Teaser. Burt Weissbourd

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      CHAPTER ONE

      Corey Logan was online, checking out VampireFreaks.com/Gothic Industrial Culture. One of the kids she was looking for was a “Goth,” and Corey was trying to figure out just what that meant. She was reading about New Orleans, the vampire and voodoo mecca of America.

      She turned away from her screen, setting her boots on the window sill. Through her window she could see a Japanese container ship slowly bearing down the shipping lane past downtown Seattle.

      Corey could just shut down her lovely face, make it hard and lifeless. When she didn’t, her face was like some kind of barometer, giving an instant reading of whatever was brewing inside. At the moment she was thinking, on the edge of something. The corners of her mouth had turned up, just a little; the fine lines around her pale grey eyes had disappeared, and the patch of freckles that spread across her nose had crept onto the gentle rise of her cheeks. She relaxed when she was thinking. She just liked it. Her husband, Abe, guessed it was her time in prison. Corey thought it began earlier, during the long days at sea. Her smile, when it came, was open and warm.

      Her boots shifted as she tilted her head back, and the scar running from her ear to her collarbone made a thin pink line. Corey was thinking about her son, Billy. When she’d called earlier Billy was upstairs, “getting it together,” an expression, she’d discovered, that covered almost any activity. She imagined him at his computer, checking out some edgy web site, listening to music, and texting his friends.

      On the phone, she and Billy had worked out the timing and the driving for his school’s eleventh-grade family night dinner. It was a potluck, which Corey hated because it meant she had to bring something that other people would eat. Last time she’d come empty-handed, and a mother from the parent organization had explained to her that “potluck” was a Native American word for sharing.

      The buzzer was too loud, and unexpected. Corey went through the empty reception area. The half glass door said: Corey Logan, in big block letters. On the glass she saw a woman’s shadow. The buzzer rang again. Who was that?

      “Coming,” she called to the silhouette on the glass, then she opened the door. In the hall a skinny, teenage girl was staring at the floor, using her middle finger to twist a knot in her flaming red hair. She wore over-sized black sunglasses. “Annie, what…?”

      Annie toed the hardwood floor.

      “Come in.”

      Annie sat down, took off her sunglasses. There were cuts on her hands, forearms, neck, and face, and sticky mats of blood in her hair. One of her eyes was blackened. “He found me,” the girl said.

      “Luther?”

      When Annie nodded, ever so slightly, Corey felt pressure inside, like she was overheating. Her skin was cold though, clammy. She sat beside Annie, taking her hand. Corey was a detective who was hired out exclusively to find runaways—on one condition: once found, the runaway became the client. And once found, Corey worked with these young people to make sound decisions about their lives. Usually, they had a reason to leave home, and though returning home was always an option they considered, it was not necessarily the goal.

      Annie liked living with her mom when her uncle wasn’t around. But she couldn’t live there if he was stopping by. So she ran away ten days before Uncle Luther was released from prison. When Corey found Annie, four weeks later, she checked in with Luther’s Community Corrections Officer (CCO) who confirmed that Uncle Luther had rented his own room in one of the few buildings that still accepted registered sexual offenders. Corey had talked several times with Uncle Luther and his CCO about staying away from Annie under any and all circumstances. Luther had convincingly promised Corey and his CCO that he would do that. His CCO had vouched for him and agreed to monitor, and, because of these things, Corey had worked with all of them so that Annie could live at home. For just an instant, Corey let down her guard, and her face turned haggard.

      Annie took a series of quick breaths, then she leaned over in her chair. When Corey touched her shoulder Annie melted back into the chair, her cut hands covering her face.

      Corey put a pillow behind her head, then she gently took off Annie’s shirt. She could see purple bruises on her arms, a bone-deep cut across her left elbow. She lifted Annie’s T-shirt. There were welts snaking across her back. A broken rib pushed out the skin under her left arm.

      Corey kissed Annie’s brow, undone.