by Tina Whittle
I knew what Garrity meant. Trey’s mirage was of fabulous construction—the Ferrari, the wardrobe, the black-and-white condo, all of it pulled from the Italian style issue of a GQ magazine. Trey knew the life he inhabited was psychological scaffolding. But when pressed about it, he would say only that it worked, the implication being that until it stopped working, he’d be keeping the whole package, thank you very much. And I did not argue.
“So how do I know whether this is the normal weirdness or some new weirdness?”
“The short answer is, you don’t. Recovery can look like relapse and vice versa.”
“So what—”
“Talk to your brother. And if you see a PTSD episode coming, do the thing.”
“What thing?”
He looked incredulous. “You know. The thing. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times.”
“I swear I have no idea—”
He placed one hand on my bicep and squeezed—just once, quickly and firmly. I suddenly remembered all the times I’d done that very same thing whenever Trey threatened to go off the rails. I remembered how he would tense, and then relax under my touch.
Now I was incredulous. “That’s a thing?”
“Uh huh.” Garrity returned his hand to his lap. “You know why it works?”
I shook my head.
“Back in his SWAT days, he led up entry teams, usually as the number one guy, front of the stack. That’s a hard place to be—God knows what fresh hell on the other side of some door, your team in line behind you. You can’t hear a damn thing with the riot helmet on, you got body shields and flashbangs and rifles clattering around, it’s dark maybe. You can’t make a move until every single man on your team is in place, but you can’t ask, can’t look, can’t break formation.”
Garrity talked with the concentrated enthusiasm of a football coach, his hands moving as if he were describing a play-by-play. His eyes gleamed with that peculiar cop shine, like a flash of light along a blade.
“Trey needed a signal to know everybody was in place. So when the last man in line got into position, he squeezed the shoulder of the guy in front of him. The guy in front of him did the same, and they passed the signal up. So when Trey felt that hand on his shoulder, he knew his men had his back. Literally. That’s what he’s remembering, every time you touch his arm. And his brain kicks down the same message now that it did then—got your back, man.”
I didn’t know what to say. All around us, the office hummed with purposeful activity. Everything in its place, everything with a purpose. It was suddenly overwhelming, and I had to restrain myself from bolting from that bright contained lobby.
Garrity tilted his head. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just…it’s a lot sometimes.”
“I know. But we’ll get him through this. We’re his team now. And if you ever need to talk, about anything, holler. I know what dealing with him is like—better than anybody.” He flashed a wry grin. “Well, except maybe Gabriella, but she doesn’t count because she’s French.”
That pulled a half-laugh from me. Trey’s ex. Gorgeous, intelligent, sophisticated, and very much still a part of his life. Like Garrity, she knew Trey From Before. But I couldn’t imagine sitting across from her discussing the only thing we had in common, that we both knew what a complicated delight it was to be the woman in his bed.
Garrity got serious again. “Tai? There’s another explanation, of course. For last night.”
“Which is?”
“He really did hear somebody in the alley.”
I shook my head. “There was no one there. He checked.”
“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone there, someone smart enough to bolt when Trey came barreling out the back door with a gun drawn.”
“Could have been doesn’t equal was.”
“True enough. But regardless, you’ve got trouble brewing, my friend.”
“I think I can handle—oh crap, seriously?” I pulled my phone from my pocket and swiped it to stop the shrill beeping. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What is it?”
“The shop’s alarm system. Again. Which means that any second now—”
My phone rang, this time with the authoritative and slightly demanding ringtone I’d grown familiar with.
“—Trey will be calling.” I shoved the rest of the breakfast bag at Garrity as I put the phone to my ear. “I know, boyfriend, I know. I’m heading up there right now.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have exact coordinates for the touchdown yet.”
I shouldered my bag and stood. “That sentence makes no sense whatsoever.”
“The tornado, Tai. I don’t—”
“The what?”
Garrity grabbed my elbow and showed me his phone, a radar map pulled up on the screen. Sure enough, it flashed with the dreaded words—Tornado Warning—and churned with a red clot of nasty weather spinning and fuming right over downtown Kennesaw.
Right over my shop.
“Aw hell,” I said, and bolted for the parking lot, not even bothering to open the umbrella.
Chapter Five
Driving in the storm’s wake felt like following a stampede. Branches littered the road. Whole tree limbs lay in the ditches like road kill.
I crossed my fingers. “Please please please, let the shop still have a roof.”
Trey’s voice was muffled through the speaker phone. “It has a roof. I can see it.”
I switchbacked the Camaro around a hump of debris, flipping the volume up to hear him better. He had the shop’s live CCTV on his work computer at Phoenix, plus the alarm schematic up on his phone. The former showed no damage, but the latter was insistent there had been a breach at the storage room window. It had taken every bit of convincing I had to keep Trey at his desk and not racing the Ferrari up to Kennesaw.
“Walls too?”
“Yes. All of them.”
“So it wasn’t a tornado?”
“Not that I can see.”
“So what set off the alarm?”
“I don’t know. It could be another false alarm. You’ve had three of them over the past month, ever since I upgraded the system. You can check the recording when you get there and see what happened, but I’ve got no information here. Are you sure—”
“I’m sure. You stay put. The Kennesaw PD is on the scene. I’ll call you back when I know something.”
***
When I got to the shop, I saw young Officer Butch out front, the squeaky-clean, buttermilk-complexioned guy who showed up at every alarm, false or otherwise. I suspected he had a crush on me, what with all the blushing and hat-in-hand chivalry, but he wasn’t crushing this morning. He was all business, rain-slickered and serious-faced, deep in discussion with a woman in a pink raincoat standing underneath a pink umbrella. I opened my own umbrella and muttered an under-the-breath curse.
Brenda Lovejoy-Burlington heard me coming and swiveled to face me, her ash-blond flip unfrizzled and smooth even in the rain. She stood yardstick straight, hips cantilevered in a beauty queen stance. A recent import to the area from parts Up North, Brenda was the third wife of a local businessman. She was also president of the Kennesaw Revitalization Commission and had recently—oh, joy of joys—set up shop in the vacant office right next to Dexter’s building.
I joined them in front of the shop. It didn’t looked tornado-battered. The burglar bars on the front windows were intact, the gravel parking area unfazed. The bleak morning light emphasized every twinge of tacky, from the paint-flaking sign to the faded brick, but I saw no damage. The rest of the square seemed untouched too—one rectangular acre of inexpertly maintained hedges and dilapidated benches bordered by buildings like mine on all four sides, all of it waterlogged but exactly as it had been the night before.
>
Officer Butch nodded his head in greeting. “Hey, Tai.”
“Hey, yourself. What’s up?”
Brenda smoothed her hair from her forehead. “Somebody tried to break in to your shop again, that’s what’s up. Probably trying to steal your car, which is another reason it shouldn’t be parked out back.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s where I’ve parked for a year.”
“Yes, but now the lot is shared property—”
“The lot is, but the parking space is not. It belongs with the apartment, which is a separate address from the gun shop.”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s all together as far as the criminal element is concerned.” Brenda glared at me, looking for all the world like a frostbit petunia. “Your shop attracts them.”
She said “shop” as if it were code for “whorehouse” or “opium den.” Never mind that I’d cleaned up the storefront considerably, taking down Uncle Dexter’s more eccentric posters and handbills, putting marigolds into the window boxes. I glanced at Brenda’s storefront, ablaze now with summery posters and sunshiney images of cleanliness and prosperity. A giant banner unfurled above it all—Kennesaw: Moving Forward!—and the craving for a cigarette hit me fierce and bright and zig-zag powerful, like a bolt of lightning.
I pulled a sucker from my pocket. “Maybe if you’d let me put up a camera in the alley, the criminal element would have a harder time tromping around our area.”
She rolled her eyes. “Another camera won’t solve anything. Cleaning up this square, making it family-friendly, pedestrian-friendly—”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Brenda.” I nodded Officer Butch’s way. “I’ll meet you out back. Where it’s quieter.”
And then I started walking. Brenda kept talking, something about enhanced livability criteria. But I knew the real score. The Kennesaw Revitalization Commission wanted to revitalize me right out of the square. I unwrapped the sucker and shoved it in my mouth, then cracked it between my molars. It was going to be a long day.
***
It really was quieter behind the shop. No Brenda, no traffic, only the pattering of rainwater on the brick pavers and Officer Butch on his radio, his voice a mumble of ten codes interspersed with the scratchy rasp of static.
“So what happened?” I said.
He stood in the mouth of the alley. “Hard to say. The back window alarm triggered, we know that. No evidence of a break-in, though. Nothing broken, front and back doors are still locked.”
“Another false alarm?”
He shrugged. “You’ve had several of those.”
“Yeah. My boyfriend upgraded the system. Everything’s real touchy now.”
Officer Butch rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Seems like it. But here’s the thing—the alarm still needs a trigger. And I suspect I found it.”
I followed his eyes to the mat in front of my door. It took me a second, but then I saw what he was talking about—the mat had several pieces of gravel on it, some of them pea-sized, but some almost as big as golf balls.
I knelt and examined them. “This isn’t from the storm.”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Somebody tossed these at my window.”
“Yep.”
“From the alley, where the security cameras couldn’t catch them.”
“Yep.”
“And then made no attempt to break in.” I stood. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“Nope. Unless this was a test of your security system. In that case, you need to be real careful. As much as I hate to admit it, Ms. Lovejoy may be right. Some unknown perp may be casing your place.”
I felt a cold wash of realization…and guilt. Trey had been right. There had been somebody in the alley the night before. It hadn’t been hypervigilant paranoia that had him chucking me in the safe room.
“I’ll tell Trey. He’ll make the proper adjustments.” I pulled out my keys. “You want to come in while I double-check the cameras?”
He tucked his radio back under the slicker. “Not right now. I just got word the tornado touched down near the park, and we’re all on emergency response for the duration. I’ll come back when I can finish the report.”
The park meant Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield National Park, the three thousand acres of rolling range around Kennesaw Mountain. It was a place of winding trails and forest and tumbling stone, a place where Mother Nature could really pitch a hissy fit.
“Is anybody hurt?” I said.
“Some tourists got throwed around, but no serious injuries were reported. So if you don’t mind—”
“No, no. I’m good. Take care of the real trouble. I’ll call you if I find something.”
He headed back into the alley, hesitated, then turned to face me, his eyes serious. “Tai? You might want to watch out for Ms. Lovejoy.” He craned his neck left and right to see if anyone was listening. “She’s been down at the station a lot. Asking about city codes and violations and penalties.”
“You don’t say?”
“She and her husband bought that building real cheap. I think they have plans to sell it not-so-cheap once they make this square more…beautified.”
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit.”
“I’m just saying. This is the fourth callout you’ve had this past month, including that firearm-discharge violation on Robert E. Lee’s birthday.”
“That wasn’t me, that was Raymond Junior, and it was black powder and shooting caps, not bullets, as I explained to Brenda when she came stomping over here. Every other call-out was a false alarm from the new security system.”
“That’s even worse, and you know it. They don’t like nuisances down at the station.” He put his hands on his hips, all official-like. “Keep things as calm as you can, okay?”
I surveyed my shop’s back door, the scattered gravel, the alley that was apparently Perp Central.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
***
Inside, the darkened shop felt as ominous as a Hitchcock movie. I flipped the switch, and the fluorescent overheads flared and hummed, revealing the boxes and display cases in all their ramshackle glory. I felt a possessive warmth rise at the sight. This place was mine. I’d cleaned the dead flies from windowsills. Squeegeed the windows. Planted marigolds, even if they always died.
Mine.
I tossed the keys on the counter, the toe of my boot scuffing the photograph propped there—Uncle Dexter and Aunt Dotty on opening day, their arms about each other’s waists. In the photo, Dotty’s pixie-cut hair was dark and thick, and Dexter already had the barrel chest and luxuriant mustache of his latter days. I’d taken down his enormous Confederate Battle Flag with a lump of guilt in my throat, folding it with military precision and tucking it away in Dotty’s cedar chest, like laying it in the coffin of a fallen soldier.
I wondered what he’d think of his shop now, of me. I wished I could ask him. I knew what he’d say, though. Stop wasting time and get to work, girl.
I shook off the bittersweet and rolled up my sleeves.
Chapter Six
I’d barely finished sweeping up when I heard the unmistakable growl of twin cam engines and the crunch of tires on gravel. I put down the whisk broom and dustpan. Sometimes dealing with Trey was as complicated and messy as the gun shop, but like the shop, he was all mine. So I wiped my hands on my jeans and went into the main room, where I found him brushing rain from his jacket, his briefcase beside the door.
I shook my head at him. “I told you not to come.”
“I came anyway.”
“So I see. I thought you had a busy day.”
“I’m taking a long lunch.” He went behind the counter and rolled a chair in front of the computer. “Have you reviewed the footage yet?”
“There’s no reason to. The perp—to use Officer
Butch’s favorite word—took advantage of the blind spot in the alley. So until Brenda sees fit to let me put a camera up, it’s gonna be open season on my back door. A fact she seems to be enjoying.”
Trey wrinkled his forehead as he pulled up the video screen, tapping in the key code that got him access to the archived footage. I joined him behind the counter, watching as he ran the video backwards and forwards, frame by frame, looking for some clue in the grainy footage. The camera we did have couldn’t capture the alley, but it did show the back lot clearly.
He pointed. “There.”
I followed his finger. Sure enough, I could see gravel strike the casement window, and sure enough, it came from the direction of the alley.
I cursed and fished in my pocket for another sucker. “Doesn’t Brenda realize that blind spot could backfire on her one day?”
“One would think.”
“One certainly would.” I shoved the candy in my mouth and hopped up on the counter next to him. “Unless she doesn’t care. I mean, there’s nothing to steal from her space except City of Kennesaw propaganda, whereas I’ve got a shop full of expensive weapons.”
“A hazard of the profession, yes.”
I swung my feet. “This means you weren’t hearing things last night. There really were footsteps.”
Trey kept his gaze riveted on the screen, but I saw a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He sat back abruptly, index finger tapping the arm of the desk chair.
“It could have been a would-be burglar testing the system,” he said.
“Officer Butch suggested the same thing. He also suggested you might want to dial down the sensitivity just a hair. The false alarms are getting me grief down at the station.”
Trey started to reply just as my phone rang. I checked the readout. “Hang on, this is one of my clients. I keep telling them I’m closed this week, but they keep calling.” I put it to my ear. “Sorry, Richard, still closed.”
