Cherry Bomb

It’s a bright day, bright and painfully su

She heads on to the car, climbs in, and drives twice around the parking lot. No tails.

Using the onboard GPS, she searches department stores in the area, and heads for the closest. She finds the superglue, the floss, the half-inch screw eyes, the inkjet printer and specialty paper, the socket set, the road flares, and the five-gallon gas canister easily enough, but has to walk up and down several aisles before finding the outlet timer. In the cosmetics department, she chooses a fire engine red nail polish. Standing in the checkout line, Alex notes that people are avoiding looking in her direction. She’s used to that-people tend to be repulsed by deformities, and after one glance they turn away. But in this case, people aren’t even giving her that first look.

It’s the uniform. People naturally distrust cops. In a weird way, it’s almost like being invisible. Alex watches a mother in line ahead of her, repeating over and over that she isn’t going to buy her son the toy he’s clutching and whining about. It reminds Alex of Samantha, the stripper with the little girl from yesterday, and Alex digs out her cell.

“Sammy? It’s Gracie.”

“Gracie?” Samantha sounds groggy. It’s lunchtime, but dancers work late hours.

“We met yesterday at the bookstore. You offered to take me clothes shopping.”

“Oh, hi! Glad you called.”

Alex’s eyes flick to a woman, Caucasian, mid-fifties, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that she probably bought at this store. Short hair, brown with blond streaks. Gym shoes. Strangely, no purse. She’s beelining in this direction, face frantic, arms pumping.

“I’m free to night,” Alex says. “What’s your schedule look like?”

“I have off. I can call my neighbor, have her watch Melinda.”

The woman is a few steps away now, so close Alex can see the trickle of blood leaking from her nose.

“Officer!” the woman calls.

“That would be so cool,” Alex says into the phone. “You’ve got my number, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you. Awesome!”

“See you later.”

She hangs up just as the woman is tugging on her arm.

“He hit me and took my purse!” The woman’s voice is high-pitched, tinged with hysteria. Her cheeks glisten with tears.

“I’m off duty, ma’am.” Alex points at her cart with her chin. “You should call 911.”

“You have to help me! Please! There he is!”

Alex follows the woman’s finger in the direction of a teenager sporting gang colors, heading for the exit. He’s about forty yards away, young, moving fast. He’ll be out the door in a matter of seconds. A challenging target.

The holster on Alex’s hip has an unfamiliar snap holding the gun in place, and she loses half a second fumbling with it. But the draw is smooth, her aim is sure, and the kid flops to the ground minus his right knee.

There’s a moment of shocked silence, then pandemonium, people diving and ducking and screaming and shouting. Alex drinks in the reaction.

“I can’t see from here, but it doesn’t look like he has your purse.” Alex talks louder than normal; her ears are ringing, and so are everyone else’s. “But he probably has your cash and credit cards on him. I’m guessing he ditched your purse someplace in the store.”

The woman’s jaw is hanging open. Alex tips her cap, holsters her gun, and pushes her cart toward the exit.

The gangbanger is on the floor, clutching his knee, face wrenched with pain. Early teens, peach fuzz on his chin. His ru

“I blew off your kneecap from over a hundred feet away,” she says. “You want to see what kind of damage I can do this close to you?”

He shakes his head, his whole body twitching, and slowly raises his empty hands. Alex digs into his pocket, takes out a battered.22. She tucks it into her belt.

“Do yourself a favor, kid, and quit crime. You suck at it.”

She walks out of the store with a cop swagger and a cart full of merchandise she didn’t pay for.

CHAPTER 35

PHIN AND I STARED AT EACH OTHER for a little bit. I put on my cop face to keep my emotions hidden. But instead of Phin wearing his tough-guy face, he looked like the last kid picked for kickball.

“I’m not going to be around for long,” he said.

I folded my arms. “I’m not forcing you to help me, Phin. You can leave whenever you want to.”

“I meant being alive. I’m dying of cancer, Jack. I might not make it through winter.”

“Oh.” I was trying to be strong, not be an asshole. “Sorry.”

“It’s just-women carry pregnancy tests for two reasons. Because they think they’re pregnant…”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“…or because they want to get pregnant.”

“I don’t want to get pregnant. And you had no right to search my purse.”

“I wasn’t searching your purse. You told me to take money for donuts.”

“And you saw something wrapped in toilet paper and decided to take a look?”

“It wasn’t wrapped in toilet paper. It was sitting on top of your wallet.”

I wasn’t buying. I reached into my purse, pulled out the wad of toilet paper I’d used to wrap up the EPT, and waved it like a surrender flag.

“Are you saying this isn’t toilet paper?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, that’s toilet paper. But it wasn’t wrapped around anything.”

“Why else would I have toilet paper in my purse?”

Phin shrugged. “Emergencies? Afraid of being caught without it? How should I know? I’m not a chick, I don’t own a purse. I don’t know why you women keep half that stuff in there.”

“I only keep essentials in my purse.”

“You’ve got a wind-up plastic nun in there.”

“That’s Nunzilla. She shoots sparks out of her mouth.”

“That’s essential?”

“It was…a gift.”

Latham gave it to me, on our first-year a

“Look, I know you’re hurting. I know you miss him a lot. But if you’re trying to get pregnant to fill a void in your life, you should find a father who will be around for a while.”

I wasn’t sure what rankled more, Phin thinking I slept with him to get pregnant, or Phin thinking I needed a child to fill some void in my life.

“It’s not any of your business, but since you brought it up, I missed my last period and thought I might be pregnant, so I bought a pregnancy test when we were at the gas station last night. If you’d bothered to look closer, you’d see there was only one blue line, not two. I’m not pregnant, so this conversation is over.”

Phin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then cupped his elbow and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I believe you,” he said.

“Good. Because I’m telling the truth.”

“But if it’s negative, why did you save it?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. What was I supposed to tell him? That part of me wanted to be pregnant, so I could always have part of Latham with me? That maybe I did have a void that needed to be filled? That keeping a negative pregnancy test was one more way I could punish myself, as a reminder of what never would be?

I wasn’t ready to tell him that. Especially when he was high on coke.

“If you think I slept with you because I wanted a sperm donor-”

He raised his palms. “I’m just trying to understand you a little better.”