The Eagles. “Tequila Sunrise.”
Two bars into the thing, she jabbed the off button with such ferocity she almost broke a nail.
No point in reliving that nightmare.
But then it was too late, and all the memories came crashing back, all the times she’d spent behind the wheel of a car very similar to this one, a four-year-old Toyota she and David had scrimped and saved to put a down payment on. And what she remembered in particular were the late nights after David and his buddies from the muffler shop had poured their paychecks down their throats and she was dragged out of bed by a drunken phone call.
Then it was into that Toyota and out to McBain’s. Rachel’s taxi service.
“Best goddamned driver in the state,” David would say with a wheezy chuckle. His breath stank of cigarettes and Jose Cuervo and God knew what else as he staggered out of the bar and climbed in next to her. “How much I owe you, babe?”
More than you’ll ever know, Rachel thought.
The next day, she’d give him holy hell while he cradled the toilet bowl in agony and promised never to take another drink. Ever.
But a few days later, Rachel’s taxi service was back in business-surprise, surprise-the sober nights becoming fewer and farther between.
Then the abuse started, the smacks across the face when she talked back to him.
“Stupid Chink bitch!” he’d scream, showing her the back of his hand, cocked and ready to fly. Despite her fear, Rachel thought the epithet a little wacky, because David himself was half-Chinese.
She called it quits the night he dislocated her jaw. Called a real taxi service and got the hell out of there.
She moved in with Ma and Grandma Luke, into their cramped little apartment in Chinatown. She stayed there nearly a year, thinking she was a failure because she hadn’t been able to keep her husband from self- destructing.
That first night, Grandma Luke had traced a finger along Rachel’s swollen jaw and told her, in quiet broken English, not to blame herself. David was kai dei, a bastard, who didn’t deserve to occupy even a small place in Rachel’s heart.
Rachel hadn’t bothered to tell her grandmother that her heart was as cold and dead as an old car battery. She knew it would be a long time before someone came along to give it the jump start it needed.
Then she met Jack.
It was a humid Friday afternoon and traffic was a bear, but she had managed to make it to the Field Division office relatively dry and on time.
Deena Crane, an ATF support staff supervisor, was impressed enough by Rachel’s test scores (and a three- year stint at the legal aid clinic in Chinatown) to usher her straight into Jack Donovan’s office. The bureau was gearing up a new task force, for which Jack had been named lead agent, and they desperately needed help to reduce the clutter they’d already accumulated.
This was close to a year after her divorce. The only thing on Rachel’s mind was finding a job that paid enough to get her out from under Ma’s and Grandma Luke’s feet. During that year she’d had to endure the Wrath of David, at first begging her to come back, then later threatening her. Always drunk, of course.
Every other week she’d find him waiting on the narrow steps that led up to her mother’s apartment, which was located above Ling Su’s, a popular seafood restaurant. She remembered the pungent kitchen smells mixing with the heat and the stench of tequila on David’s breath as he professed his undying love. The waves of revulsion had nearly smothered her.
Despite David’s proclamations, there was that oh-so-familiar fury in his eyes, and she wondered what had happened to the fresh-faced college boy she’d fallen for. Was he still buried in there somewhere? Driven into retreat by whatever demons haunted him?
These were questions she had asked herself over and over in the last months of their marriage, but she’d never found a satisfactory answer.
Maybe there wasn’t one.
A request for a restraining order was filed and granted, but David routinely ignored it. His job at the muffler shop long gone, he was living on the streets now, spending most of his time with a group of newfound friends in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven just a couple blocks south of Chinatown. That put him within walking distance of her doorstep. She called the police a few times to shoo him away, but a week or so later he’d show up again, looking gaunt and filthy.
And dangerous.
Then the investigative analyst position at the bureau opened up and Rachel met Jack and dreamed of escape. A better-paying job, a place of her own, and hopefully no more David.
When Deena first ushered her into Jack’s office, Jack had been brusque and preoccupied, searching for something he’d misplaced on his desk. But when he finally raised his head and took a good look at her, he paused, his eyes clear and direct and pleased by what they saw.
Then the look passed and he avoided her gaze as if he’d been caught in some forbidden act, busying himself with his search until he uncovered a copy of the Chicago Tribune, folded to the crossword puzzle. Picking up a stubby pencil, he told her to have a seat and sank into his own chair.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re the first to make it through that door.”
“She has all the qualifications,” Deena told him. “And a solid ninety-eight on the written exam. That puts her at the top of the list.”
Jack nodded and looked at Rachel. “You have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”
My own apartment, Rachel almost said, but resisted the urge. “I’ve seen my share of cop shows.”
Lame, she thought, immediately regretting it.
Way to kill ’em, Rache.
Jack looked at her as if he wasn’t sure if she was joking, then dropped his gaze to the folded newspaper in his hands.
“Tell me this,” he said without looking up. “What’s a six-letter word for German mythological protector?”
Now it was Rachel’s turn to wonder. Was he serious?
She thought a moment, reaching back to a class she’d once taken in college. World Mythologies. She’d always been good at retaining trivia (most of it about as useful as her degree in art history) and she was pretty sure she knew this one.
Mentally counting the letters, she shrugged and said, “Kobold?”
Jack’s eyebrows went up and he put his pencil to work, filling in the appropriate squares.
Then he smiled.
Rachel thought it looked good on him. Maybe too good. As their eyes met, a spark of electricity stuttered through her dormant heart.
“Welcome to the fun factory,” he said.
The incident that really warmed her to Jack happened one afternoon several weeks later. She was living the dream by then-the new job, the upstairs floor of a duplex in Bridgeport that she was just able to afford-and, miraculously, no sign of David in over a month.
Until that afternoon.
She and Jack and some of the crew were in the middle of a working lunch at Boysen’s Deli, just across from the federal building, when the door burst open and David staggered in, drunk and disorderly, a filthy, disheveled mess. His angry eyes searched the place until they locked on Rachel.
“Fuckin’ bitch,” he muttered, his voice slurred. “You think you can sneak out on me?”
Rachel felt her scalp prickle and her cheeks get warm as she shot up out of her chair. Jack was on his feet, too, and so were A.J. and Sidney, all three threatening to make a move toward David. But she waved them off and went around the table to where he was standing. The eyes of everyone in the restaurant were on her as she approached him.
“David, please,” she said, taking his arm. “Let’s go outside.”
But David recoiled at her touch and swung his free arm, backhanding her. She yelped and stumbled into the
