Prologue

The bell over my shop's door tinkled, and my life as I knew it was over.

In Springfield, whether you live in the seedier parts of the city or the more suburban areas along the outer edge, you learn to be wary of a man in a suit—and not for the reason you might think. It's been a crime hotspot my entire life, and even if you do your best to avoid the gangs, the local mafias, the organized syndicates that rule the entire city, sometimes they find you.

These two don't give off the vibe that they're criminals. Still, something about the way they move single-file down one of the narrow aisles that separates the cashwrap from the entrance has my greeting catching in my throat.

The one in front is a couple of inches taller than the other, and quite a few pounds heavier. He's light on his feet, though, and when he heads straight for me instead of looking around the store, any hope that he stopped by for a test booster or maybe a weight loss supplement dies a quick death.

Two years in business has trained me to offer any customer who walks into Healthy Habits by Georgia a customer service grin. Even if I stumble over my "what brings you in today" spiel, I can at least smile at him.

He doesn't smile back. Instead, pulling out a black wallet, flashing me a Springfield Police Department badge, he asks, "Miss Georgia Gayle?"

My heart just about stops beating.

Well, I wasn't wrong, was I? Cops. I've got cops in my store. Detectives from the look of the suits, and they want me.

I'm not a fan of the police. Law enforcement makes me uncomfortable. With all the news stories about cops being just as bad as the gangsters that run Springfield—and about how crooked the SPD is in particular—whenever I see a uniform or a badge, I start convincing myself that I committed a shit ton of crimes and just conveniently forgot about them.

Why else would a pair of DTs be looking for me?

I could lie. I could pretend that—despite the name on my sign—there's no Georgia here. Maybe I'd be better off acting like she's my boss and I'm some poor sales clerk who has no way of getting in contact with her.

I don't do any of that. Deep down, I'm a goody-goody. It's not that I want to help the SPD, but I hate getting into trouble. It goes back to being an anxious mess of an only child with a narc mother and a workaholic father who was rarely home, who was born with this pathologic need not to piss people off.

You'd think that, at twenty-five and finally living happily on my own, I'd have gotten over that by now. Considering I gulp, struggling to keep my nervous smile in place as I nod, you'd be wrong.

"Hi. Yes. I'm Georgia. Can I help you?"

The taller detective glances at his partner. The second suit has straw-colored hair, mud-brown eyes, and a flat expression that only ramps up my anxiety.

Without a word, he reaches inside of his suit jacket. Pulling out a thick envelope, he passes it over to the taller—lead?—detective.

The taller detective has thinning brown hair, a dent in his chin, and a small grin that might pass for friendly if he hadn't already stoically flashed his badge before. Rifling through the envelope in his hand, he pulls out a thin rectangular-shaped sheaf of paper.

"Yes, miss, you can. My name is Detective Chestnut. This is Detective Lewis. We have a couple of questions for you. First, tell me… do you recognize this?"

He places it on my countertop, using his pointer finger to position it in front of me.

"Um. Yeah. This is one of my deposit slips."

"That's your signature, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"And this"—he turns the slip over—"you filled this out yourself?"

Chestnut taps the lines on the back of the deposit where I usually mark how many coins, how many singles, how many fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds I'd put into the deposit bag before I dropped it off inside of the Springfield Bank depository after closing.

I might own and run this business by myself, but I do my banking through the branch about two blocks away. All of the daily deposits go there, and I get any change I need for the drawer from one of the tellers.

"Yes. I'm the only employee here. I do everything myself."

The shorter detective—Lewis—nods as if that was all he needed to hear. Leaving the other cop at my cashwrap, he slips away.

Chestnut clears his throat, drawing my attention back to him. "Miss Gayle, are you aware that there is currently an outfit in Springfield that's pushing counterfeit bills through small, locally-owned businesses?"

"I… no. I had no idea."

The last lingering hint of his earlier smile fades. Dipping into the envelope again, he pulls out a stack of deposit slips at least half an inch thick. He plops them on top of the first one.

"Each deposit slip here has your account number and signature on it," he says needlessly before dropping the bomb on me: "And each one of these was marked as coming from a bag that contained at least one counterfeit bill."

Holy shit. There's gotta be at least fifty slips there. Even if they were each only representing a bad twenty, I'm looking at a good thousand dollars loss in front of me.

I feel queasy. Gripping the edge of the counter, I peer up at him. "My store was hit?"

"If it was only one or two deposits, I could believe it was just bad luck. But when our sting operation caught all of these"—Chestnut uses his thumb to fan out the stack of deposit slips—"in just one quarter, our task force came to a different conclusion."

And?

Seconds away from panicking, I wait for him to tell me what it is. Because, I'm sorry, I'm so confused. The suit made me nervous; the idea that my bank account is screwed up has my stomach going tight.

No. There's gotta be some mistake. Something… something's wrong. I've done the training. I have the counterfeit pen right next to my register stand. When a customer gives me anything over a twenty for the drawer, I check all the markers to make sure it's real. And who even uses cash anymore? A good eighty percent of my sales are either debit or credit. This is impossible.

Seriously. There's no way he's telling me that I've been depositing fake money for months?—

—only that's exactly what he's telling me, isn't it?

The bell over my shop's door tinkles again, and when Detective Lewis marches back into my store, he's not alone.

There are two more cops with him. One's a blonde woman with her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, the other a dark-haired man about my age with piercing blue eyes. In the back of my mind, I realize I've seen him patrolling on foot outside of my store more than a few times over the years.

There's something about being slapped in the face with a uniform that makes this seem so much more real. The suits had me nervous, but the uniforms… the badges pinned to their chests… the guns on their hip… holy shit. I think I'm going to pass out.

"Please, no," I say, my voice coming out strangled. "There has to be some mistake."

They don't seem to think so.

Detective Lewis nods at the male cop, gesturing toward me with a wag of his finger. The uniformed officer immediately eases around the side of the cashwrap, joining me behind the counter.

His nameplate says M. Burns. His undeniable smirk says that I'm in deep, deep shit.

A pair of handcuffs appear in his grip as if by magic. "Hands behind your back."

Even as I'm trying desperately to argue, to understand, I do what I'm told.

The bite of the metal around my wrist is a shock, but it only gets worse when Detective Lewis finally decides to speak up as Officer Burns starts maneuvering my stunned body away from the cashwrap.

"Georgia Gayle, you're under arrest for the charge of passing counterfeit currency. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…"