my decision-making stalled if I was overstimulated. I berated myself for tiny mistakes. Adam patiently explained that my body needed time to catch up to my will.
Adam clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. The MMA dudes were doing pushups in the corner. That made me smile. I looked around and my gaze landed on one woman standing by herself, wearing a Rolling Stones hoodie. She had an I don’t give a damn expression and a nervous habit of rolling her ankle out. I hadn’t seen her before. I nodded my head over in her direction, silently asking Adam. He shrugged.
I walked over, intrigued. She reminded me of myself. Especially the go away vibe she radiated. Another rock, like me. “First class?”
Up close, she was much younger than I had thought. She’d dyed her hair darker. Like she wanted to look tough. Late teens, at most. I could see her fighting the urge to say something snarky so I decided to let her off the hook.
“I can tell because you don’t look like a frosted cookie yet.”
It probably wouldn’t make Adam happy to hear me make fun of the other students, but I sensed that she needed an ally more than the rules needed to be unbroken. And I’ve got my own smartass issues. She giggled, confirming my assessment of her age. I wondered if she went to Ben’s school.
“You’re wondering if this is the right place for you. You don’t see yourself in these other women.”
She nodded, biting her lip, her eyes following the duck line of women walking behind Adam.
“If you’re here to learn, you’re in the right place. And it looks like you’re stuck with me as your partner, so you’re going to learn a lot. Not to brag or anything, but I’m Adam’s favorite.”
I moved to the front of the room, feeling the girl trail behind me, and took my place near Adam. The girl stood in front of me, uncertainty on her face.
Adam ran us through some basic drills to help us work on our muscle memory, stuff I’d mastered months ago. My new friend did a good job. She kept her focus and when she made a mistake she didn’t act silly like some of the pastels. She worked hard too. We were both sweaty before the halfway mark and I had stripped off my t-shirt to my sports bra. The Rolling Stones hoodie stayed put.
We stopped for a water break. Our guests were still doing pushups in the back. Adam had been very annoyed. I watched the other women pull out their color-coordinated water bottles. The fountain was closer than my gear bag and good enough for me. I knew Adam kept the place spotless.
“I’m Aja, by the way.”
The girl had followed me to the water fountain even though she had a water bottle too.
“Like the continent?” a voice asked from behind us. It was one of the college girls. Her shirt had the school mascot on it. One of the other non-pastels.
Aja blushed. “Uh, the album title.”
“Cool. I haven’t heard of it, but that’s still awesome.” College Mascot girl took her place at the water fountain I’d just abandoned.
“I agree. It is awesome. I love Steely Dan,” I said.
“Oh my god, you’ve heard of them?” Aja asked, blushing a pretty shade of rose that was at odds with her attempt at toughness.
“My dad is a big fan.”
Her smile was suddenly shy, like a little girl. My chest squeezed a little bit.
Adam didn’t work us as hard physically during the second half of the class. We ran through some scenarios—how to be aware, what to look for, giving yourself options. I could see some of the candy-colored women weren’t really engaged. These were harder exercises. They required you to imagine yourself in danger, needing to think several moves ahead like the scariest game of chess you’d ever played. That some students were disconnecting from this part of the class wasn’t a surprise.
“I know it’s hard to think in abstracts. Try imagining it’s a television show you’re watching. It’s late and dark. The lead actress is playing with her phone and absentmindedly starts walking to her parking space after her shift at the bar. What are you yelling at the TV?” Adam asked.
“Put your phone away.”
“Have your keys out.”
“Check your car first.”
“Walk with friends.”
The whole class was getting into it, yelling answers. Adam was an astute teacher to take them back a step, noticing they were resisting playing the victim. I knew what it was really like to be in danger. You yell those things at yourself too. After. Pay attention to your surroundings. Even at the grocery store, shopping with your boyfriend and your brother. Full-on daytime, store packed with yuppies looking for quinoa and arugula. You found yourself checking the locks at stoplights. You felt them look at you, knowing what you were doing, not saying anything, not having to. Because you saw it in their eyes. And then those close to you start doing it too. Before you can. Wanting to make you feel safe. Wanting to take some of it off you. Wanting to make it better. And knowing that they can’t.
