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Chapter Two
Everything in Montana was measured by time, not miles driven, not quality and not sacrifice. For example, the trip from Missoula to Butte took just under two hours. And her boyfriend? Nearly three months. At sixteen, the relationship had been too short to be called serious, yet long enough to leave her with a child. Then, in less than ten seconds, the relationship was over and she had been left with a beautiful daughter and fading dreams.
That was thirteen years ago. Thirteen terrifying, humbling and gratifying years. Nights spent soothing her daughter when she had ear infections, and days spent struggling to get where she was—a sheriff’s officer with a steady job and a stable income. She was the only one strong enough to support her mother and her daughter. They needed her.
Dreams were for those who could afford them—and that would never be Blake West.
Her antiquated patrol unit’s radio crackled to life as the 9-1-1 dispatcher’s voice filled the car. “Blake, your mom called. Said there’s some kind of issue up at your place.”
She picked up the handset. “Dispatch, feel free to remind my mother that nine-one-one is to be used for emergencies only.”
“You tell your mother that,” the woman said with a laugh.
Blake shook her head, as she thought about telling her throwback-to-another-era Irish mother that she wasn’t to do something. Blake had a better chance of convincing the Pope to give up being Catholic.
“Really, though,” the dispatcher continued, “she said your cell wasn’t working. She sounded really upset.”
Blake picked up her cell phone. Just like half of Silver Bow County, there was no service today where yesterday there had been—just another perk of living in a state where technology was an unreliable amenity.
“Is Megan okay?”
“She didn’t say. Just said she needed you to come home.”
Blake stepped on the gas as she turned the car down the set of roads that led to their house. “If she calls back, tell her I’m on my way.”
She flicked on her lights and sped down the pothole-ravaged road that led to the house on the outskirts of the mining-centered city of Butte. At one time the historical city had been beautiful with its brick buildings and Old West charm. There had been an uptick in the mine’s activities around the city in the 1990s, but now it was a decaying mass of run-down miner’s row houses and the home of a pit full of water so toxic that it even killed the birds that dared to land on its surface.
Most of those left in town were small-time miners, those who hoped the large mine operations would open again someday, or those who had retired from the Pit. It was the city of the strong, a city of survivors—just like Blake and her mother.
Gemma West could handle anything. If she was as upset as the dispatcher said, something had to be majorly wrong.
Had something happened to Megan? She was old enough to know the rules, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t done something to put herself in danger.
Blake took a series of long breaths as she forced herself to remain calm.
Megan was probably fine.
She pulled to a stop in front of their beige ranch-style home, which rested behind a mature, though chemically stunted, pine. Near its base was a scar from her father’s car the day he’d left so many years ago. She’d always hated and loved that tree. It was a visible reminder of days and lives spent scratching and tearing away in the mines that were the fulcrum of the corrupt city and how that city and its vices had destroyed her family. No matter how many years went by, the tree would never grow, never change. Too much damage had been done.
“Mom! Megan?” she yelled, hoping they would step
