“Ed, this is Sam Douglas down at the police department. How are you, man? It’s been a long time.”
Sam didn’t know if he’d ever met Ed Lawrence, but he certainly knew his kind. Made his success on the backs of underpaid, overworked employees, somehow convinced himself that they would be nothing without him when it was really the other way around, smarmy and blustery and always looking for anything he might use to increase his sense of self-worth. In a small town, being on a first-name basis with the police chief could be that something.
“Oh, I’m good, Chief, good.”
“You heard about the incident out here at Hawk’s Aerie, I’m sure. Your employees have been most helpful. I really appreciate it a lot.”
“At Happy Grass, we’re always glad to help. Glad to help.”
Great, a repeater. It was a quirk of cops that too many of them figured if it needed saying one time, it couldn’t hurt to say it twice. It was on the short list of things that drove Sam crazy.
“Listen, your worker who found the body...she’s pretty shook up by this. You can’t imagine what it was like for her.”
“Must have been a pretty ugly scene.”
Lawrence’s voice held a sly, inviting tone that all the put-on sympathy in the world couldn’t hide. He would love to share the gruesome details with his buddies while bragging that he got them straight from the police chief himself. That would be worth free rounds at the bar for two or three days, at least.
“Ugly enough that she really needs to take the rest of the day off. You’re fine with that, aren’t you, Ed? I mean, supporting the community and the police department the way you do, of course you’d want her to go home and deal with this instead of worrying about lawns.”
In his peripheral vision, he caught Milagro rolling her eyes. Apparently, she couldn’t imagine her boss caring anything about his employees except that they showed up and worked hard. Sam couldn’t imagine being that kind of supervisor. Couldn’t imagine anyone in his family letting him get away with it before they smacked him back down to size.
“Sure, sure, she can take the day off,” Lawrence said. “It’ll put us behind schedule, of course, but that’s a small price to pay given the circumstances. You just go ahead and tell Maria—”
“Milagro.”
“Yes, yes, of course she should deal with this. Tell her I said don’t think about work at all today. Tomorrow’s plenty soon enough for that.”
“I will. And you know, Ed...” Sam adopted Lawrence’s insincere good-ole-boy tone. “I would consider it a personal favor if you didn’t dock her pay for the time off. She’s doing her civic duty, helping the police, and I would just hate to see it cost her more than the emotional trauma she’s already been through. You think you could do me that favor, Ed?”
The level of joviality in Lawrence’s voice dropped enough to force him to clear his throat to answer, but he came out with the right response. “Of course, Chief. I’m happy to do it. Happy to do it.” He pronounced each of the last four words with extra emphasis, like he was trying to convince himself.
“Thanks, Ed. I’ll see you around.” Sam laid the phone in the console cup holder.
Milagro was watching him again, but this time her gaze didn’t dart away and back. Her brows were narrowed, and something that might be the start of a smile curved her lips a bit. He got the impression that she didn’t smile much. Lurking beneath the lingering shock and dismay was an intense solemnity that he doubted gave way very often.
What had she been through in her twenty-six years that made her so solemn?
The list of possibilities was too long to consider right now.
She made no comment about the conversation, though she’d clearly heard enough from his end to get the gist of it.
“Do you need to go back to the shop to pick up your car?”
She shook her head.
“How’d you get to work this morning?”
“Ruben picks us up. We’re on his way.”
“I’ll take you home then.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he went on, “You’re on my way. Buckle up.”
She did, and so did he. He pulled out and drove to the driveway, where he rolled the passenger window down. “Simpson, get a ride back with Lois. And Lois, give him the benefit of your years of experience, will you?”
Lois saluted him with a wink and a grin.
After raising the window again, he followed the loop past quiet grand houses and out the gate. He figured Milagro would be happy if they made the drive in silence, but silence wasn’t usually one of his strong suits. “How long have you lived in Cedar Creek?”
Quick glance, hesitation. Yep, she’d rather not chitchat. “Fifteen years.”
“Hmm. I see the same people so often, sometimes I start thinking I know everyone in town. You go to school here?”
“I was homeschooled.”
“Church?”
“No.” After a moment’s pause, he guessed curiosity made her ask, “Do you?”
“Regularly enough that God doesn’t forget my face. Every Sam Douglas in town is expected to be there at least twice a month on Sundays.”
That caught her attention, as he expected it would. “How many are there?”
“There’s me. My father. My grandfather, who’s gone now. My cousin Samson. His boy, Sammy. A cousin Samantha. And her son, Samwell. Samantha hyphenates Douglas with her husband’s last name for both her and Samwell.”
“Maybe your family should look at one of the other twenty-five letters in the alphabet.” She folded her arms across her chest, tucking her fingers into the folds of fabric at her elbows.
Wow. A long sentence with a little bit of humor in it. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, he turned the AC lower. “We’re a big family. We require a lot of names.”
She didn’t ask how big. If she had, he would have turned the question back on her. Since she didn’t, he turned it back anyway. “Do you have family?”
Her expression turned both pensive and wary, and though the truck cab left her little room to move, she managed to put some distance between them.
“Look, Milagro, I don’t know if you’re a citizen, an immigrant or an undocumented worker, and I don’t care. You had a shock today. You probably need someone to stay with tonight, just in case. Do you have someone you can call?”
Her face had gone pale once more, but reluctant acceptance replaced the wariness. “Gramma. My grandmother.”
“Do you want me to take you to her house?”
“No. She’ll come.”
He caught a glimpse of that tiny sort-of smile, softened with deep affection.
“She always comes.”
Whatever she’d been through, she’d held on to her faith in her grandmother with both hands. That was good. With a family the size of his, it could have been easy for some of the kids to get lost in the crowd, to not have anyone special they could trust no matter what, but with parents and grandparents like his, that hadn’t happened to them. He appreciated that it hadn’t happened to Milagro, either.
By that time, they’d reached her street. Sam’s own house was only six or eight blocks away, across Main Street and in a very similar neighborhood: old houses, some neatly maintained and others looking as if the next strong wind would blow them away. Some of the yards were lush with flowers and vegetable gardens; some looked as if a flock of ravenous chickens had pecked out the last piece of grass and it had never grown back.
Milagro’s house was, like his, on the better side of things. It occupied the corner, a decent-size lot with a white-sided house, a deep front porch and a picket fence containing the closest thing he’d ever seen to an English cottage garden. He hadn’t expected her to have a pretty yard or a lot of flowers. She did that sort of thing all day. Didn’t she want a break from it at night?
The driveway went only as far as
the sidewalk, the rest of it having been claimed for plantings. He shifted the truck into Park, then turned to face her. “Are you going to be all right?”
She nodded.
“You’ll call your grandmother?”
Another nod.
“Here’s my number. If you need anything, even just to talk, call me.”
She hesitated before accepting the business card he offered. Then, with a polite nod, she opened the door, got out and walked through the gate and into her garden. She followed the stone path to the porch, never glancing back. There she unlocked the door, opened it to the bare minimum of space she needed to slip through and did just that.
The cop in him wondered about that. Was someone inside she didn’t want him to see? Did she have an inside garden that he might have to haul her to jail for? Was she such a bad housekeeper she didn’t want anyone to catch a glimpse of the mess? But in those seconds the door was open, he’d heard excited barking and gotten the impression of a yellow-furred mass of energy greeting her. She had a dog, a big one judging from what he’d seen, who’d been locked up all day and probably regarded an open door as an invitation to romp down the streets.
Would she call her grandmother? Would she do it now or wait until tonight, when it was dark and she was vulnerable and the image of Evan Carlyle’s face haunted her even with her eyes squeezed shut?
Her decision to make, he reminded himself. He’d done his duty, both as police chief and as Samuel Douglas’s son. The rest was up to her.
Chapter 2
January 1.
Halloween had come and gone, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I saw TV sometimes. I knew what those days were like for most people, but I had never had a Halloween costume or anything to feel thankful for. My parents hadn’t killed me yet. That should have been something, shouldn’t it? The idea of Christmas, of people all over the world celebrating someone’s birth... My mother said my being born was the worst thing that ever happened to her. She hated me. He hated me, too.
I didn’t hate them. I just wished they were dead.
He took me to the Rose Parade today. I had never seen so many people in one place, tens of thousands of them. We walked down the crowded sidewalks, him grasping my hand so tightly it hurt, his narrow dark eyes sliding from one woman to the next. Did they have any idea, even just a slight disturbance in their souls, that they were in the presence of evil? I knew it. I smelled it, that mix of excitement and lust and sick, sick pleasure. For him, half the fun was the choosing. He never drank before a hunt. The anticipation was his high, his need, his reward.
We walked. He looked. I let my mind wander someplace safer. Sometimes I just stopped being. I was nothing and nowhere. A blink, and I no longer existed. Sometimes I became someone else, a normal girl whose father loved her so much that he’d fought traffic and huge crowds just so she could see the parade. He held my hand so tightly because his heart would be broken if we got separated. Fear, ignited by pure, sweet love.
I didn’t pretend very often. It was too nice, and when he poked me to point out his target—our target—the fantasy crashed so hard I was afraid it would squash the hope out of me.
Today I looked at those crowds, those hundreds of thousands of people, and wondered what would happen if I ran right into the middle of them. He was stronger, but I was fast and wiry, and I was more afraid. If I twisted my hand from his, quick and hard, and darted into the street between floats, I could reach the other side. I could run to that group of college kids over there and cry, “This man is not my daddy! Please don’t let him take me!”
Better yet, I could disappear. Sometimes when I was allowed to play outside, my mother said I’d never met an obstacle I couldn’t go over, around, under or through. I could run and run until my lungs burst, and he wouldn’t keep up. Everyone around was taller than me. He would have only a vague idea of where I’d gone, and I would get so far away from him that he would never find me.
Suddenly he jerked me to a stop and bent low to look into my face. His fingers squeezed so viciously around mine that the tips turned red, and after a spike of pain, mine went numb. “You wipe that smile off your face, you stupid little brat. You try to run away, I’ll kill you.” He yanked hard on my hand, pulling me closer. “You understand?”
I knew what he wanted, and I gave it, a solemn nod.
“You believe me?”
Oh, yes, I believed him.
I’d believed for as long as I could remember that someday my father or my mother was going to kill me.
—Excerpt, The Unlucky Ones by Jane Gama
“Hey, Poppy, are you surprised to see me home early?” Mila leaned against the door, held there by the dog’s paws on her shoulders, and rubbed the base of her ears. Gramma had rescued the yellow Lab mix from Cedar Creek a few years ago—had seen the puppy perched on a tree stump snagged in the middle of the creek, alternating between whining at the current and barking for help. There had been other people around, but only Gramma had taken action, kicking off her shoes, wading into the waist-deep water and calming the dog for the trip back to shore.
Gramma hadn’t wanted a dog, but she’d saved its life, so she’d had to find it a safe home. Where else would that be but with Mila, she’d asked, as if it was the most logical question ever.
She had already given Mila two incredible gifts: unconditional love and escape from the terrors that were her parents. Trusting her with Poppy, with the care and nurturing of another living being, had been the third treasure. Twenty-four years old, and Mila had cried over the big-eyed waterlogged puppy who had climbed into her lap and promptly peed.
The Lab had changed Mila’s life. She’d never had a pet before, had been too terrified to even show interest in dogs, cats and hamsters. Showing interest in anything to her father was a one-way trip to pain.
Even over Poppy’s happy barking, Mila heard the police chief drive away. She exhaled, tightness easing in her chest and her stomach. He seemed a perfectly decent person, but being away from him made her feel the same way she did after a long swim: like a fish breaching, bursting from the crushing depths of the ocean into fresh, clean, light, sweet air.
He was a cop.
And she was what she was.
Not right. Damaged. A killer.
Numbness spread through her, closing her eyes, but she still saw things. Still heard. Still smelled. Thankfully, Poppy broke the moment by licking Mila’s face from the bridge of her nose all the way to her chin. “Ew, Poppy, no dog slobber.” Her voice trembled over the words, and she dragged in a breath before catching the dog’s face in both hands and pressing a grateful kiss right above her eyes.
“Okay, sweetie, let me get away from the door and maybe I’ll find some treats in the kitchen.” She caught the dog’s front paws and half pulled, half pushed them to the floor. After removing her ball cap and long-sleeved shirt, she bent to unlace her boots and kick them off on the rubber mat next to the door.
Goose bumps rising on her arms—and an odor so unpleasant that even Poppy wrinkled her nose and stepped away—Mila walked across the cool living room, the dining room and into the kitchen. Her landlord claimed the house had a thousand square feet of living space, but she was convinced that included the front porch, the back stoop and the shaded portion of the backyard. The kitchen’s maximum occupancy was one, though that never stopped Poppy from trying, and the bathroom was small enough that a two-by-three-foot rug covered all except the outside edges of the floor. Her bedroom was about ten by twelve feet—enormous compared to the second one, which had room for a twin bed, a night table and a skinny person standing sideways.
She got treats for Poppy before heading to the bathroom. She turned the water to hot, then shed her clothes in the hallway hamper. Once steam drifted on the air, she adjusted the water from scalding to merely breath stealing and stepped into the glass-enclosed shower.
The water strea
med down her, washing away sweat and grime and the tensions she wore like a second skin. She luxuriated in it for one minute, three, five, then washed her hair and scrubbed her body. When she’d started working at Happy Grass, she had welcomed long days in the sun, wearing only short shorts and a tank top. That first day, Ruben had looked at her and shaken his head chasteningly. That day she’d burned despite her olive-toned skin and a zillion-SPF sunblock. She’d quickly adopted Ruben’s ways.
Her brown skin and black hair helped her live up to the name she and Gramma had chosen so long ago. People heard the name, looked at her and thought, Yes, she looks like a Milagro Ramirez. Even Chief Douglas had seemed surprised when he’d heard her unaccented voice.
She had no accent because she came from everywhere and nowhere.
Someday, she hoped to hear Oklahoma in her voice.
After shutting off the water, she pushed the shower door, but it moved only a few inches before stopping. Poppy lounged on the bath mat, her yellow hair drifting in the air. Mila coaxed her back enough so she could step out, throw on some clothes and then let her into the fenced backyard and watched her through the window over the sink. The garden there was as elaborate as the one out front, and if blooms escaped the dog’s huge feet only to fall victim to the sweep of her brushy tail, it was a small price to pay for having her.
One word in that thought stuck in Mila’s brain, refusing to fall away into oblivion as the others had. Victim. Evan Carlyle’s image appeared, as sharp and clear as it had been in the relentless glare of the midday sun, his body slack, his neck gaping, his eyes... It was always the eyes that stayed with her. A dead body wasn’t obscenely different from a living one, just a shell for a soul that had been ripped away. But something about the eyes... The spirit left them last, watching her, accusing her.
“It wasn’t my fault!”
The words exploded from her with such emotion that Poppy, curiously sniffing a frog, directed her gaze to the window, her head tilted to one side, concern on her goofy, doggy face. Mila wanted to tell her it was all right, to go back to her exploring. She wanted to pet her and thank her for caring. She wanted to drop to the ground beside her and wrap her arms tightly around her neck and let her wild hair tickle her nose.
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