I drove to Boston. Ditched the car, tossed my cell phone, and turned my back on Aunt Nancy, my community, the mountains, and the only shot I’d had at a real life. As the saying goes, hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
So that’s what I’m doing. Hoping for the police to do their thing, and catch the bastard who murdered my best friends. But planning on January 21 rolling around, when sometime around 8 P.M., according to the police reports, someone may come looking for me. Because once there’d been Randi Jackie Charlie, then Jackie Charlie, then just Charlie. And soon maybe none of us at all.
I don’t have friends anymore. I don’t encourage acquaintances. I live in Cambridge, where I rent a single room from a retired widow who needs the income. I work a solo graveyard shift as a dispatch officer for a thirty-man PD outside of Boston. I work all night, sleep all morning.
I run ten miles four times a week. I attend firearms training courses. I box. I lift weights. I prepare, I plan, I strategize.
In four days, I believe someone’s going to try to kill me.
But the son of a bitch has gotta catch me first.
Chapter 2
BOSTON SERGEANT DETECTIVE D. D. WARREN was on the case. And she was not happy about it.
This was unusual. A born workaholic, D.D. lived and breathed her job. Nothing made her happier than a high-profile homicide case that demanded endless nights of cold pizza as she and her squad racked up round-the-clock hours, targeting their prey.
Granted, she was a mother now, and baby Jack was proving as big an insomniac as his mom. Teething? Probably not at ten weeks. Colic? Maybe. It’s not like babies came with an instruction manual. D.D. had tried singing to him last night. He’d cried harder. Finally, she’d rocked and cried with him. They’d both fallen asleep around four; her alarm had woken her at six. But two hours of sleep wasn’t the reason D.D. was cranky.
True, her life had undergone another major sea change: Given the unexpected news that she was forty and pregnant, she’d decided to roll the dice toward domestic bliss and actually move in with the baby’s father. She’d sold her North End condo, said sayonara to the four pieces of furniture she’d managed to acquire over the years, and moved into Alex’s tiny suburban ranch. He’d graciously given her the entire closet. She was trying to stop hogging the covers. They both loved the nursery.
Alex was supportive, caring, and most importantly, as a crime scene expert who taught courses at the police academy, wise enough to allow her plenty of space to do her job. He’d spent the previous night taking his turn being up all hours with the baby, so Alex definitely wasn’t the reason she was cranky.
Granted, this was also her first major case after her eight-week maternity leave, but given the past two weeks of office paperwork, fieldwork seemed a great idea and definitely was not the reason she was cranky.
Frankly, she didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted others to feel her pain.
D.D. pushed her way through the growing crowd of gawkers piling up on the sidewalk, then flashed her shield at the uniformed officer standing outside the crime scene tape. He dutifully entered her name and badge number in the murder book. Then she was ducking under the yellow tape and slipping on shoe booties and a hair net, before finally mounting the peeling wooden steps of the faded gray tenement building.