Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(74)

“You’ll have to tell him soon. I mean, what, you’re about six weeks along?”

“Eight and a half.”

“Wow.” Ana folded her hands over the photo album, rested her head against her pillow. “Being a mother is the best thing I’ve ever done, in case you’re wondering. I can’t . . . I can’t pretend I have your concerns. But Lucia is the best thing in my life.”

“What about Guy White?” Maia asked. “Are you going to confront him?”

Ana’s eyes shone clear and intense. “Maybe when I’m stronger. I can’t do it now. The idea of having his blood inside me . . .”

Maia nodded. “I’ll keep it our secret.”

Ana turned up her palm, gave Maia’s hand a squeeze.

“I’ll need the rest,” Ana said. “I’ll need time just to be a mother for a while.”

Maia thought back to her brief baby-sitting stint with Lucia Jr. “I wouldn’t call that rest.”

Ana put her hand in a square of winter sunlight that was sliding across her bedspread. “You got that right, sister. You got that right.”

JULY 14, 1987

THE MERCEDES PULSED RED AND WHITE in Lucia’s emergency lights.

Despite all her years on the force, her courage wavered when Frankie White got out of his car.

He looked so much like his father, especially in this place, on this isolated road.

She watched him trudge toward her patrol unit, his blond hair and white shirt ghostly in the dark.

He was almost at her car door, intolerably close, before she got out to meet him.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Who’s in the car, Frankie?”

He glared at her as if she were a traffic signal—some annoying mechanism of society. He probably didn’t remember or care that they’d met before, that she’d warned him to stay away from her beat. Why should he? He’d been dealing with cops for years. They all called him by his first name. He was like their goddamn foster child.

“Nobody’s in the car,” he said. “I’m alone.”

Lucia glanced at the tinted windows of the Mercedes. She couldn’t see anyone inside, but back on South Alamo, when she’d first spotted him, she thought she saw a silhouette in his passenger’s seat—a young woman. When Frankie had turned on Mission Road, she’d had no choice but to follow.

“You don’t mind if I check it out.” She started forward.

He surprised her by grabbing her forearm. She yanked it away, felt his fingernails rip into her skin.

“Back off.” Her heart was pounding. “Kneel on the ground. Now.”

“Go away, lady,” Frankie told her, not moving. “Get out of here while you still can.”

“You threatening me? A police officer?”

His eyes were icy with rage. “The police are a f**king joke. You couldn’t arrest my father. What makes you think you can touch me?”

He pushed her shoulders, hard enough to send her staggering backward a few steps.

She drew her nightstick.

“Stop.” Her voice sounded shrill, even to herself.

She knew she should follow procedure. She had a violent subject. She should call for backup. She should not be arguing with him.

But her training was dissolving—the heavy blue thread she’d used to stitch her life together was swiftly coming unraveled. She was nineteen again—a young girl being shown that her power was nothing but an illusion.

“Get on the ground,” she ordered. She heard the wobble in her voice and hated it.

“Fuck you.”

“Do it, Frankie.”

“You get on the ground, bitch.”

Lucia’s arm was bleeding. He’d broken the skin.

So much like his father, yet the anger in his eyes was more volatile—more like what Lucia saw when she looked in the mirror, when she thought about Mission Road.

You couldn’t arrest my father.

Frankie turned. He started back toward his car.

He would drive away, leave her standing there. She was meaningless to him. The years with the badge, the years building herself back up from a thousand shattered pieces, they meant nothing.

She was a girl again, abandoned in a cold ditch, her back snagged on a line of barbed wire, the orange moon glowing above her through the na**d branches. Another man was walking away—a man in a beige suit who had just crushed her soul like a balsa wood toy.

Later, she would not remember raising the nightstick, but she felt the crack of wood against bone reverberate in her fingers. Franklin White crumpled.

Her rage left her. Years of police officer composure shed off her like winter clothes. She was alone, horrified.

Afterward, talking to Etch, she would realize how many mistakes she’d made. She would try to piece together what really happened and wonder if she was going crazy. Had she only hit him once? Hadn’t she left the murder weapon with her fingerprints on the handle?

At the time, she had no thought but getting away, running from that place.

She dropped the bloodied nightstick and fled.

Chapter 21

THE STATE OF TEXAS LET ME KEEP MY PI LICENSE.

My less-than-heartening conclusion: They looked at how many times it had almost gotten me killed and decided that letting me keep my job was the best possible punishment.