Chapter 1

On a cold April day, thanks to an awful card my awful Aunt ML had sent me, I was driving down Route 52 along the Ohio River toward my home town for the first time in fifteen years. I had a six-foot plush teddy bear riding shotgun (color: Guilt Red) while I told myself not to be ridiculous, everything would be fine, and look how beautiful the Ohio River is, and ML is nuts anyway. (The card ML had sent had one sentence on it: ‘Your mother is sick and in terrible trouble and needs you, but you don't care because you're a cruel, thoughtless daughter and a disgrace to the family.' On the front, it had said, ‘Thinking of you . . .')

Then I saw the Welcome to Burney, Ohio, sign looming up in front of me, and my childhood memories loomed, too, and my stomach turned over, and I flat-out panicked and floored the Camry past the turn-off to my mother's house (and Aunt ML's house three doors down), running from my past like the coward I was. The old car was hurtling along like a champ when I heard the siren. I looked in the rear-view mirror, saw a cop on my tail, said, "Oh, hell, no," and pulled over onto the muddy edge of the two-lane highway.

I heard the door on the cop car behind me slam, and realized my palms were clammy which was ridiculous: I was not eighteen anymore. I was perfectly fine. I prayed that whoever was about to bust me didn't know me. I'd been gone for fifteen years. It was possible. Not probable. But?—

Somebody knocked on my window.

At first all I could see was a nice broad expanse of uniformed chest over a trim waist. Then I shut off the stereo—Terri Clark singing ‘Bigger Windows,' so appropriate—rolled down the window letting in the cool April air, looked up, thought, Thank you, God. The cop wasn't anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn't get any "Well, here's trouble back in town' crap. He had brown hair that looked like he'd cut it himself, non-twinkling brown eyes, and a nose that had been broken at least once, a real Burney guy.

I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.

He didn't smile back, but he didn't look particularly upset, either. And when he said, "Ma'am, do you realize you were going seventy-five in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone?" he sounded bored.

"Yes, officer," I said, holding onto that smile. "I wasn't thinking. I apologize and I certainly won't do it again."

He held out his hand. "License and registration, please."

I got my license and insurance card out of my billfold and handed them to him, and said, "I'll be just a second with that registration." I shoved the bear back again and opened the glove box, and a bunch of papers cascaded out onto the floor. So, I stuck my head between the bear's legs and into the space under the dashboard and sifted through a couple of dozen old repair bills, lapsed insurance cards, and expired registrations as fast as I could before I found the current one. When I straightened up again, he had bent down to look through the window.

"Nice bear," he said, still with no expression at all.

"Thank you." I handed him the registration.

He looked at it and then at the license. "Your name is Elizabeth M. Danger?"

"Yes, sir." Please don't ask what the "M" is for.

"Any relation to MaryBeth Danger?"

Oh, hell. "She's my mother." Please don't tell her I'm here.

He nodded. "I'll be right back."

He walked around my old car, probably looking for code violations, and then back to his cruiser, and I rolled up the window and watched him in my rear-view mirror to see if he was going to call my license in. He had a nice ass, but that was peripheral to the fact that of course he was going to call it in.

I tried some box breathing to chill the anxiety attack I did not want to have in front of the cop. In for four counts, hold for four counts, out for four counts, hold for four counts, in for . . .

The worst thing about traffic stops is the waiting. I'm sitting there like an idiot, box breathing while people drive past, and I really can't do much because the cop's going to come back, so I'm stuck with my thoughts. Like Fucking Burney, and I can't believe I panicked like that, must be Post Traumatic Burney Syndrome, and I wonder if it looked like I was blowing that bear, and Fucking Burney, and That cop is cute in a Neanderthal kind of way, and Anemone hasn't called me in twenty-four hours, I wonder if she's trapped under someone heavy, and Fucking Burney. Well, you get my drift. I can't do anything worthwhile because at any minute?—

He knocked on the window again and I rolled it down.

"Since you're a local, I called the station. Steve Crider says hi." He passed back my registration and license.

"Steve's a cop now?" I said, surprised. The police department was not where I would have guessed Steve Crider would end up.

"He also said not to give you a ticket and to say hi to your mom for him."

"Good old Steve," I said, with real enthusiasm. "Tell him I said thank you. Except I can't say hi to my mother."

He raised his eyebrows, so I went on: "I was stopping by home for a short visit because it was on my way to Chicago, and then I decided I didn't want to, and that's why I gunned the car, and once I'm done here, I'm going to keep on trucking, so I won't be telling my mother anything for a while, and I definitely won't be speeding in Burney again." The guilt rose up again as I said that, but Aunt ML was insane, Mom was probably fine, so no reason to stop . . .

He nodded. "Wouldn't it have been easier to say, ‘I sure will say hi'?"

"That would have been a lie."

His eyebrows went up again on that one, but then he was a cop, so he probably figured everybody lied. Then he said, "Is your mom going to worry when you don't show up?"

"She didn't know I was coming." I glanced at the giant bear beside me. "It was going to be a surprise."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Then I can go?"

"If you want your right rear wheel to fall off. Did you have your tires rotated recently?"

I blinked up at him. "Last week. When I bought the car, Johnny Porter told me to do that every six months."

"Johnny Porter. You bought it a few years ago, then?"

"Fifteen."

"Right. Wait a moment, please."

He went back to the cop car and opened the trunk. A minute later he was back holding an X shaped black wrench. "You're missing three lug nuts on your right rear tire. Didn't you feel the vibration? I noticed the tire was wobbling and that's why I pulled you over."

"What?" The entire car rattled and shook all the time. It was an eighteen-year-old car. That was like a hundred in people years. I'd rattle and shake, too.

He didn't wait. I watched him walk around the car to the right rear and drop down. I was tempted to get out and watch, but he hadn't said I could, and I didn't know the proper protocol for lug nuts and cops, so I stayed put.

The car shook slightly a couple of times and then he was back. "I put new ones on."

"You carry lug nuts with you?"

He seemed perplexed by the question. "Of course. I'd stop and get it lifted and those nuts tightened down first chance you get, but they should hold until Chicago." He looked over the car.

"The tire will stay on." He didn't say anything about the rest of it.

"Thank you. Very much. That was above and beyond the call."

"You're good to go."

"Uh," I began, and he waited. "Could you ask Steve not to tell my mother . . ." I stopped, realizing how lame I sounded. I'm thirty-three and I'm asking the cops not to tell my mom I got busted. "Never mind."

"Too late anyway. The grapevine here makes sound look slow."

The way he said it and the accent, which sounded like New York City, made me think he was still getting used to it, so I said, "You're not from here, are you?"

"No." He frowned at me, and I remembered I wasn't the one who was supposed to ask the questions.

"Sorry," I told him. "I'm used to interviewing people. Forget I asked that. Thank you very much for not giving me a ticket. And for the lug nuts. You're a good person. I hope you enjoy living in Burney."

"I do," he said, actually sounding like he meant it, and stepped away from the car.

I turned the ignition and the car sputtered, as usual, and then the engine kicked in. I stepped on the gas pedal, and my tires spun. Hell. I'd forgotten I was in mud. I looked in the rear view and saw that the highway was still deserted except for the nice cop walking back to the cruiser behind me, so, apologizing to the Camry, I floored it. The car spurted out of the mud and onto the highway, fishtailing a little, and then it coughed in mid-surge and died.

I steered it back onto the shoulder using the last of its momentum, feeling guilty and stupid and cowardly. I knew that was no way to treat an eighteen-year-old car, but it was Burney for god's sake. I tried to restart it. No go. "Come on, come on," I said and tried again. No go. No, no, no, I thought, panic rising, please, not in Burney, and cranked the ignition again but there was nothing there.

I put my head on the steering wheel and tried to stay calm while my stomach churned. I was not trapped in Burney. This was not happening. A minute later, the cop knocked on the window.

I rolled it down. "Well, at least the tire didn't fall off."

"How bad is it?"

"I think it's dead."

"Try cranking it," he suggested.

I did. He cocked his head, listening, then waved his hand for me to stop. "Yep. It's dead. I can call the Porters."

The Porters. Their mom Kitty had baby-sat me. I'd baby-sat their little sister Patsy. Their big brother Cash had felt me up in the front seat of the truck they'd probably send to tow my car. And they all knew my mother.

"Or not," the cop said.

It would take hours for some out-of-town tow truck to get to Burney, and by that time, my mother would have heard and driven out to the highway to find me. "That would be . . . fine. Thank you."

"How about this," he said. "I give you a ride to the garage, you talk to the Porters in person and ask them to keep it quiet, and they'll get you back on the road."

I squinted up at him. He mostly looked monolithic, and his ears kind of stuck out, and those brown eyes were hooded which made him sort of inscrutable, and he definitely had been cutting his own hair, but I was warming to him. This was a man who understood the importance of avoiding family. "Thank you. That's very kind of you."

He opened the door for me, and I got out into the cold and looked up into sharp brown eyes and realized there was something going on there. He'd give good interview, I thought, and then I realized he was staring at my chest.

I looked down at my T-shirt that said Attempted Murder with the silhouette of two crows on a branch under it. "I'm not advocating murder," I told him. "It's a play on words. A bunch of crows is called a murder, like a bunch of seagulls is called a flock, but there are only two crows on the branch so they're just trying for a murder." When he didn't say anything, I said, "I'm not going to kill anybody, I swear."

"Good to know," he said. "Better get a coat."

I reached in for my hoodie and my laptop bag and saw the bear. Hell. I could just leave it in the car. If somebody stole the damn thing, I wouldn't have to mail it to my mother. But it had cost two hundred dollars.

"Wait a minute." I handed the cop the laptop bag and pulled the hoodie on. Then I went around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and tugged on the bear. It didn't budge. I yanked again and then again, and it popped out, and I stumbled back and lost my balance and let go of the bear as I flailed my way down the embankment and fell on my butt in the mud.

I checked my hoodie. No mud. It's a Wonderfalls hoodie that says I Surrender to Destiny and it's a collector's item so that was important. Then I looked up at the road and saw the cop, backlit by the late winter sun, my bag still under one arm, holding up the bear.

That bear was six feet tall standing up, the top of it even with his head, so that was an impressive save.

"It's fine," he said, holding the bear even higher. "I got it before it hit the ground."

"My hero," I said.

"Should I cuff it?" he asked.

He was definitely not from Burney.

"We're good," I said. "Give me a minute here, please."

He took the bear and my bag back to the cruiser while I climbed to my feet, examined the damage to my favorite five-button jeans—there was a laundromat in my future—and began Plan B. The Porters had a bathroom at the garage. I could wash out the dirt in their sink, leave town, and hit a laundromat when I got to Indiana. And maybe get the lug nuts tightened. I was pretty sure my mother wouldn't follow me to Indiana. She didn't like driving in the dark.

I was never opening a card from Aunt ML again.

I wiped the worst of the mud off on my jeans and began the crawl back up the embankment, and when I looked up, the cop was there again, holding out his hand.

I looked at my hand and said, "Mud," and showed him.

"No problem," he said, his hand still extended, so I put my dirty paw in his nice clean cop hand and let him pull me up onto the highway.

Once I got there, I looked up at him and held on for a moment. He had those eyes, and he'd hauled me out of a ditch, and he'd saved the damn bear. Plus, the lug nuts. I could spare a moment.

"I'm Liz," I said.

"I'm Vince," he said.

"Vince, I'm going to get mud in your car."

"Not my car," he said. "You can sit in the back with the bear. There's been worse back there."

"Good to know," I said and went to get into the cruiser.