by Jackson Ford
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Jackson Ford
Excerpt from Fortuna copyright © 2019 by Kristyn Merbeth
Excerpt from Adrift copyright © 2018 by Rob Boffard
Cover design by Emily Courdelle and Steve Panton – LBBG
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
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First Edition: July 2020
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931377
ISBNs: 978-0-316-51922-9 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-51918-2 (ebook)
E3-20200610-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
One: The State Trooper
Two: Teagan
Three: Matthew
Four: Teagan
Five: Teagan
Six: Teagan
Seven: Amber
Eight: Teagan
Nine: Teagan
Ten: Matthew
Eleven: Teagan
Twelve: Teagan
Thirteen: Teagan
Fourteen: Amber
Fifteen: Teagan
Sixteen: Teagan
Seventeen: Teagan
Eighteen: Teagan
Nineteen: Matthew
Twenty: Teagan
Twenty-One: Teagan
Twenty-Two: Teagan
Twenty-Three: Teagan
Twenty-Four: Teagan
Twenty-Five: Amber
Twenty-Six: Teagan
Twenty-Seven: Teagan
Twenty-Eight: Teagan
Twenty-Nine: Teagan
Thirty: Matthew
Thirty-One: Teagan
Thirty-Two: Teagan
Thirty-Three: Amber
Thirty-Four: Teagan
Thirty-Five: Teagan
Thirty-Six: Teagan
Thirty-Seven: Amber
Thirty-Eight: Teagan
Thirty-Nine: Teagan
Forty: Teagan
Forty-One: Teagan
Forty-Two: Teagan
Forty-Three: Teagan
Forty-Four: Teagan
Forty-Five: Matthew
Forty-Six: Teagan
Forty-Seven: Teagan
Forty-Eight: Amber
Forty-Nine: Teagan
Fifty: Teagan
Fifty-One: Amber
Fifty-Two: Teagan
Fifty-Three: Teagan
Fifty-Four: Amber
Fifty-Five: Teagan
Fifty-Six: Teagan
Fifty-Seven: Teagan
Fifty-Eight: Teagan
Fifty-Nine: Matthew
Sixty: Amber
Sixty-One: Teagan
Sixty-Two: Matthew
Sixty-Three: Teagan
Sixty-Four: Teagan
Sixty-Five: Teagan
Sixty-Six: The Director
Acknowledgements
Discover More
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of Fortuna
A Preview of Adrift
Also by Jackson Ford
Praise for Jackson Ford and The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind
Dedicated to Jay Rock, Watts, and paella.
Also to Nipsey Hussle. RIP. The marathon continues.
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ONE
The State Trooper
Ninety-nine per cent of traffic stops are completely routine.
Rudy Daniels knows the stats. He’s been doing this job for a while. All the same, that pesky one per cent is never too far from his thoughts, close as the sidearm on his left hip.
Not that he’s worried about this stop. In his learned opinion, it fits squarely in the ninety-nine per cent. He caught a glimpse of the driver as she shot past in her red pickup – she’s not the one per cent type.
Daniels pushes the accelerator, coming in close behind her and blipping the siren. The pickup swerves slightly, as if the driver had been on the verge of falling asleep. There’s the flash of an indicator, and the truck comes to a stop on the hard shoulder, the tyres sending up a burst of fine desert dust.
Daniels brings his cruiser to a halt twenty feet behind the pickup. He squints into the harsh afternoon sun, reading the plate, scratching it out on his notepad in case the driver decides to take off. Not that he’s expecting it. The worst he’s ever encountered on this particular road was the time a couple of kids got into a drag race, and thought they could outrun him. Spoiler alert – as his daughter Kyla would say – they couldn’t.
He keys his mic. “Dispatch, Charlie C3.”
Connie’s voice comes over the line cleanly. “Copy Charlie, what’s up?”
“Got an 11-95 out on the 10.”
“Anything serious?”
“Naw. Just letting you know what’s what.” Daniels reads her the pickup’s plate from his notepad.
“Goddamn slow-ass computer,” Connie mutters. “Sorry, Rudy. Give it a second to run.”
Daniels sighs. If he waits, he’ll be here for ever. “I’ll go have a look-see. Doesn’t seem like trouble.”
“Copy that.”
He grabs his hat from the dash, slipping it on as he clambers out of the cruiser. He wishes he didn’t need it – he’s six-two with shoulders like a linebacker, already scary enough without his shades and the wide-brimmed Highway Patrol hat. But both are essential out here, in the shitting-hot, baking hardpan of the Arizona–California border.
The sunlit sky above is completely empty. So is the highway: no traffic in either direction. Daniels adjusts his nametag, making sure it’s visible, knowing it is but doing it from habit anyway. Traffic stops go a lot easier if the subject has a name to hold onto. He’s heard of other patrolmen, even LA cops, taking their badges off before they head into action. It’s the kind of thing that makes him curl his lip every time he hears about it. God above knows, he’s not perfect, but even the thought of it makes him angry.
The truck has New Mexico plates, yellow on blue. The window is already down, which is good. The driver’s hands come into view as he approaches, still tight on the wheel. No rings – just a single gold bangle on her left wrist. The hands are veiny, fingers thin, the skin baggy around the knuckles. Daniels can’t proper
ly make out the interior yet, let alone the driver, but the hands tell him plenty.
The rest of her comes into view as his eyes adjust. She’s younger than her hands suggest – a lot younger. Early twenties, maybe. Bleached-blonde hair with the brown roots showing tied up in a messy ponytail. High cheekbones, a splash of freckles across tanned skin. Daniels would peg her for a college senior heading out on Spring Break, if it wasn’t for the hands. And her eyes. They’re a little too big for her face, and she’s blinking too much.
For a second, Daniels is on edge – if she’s high, this is going to get a lot more complicated – but then he relaxes. She’s just nervous.
“Afternoon, ma’am. I’m Officer Daniels, California Highway Patrol. You coming from Arizona?”
“That’s right.” Said with a little upward tilt of the chin, like he’d accused her of something.
“May I see your licence, please?”
She starts, digs in her purse. Daniels flashes a quick smile at her passenger, the little boy sitting on a booster in the front seat. His tanned skin is dotted with freckles, untidy brown hair hanging down past his neck. He’s wearing an oversized white T-shirt with a bright hot-air balloon on the front, advertising the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. His head, which is a little too large for his scrawny body, is bent towards the iPad on his lap.
Usually, kids get interested when Daniels asks for a licence, ask if he’s a real police officer or if he can arrest them. Yes I am, and only if you’re mean to your mom. The answers are ready, but the boy barely glances at him.
“Here,” the woman says.
Daniels squints at the licence. Amber-Leigh Schenke, and she looks as nervous in the photo as she does in real life. “You folks on vacation?”
“That’s right. We’re visiting LA. I wasn’t speeding, officer…”
“No, ma’am, you weren’t speeding.” He leans down, hands on his knees, looking across the car. “What’s your name, young man?”
The young man in question says nothing. He ignores both of them, fingers tapping at the tablet screen. He’s reading an ebook, and not one with pictures. His finger traces along the text, his mouth moving silently. Daniels blinks – the kid can’t be more than four. He’s reading already? At that age, his Kyla had only just figured out the sounds of the different letters.
“Say hi, Matthew.” Amber-Leigh rests a hand on the boy’s leg. He doesn’t look up.
Daniels has always relied on his gut in the past, relied on it to send up a little warning signal when something isn’t quite right. It’s just given him the very slightest twitch.
He lets it go, annoyed with himself. His brains must be cooking. He’s stopped hundreds of drivers since he started the job, and he recognises the type. Law-abiding, nervous-as-hell, head filled with scare stories about rural cops.
“Well,” he says, hitching his belt, “you might not know this, being from out of state, but your son’s too young ride in the front seat.”
“He can’t?”
“No, ma’am. Against the law in California.”
“I want to sit up front,” Matthew says. He has a thin voice, high and reedy. He still hasn’t looked up from the iPad.
“He likes to sit in the front,” says Amber-Leigh.
“Sorry. No can do, my young friend.” He taps the pickup’s roof. “Better move on over to the back.”
“We’re sorry, officer.” Amber-Leigh glances at her son. “Would it be all right if he stayed? I’ll drive real careful.”
Rudy Daniels frowns. He’s not in the habit of letting traffic stops negotiate with him. And technically, he should be writing her up – something he wasn’t intending to do, until she started arguing with him.
His stomach rumbles. There are some nuts in the cruiser’s glove compartment, packed by his wife, who says they’re good for his cholesterol. Daniels happens to think that they taste like salted sand, and he’d be better served by a burger over at the diner in Ripley. He’ll have a salad instead of fries, though, to keep Stella happy.
He hands back the licence. “Just put him in the back seat, OK?”
“Is there no way we could—?”
“Have a good day, ma’am. Drive safe now.” He gives the pickup’s roof another tap, turning to head back to his cruiser. By now, Connie’s system will have turned over. Odds are Ms Amber-Leigh Schenke doesn’t have any violations, but—
Officer Rudy Daniels gets three yards from the pickup before the ground opens up and swallows him.
One moment, he’s mid-stride, mind already on his burger, wondering if maybe he should skip the salad and just have the fries anyway, Stella isn’t going to know. The next, there’s nothing but air beneath his foot.
It’s as if the ground is the surface of a pond – one that’s just had a heavy stone dropped into it, right where Daniels is standing. A depression forms instantly, a huge hole that grows deeper by the second. The displaced earth rises on either side of it in two enormous waves, the rocks and dirt and dust rushing outwards and upwards. He falls face-down into a gaping pit, mouth open in a scream that doesn’t quite make it out of his throat. His left wrist snaps on impact, a horrid burst of pain ripping up his arm. His ears ring, and above the sound, there’s a horrible, shivering roar.
Daniels rolls onto his back, gasping, getting a split-second glimpse of sky beyond the rearing waves of dirt. He has time to think one thought – a memory of playing on the beach in Santa Cruz with Kyla, holding her tight as they bodysurfed – then the earth crashes down.
Plumes of white dust drift away. The only evidence of what just happened is a vaguely ovular depression, as if a giant had briefly ground the sole of his boot into the dirt. There’s no sign of Rudy Daniels. His cruiser sits quietly on the shoulder, blinkers on, engine ticking as it cools.
In the pickup, Amber Schenke has her hands back on the wheel, ten and two. Knuckles white.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, staring straight ahead. Her voice is brittle.
Matthew shrugs, still not looking up from the iPad. “I didn’t want to sit in the back.”
After a moment, Amber turns the key and pulls away.
TWO
Teagan
Oh, I fucked up.
I fucked up bad.
Sweat pours down my forehead, sliding into my eyes. I wipe it away with a knuckle, but that just makes it worse. Goddamnit, how could I be so stupid?
I lick my lips. OK. I can fix this. No biggie. I already have everything I need. Holding my breath, I manoeuvre the little wedge of metal into view, floating it through the air with my psychokinesis. Just as well – my hands are way too sweaty to hold it right now.
“Come on, baby,” I whisper. “Momma needs a new pair of shoes…”
Moving very, very freaking carefully, I wedge it into the gap. Wiggle it gently back and forth.
With a slight skritch, the metal spatula slips underneath the burnt rice, levering it up from the non-stick surface of the pan.
I almost squeal with anxiety, hardly daring to look. When I do, I let out a relieved groan. I didn’t scratch the pan. It’s the one good piece of kitchen equipment I own, outside of my knife, and I really didn’t want to fuck it up because I don’t know how to make paella.
I’d already transferred the top layer of unburnt rice to a fresh pan, so at least I have that to work with later. I keep at it, gently prying up the edge of the burnt crust. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to use metal on non-stick. I’ve lost my plastic spatula. It’s somewhere, in the messy clusterfuck that is my apartment, and I haven’t been able to find it.
The key to a good dinner party is to cook something you’re familiar with. That way, you can do it on autopilot, casually reducing sauces and sautéing onions while chatting to your guests and looking like a total pro.
So of course, for tonight’s dinner, I got it into my head to cook a dish I’ve never attempted before. Paella. It’s Spanish, and it’s yummy. Chicken, mussels, peppers, chorizo, jumbo shr
imp. Bound together in creamy, al dente risotto rice, stained yellow with saffron. It’s one of my favourite things to eat in the world. Even the ones I’ve had here in Los Angeles, which is obviously not Spain, are pretty badass.
After reading the recipe, I figured it didn’t look too difficult. I don’t exactly know why I thought the best time to attempt it would be on a night I’m trying to impress a certain someone, but I did. I’m smart like that.
Paella needs to be cooked over fire, in a wide, shallow pan. That’s how you make sure the rice is soft and squidgy on top, and crusty and awesome on the bottom. I do not have a fire, or a special paella pan. I have a shitty four-ring burner in my postage-stamp kitchen.
My mistake was turning the heat too high. The pan couldn’t cut it. It’s baking hot around the stove, and as I dig in with the spatula to get the rest of the burnt rice, a couple of drops of sweat launch themselves off my forehead and land right on top of the only properly cooked shrimp in the entire pan.
Perfect. Just what every dish needs. Teagan’s secret sauce.
I push the spatula in deeper, going past the edge into the central part of the paella. “Come on, you stupid piece of shit.”
The burnt crust does not come on. The burnt crust is a little bitch and stays put, even with my pinpoint-precise mental movements of the spatula.
Yes: having psychokinesis – PK, as I call it – is really useful in the kitchen. It doesn’t help with actual ingredients – I can’t lift anything carbon- or hydrogen-based, so food is a no-go. But it’s great for implements. Not that I can reveal my ability to anyone. If I ever do make it into a professional kitchen – something that is absolutely going to happen, by the way – I’ll be on my own.
Of course, to cook for a living, you probably have to know how to make decent paella. Right now, I am so fired.
It might be better if the meal actually looked nice – trust me, a glowing pan of orangey-yellow paella is an orgasmic sight. Mine is… not. It’s an off-white sludge of creamy rice and proteins and overcooking peppers. As it turns out, you need a ton of saffron to make any real difference to the colour, and saffron is fucking expensive. Shockingly, the government agency I work for wouldn’t let me expense four grams of the stuff.
