Unraveling The Past

She slid her helmet over her head, knowing the exact content of Tyler’s unfinished sentence. The scant praise from Sheriff Beck was short-lived. He had placed himself in charge again, and she was back to being the wild card.

* * *

The log cabin in the Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park was perfect, set in beautiful dense woodland, far from any neighboring properties. The forest was spectacular, with a mixture of oaks, American beech, hickory and sweet gum. At any other time, Tyler would be incredibly excited to explore their temporary new environment. But this wasn’t a vacation. This was a hideaway.

Tyler pushed his motorcycle inside the garage around back. Joanna watched him with steely eyes, sipping from a bottle of water they’d picked up from a large store in the town of Millington, along with some food provisions and ladies’ clothes. Joanna had discarded her neon pants and bright purple sweatshirt and chosen some blue jeans and warm sweaters that would allow her to blend in better. The store in Millington had been full of Christmas shoppers with laden carts, perusing the aisles to the sound of festive songs. The children lining up to meet Santa added to the noisy excitement in the air. Tyler and Joanna must have looked like any regular couple, doing last-minute shopping, and, for a little while, he wished it were true. Spending Christmas in the bosom of your own family was a blessing that many failed to appreciate. Since his grandmother had died, the holidays were mainly lonely and painful, at least those he could recollect. Yet with Joanna by his side, the pain eased a little. The pretense of being a happy couple at Christmas was too much to resist.

His forced his thoughts to return to their immediate situation. He had already scouted out the cabin and the surrounding area, leaving him satisfied that this was the safest place they could possibly be. His earlier heated exchange with Joanna had given him a better understanding of why their relationship hadn’t worked out. She truly was hotheaded and impetuous, whereas he was meticulous and measured. He smiled to himself, imagining how she must have driven him crazy—how she still drove him crazy. Yet a lingering feeling of affection for her remained, and he knew that she must have gotten under his skin.

Joanna had said very little while shopping, only asking questions after he had taken a call from Ed, informing them that the cabin had been opened up by a naval officer and was ready for them to inhabit. Their Dark Skies buddy, Dillon Randall, had arranged for the property to be at their disposal until it was required by navy personnel, which wouldn’t be for a good while yet. Tyler was beyond grateful. He closed his eyes and said a brief thank you to God for providing them with avenues of help at every turn.

Joanna obviously saw his prayer. “Put in a good word for me, will you?” she said with a strangled laugh. “I need it.”

He opened his eyes. She had tried to disguise her misery with humor, but he saw through it in an instant. “You’re feeling a little lost, huh?”

“You could say that.” She suddenly seemed more vulnerable. “I think God forgot about me somehow.”

Tyler walked over to her and sat on the porch step, leaning forward with his forearms on wide apart knees. “God never forgets about anybody,” he said softly, watching his breath swirl in the coolness of the air. “Did you ever read that poem about footprints in the sand? When you see only one set of footprints, that’s when the Lord carries you.”

A sound rushed from her mouth, like a sob, but she quickly turned it into a snort. “Carries me?” she said with incredulity. “Wow, if this is how it feels to be carried, then I’d hate to know how it feels to be put down again.”

He couldn’t help or counsel Joanna unless he knew more about her, and they had another few hours to wait for Ed to arrive, so he wanted to use it wisely.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “I’d like to know you.”

She smiled. “You know me already. You just forgot all of it.”

“Exactly,” he said. “So tell me again.”

She sat on the step next to him. The late-afternoon sun was pleasantly warming, and it lit up Joanna’s face with an orange glow. She really was beautiful, with smooth, clear skin and an expressive face, framed by a mass of deep brown hair. Yet he couldn’t see any joy in her heart.

She took a deep breath and stared into the woods beyond. “I grew up on a farm about ten miles from Godspeed. My dad worked the farm while my mom homeschooled me and my brother.”

“So you never went to a public school?” he asked. If Godspeed was also her hometown, this would explain why he didn’t remember her from his childhood days. “You didn’t go to regular classes with other kids?”

“My mom was an amazing teacher,” she said with a note of intense pride. “I had plenty of friends in the area, and I never needed to go to a public school. Whatever I wanted to learn, Mom would show me, and I had a natural ability for understanding biochemistry. I loved studying the way living organisms work, the chemical processes that allow them to function the way they do. The complexity of life in all its forms is fascinating.” She clearly noticed the smile light up on Tyler’s face. “Yeah, sorry, I can be a bit of a nerd sometimes.”

“Never apologize for being intelligent,” he said. “Your intellect took you all the way to Harvard. That’s pretty incredible.”

“I never really thought I had the brains to go to Harvard.” She threw her hands into the air. “I mean...me...at an Ivy League university. I was just a hick girl from Missouri who liked looking at cells under a microscope. But I was offered a full scholarship to study molecular and cellular biology.”

“So,” Tyler said, rubbing his chin. “How does a girl studying molecular and cellular biology end up serving as a sheriff’s deputy for Yardley County? It’s quite a career change.”

“Well,” she began, “after I graduated, I went to work for the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases in the Harvard School of Public Health. And for the next eight years, I worked on all kinds of amazing projects, trying to find ways to combat the spread of things like malaria, HIV, tuberculosis.” She dropped her voice. “And cancer.”

“What happened?” he asked. “Why did you leave?”

“I was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after my thirtieth birthday. It was a particularly aggressive type, and I was only given a twenty percent chance of recovery. I was off work for months and months, just focusing on beating the disease and getting well again. My mom came to Boston to take care of me.” She wound her fingers tightly together. “I’ve never really discussed this in detail with you. I was worried you might see it as a weakness.”

“Really? Is that how you see me?” He was disappointed in himself. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d offered you a better shoulder to cry on.”

“It’s not all your fault,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’m not an easy nut to crack.”

“Well, now that I have no recollection of our history, why don’t we start over?” He sensed her beginning to relax. “How did your cancer diagnosis make you feel?”

She looked into the distance, seemingly reluctant to answer.

“Please,” he coaxed. “I’d like to know.”

“Okay,” she said. “My diagnosis made me look at my life from a totally new perspective. It’s so difficult to face your own mortality, to question whether you’ve made the most of all the exciting opportunities that life has to offer.”

He was beginning to see the reason for her impetuousness. “And you didn’t think you’d grasped life by the horns?” he asked. “You felt something was missing?”

“Yes,” she said. “When the doctors told me I was in remission four years ago, I knew it didn’t mean I was cured. I know exactly how cancer works. I’ve studied it in molecular detail. If cancer returns, it’s usually within five years of treatment, so I’m kind of living day to day just hoping and praying that I’ll stay in remission. I’ve had reconstructive surgery, so on the outside I look perfectly normal and healthy, but the cancer changed me. When I was well enough to return to work, the thought of going back to the lab and handling petri dishes all day was too depressing. I might not have much time left in this world, and I want to make the most of it.” She took a deep lungful of air, as if breathing in the vitality of the natural world around them. “I want to feel alive.”

“You could have taken up an extreme sport like rock climbing or bungee jumping.” He glanced at her, and she shook her head irritably. Maybe he didn’t quite fully understand what she was saying.

“I want to make a difference,” she said. “Rock climbing and bungee jumping may be great experiences, but they only benefit me. I want to benefit other people. I want to help those who need it.”

He nodded with a better understanding. He knew how it felt to want to make a difference.

“So why did you choose the sheriff’s department?” he asked. “There are plenty of organizations where you can do good work and help people.”

In truth, he was asking the same question of himself. Why did he choose the sleepy county of Yardley over the SEALs?

“While I was working in Boston, I knew that Missouri had a growing problem with the production and trafficking of methamphetamine, but when I moved back to the area, I learned just how bad it had become. It seemed like the ideal opportunity to try to do some good. I underwent police training and joined the sheriff’s department immediately.” She gave him a broad smile. “But I chose to live in Godspeed for the same reason as you, Sheriff. I wanted to go home. Sometimes when everything around you has fallen apart, there’s only one place you want to be, and that’s home.”

He wondered whether his reasoning had been the same. “Did I return to Godspeed because I wanted to go home?”

“That’s what you said when you ran for the position of sheriff. You’d already served a year as a police officer for the Godspeed Police Department, but you didn’t always get along with Chief Crenshaw. You thought he allowed Mayor Landon too much influence over police matters and—”

Tyler put up his hand to interrupt. “I noticed that the mayor was standing right beside the chief on the news this morning. Are they close?”

“Almost joined at the hip,” Joanna replied. “I rarely see one without the other. The mayor is really concerned with the meth problem in Godspeed, so he takes a very close interest in trying to halt the growth of The Scorpions. He’s also heavily involved in the Southern Missouri Drug Task Force.”

“That’s the organization that placed you undercover with The Scorpions, right?”

“That’s correct. It’s a team specially designated to deal with narcotics. It’s a multiagency task force that includes numerous police chiefs from Southern Missouri, elected mayors and some of the top officials in local government.”

“And me?” he asked.

“For a little while, yes,” she replied. “But you were quite critical of how the task force was managed, so Mayor Landon forced you out. The board elects a new leader every three years, and Chief Crenshaw was given the job right before the undercover operation began. You said that somebody with more experience in undercover assignments should be the leader, and you caused a bit of a stir. Landon led a group that voted you off the board, so you played no part in the undercover operation after that.”

“But I obviously released you from your duties so you could go undercover.” He wondered why he would do this if he had no faith in the assignment or those running it.

“You said it was my choice, and you would never try to stand in my way. My background in chemistry made me the ideal person for the job, and I was able to infiltrate the gang by posing as a radical chemistry student who didn’t believe in government control. It was terrifying at first, but the adrenaline rush was incredible, knowing that I was putting myself right at the heart of a dangerous meth gang.”

There it was again: the reckless edge she couldn’t control.

“So what was your job in the gang?” he asked. “Surely you weren’t cooking meth yourself?”

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