“Buzzkill,” he said. Norm Kessler, Amy reminded herself, wasn’t a bad guy. He could actually be half-decent at times but he remained her mom’s husband. When it came to Amy, his job was to support Cheryl without crossing any boundaries. To bolster mom but never impose. Alone, Amy didn’t mind him, but around her mom, Norman was one pubic hair shy of being a sycophant.
“So,” Cheryl said, “do you want to talk about what happened at school yesterday?”
“Not really.” Amy poured the coffee, spilling half of it on the counter.
“Honey, you can’t just skip half a day like that. Your grades are bad enough as it is.”
Amy grunted without actually saying anything, a habit she’d fallen into recently. The last thing she wanted to talk about were dismal grades.
Cheryl wiped her hands on the dishtowel. “Gabby said you had another episode.”
“Do we have to do this now?”
“Yes, now. The school year is almost over and you’ll be lucky if you don’t fail completely. These episodes are becoming more and more frequent. What are we going to do?”
“You can start by not nagging at me.”
Cheryl’s jaw clenched as she bit her tongue. The word nag touched a nerve. Norm leaned forward to intercede. “What your mom means, Amy, is that we’re worried about you but we don’t know how to help. We think it’s time you started seeing a counselor.”
“We?” Amy shot back, reminding him of his boundaries.
Cheryl said, “You need help and clearly, all I do is make the situation worse.”
“Look, mom. It’s just grief. It does weird things to people. Okay?”
That dampened the proceedings. Cheryl floundered for a moment. “It’s more than that, honey. I know what grief is. I know what depression looks like. This is something else and I’m worried to death it’s just going to get worse if we don’t do something now.”
“I know,” Amy conceded. “But I don’t need a shrink or a therapist to deal with grief. I just need time.”
Cheryl’s eyes softened. “Well, maybe we can help with that.”
“How?”
Cheryl took a breath then let it out. “It’s time to deal with your dad’s house.”
All of the oxygen slipped from the room. Amy set her cup down, afraid she would hurl it against the wall. “No.”
“We have to, honey. We can’t carry it any longer.”
The house owned by the deceased detective John Gallagher had sat untouched since December. It had been Amy’s other home since she was eleven years old but she hadn’t stepped foot inside it since the incident. Aside from the police, the only person who had ventured inside was Norm, and that was only to board up the front door that had been smashed open by the assailant who had kidnapped her dad. A month ago, Cheryl had brought up the issue of the empty house, gently suggesting that it was time to think about selling it. Amy had refused to even float the idea.
“I know this is difficult and you don’t want to let go,” Cheryl said. “But it’s been four months now. We’re still paying the mortgage on it and we just can’t carry two households anymore.”
“You just can’t wait to sell it, can you?” Amy’s eyes narrowed to slits. “No. It’s my home and I’m not losing it.”
“We can’t keep it, honey. I wish we could but we can’t. And there’s still so much to do before we can even list it. There’s all of your dad’s belongings to deal with and the repairs—”
“I’m not having this conversation.” Amy turned for the stairs. “You’re not selling my home!”
“Fine. You want to keep it, then you make the monthly payments. Because we can’t float it anymore, not without running us into debt.”
“Amy,” Norm spoke up, cautiously. “You don’t have to go back in there or deal with any of your dad’s things right now. You’re mom and I can sort most of the stuff and any of the important things can be moved into storage. Okay?”
“Stay out of it, Norman,” Amy said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I’m afraid it does.” He spoke softly and slowly, the way one does to a jumper on a ledge. “I know this is hard and you don’t want to deal with it but your mom needs you to be reasonable.”
Amy squared them both with an icy glare. “You two make me sick. The man’s barely cold in the ground and you can’t wait to divvy up the property. We’re not selling it! If I have to, I’ll go move in and live there. Alone!”
She stormed away. She heard her mom call after and then Norm’s voice telling Cheryl to leave it and let the kid cool off.
5
LUNA COUNTY RESCUE WAS headquartered out of the back of a strip mall unit, where the loading dock was. The storefront half of the space belonged to Our Lady of the Broken Tears ministry. Established by Pastor Raymond Talbot, the rescue mission operated as a charitable adjunct to his nascent ministry in the lonely strip mall. Mornings began with a debrief of the previous day before Pastor Talbot divvied up assignments and routes to the seven member team.
The debrief was already underway when Lara pushed through the door and tried to slip into a seat beside Mason without interrupting the meeting. Pastor Talbot spotted her immediately and held up a hand. “There she is.”
The assembled members turned around and clapped their hands in a quick but enthusiastic round of applause. Lara shrank in her seat. She despised being the center of attention. Mason whistled a hoot to prolong both the clapping and her torment.
Trumbo sat on the far side of the room with his arms folded, refusing to play along. The puckered sneer on his face hinted at a sour taste in his mouth.
“Well done, Lara” the pastor said once the rumble died away. “Mason was just giving us the details of how you found the little girl yesterday. He described it as spooky but I suggested that maybe some higher spirit was guiding you.”
“We got lucky.” Lara nodded at Mason to acknowledge his part in the rescue. She wished the pastor would change the subject so everyone in the room would stop looking at her.
“Any word on the girl’s condition?”
“She’s stable,” Lara said. “I just came from the hospital now. The doctors are optimistic.”
Pastor Talbot beamed.“That’s good news. You ought to be proud of yourself, Lara, for saving that child’s life. I know we are.” Her team-mates nodded in agreement and flashed her silent thumbs-up signals. Save for Trumbo, who yawned like a bear.
Mason studied Lara’s drawn expression. “You okay?”
“Tired. I spent half the night at the hospital.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I could have come to relieve you.”
“It’s fine. I wanted to be there.”
“Did the girl wake up?”
Lara folded her hands in her lap then nodded. “She asked for her mom.”
His knee stopped bouncing. “What did you tell her?”
“I said we’d find her.”
Mason winced. “You can’t promise things like that. For all we know the body we found was her mom’s. What are we gonna tell her?”
“The truth. If her mom is gone, she needs to know.” She watched his knee resume its bouncing then added, “I’m not asking you to do it.”
Pastor Talbot waited for all eyes to drift his way again. “Before we get to the day’s routes, I need to share some bad news. Lambert Auto informed me yesterday that they’re withdrawing their support for our mission and will no longer be providing any funding. As you know, Lambert was one of our biggest financial supporters and without their backing, our rescue mission here is extremely hampered. We will have to tighten our belts.”
Trumbo sat up. “Why did they pull out?”
“They said their charitable givings were stretched too thin. Translation; they’re being pressured politically. Public support for our mission is shifting and our opponents believe we’re exacerbating the border problem, not helping it.”
Another hand shot up in the back. “What do you mean by tightening our belts?”
The pastor leaned against the whiteboard on the wall. “Unless I can find another business to replace Lambert’s funding, we are going to have to scale back the operation. We can crunch numbers as best we can but it will probably mean reducing the team by two, maybe even three members.”
A collective groan passed through the assembled members. Pastor Talbot held up a hand, as if waving a white flag. “I know, I know. And I’m sorry. But I wanted to be straightforward about this and give everyone ample warning. But until then, we still have a job to do.” The pastor wrapped up the session by assigning the teams their routes for the day, the number of water stations to check, but a pall had settled over the room, dampening the triumphant mood that had started the briefing.
Derek Trumbo stayed seated after the briefing was over. The pastor had ended with a short prayer for any help the Almighty could grant them in their mission to help those who were literally lost in the wilderness. The team rose from their folding chairs and milled about, chatting or filling their travel mugs from the coffee urn. Trumbo leaned back in his chair and peered through the crowd to the far side of the room where Lara Quesada stood speaking with Pastor Talbot.
He had never liked Lara Quesada, not since day one. And now she was a threat.
Trumbo considered himself to be a stand-up guy and he often told people so. He went out of his way to make any rookie member of the rescue team feel welcome and valued. This wasn’t idle feel-good shit or obligatory team-building. As a team leader and member with an unmatched record in finding survivors in the vast wasteland of the New Mexico desert, his inclusion and mentoring meant something to the rookie crews. At least it had until this punta Lara showed her face two months ago.
As usual he had welcomed her onboard and gave her tips on what to expect and what was expected of her. The pastor was the one who did the recruiting but it was Trumbo’s job to size up the potential acolytes. Show them the ropes and school them through the often hazardous work of pulling refugees out of the dust. Lara had been polite but oddly cold. Trumbo forgave it as first-day jitters but found the same response again and again. A cold fish, plain and simple. Some people were just like that.
And it wasn’t like she was that hot anyway, he reminded himself. Sure, he may have poured on the charm a little too much those first few days but who didn’t? He’d mistaken her for Jersey Italian at first. The dark hair, the complexion, the tough exterior. When he learned she was just another chica from the block, he figured he had a bird in the hand for sure. Not the way it played. Chica was so aloof around him the bitch could have passed herself off as wasp. Few things pissed him off more than a chica posing above her station. It galled him now to remember that he had been so welcoming back then. Back before the punta had set out to ruin him by performing above her pay grade.
Some women were just like that, he reminded himself. They saw every man who wasn’t gay as a threat and had to, just had to, prove herself better. Prior to Lara’s arrival, Trumbo had been the point man, the stand-up guy who got the job done. Then Lara comes along and starts trumping him, sniffing out corpses baking in the sun or half-dead migrants coiled under any bit of shelter like snakes. What was the Spanish word for it? Bruja. Spooky shit, as Mason would say.
And now Lara Quesada was Pastor Talbot’s new pet and he himself had been relegated to second banana. That shit just wasn’t gonna play, not after how much he’d given to the cause. Mason wasn’t far off the mark; there was something downright spooky about that chica.
With Lambert Auto pulling their funding, the rescue mission was crippled. The pastor would be lucky to keep half the team employed and his position on it was jeopardized by the pastor’s new pet. Lara had to go and that was all there was to it.
~
“The pastor looks tired. You see those bags under his eyes?” said Mason between bites of his Danish.
Lara loaded gear into the back of the truck. “He’s keeping a brave face on it. Doesn’t want to rattle the troops. Do we need to gas up before we go?”
“I filled it on the way in this morning,” Mason said. He looked out to the horizon, where clouds were clustering in a dark mass. “That sky looks nasty. Headed our way too.”
Lara glanced up at the big sky over the land of enchantment. “Let’s get on the road. Maybe we can get through most of this before the weather hits.”
“Looks like a storm’s coming.”
Lara and Mason turned to see Pastor Talbot marching towards them. Smiling, he patted Lara on the shoulder. Mason caught her flinching briefly as he did so. “Lara, I just wanted to thank you for yesterday. You outdid yourself again, finding that little girl.”
“Wasn’t just me.” She nodded to Mason. “Team effort.”
The pastor smiled again. He knew that his newest team member hated being singled out or fussed over in any way. Humility was a trait that he held in esteem and Lara had it in spades. “Well, I’m proud of both of you.”
“Is there anything we can do for the girl?” Lara asked. “She’s all alone in that hospital. And soon as she’s better, they’ll just run her through the system and bus her back across.”
“There might be someone I can talk to about it. A special provision, given her age. We’ll see.”
Mason brushed the crumbs from his lap. “That’s a shitty deal about Lambert pulling out. How long do you think we can get by without them?”
“Not long. I need to start knocking on doors again, hat in hand. Until then, we’ll have to scale back and watch every penny. I hate the thought of having to let anyone go.”
“Is there a door in this town you haven’t knocked on?” Lara asked.
“Not many. I’ll just have to amp up the charm.” The pastor’s smile drained a little at the prospect. Lara didn’t envy him the task ahead. “The real problem,” he continued, “is simply finding the time. The administrative side of the mission is eating up more and more of it.”
“Maybe we can help with that,” Trumbo said as he joined the group by the truck. He nodded curtly to Lara and Mason before turning to the pastor. “I’m gonna stay behind today and take care of the paperwork. That way, you can have the day to find some more donors.”
Pastor Talbot’s smiled sprang back. “That would be extremely helpful, Derek. But what about your field duties?”
Trumbo looked at Lara. “Can you guys check station eight and nine for me? I can get Diaz and Johnson to take the other spots on my route today.”
“We can do that,” Lara said.
Mason’s brow arced with skepticism. “I thought you hated paperwork.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures,” Trumbo said. “We can save the cost of having another truck on the road too.”
The pastor patted Trumbo’s meaty shoulder. “Thank you, Derek. It’s nice to see everyone pull together on this. Let’s get started, shall we? Before that storm hits.”
Talbot and Trumbo walked back inside as Lara closed up the tailgate. Mason watched the pair pass through the door and then looked at Lara. “What do you suppose that was all about?”
“Like the pastor said. Everybody’s pulling together.”
They climbed into the cab but Mason kept looking back to the roll-up door in the loading dock. “Trumbo volunteering for admin duties? Dude’s up to something.”
Lara shrugged and turned the ignition. She could not care less what Trumbo was doing.
With the crews gone, the pastor put on his jacket and headed out the door. Alone in the offices of Luna County Rescue, Trumbo sat down at the main desk and looked over the stack of paper waiting to be sorted. He pushed it aside, pulled in the keyboard and logged into the system. The personnel files popped onscreen. He scrolled down the names of every team member until his cursor stopped at one. Quesada, Lara.
There were plenty of things about Lara Quesada that Trumbo didn’t like. One of them was her secrecy. Whenever the conversation turned to the topics of hometowns or family or previous careers, Lara offered nada to the conversation.
She would deflect any personal questions before subtly changing the subject. Trumbo hadn’t thought much of it until this morning, stewing over the dark cloud that now hung over Luna County Rescue.
Every individual recruited by the organization was required to undergo a background check. Standard procedure. Clicking through Lara’s file, he hoped he might find something here he could use against her if needed. There had to be a reason she was so cagey about her past and he expected to find jail time or a child taken away by family services.
What he didn’t expect was to find nothing at all. No history, no details. There was no background check at all filed under the name Lara Quesada.
6
THERE WERE TIMES WHEN Amy hated her best friend. Only friend these days, she reminded herself. Back before the world went to hell, she had lots of friends. Old friends she’d known since the sixth grade, other friends bonded with during high school and other girls whom she played basketball with. They were all gone now. Driven off by her grief and morose withdrawal as if she was contagious, the friends had scattered before the dark pall around Amy could infect themselves. She recalled learning about the brutal caste system in India, about a whole subset of society who were considered untouchable. It couldn’t hold a candle to the complicated and cruel social strata of a high school pecking order. Amy found herself invisible to her former friends, cast off and set adrift as a pariah among her former peers and allies.
She shrugged it off and let it slide. There wasn’t any other option. She had neither the stomach nor the heart to give a rat’s ass if she was untouchable now.
The only friend who hadn’t abandoned her was Gabby. Outspoken, clumsy and a magnet for trouble, Gabby was a mess of a girl who invoked chaos the way other people yawned. Even in Amy’s most depressive, toxic state, Gabby had remained loyal and constant and available. She knew when to back off and give space and she knew when to reach in even when Amy lied about wanting to be alone. Despite Gabby’s knack for hell-raising, she was mature beyond her years and Amy would have suffered a complete breakdown without her.
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 57