Ready to Die

  “You know, you’re wishing your life away,” Santana had once told her when she admitted, not for the first time, how good she’d feel once a particularly hard week was over. They’d been driving in his truck, heading to a rare dinner out, he at the wheel, she in the passenger seat. It had been autumn with the weather beginning to turn.

  “Yeah, well, don’t give me any of that ‘live for the moment’ stuff. I get it, okay?” She’d finished her flat Diet Coke and tossed her empty cup into the trash, a grocery bag he’d tucked just behind the driver’s seat. “I just think some of those supposedly special moments aren’t that great.”

  “Could that come with being a cop?”

  She’d stared out the windshield as fat drops of rain had drizzled down the glass. “Trust me, it’s not all the ‘dark underbelly of society’ that gets to me. It’s just the way I’ve always been, ready for the next challenge.” She’d swiped at the condensation collecting on the passenger window. “The way I was born.”

  He’d lifted a dark eyebrow in disbelief but had let any further argument slide. Thankfully. She hadn’t been in the mood for an ideological discussion and figured those kinds of talks were better left to the great philosophers, of one she definitely was not.

  Santana had learned when to press an issue and when to back off. Well, most of the time. The arguments that did flare between them were always white hot, furious, and, it seemed, rarely resolved.

  She thought about the ring he’d given her and the realities of marrying him. If nothing else, it would be interesting. “And challenging,” she said aloud and caught her worried expression in the rearview mirror. “Commitment-phobe,” she told herself and knew that she had to come to some decision soon.

  Santana wasn’t the kind of man who would wait around forever; he’d said as much and she believed him. And though it was true that the attempt on Grayson’s life had thrown her and the department into a tailspin, Santana would still want an answer.

  She drove into the garage, killed the engine, then, carrying both pizza boxes and her laptop case, shoved open the back door with her hip. Sturgis bounded out and eagerly followed her into the house. Cisco, spying an intruder, barked loudly, the hackles on his neck rising and his teeth flashing. “Enough!” Pescoli said to her dog as Sturgis, intimidated by the smaller terrier, immediately sat beside her. “We’re all friends here.”

  Cisco wasn’t about to be appeased and rather than rush up to greet her, climbed onto his favorite pillow on the couch and growled his dissatisfaction, all the while staring at the offending Lab. “Yeah, fine. Whatever,” Pescoli said as she slid the pizza boxes onto the counter, the laptop on the table, and unwrapped her scarf. She yelled loudly, “I’m home. With pizza!”

  When no one appeared, she walked down the short hallway and heard music pounding from her daughter’s room. Knocking softly on the door before pushing it open, she found Bianca, clad only in her bra and a scrap of underwear, standing in front of her full-length mirror. Scowling at her image and cocking her head, she pulled some skin from her tiny waist.

  “What’re you doing?” Pescoli said and Bianca visibly jumped.

  “Mom!” She grabbed a hoodie that was tangled in the sheets of her unmade bed and threw it over her head. “Don’t you believe in knocking?”

  “I did knock.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I wonder why.”

  Pushing her head through the sweatshirt’s neck, Bianca said angrily, “You should wait ’til I answer.”

  “Too late.” Pescoli walked over to Bianca’s desk, where between the bottles of fingernail polish and makeup, Pescoli found her daughter’s iPod docking station. She yanked out Bianca’s phone and the pounding music suddenly ceased.

  “I was listening to that!”

  The device vibrated in Pescoli’s hand. “So what were you doing, there at the mirror?”

  “Just looking, okay? I’m going to be taking that trip with Michelle and I want to make sure I look okay in a bikini. Give me my phone.”

  “You look fabulous.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “You don’t think I’m fat?”

  “Good God.” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Bianca had always been slim and athletic, not an ounce of excess fat on her body. “Of course not.”

  “You’re just saying that cuz you’re my mom. You have to. Can I have my phone back?” She held out her hand and wiggled her fingers in a “come-on-gimme” gesture just as the damned thing vibrated again.

  Pescoli tossed the cell to her daughter. “Trust me, runway models would kill for your figure.”

  Bianca glanced at the cell, then sent a sidelong look toward the mirror again, her expression clouding. “You sure? You’re not just saying that cuz you’re my mom?”

  “I speaketh the truth.” Pescoli sat on the edge of the bed where she spied a shimmering turquoise bikini lying in an open box. God, it was tiny.

  “I just think I could look better,” Bianca confessed.

  “You look great. Trust me. And enjoy it. While you’re young. Okay?”

  Bianca shrugged.

  “Come on, let’s have some dinner. I told you we’re starting a new tradition tonight.”

  “Oh, right. No Christmas or something.”

  “Most Un-Christmas. We’re still going to celebrate the real deal on Christmas Day if we can, but when we can’t, let’s do something different. We’ll have our pizza and open gifts and I have a surprise guest tonight.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “Un-Christmas, Mom. Really? And don’t tell me, the surprise guest is your boyfriend.” Her expression turned to disgust and Pescoli clamped her teeth together in frustration. In her daughter’s mind, it was fine for Luke to have carried on while they were married and to marry a much younger woman. Bianca accepted Michelle, for the most part, with open arms as her stepmother. However, that’s where the understanding stopped. When it came to Santana, or any other man Pescoli had dated since her divorce, Bianca didn’t hold back. She was vociferous in her dislike of all of them, especially Nate Santana.

  Pescoli figured it’s because Santana was her first serious relationship and thereby a threat of some kind.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but the other guest is Sturgis,” she said and whistled to the dog.

  “Who?” Bianca was confused for a second. Then the Lab cautiously stuck his nose into her room. “Oh!” Her face lit up. “We’re keeping him?”

  “More like he’s on loan. Just until the sheriff is well enough for the both of them to go home.”

  “Awesome!” She turned to the dog and patted her bed, indicating for him to jump up. “Come on, boy!”

  Unsure, Sturgis hung back, glanced at Pescoli.

  Pescoli plucked at the pink quilt on her daughter’s canopy bed. “Maybe he’s intimidated by all the girlie stuff.”

  “Come, Sturgis!” Bianca threw her mother a don’t-even-go-there look and patted the bed again. This time the black Lab, head down, tail swinging slowly behind him, sauntered into the room. At another round of urging, he bounded on the bed and got lost in the myriad of blankets.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Pescoli said. As if to back her up, Cisco appeared in the doorway and yipped for attention.

  “You never think anything is a good idea.”

  About to argue, Pescoli changed her mind and said instead, “Let’s just remember he belongs to the sheriff and we already own a dog whose nose is more than a little out of joint.” Cisco began doing quick twirls in the hallway. “He been out lately?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I’ll take care of it. But in the future, pay attention, okay.”

  No response.

  Don’t pick a fight, it is the first ever, hopefully not annual, Most Un-Christmas.

  After letting both dogs out and then wiping their paws, she fed them both on opposite ends of the kitchen and was gratified that Cisco had quit growlin
g long enough to snarf down his dinner.

  Pescoli left her daughter’s room and started down the narrow staircase at the back of the house, to the basement and Jeremy’s room. Rapping on his door with her knuckles, she felt it give way, opening to a dark room where a lava lamp was slowly burping, its weird-shaped, gelatinous lumps giving off an eerie glow. “Jer—?”

  “He’s not here!” Bianca called from the floor above. Pescoli looked up to find her daughter leaning over the rail. She’d found a pair of jeans and her hair, as she leaned, fell forward around her face. “I just texted him.”

  “Where is he?”

  Bianca gave her mother a knowing look. “Where do you think?”

  “With Heidi.”

  “You got it.”

  “I thought it was over between them.”

  “That was last week.”

  Great. Pescoli had hoped that after the last breakup Jeremy wouldn’t get back with Heidi, but, it seemed, they were forever doomed to their on-again/off-again romance. Her only hope was that one of them would grow up enough to move on, get out of Grizzly Falls, start making a real life for him- or herself. So far, it wasn’t happening. Heidi was still in high school, and Jeremy was struggling with classes at the local community college. He seemed lost, sometimes not enrolled in college at all and working at the local gas station, only to “go back to school,” only to change his mind and make a stab at something else again.

  All the while, he’d never been able to break it off with Heidi. The undersheriff’s daughter seemed to be his grounding point, which scared Pescoli to death.

  “I texted him, he’s on his way,” Bianca said as Pescoli started climbing the stairs.

  “Well, let’s eat. The pizza’s getting cold.”

  “I thought you were making spaghetti.”

  “Ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Bianca was following her into the kitchen. “I’m not really that hungry.”

  “Why not?”

  “I already ate.”

  “When?” Pescoli asked.

  “I don’t know. A few hours ago.” She leaned over again, scooped her wild curls together, and snapped a colored band around her fistful of hair.

  “What did you eat?”

  Bianca straightened. “A power bar and a Diet Coke.”

  “Again?” Pescoli groaned. “Listen, I’m not going to get into it about the merits of eating well. We’ll skip that lecture tonight, but between you and me, the protein bar and soda? Doesn’t count as a meal. Maybe not even a snack.”

  “You just said you weren’t going to give me a lecture.”

  “I might have lied.”

  “Geez.” Bianca stalked to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. She took a long swallow before recapping the bottle as Pescoli warmed slices of the pizza in the microwave and both dogs waited impatiently, eyes on the platter.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she told them as the first plate was the Vegetarian’s Delight. Looking at the thin, limp strips of peppers and onions, Pescoli silently agreed with the dogs. “Here ya go.”

  “Yummy,” Bianca said without enthusiasm as she kicked out a chair and sat down.

  “You usually love Dino’s,” she said as she shoved plate number two into the microwave and hit the Start button.

  “Only pizza parlor in town.”

  “It was kind of quiet there tonight. The guy who helped me was Eric Ingles. I think he went to school with Jeremy.”

  “Dropped out sophomore year.” She picked at a piece of artichoke on the pizza.

  “You know this how?”

  “He was a friend of Chris’s older brother, I think.”

  Chris was her ex-boyfriend.

  “What do you know about him now?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “He just seemed nervous that I was a cop.”

  Bianca snorted her disdain. “Y’think?”

  The microwave timer dinged and Pescoli retrieved the second plate of pizza just as she heard a truck’s engine rumbling ever closer. “So it looks like the prodigal son has returned.”

  Less than a minute later, the beams of headlights splashed through the windows and Jeremy’s truck came into view. It slid to a stop near the front of the house and he flew out of it, then pounded snow from his boots as he reached the front door, and Cisco, giving up on any scraps dropping his way, ran to the living room to do his happy dance.

  “Hey, Bud,” Jeremy said, scooping up the terrier and getting his face washed. “Pizza?” he asked, his face flushed, his eyes bright. “Great!” He let the dog hop from his arms, tossed his cap onto a side table, and began unzipping his jacket. “I’m starved!” He took the plate from his mother’s outstretched hands and stopped at the refrigerator for a soda.

  “That’s the reaction I was hoping for,” she said to her daughter.

  “The rest of this”—he made a circular motion with a finger not wrapped around the neck of his Coke to include the remaining pizza—“it’s mine. Right? All of it.”

  “You’re such a Neanderthal,” Bianca muttered with a long-suffering sigh.

  “Oh, shut up,” he said, half joking, his good mood making him almost euphoric. Dear God, she hoped he wasn’t high on something. He’d been known to smoke a joint or two, but so had she in her youth. Leaning across the table, his nose inches from his sister’s, he said, “I was only asking.”

  “Huh. Sounded more like marking your territory. You know, kinda like pissing in the corners of the kitchen.”

  “Okay, no squabbling,” Pescoli intervened. “This is a holiday.”

  “Yesterday was a holiday,” Jeremy said.

  “Mom’s got one of her lame ideas going. If you haven’t got it yet, you’re celebrating some anti-Christmas Day.”

  “It’s not anti-Christmas. It’s in addition to the holiday.” When Jeremy looked at her she waved away the questions in his eyes. “I’ll explain later, and to answer your question, most of the meat pizza is yours. I want a slice or two.”

  “Afterward we’ll open presents,” Bianca said.

  “Good.” Jeremy twisted off the cap of his Coke and washed down his bite. “Because I want to celebrate.”

  Pescoli looked up sharply. Her insides froze. He’d just been with Heidi. It was still the holidays . . . she thought about the ring Santana had given her and waves of denial swept through her. “Celebrate?” she whispered.

  “I hate to ask,” Bianca said, shoving the barely touched slices to one side.

  “Then don’t. You’re looking at the newest deputy for the Pinewood Sheriff’s Department,” he declared with pride.

  “What?” Pescoli whispered, thinking this was some kind of joke. Surely he was kidding, right? Pulling her leg? But she barely heard the hum of the microwave over the pounding of her heart.

  “It’s just one of those temporary things, until I finish school, but I went in and talked to Heidi’s dad and he made me a deputy. Can you believe it?” Jeremy positively beamed, his grin stretching ear to ear. “See? I told you I wanted to be a cop.”

  “A deputy? But—”

  “Okay, kind of a deputy.” He cut off Pescoli’s desperate-sounding words before he could get an all-out “no” from her. “He called it something else.”

  “A volunteer?”

  “Yeah.”

  The rush in her ears was almost deafening. “I’m . . . I’m surprised you didn’t talk to me first.” She leaned against the counter for support, the way she had when she’d learned that her husband had been killed in the line of duty so long ago. He’d been older than Jeremy, of course, but the pain of that loss, whenever she thought about it, was still visceral. It didn’t matter that their marriage had been in trouble. It was just . . . hellish on all of them.

  And to think that her son wanted to walk in his shoes!

  “I’ve been telling you about this, Mom.” He took another large bite, stuffing the crust into his mouth, washing the whole wad down with another swallow of Coke. “For
a long time. But you haven’t been listening. You’re always too busy.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Bianca said from her chair at the table where Cisco had taken up guard duty, his nose twitching upward. “Don’t you get it, dumbass?” she asked, gesturing toward Pescoli. “She’s in denial.”

  “It’s not denial, and don’t call your brother names.” Pescoli held up both hands and kept her gaze on her boy. “I just didn’t think you were serious.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t. Before.” He swiped another two sections of the pizza and didn’t bother to heat them. “But then someone tried to kill Sheriff Grayson.” Jeremy was suddenly dead serious. “Just like some jackass killed my dad. It’s time for me to step up. Help find the dick who did this.” Before she could argue, he continued, “You’re the one who’s always trying to get me to do something, aren’t you? You know, always wanting me to set goals. So I am.”

  “But, law enforcement?”

  “It’s what I want, Mom. Like you. Like Dad. The only thing I want to do. So I just went for it.” He took another bite and kind of grunted in satisfaction. To Bianca, he said, “And from now on, you can call me Deputy or Officer.”

  “Like sure. Get real.” Bianca’s phone vibrated and she started texting as Jeremy looked in his mother’s direction again. “Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t fu—mess this up. You’ll see.” He grabbed another slice. “Didn’t you say there were presents or something? What’re we waiting for?”

  Chapter 14

  The last person Hattie wanted to run into was Cade Grayson, but it seemed as if her luck had run out and sure enough, as she was walking into the hospital, he was striding through the first set of wide doors at the entrance to Northern General.

  If she’d thought he would pass her by without making a comment, she was sadly mistaken. Keeping his thoughts to himself, especially where she was concerned, was just not his style.