“This place is a fucking dump,” Steve sighed as he slid into the booth seat across from Pat.

A slim, unconscious smile slipped onto Pat’s face as he shook his head slightly, turned down the corner of his newspaper, and replied, “I love this place, Huft.”

“Of course you do,” Steve sighed as he stuffed a cigarette in his mouth and threw the rest of the pack down on the table. “It fits you too well, Brookfield.”

Pat did a half assed job of folding his newspaper up, took a sip of his coffee, and said, “This ain’t the smoking section. Besides, since when do you smoke?”

Steve shrugged and lit his cigarette, “Since I was fifteen. I’ve been quit for about three years.” Then he dragged deep on it and coughed, “This fucking case, though.”

Before Pat could say anything else the waitress was standing at the edge of the table. “Smoking section’s over there,” she said, pointing toward the back of the place.

“I told him that,” Pat looked up at her and smiled.

Steve rolled his eyes at Pat, looked up at the waitress, read her nametag, and said, “Ellen, there ain’t nobody else in her but us. Can you cut me some slack and bring me an ashtray and a coffee?”

After a quick look around, she thought for a moment and sighed, “Fine. The place will be empty until lunchtime anyway.”

“You’re a doll, Ellen,” Steve winked over a broad smile that followed her as she walked away. When his gaze dropped back down to Pat, he shrugged and added, “See? I told you.”

Pat chuckled. Then he sipped his coffee and asked, “So, how’s Cheeks doing? I haven’t heard from him at all since that night.”

“He’s doing good, riding a desk. He hates that, but he’s healing up nice,” Steve took too big a gulp of the coffee Ellen had just dropped off and had to suck a bunch of air in through pursed lips, “Fuck that’s hot.” Once the burn calmed down a bit he added, “He’s been kind of depressed. That’s probably why he hasn’t gotten back to you.” After a more delicate sip he finished with, “You guys are pretty close, hey?”

“Kind of,” Pat shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess not so much anymore. We used to be a lot closer, best friends in high school.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into it. He’s been in a funk.”

“I’m not. We’ve gone months without talking to each other. Real life gets in the way sometimes.”

“It sure does, Brookfield. It sure does.”

Pat grinned at the nickname Huft had branded him with. Brookfield. That name had never sounded so generic to him as it did when it came out of Steve’s mouth. The way he said it gave it a dirty, backwater feel, like torn overalls and a floppy hat.

“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?” Steve asked as he pounded the spent butt of his cigarette in the ashtray Ellen had dropped off with his coffee.

Pat hadn’t noticed the dopey grin that had invaded his face until Steve called him out on it, “Oh…sorry. I don’t know.” He chuckled, raised his hands palms up, and added, “You’ve been rubbing me the wrong way since we met, but somehow I still like you, Huft. I don’t know why. More than half of the shit that comes out of your face pisses me off, and yet, I can’t help but giggle at it.”

“Because everything I say is true, Brookfield,” Steve shrugged. “It’s honesty. I’m honest. I call it as I see it, and I don’t give a fuck about your feelings. So, sometimes the shit I say pisses you off. However, when you really think about it, you know I’m right.”

“Maybe you are,” Pat smiled, “and maybe you’re just full of shit.” Pat nodded up at Ellen who topped off his coffee cup. Then he sipped it and asked, “So, how did you and Cheeks get away with everything? I mean, there wasn’t any connection to mine. It wasn’t our case. But you guys… Shit, Cheeks was shot. I mean, didn’t anybody ask?”

Steve lit another cigarette, shook his head, and said, “First of all, the Ramsey’s – except for Mark – are still missing persons. None of them have been found. They’ve got the bodies of Vinny’s crew and tied the massacre in Coleman to it. They were also able to connect one of the corpses to the Rosatti’s. It’s a loose connection, obvious in my opinion, but loose nonetheless. I mean, they know that Vinny took the kids, and now they know that the punk was either working for somebody else or trying to make a deal. However, they can’t really use it unless they can find something stronger. And what would they use it for anyway? Everybody’s dead. That’s all they’ve got.

“They can’t connect anything to the bloodbath at the rest area. Sure it’s between here and there, but there wasn’t any useable evidence. None of the corpses have been identified, and their van was a twisted hunk of melted metal. They didn’t get anything off of that,” he paused, sipped his coffee, and added, “Oh, yeah, and that other carcass in the barn just down the road, he was fucked up. They haven’t been able to find anything on him either. The feds have had it for a month and haven’t been able to put anything together. It’ll be a memory before you know it.”

Pat was nodding long before Steve finished, “Yeah, but Cheeks was shot. How the hell did you explain that?”

“We said I shot him,” Steve laughed.

“What?” Pat laughed back at him. “Why would you shoot him?”

“It was an accident,” Steve shrugged, still giggling. “We were at the range. His gun jammed. I looked at it. He was too close and it accidentally went off.”

“Wait a minute,” Pat squinted. “They’d be able to tell that his gun didn’t fire that bullet.”

“No,” Steve dragged hard on his smoke before busting the cherry off in the ashtray, “not if it wasn’t there. I have a doctor buddy. Not to mention, all of the equipment we used in Lake Geneva had been scrubbed. You’ve never worked in a place like New York, Pat. I have my ways. You have no idea how easy it is to erase things.”

“You didn’t call me Brookfield,” Pat reached over and grabbed one of Steve’s cigarettes, “May I?”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

“My wife will kill me if she smells this on me. I haven’t smoked in over five years.”

“Anyway,” Steve lit another cigarette, sipped his coffee, and said, “The only one who looked sideways at either of us about it was French.”

“Your captain?”

“Yeah, he fucking knows.”

“How much does he know?”

Steve shook his head, “I don’t, but he knows a lot.”

“How?”

“Captain French knows everything,” Steve shrugged. “I don’t know how he does it, but he does. He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know whether I should pin a medal on your chest or punch you in the mouth.’ I played dumb, but he knew. He told me that if the feds didn’t find anything that could place me and Cheeks at the scene in Coleman or Lake Geneva, he would give us atta boys. If they did, he’d send us up the river.”

“Did he really say, ‘Up the river’?” Pat chuckled.

“He did,” Steve nodded. “He says shit like that all the time. He also said that it would have been a real bonus if we could have found the kids. This case is going to be open forever until they’re found. I told him that I figured the mom had them. He agreed, and that was it.”

“Wow,” Pat shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

“Yep,” Steve dragged deep on his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly around his words, “Then I gave my notice. I’m gone in a month.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it anymore, Pat. I’m not like you. I wish I was. You’re a good person. You care about people. You want to help them. That’s why you’re a cop, because you want to help people. I wish that was why I did it. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it is for the past five years. This case reminded me that it’s not. I don’t give a fuck about anybody, not even myself. My wife, I care about her. I don’t give a fuck about anybody else. I’m a hunter, Pat. I miss the hunt. I miss tracking a scent and gunning it down like a fucking hound dog. Man, there ain’t nothing to hunt in a shithole like West Allis. It’s too fucking small. Do you want to know what kind of cases I get here?” He paused and raised his eyebrows at Pat, “Well, do you?”

Before Pat could answer, Steve continued, “I’ll tell you, domestic violence. Nine times out of ten if there is a homicide in my jurisdiction, it’s a half-bald beer belly that didn’t get quite as far as he wanted to in life so he drowns his sorrows with a case of beer or a fifth of whisky or brandy or some other fucking thing, and then lets all of his pent up aggressions out on his wife whose only crime was standing by his side through failure after failure. Most of the time, the killer is the one who calls it in. Sure, he lies about what happened, like he fucking found her that way, but I never have to look passed the front door to find all the fucking clues I need. Case fucking closed.”

“Wow,” Pat raised his eyebrows and stole another one of Steve’s cigarettes. “I normally write traffic tickets to speeders. But, I get where you’re coming from with the whole domestic disturbance. The ones in my town seldom end in murder.”

“Most don’t in my town either,” Steve shook his head. “That isn’t the point. The point is they’re all crimes of passion. I don’t care if it’s some drunk stabbing another drunk at the bar or some asshole throwing his wife down the stairs, these aren’t elaborate, well thought out murders. They’re easy. They’re dirty, and they’re easy to solve.”

A heavy silence settled in between the two of them as Steve watched Pat awkwardly light the cigarette he had just stolen from him. Pat’s face twisted into a series of different expressions. A couple of times he looked like he was going to say something but changed his mind. Just as Steve was about to ask what the hell he was thinking so hard about, Pat finally broke the silence, “Where are you going to go?”

“Braston,” the word sounded kind of oily as it came out of his mouth.

“Braston?” Steve asked, furrowing his brow. “Why Braston, isn’t that place kind of a shithole?”

“It’s a horrible shithole,” Steve slammed his cigarette butt down in the ashtray a couple of times and quickly lit another, “but I grew up there. On top of that, I have a friend on the force. We worked together in New York. He moved back, says his captain is interested in talking to me.”

“What does your wife think?”

“Mary? She hates the idea. But I think she hates West Allis more,” Steve grinned. “Not to mention, she can’t stand me moping around all the time. We need a change, and she’s supporting me. What can I say? Maybe she misses the big city too.”

A faraway look spread across Pat’s face, “I’m going to miss you, Huft.”

“You know what, Brookfield,” Steve paused, “Pat, I’m going to miss you too. We’ll keep in touch. You make a trip out to the big city, and I’ll show you a good time.”

Pat chuckled, “Big city, you make it sound like I’m a country boy. That sounds good, though. Let’s do that. Let’s keep in touch.”

Steve sipped his coffee, “So what about you? What’s next for the pride of the Brookfield P.D.?”

“Same shit, writing tickets,” Pat stretched and glanced out the window at the empty parking lot. When he looked back at Steve he added, “I’m going to get to know a stranger that I should have gotten to know a long time ago.”

“Miles?”

“Yeah,” Steve shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of my life subconsciously hating the guy, and for what? He is who he is, and he’s a part of me.”

“Father and son camping trip,” Steve smiled.

“No,” Pat laughed, “nothing like that. He’s a stranger that should be an old friend. He’s been all over the place too. I’m kind of interested in knowing more about him, more about where I come from. I don’t know. I don’t really expect anybody else to understand.”

“I get it, Pat. I’d want to do the same thing.”

“Yeah?” Pat asked.

“Yeah,” Steve replied.

Then they both looked out at the empty parking lot, completely out of things to say.

Shelia didn’t make a sound as she slipped into the empty hallway. A shiny metal door to her left marked the focal point of the hall in that direction. About one hundred yards in the other direction, a cherry-colored elevator door didn’t quite balance it out. Between the two were several lights and several doors on either side of the hall, more than she cared to count. The shiny, metal door behind her was intriguing. It was almost too obvious though. Muffled voices coming from the room directly next door to the one she had just exited – the room that Matt’s lifeless body now occupied – were even more intriguing. She didn’t make one step in that direction before the metal door began to open. By the time it was fully open, Shelia had fallen to a crouch with her gun aimed and ready to fire.

The face looking at her from the darkness of that room almost knocked her on her can. Not quite struck completely dumb, she managed to whisper, “Miles?”

Miles smiled, “Hi Stiletto. I would have preferred to see you under different circumstances, but John’s son made a mess of everything. It was too much for me to take care of myself.”

“Miles,” she shook her head, “what are you doing here?”

“We don’t really have time for that right now,” he replied. “I will say this much, there are many things that I never told you or your dad. It wasn’t that I wanted to withhold anything. I just felt it would be safer if neither of you knew. John Rosatti was married to the woman I fell in love with. He killed her when he found out that your dad wasn’t his son.”

Shelia didn’t reply. The look on her face – squinted eyes and slight frown – as her head dipped slightly to the right asked the question. There was no need for words.

“Yes,” Miles’ smile widened, “Jack was my son.”

Memories flooded Shelia’s mind drowning it like a valley beneath a broken dam. Little bits of her life swirled around her consciousness like scenes from an old movie, the kind she would watch with Miles while her dad was away with Rufus on business. Hundreds of questions fought to be among the next words that came from her mouth. None of them could beat the sober statement that left her lips, “They killed Matt.” She didn’t need words to leave the blame for that at Miles’ feet. Her tone handled the accusation.

Miles’ eyes widened as quickly as his smile fled. Before anything audible could accompany the frown that was feverishly working around silent words, a faint ding from the other end of the hallway grabbed the attention of the two glistening orbs his eyes had become.

Shelia followed the gaze as she spun and trained the barrel of her gun on the elevator door at the other end of the hallway. It took her a second to place Sergeant Pat O’Malley, pride of the Brookfield Police Department. She didn’t recognize the guy with him. “How the fuck?” she asked mostly herself. By the time the words had left her lips, both men were aiming guns back at her.

Shelia couldn’t tell which one of them yelled, “Freeze!” She was too distracted by Miles shouting at her, “Don’t shoot. I guided them here. They’re here to help.”

“Ms. Ramsey,” there was measured tension in O’Malley’s tone, “please put the gun down. We’re here to help.”

Shelia paid far less attention to Sergeant O’Malley than she did to the other asshole with him. That one wasn’t trying to hide his tension at all as he said, “Fuck that. Both of you drop your weapons.”

“Detective Huft,” Miles replied before Shelia could, “you would do well to avoid a shootout with this one. I know that you are an exceptional police officer, but you may as well be standing between an angry mother bear and her cubs.”

“Cub,” Shelia corrected without looking back at him. “Those bastards have already killed one of my babies.”

“Pat, if you have any influence over your friend…” Miles words were cut short when the door next to the room that Matt’s dead body was lying in busted open.

The suit that spun toward Shelia never had time to take aim. Shelia squeezed her trigger and left a hole just a hair above the bridge of his nose. The shot he got off as he stepped back before falling forward onto the carpet hit the ceiling just to her left. She held what would have been her next shot as she watched the other suit lean back and fall away from her toward the elevator. Intense looks of some twisted form of satisfaction on both O’Malley’s and Huft’s faces assured her that both of them had fired and both of them had hit their shared target. Shelia allowed herself a few moments of similar satisfaction as she watched the two suits bleed out onto the already red carpeting amid involuntary twitches here and then there.

Then the world slowed. Mario stumbled out of the room. Shelia hadn’t seen that man for about fifteen years. The depth of the connection she shared with him was just beginning to come together as she shuffled through the memories of the darkest period in her life prior to the one unfolding around her. He was more than just a blood relative of her daughter, a grandfather to be specific. He was also related to Jack in a fashion that had nothing to do with blood. Finally the answers were clear. In that split second – infinitesimally small compared to the years that had passed since she first killed for the Rosatti family – every piece of the puzzle fell into place. Everything made sense. Her dad was Miles’ bastard, and no matter what kind of monster Big John Rosatti had been, Jack Rose – or Rosatti to state it more correctly – was the result of betrayal. She was the result of betrayal. That is why Mario was coming so hard at her. Revenge for his son’s death was one piece. Pressure to wipe a black spot from the family name just added to the fire. Sure, years had passed, but Mario was just like his father, the kind of man that doesn’t forgive and never forgets. All the time that had passed obviously did nothing to cool that flame. He wanted her dead to avenge his son, and his dad wanted her dead to erase any living memory of Jack Rosatti. The aha had barely faded into just another bit of known information when Shelia realized that the fact that Alyssa was Mario’s granddaughter might not be enough to keep her from being one of those bits of Jack that needed to be erased.

That new, stifling fear didn’t even have time to get a good grip on Shelia’s spine before she saw that last little bit of Jack stumble out of the room behind Mario with a large hunk of her hair wrapped around his knuckles. The master of the puppets that had been gunning for her was a mere ten feet in front of her and she couldn’t pull the trigger. His feet were all tangled up in Alyssa’s and the shot just wasn’t clean enough to risk it. Her finger remained tense on the trigger as she kept her barrel pointed at the maestro that orchestrated the massacre of her family. All the hapless pricks that had died for destroying nearly everything that meant anything to her were merely following this slick fucker’s orders. He was the one, the real target, the mystery, and the sonofabitch was finally within reach. One bullet would end it all. Unfortunately, the one person left in the world that Shelia gave two shits about was too wrapped up with that target – that could be so easily wiped from the face of the earth – for her to get a clean shot.

It took every bit of resolve that Shelia had left in her body to stay her trigger finger and keep it from firing a slug into that prick’s head. If it were anyone else on the planet she’d be ending that piece of shit with a little hunk of hot lead. Her focus had grown so intense over those brief moments that she never saw the gun in Mario’s right hand aiming at her. Neither did she flinch in the slightest when that .45 belched a bullet in her direction close enough that she would have felt the heat of the slug on her cheek had she not been so absorbed in Alyssa’s struggle to free herself from the animal’s grip. Then something registered. Before another bullet could fly out of Mario’s gun, Alyssa’s hand shot out like a snake toward Mario’s neck. Shelia’s eyes widened as Mario’s big body slammed into the wall with Alyssa’s tiny form pushing against it. Blood pulsed out of Mario’s neck as Shelia’s sweet angel – that seemed so much bigger than she had moments prior while struggling in Mario’s grip – climbed onto his chest and slashed toward the elevator splashing the ape’s blood all over the wall, the carpet, and herself.

Shelia’s gun fell at her side. All of the effort it took to remain still became instantly unnecessary. In fact, now she really wanted to move. She wanted to run to her daughter, scoop her into a tight embrace, push her blood-streaked and matted hair away from her face, and tell her that everything was going to be okay. Despite all of that desire, shock kept her motionless. Instead, her eyes widened as she watched her sweet, caring angel covered in blood, screaming in the face of a dying man, and pounding the little knife in her hand repeatedly into his chest, arms, and face. A tear streamed down her cheek as the horror of watching the birth of an assassin sunk into Shelia’s soul. That lone tear carried the innocent spirit of her daughter away. The last person in the world that she loved was gone. She could do nothing more than sit and watch her die as the person she would become continued to release her rage long after her first victim had expired. Alyssa was dead, and someone new had taken her place, someone dark and cold with a lifetime of experience earned in a handful of days.

“Put the knife down, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be okay,” Pat’s voice was enough to snap Shelia out of her shocked state.

She glanced up. O’Malley and his friend were far too close to Alyssa. “Back off,” she shouted. “Both of you stay the hell away from her.”

Alyssa stood and turned the knife toward the approaching officers, slowly swinging it back and forth between them as she continued to scream wildly.

“I said get the fuck away from her,” Shelia shouted again with more vigor.

“We’re just here to help, Ms. Ramsey,” Pat’s tone failed to convey the calmness his words would suggest.

Shelia shook her head as she stood and aimed her gun toward them, “Everybody’s fucking dead. We don’t need any more help. My daughter and I are walking out of this place. You’ll never see us again.”

“That’s not going to work, Stiletto,” Huft replied.

“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” Shelia said quietly as her stance tightened.

“Wait,” Pat shouted. “Steve, I’m sorry. This is personal for me now. They’re going to walk out of here, and you’re not going to try to stop them.”

Huft’s arms fell to his sides as he looked toward the ceiling and sighed, “Come on, Brookfield. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m not,” Pat shook his head. “Ms. Ramsey’s a victim here. She did what she had to do. If we take her in, she’s not going to be treated like a victim. You know that. She’ll be put away, and Alyssa will be put into foster care.” He paused, scratched his head, and added, “Besides, she cracked the case and killed all the bad guys. I know you hear those sirens too. We can still get the hell out of here and not lose our jobs over this.”

There were sirens, and they were getting close. Huft’s face tightened up as he clenched his teeth, forming silent words for a few moments before saying, “Fuck! Fine, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Shelia finally moved toward Alyssa who was still slowly swinging her knife back and forth and shaking. She had finally stopped screaming. “Alyssa, sweetie,” she said. “It’s okay now. We have to go.”

Alyssa remained silent as she dropped her knife to the floor and slowly turned.

Shelia forced a smile to her face, a smile that desperately wanted to flee the gory sight that Alyssa’s face had become, and whispered, “Come here, honey.”

As Alyssa slowly melted into Shelia’s embrace, the tears came. Her body heaved as she buried her face into her mother’s shoulder and wept. Shelia remained silent as she stroked her daughter’s bloody hair and watched O’Malley and his jackass friend retreat back toward the elevator. That prick was lucky to be more than another well-blended stain in the red carpeting of the hallway.

“Let’s go ladies,” Rufus’s deep voice beckoned from the room behind Shelia, “I’ve got Matt. We need to get the fuck outta’ here quick. This place is gonna’ be crawling with fuzz in a minute.”

Shelia glanced back, this time suppressing her smile, and replied, “I knew you’d come. We’re still going to deal with this shit, though.”

“I know,” he replied through a sober expression.

“Miles?” Shelia leaned her head back over her right shoulder.

“Miles ain’t here, babe,” Rufus answered. “We gotta’ go.”

“He was,” Shelia’s tone matched her confused expression.

“Well he’s gone now, and we need to be too.”

Shelia nodded at Rufus. Then she gently pushed Alyssa back to arm’s length and said, “It’s going to be okay, sweetie. But we have to go now. We’ll get all of this out once we get someplace safe.

Alyssa didn’t say a word. Though her eyes were staring back at Shelia, they were somewhere else. Nobody was home. That vacant stare was all too familiar. The same expression sat on her own face for weeks after her first kill, and she had been prepared, trained. Alyssa’s first kill was full of passion and feeling, more than just a contract or a target. This kill had meaning. That scar might never heal.