Sergeant Dahlen—Ingrid—lifted her chin as though reading Sienna’s thoughts and agreeing. “Even so, I don’t need nor want a troublemaking renegade causing me headaches and unnecessary paperwork. I hate unnecessary paperwork.”
“No, ma’am. I don’t intend to cause this department—er, especially you—any trouble. What happened in New York was a . . . unique situation. I won’t let it happen again.” Her tone sounded weak, even to herself. She straightened her back, attempting to convey the message of strength with her posture where her voice had failed. Sienna had a strong feeling Sergeant Dahlen had a low threshold for weaklings.
The older woman studied Sienna for another moment, and she resisted the urge to squirm. If that was the look the detective sergeant used when she was interrogating a suspect, the department must have an insanely high solve rate. Anyone would crack under that glacial gaze. Her eyes moved to the window, and Sienna let out a silent breath. “We have a major staffing shortage right now in the Reno PD, so when Darrin requested the transfer, that made things a little easier on our end.” Sienna resisted a flinch. “But,” the sergeant went on, “Darrin also told me you’re a damn good detective when you’re not going off half-cocked and that any department would be lucky to have you.”
Thank you, Darrin. For that and a dozen other kindnesses. “I’m going to do my best to live up to that generous description, Sergeant.”
“See that you do.”
Sienna turned at the sudden rap on the glass of the door, and a dark-haired woman opened it and peeked her head in. “Come on in, Kat,” Ingrid said.
The woman named Kat came in, taking a seat next to Sienna. She had her hair pulled back in a tight bun, and her lips were red and full. She reminded Sienna of a Bond girl in a pantsuit, if a Bond girl would ever be seen in a pantsuit, fashionable and well fitted though Kat’s was. “Katerina Kozlov, this is Sienna Walker, your new partner.”
Kat turned, assessing her very directly but not unkindly. “Well, thank God the percentage of testosterone in this place just reduced another fraction.” She leaned in slightly. “Ingrid being the biggest supplier of said testosterone.” She shot a grin at the older woman, whose eyebrows rose slightly but who seemed otherwise unamused. Sienna fought the smile that would make it appear she was laughing at her boss’s expense on the first day of a new job.
Kat held out her hand. “Welcome to homicide,” her new partner said. “Call me Kat.”
Sienna shook. “Hi, Kat, nice to meet you.”
“All right, now that the niceties are out of the way, why don’t you show Sienna to her desk and get her acquainted with the layout.”
Kat stood. “Come on, partner. I’ll show you the most important room in this building—the one where we keep the coffee.”
Sienna thanked Sergeant Dahlen and then followed her new partner out the door.
The coffee lounge was small but adequate, featuring a corner kitchen area and a table off to the side, where no one currently sat. Kat picked up a paper cup and held it up to Sienna, her brows rising in question.
“Sure, thanks,” Sienna said. Kat poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Sienna before turning and leaning against the Formica counter. “So what’d you do?” she asked.
Sienna let out a small, surprised laugh, then swallowed a sip of weak coffee. She hadn’t expected the direct question right off the bat, though she knew well that rumors spread quickly among cops. “I neglected to follow orders.”
Kat looked mildly disappointed. “Insubordination? Damn, I was hoping you had an affair with the chief or something juicy.”
Sienna let out a chuckle that died a quick death. If only. “Well, it was a little more complicated but not very juicy. The orders I disregarded came down from the mayor.”
Kat’s eyebrows rose. “Ah.” She was obviously considering that nugget of information. “So they did you a favor and shuffled you out of town before the mayor could demand you resign or be fired.”
“They obviously don’t call you Detective for nothing.”
Kat smiled, nodding to the door and tossing her cup in the garbage. “Let me show you to your desk. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. If you decide you feel like telling me the details of that story, you won’t have to travel far.”
She followed Kat to their work area, the only privacy a flimsy partition, with two standard-issue metal desks just like the one she’d had in New York. She pulled open a drawer, expecting the squeak that followed. The familiar piece of furniture felt like one of the only things in her life that hadn’t changed. Welcome to Reno PD, Sienna.
Sienna was surprised that the trailer park looked slightly less squalid than she remembered. Maybe it was due to the wash of golden light from the setting sun softening the ramshackle trailers and patchy grass. Or maybe it was because her memory had exaggerated the seediness of this place. Or maybe it was because at some point, someone had come along and tried to rejuvenate Paradise Estates Mobile Home Park—a true misnomer if ever there was one—and somewhat succeeded, even if minimally.
Perhaps a mixture of all those things.
In any case, here it sat, in front of her, the layout the same, though the girl she’d been, the one who’d grown up here, felt different in every way. Even though she was sitting in her car, staring out the window, she had a strange sense of imbalance as she looked down the rows toward the lot where she’d once lived, as though the world had shifted subtly beneath her.
Why were you pulled here? She’d found herself driving in this direction after meeting with her new boss and partner, without even really deciding to do so, almost as if by muscle memory alone.
The heart is a muscle too. Yes, and maybe that was the one she’d been using. She’d been raised in this trailer park. She’d left for school every morning from here, until the day she’d graduated high school. She’d had some of her happiest moments in this place and some of her worst.
She’d fallen in love here. Her chest squeezed as she turned her head to the right, gazing down the row where his trailer sat. Of course, it wasn’t his anymore. Or his mother Mirabelle’s. Someone else lived there now, she was sure. He had made it big. And though it had turned out she didn’t know as much about him as she’d once believed, she knew in her heart of hearts that the first thing he would have done with the money he earned was to buy his mother a home. A real home, not housing made of plastic walls that swayed in any moderately strong wind.
At the thought of Mirabelle, she felt a pinching sensation under her breastbone and unconsciously brought her hand up to massage away the pain. She missed her. Still. She’d been the only real mother Sienna had ever known, her own an alcohol-drenched shell of a woman who had been generally unaware of Sienna’s existence. The woman who had passed on her green eyes and her golden-blonde hair to Sienna and—thankfully—not much else had died five years before. When Sienna had learned the news, she’d felt little more than a passing sadness that might accompany the knowledge that any wasted life had ended.
She’d sent her father a check to help with the cremation costs and made a donation in her mother’s name to a local charity that helped drug and alcohol addicts find recovery. It was enough closure for her. And while her father had very promptly cashed the check, she hadn’t spoken to him since.
She’d left this mobile home park eleven years before without saying goodbye to either of her parents. The ache in her heart had only been for Mirabelle. At the time, that particular ache had been drowned out by a greater one, though, and it was only in the aftermath that she had realized her grief had layers.
She stared, unseeing, in the direction of what had once been her home. Her mind cast back.