called Copper Lake.” YaYa folded her hands in her lap. “It’s about halfway between Atlanta and Augusta. It’s where you’ll find the reason for your dream.”
A knot had formed in Nev’s throat. “I-it’s just a dream. Maybe some place we drove through once. Something I saw on TV. It doesn’t—” Feeling the weight of YaYa’s gaze, she stopped abruptly and inhaled again.
“Some dreams don’t mean nothing. But one you’ve had every night for—” YaYa glanced at the calendar hanging beside the refrigerator “—twenty-nine nights means something. It is twenty-nine, isn’t it? You had it again last night, didn’t you?”
Nev nodded.
“Now you know where, Nevy. All you have to do is find out why.”
If she had one bit less control, hysteria would be bubbling inside her about now. How freaky would it be, going to a town she’d never seen before and recognizing places around her? Knowing the bumps and cracks in sidewalks she had walked only in dreams? And not pleasant dreams, at that.
“How do I do that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, sweet girl. I imagine the answer’s there.” YaYa pointed at the computer screen, where pictures still scrolled: churches, parks, hospital, schools. “You go there, and you’ll find out.”
* * *
For as long as he could remember, Tyler Gadney had wanted to be a cop. The dream had kept him out of trouble and working hard through high school and college. It had brought him back home to Copper Lake, where he’d been the first black officer hired by the department. A few decades behind other southern cities but light-years ahead of plenty of places.
He’d gotten Tased for the honor of serving and protecting. He’d been spit on and wrestled with and even shot. This Saturday morning, though, he thought the job would finally kill him. Turning to glare at the prisoner in the backseat, he gritted out, “Remember that right to remain silent? For the love of God, Maggie, would you use it?”
She stopped wailing long enough to glare back at him. “Come on, Ty, you know me. You arrested me, what, three times? You know I would never make meth in the house where my kids are at!”
Ignoring the snort from Pete Petrovski, his partner, behind the wheel, Ty scowled again. “I’ve arrested you at least eight times, Maggie, and twice your boyfriends were making meth in the house with your kids there.”
Mascara ran down her cheeks in streaks, a fine fit to her stringy bleached-blond hair and clothes that smelled as if she’d worn them most of the week. “They’ll take ’em away for sure this time! Ty, you can’t let that happen!”
He faced forward again and tried to tune out the howls from the backseat. It was a fine show, impressive for someone who hadn’t been treated to the scene plenty of times already. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Maggie Holigan. She’d been given multiple chances to get straight, to be a good mother to her kids, but she’d thrown them all away for men, for drugs, for oblivion.
He did feel sorry for the two girls, though. It wasn’t easy being a Holigan in this town. If there was a wrong side of the tracks further dividing people who already lived on the wrong side of the tracks, the Holigans were there. Mothers run off, fathers in prison, drugs and booze incapacitating the few who stuck around, looked down on by even the other poor people and no one who cared enough to take the kids in and give them a chance.
Ty gave a silent prayer of thanks for his grandfather, who’d taken him in when he’d needed someone.
Her histrionics getting no response didn’t curb Maggie’s tears. In fact, she increased the volume another ten decibels. Pete grimaced and settled his left arm on the door frame. Ty would bet he was holding one finger in his ear. He wouldn’t mind doing the same, though it wasn’t the most dignified way for a police officer to go about his official duties.
By the time they reached the station with the adjacent jail, Maggie had stopped to take a few breaths. Though it was routine for her, he glanced around. The way his luck ran, one day she’d shriek so long and loud that she’d bust a vessel in her brain and die right there, in a place as familiar to most people as their homes, handcuffed in the backseat of a police car.
He couldn’t help thinking, albeit guiltily, that her daughters would be better for it.
The rest of the suspects taken into custody at Maggie’s house—her boyfriend of the month, his cousin and three buddies—had already been escorted inside and were going through the booking process. Ty freed Maggie’s left wrist, waited until she sat on a bench and then hooked the dangling cuff to the metal loop welded there.
“Isn’t this a fun way to spend a Saturday?”
He didn’t have to look to know it was Detective Katherine Isaacs standing behind him. She’d been teamed with their boss, Tommy Maricci, this morning, and they’d been the first to return to the station with their prisoners. As he’d been the first black hire, the first black detective, Kiki had been the first female.
“Yeah,” he said before he turned. “Hell of a morning.”
She wore her brown hair pulled back tightly, braided to control its natural frizz. Like everyone else, she was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, though she definitely looked better in them. With pale skin, a few freckles and blue eyes, she was smart and aggressive, the first requirements for a woman in a male-dominated field. The only problem was she was so used to going balls-to-the-wall for what she wanted that she had trouble accepting that she sometimes couldn’t have it.
And what she’d wanted, for the past few years, had been him.
“You got plans for tonight?” she asked as they both turned toward the hall that led to their office. Her head topped his shoulder; she wasn’t more than a few inches shorter than him and probably didn’t have much more body fat than him.
He missed the days when he’d dated shorter, softer, rounder women.
“Uh, yeah. I’m going over to my grandfather’s house. Fix him some dinner, watch a movie. He’s partial to John Wayne.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really. Saturday night, and you’re hanging out with Grandpa? Come on, Gadney. Doesn’t Pops go to bed with the sun?”
“Actually, he stays up later than me most nights. Says he doesn’t have enough time left to waste it sleeping.” Ty repeated Granddad’s words with a smile that was more grimace. Everyone had a time to die, and Granddad’s couldn’t be too far away. He’d already lived eighty full years, forty of them mourning his wife, twenty-five of them raising various grandkids and great-nephews. It had been a good life, and he was ready to meet his Maker.
Ty would never be ready for life without Granddad in it.
He opened the door at the end of the hallway that led into the police department proper, and Kiki brushed against him as she went through. “Can’t you visit Pops tomorrow? It’s Saturday night, Ty, and I want to party.”
“You’ve got other friends to party with. Granddad’s expecting me.” He said it in as friendly a voice as he could muster, but it didn’t win him any points with her.
Her lower lip sliding into a pout, she muttered something that he was pretty sure was obscene before turning
