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Last week, she’d gone shopping one hundred miles east instead.
She picked up a couple of packages of a cold medication containing ephedrine at the local drugstore, showing a fake ID to make the purchase. She’d bought the ID from a biker. Since she was making meth for them to sell, they’d been accommodating.
Before heading home today she’d pick up more cold medication in a town ten miles west, also. She shopped different towns every week, miles and miles apart so no one could ever connect the dots.
That, along with what she ordered through her husband’s pharmacy and what she’d ordered online to be delivered to her parents’ old farmhouse, put her in good shape.
* * *
WHEN SHE FINISHED with her purchases, she didn’t head straight home. Instead, she drove to her parents’ farm. They were dead now, killed in a car accident two years ago.
They’d left the property to Brad in the will. Why? This wasn’t the 1900s. They should have trusted her to take care of this place just fine on her own. But no, they’d left it to her husband as though she were too dim-witted, too gently-bred, too female to be of much use. She would have loved having a piece of land in her own name.
She was the one with the brains. She was the one who’d excelled in school, who’d adored math, science, everything. But she was the one who stayed home to care for the children while Brad had a career, while the town looked up to him, while he made money and she went to him every week for handouts.
They’d raised her to be sweet, to be demure and supportive of her husband, but she was smarter than Brad.
Her parents had never seen that.
She stepped into the RV parked a dozen yards away from the house and turned on a light. A sense of satisfaction ran through her. She was a businesswoman. A clever one.
In the small narrow space, she’d made the sweetest little chemistry lab.
She’d seen photos of meth labs, had done a lot of research before building her own. In every photo the labs had been a mess. Not hers. Hers was clean and tidy and perfect, everything lined up exactly as it should be. Three large plastic jars with lids sat beside an eyedropper, coffee filters, glass dish and funnel.
Her ingredients were precisely lined up in a row along one wall. Iodine. Red phosphorous. Ether. Hydrochloric Acid. Sodium Hydroxide. Methanol. On hooks in the wall, she stored her clean tubing.
She placed her purchases on the end of the table and opened the windows. She dressed in protective clothing and secured a mask around her mouth and nose before starting on her next batch of meth.
First she washed her cold medication tablets in ether to get rid of the red dye covering them and to break the pills down to pure ephedrine.
Then she crushed them into powder and put it into a jar with methanol. Before she started shaking the jar, she checked her watch.
Too bad so many parts of this process were slow and tedious.
She wouldn’t have time to clean up after herself today. Her days were a bit longer on Fridays because the boys stayed after school for sports, and she picked up fried chicken and chips for dinner, so no cooking. Even so, she was cutting it real close today.
She’d have to come back on Sunday to clean up. Time to start coming up with an excuse for not attending church services.
* * *
SHANNON PULLED ON a red leather skirt that showed too much leg and too little modesty. Ditto for the black tank top that displayed too much cleavage. She covered it with a fake fur jacket and checked herself in Janey’s full-length mirror.
Her legs looked long and sleek thanks to her six-inch stilettos.
Ruby lipstick made her lips look full.
Dressed and ready for the biker bar in Monroe, she still had to press her hand to her stomach to settle the butterflies roiling there.
She knew men. She knew bars. She knew alcohol. The three could be a deadly combination. She’d had plenty of experience dealing with all three in her career. That experience, and her training, would get her through tonight.
Sheriff Kavenagh wanted her to leave this alone, to let him take care of it, but that wasn’t in her nature. Tom was her brother. She was going to Monroe.
Not ideal going alone.
It is what it is, she told herself.
She’d been in—and handled—tough situations before and had survived.
Not without backup.
True, so she had to be smart. She stuffed her gun into her purse before heading to the bar.
Meth wasn’t called Biker’s Coffee by accident. It made sense for her to look at the biker gang first, but she couldn’t exactly walk out to the farm where they crashed and ask to see where they were cooking the stuff.
She drove to the bar in the next county wishing she’d rented something sexier to drive than the Fiesta she owned. It didn’t make a ballsy statement, wasn’t really in character with the clothes.
She cruised a long square of rural roads around the bar to check out escape routes.
A couple of cop cars were parked off the small highway on a side road just yards away from a flashing neon sign. No doubt waiting for Friday night trouble at the biker bar. Perfect. Backup was close.
When she arrived at the bar, the first thing she noticed was the neon sign flashing red and yellow beside the highway—sASSy’s. Great. A strip joint. Not her cup of tea, but so what? She was here to work.
The lot was full to the gills with hogs and pickup trucks. The only available spot was a dark corner around back, which she didn’t care for. Nothing about this evening thrilled her except the possibility of catching a lead.
She patted the purse she’d slung across her chest messenger style and drew confidence from the bulge of her Glock as she walked around the building to the front door.
Cops advised women not to carry guns in their purses. A purse could be taken away from a woman too easily and the gun used against her. But Shannon was no amateur. She knew what she was doing.
A group of bikers wreathed in smoke and wearing enough black leather to keep the ranchers of Montana in business for years blocked the entrance.
She struggled with her nerves. She didn’t want just the dealer, she reminded herself. She had no choice, she needed to do this if she wanted to nab the creep who was making the stuff.
When she stepped forward and got the bikers’ full attention, the competition and posturing started. She planned to use it to her advantage.
“Hey,” she said. “Where can a girl get a drink around here?”
“Right here, babe.”
“I got it.”
“Hey, lady. I’m buying.”
Cologne swirled around her, mingling with a whiff of sweat from one of the bikers.
One man went through the door and the rest parted long enough for her to enter the bar, then closed around her after, blocking her exit. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
Her heart rate kicked in hard. Easy. Don’t panic. Panic is the worst way to handle this. Jammed in the middle of too many oversize bodies, she forced herself to wrestle her fear under control. She could do this.
She wiped her upper lip.
She had extensive martial arts training. She had a gun and a cell phone. Two cop cars were a one-minute drive away.
The man in front of her stepped aside and she got a good look at the bar.
A stripper gyrated onstage to the throbbing beat of a rock song so loud the bass echoed in Shannon’s pulse.
The place was packed. More than a few glances flicked her way.
Lights flashed onstage while the rest of the bar was dimly lit, no doubt covering up all manner of illegal activity. She glanced at every corner, assessing the situation.
She’d gone through Awareness Training when training to be a cop. There were five levels of Awareness, all color-coded. At the moment she’d bypassed Condition Yellow—attentive, but relaxed, and had shot straight to Condition Orange—focus directed and watching for potential threat.
Any one of these jokers could become a potential threat in a flash.
Perfect. She was exactly where she needed to be. If she couldn’t find the answer here, the cause was lost. Determination stilled her panic and her sense of purpose returned. She could do this.
Her biggest challenge would be keeping maximum awareness of her surroundings without looking like a cop.
She chose a seat at the bar with her back to a door she was fairly certain opened to the back parking lot.
She’d done as much as she could to keep herself safe. She knew from experience, though, how things could go from safe to shit in a matter of seconds.
* * *
FRIDAY NIGHT IN Ordinary, Montana, was small-town quiet. The shop windows were dark and only a few couples strolled toward Chester’s Bar and Grill for dinner.
As he’d done every Friday for the past year, Cash drove to Austin’s trailer to pick him up and take him to a movie.
Austin’s mother answered on the first knock, ready and waiting for Cash. He hated this part. Connie was about the neediest woman he’d ever met. Her most pitiful aspect was the way she looked at him—as though he were her hero, or savior.
He might be trying to save her son, but he wasn’t rescuing her. That was beyond his limited powers.
He’d done his time with Mom until another man had come along and married her. He loved his mom, and he would come running the second she needed him, but his duty with needy women was done.
He wasn’t taking on Connie.
“Austin ready?” he asked.
Austin appeared behind Connie, but she raised her arm and leaned on the doorframe so the boy couldn’t pass.
“How’ve you been, Cash?” She smiled, probably thought she looked sexy, but all he sensed was loneliness pouring from her in waves. He wished he could help—he really did—but what she wanted, he wasn’t prepared to give. The only thing he could do was try to save her son.
That old claustrophobia he used to feel when his mom needed him too much crept around him, choking him. He needed to get away.
Austin scooted under her arm, thank goodness, and out the door, more than ready for his few hours of freedom.
Connie saw Cash start to turn away and she frowned.
“Austin,” she called, “don’t forget to stop at the Lucky Seven and pick up food. There’s nothing in the fridge.”
Cash’s anger flared. It was a mother’s job to take care of the kid, not the other way around.
He wanted to shake Connie, to yell at her, “For God’s sake, woman, develop a backbone and do right by your boy,” but he was caught in a familiar bind. If he yelled or criticized, he would hurt a woman too weak to defend herself no matter how mildly he expressed it. He remembered how easily Mom used to cry. His anger and frustration had nowhere to go.
He bit his tongue, holding it all in. He left her standing there and climbed into the truck.
“Harry Potter is playing tonight. That okay with you?”
“Yeah,” Austin said, his low voice barely audible.
Was the giant step Austin had taken away from his Big Brother normal I’m-almost-a-teenager-stuff? Or was there something more sinister going on?
At the edge of Monroe, on the way to the Five Points Cinema, they passed Sassy’s Bar. The transient biker population of the next county hung out there, and the parking lot looked jammed full of chrome and bikes.
When they got to the theater, they settled in with popcorn and pop and watched the movie.
Afterward, Cash waited while Austin went to the washroom.
Five minutes later, Austin came out looking pale, with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, setting off alarms in Cash.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Austin mumbled while he kept his face averted. Something seemed fishy.
“Hold up,” Cash said. “I think I’d better use the washroom, too.”
He slipped into the men’s room and scouted around. Nothing looked out of place. There was a pair of feet under the closed door of one stall. Did someone just sell Austin something? Marijuana? Drugs? Or had someone said something off-color or insulting? Something about his mom? Cash’s cop instincts went into overdrive. Why had Austin come out of here so secretive and embarrassed?
He used the urinal and washed his hands, taking his time so he could find out whose feet those were. The toilet flushed and Brad McCloskey walked out. He nodded when he saw Cash.
“Hey, Cash,” he said.
Brad owned the only pharmacy in Ordinary. He was a father of four boys, and his wife, Mary Lou, volunteered at church. They attended services every Sunday.
Brad was one of the good guys.
So why had Austin come out of here with a bad case of something going on, with Brad the only other person here?
Had Austin picked up something that had already been stashed in here? They came to the theater every Friday. Had Austin pre-arranged something? No way could Cash go out and search Austin’s pockets, though. It would break the fragile trust he had worked so hard to build.
Besides, he didn’t have a shred of proof that Austin was doing drugs other than those few puffs of marijuana this morning. All he had was a healthy suspicion of trouble, and trouble didn’t necessarily mean drugs.
He left the washroom no wiser than when he’d entered it, his frustration racing double time.
One thing he would do was put his cop skills to use by taking a closer look at Brad. Was there a wolf hiding inside his mild-mannered sheep’s clothing?
Cash pulled into the Lucky Seven parking lot, the only convenience store and gas station in the county open twenty-four hours.
