If it weren’t for my obstinate determination I wouldn’t have achieved a single thing in my life. Stubborn to a fault. That’s how my friends and family describe me.
At least I learn from my mistakes. My friend Mike is one of those guys who keeps doing the same thing over and over, lamenting all the while about how he can never catch a break. You gotta make your own breaks. At least those of us who don’t get things handed to them. I’m always looking out for the next thing, the next “whatever it’s going to be that’ll take me where I want to go.” However circuitous the route. No straight lines to anything for me. Nope. The road to all my achievements has been twisty and windy, filled with flooded potholes. Every once in a while something will fly out in front of me, forcing me to change course to avoid it.
It’s those unexpected detours that have lead to the most interesting things in my life. Take my new job at Nash Security and Investigations. Totally not what I saw myself doing when they handed me my college diploma for my degree in criminal justice. I was going to be a police officer. Or maybe a sheriff. Okay, a small part of me kinda hoped the FBI would recruit me right out of college. That didn’t happen. Also, it turns out that I’m not cut out to be a cop. A little more than halfway through the entrance application, I had the sudden, overwhelming realization that I didn’t want to go into law enforcement.
After that revelation—another something leaping across my road, making me jerk the wheel to avoid it—I found myself on an unfamiliar street, fenced in by unfamiliar surroundings, driving along at a snail’s pace. That was the year I wandered aimlessly through job after job, looking for The Thing. My Thing. Who and what I was meant to be. And then I came across the story of how this PI firm, Nash Securities and Investigations, had helped to clear a man named Beau Hollis who was wrongly convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend. That sounded like a really cool job. I mean, freeing someone after years in prison. Giving them their life back. That’s a fucking incredible thing.
I wanted to be a part of that.
It was the first time I ever had that feeling about anything. I sure as shit didn’t have it about selling cars or driving a delivery truck or being a customer service rep for an electronics company. The free pizza I got to eat doing deliveries for an Italian restaurant didn’t give me the sensation of being imminently useful. Contributing to society. Doing good. Making wrong things right. That’s what I want to do.
Except as usual I managed to screw things up the first chance I got.
Backing up.
I got the job at Nash Security and Investigations by nailing the interview. That never happens to me. I should’ve known it was too good to be true. Like I said, nothing’s ever been handed to me. Definitely not something as big and as sought-after as this job was for me. The very first assignment they gave me on my own, I screwed up. Like huge, major, no-going-back-from-this, lives-in-danger kind of fucked up. It should’ve been a cakewalk. Watch this retail center. See if this guy shows up. Follow him. See where he goes. Simple, right?
Not for me.
I got close enough to get his license plate. I followed him, thinking I was cool and important, and then the guy lost me. One minute he was there then the next—POOF. Gone. When I got back to the office to give the car and tag info to my boss, Cora Hollis (sister of the exonerated Beau), the client, Vera Swain (Beau’s firlfriend), pointed out that if I got close enough to get the guy’s plate then I was close enough for him to get my plate. And son of a bitch if he hadn’t. That’s how the asshole found Vera—through me. Finding her resulted in the bastard killing her sister and nearly killing Vera and Beau, the guy who’d just gotten his life back after spending years in prison.
All of that shit was on me. Why Cora didn’t fire me on the spot I have no idea. Hell, I would’ve fired me. A young girl died because of me. I almost got Beau and Vera killed. All because I can’t get anything right the first time out. This was one case where the effort and the thought didn’t count. I tried didn’t mean shit. I’m sorry wasn’t enough. I didn’t mean to was useless.
Cora insisted there was nothing to forgive. An honest mistake, she called it. Could’ve happened to anyone, she said. You’ll do better next time, she placated. Would I though? Second and third tries were iffy for me. Nearly as dicey as the first time. And that first time was a giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. I know it’ll get better from here on out, but that’s not much consolation. Like a category five hurricane downgrading to a three or a four. Still a major disaster. There will be damage, it’s just a matter of how much and who it will affect.