“David!” she screamed.
The horrible moan picked up again across the river, closer now.
A scuff in the gravel behind her sent a shudder down her back. Her legs were heavy, posts set in the frozen mud. But she still had the shotgun. “David!” she said again, more of a squeak this time, through clenched teeth.
Before she could turn, something heavy slammed into the side of her neck. She stumbled forward, sinking to her knees. The shotgun slipped from her grasp. She tried to call David, but could manage nothing more than a pitiful croak.
A second blow sent her reeling, this one to the back of her head. The night closed in around her, and the moan across the river faded away.
CHAPTER 1
Anchorage, Alaska
In addition to being a heroin addict, Nicky Ranucci was also an extremely talented chef. Unfortunately, the thirty-year-old junkie could never remember to turn off the stove, and his mother’s four-plex burned down around what was probably the best bucatini carbonara anyone in Alaska would have ever tasted.
Worse than that, Ranucci found himself in jail and in desperate need of a fix—which meant he ended up in the back seat of a government SUV with tinted windows, sitting next to a mountain of a deputy US marshal who frowned like someone had just fed him a spider.
Fortunately for Ranucci, he had something to trade. And it was good stuff too. With any luck, it would be enough to get him out. Feeding a six-hundred-dollar-a-week heroin habit put Ranucci in constant contact with the worst of humanity, the kind of dudes who prayed to their patron saint one minute, then preyed on some hooker’s addiction the next. Ranucci was a small fry, a user. The cops wanted the big fish and he intended to give them one in trade for his freedom. In this case, the big fish was Twig Ripley, a dealer and leg-breaker who was wanted for selling black tar heroin in Nevada. Lucky for Ranucci, Twig had burned every bridge he had from Vegas to Northern Cali and had come to hide out with his cousin Sam, who owned a used-car lot in Anchorage.
The lady marshal behind the steering wheel drove past a sign that said HONEST SAM’S HONEST CARS. She was hot, if a little scary looking. Hawaiian or something like that.
Ranucci’s gut churned. Snitching could get him killed. Someday. But he had to think about the here and now, the shit that was staring him dead in the eye at this very moment. Turning rat was better than the alternative. Getting sick. That’s what they called it. What a joke. Sick was nothing compared to coming off heroin. Sick was puking up your lunch. Withdrawal was having your skull opened with a chisel while someone scraped out your brain with a spoon. Overdosing was what killed you, and they had Narcan for that. Getting clean sure as hell felt like dying. The jail doc had given him methadone, but not nearly enough, and it just made him thirsty.
People kept telling Ranucci he was lucky to be alive. But he didn’t feel lucky.
He’d escaped the fire with the clothes on his back and a Crown Royal bag that contained a burned spoon, a well-used insulin syringe with a bent needle, and a gram of black tar. None of the junkies he knew ever had any luck, and the kit had fallen out of his shirt when the firefighters were helping him to safety. Some cop, who should have been minding his own business on the fire perimeter, saw the whole thing. Everyone knew the purple whiskey bags were the worst possible place to stash drug paraphernalia, but they were just so damned convenient. Nicky’s mom had never used anything stronger than aspirin, but she did love her Crown Royal and had collected enough of the bags over the years to make a couple of quilts, a Christmas-tree skirt, and a big curtain for the missing door to her spare bedroom—all of which Nicky had just torched along with the carbonara.
Now, a day after the fire, he found himself handcuffed in the back seat of a Ford Expedition dying of thirst—an aftereffect of the damned methadone. The big, blond deputy sat in the back seat too, hands folded quietly in his lap. Gray clouds hung low over the squat, earth-tone buildings, spitting rain on midtown Anchorage. The side streets off Arctic Avenue were paved—contrary to what people in the lower forty-eight believed about Alaska roads—but a layer of gravel from last year’s winter maintenance caused the tires to crackle and pop as the SUV rolled slowly south. Ranucci wished the pretty Polynesian lady in the driver’s seat would speed up. The dark Expedition was obvious enough. Rolling slowly through this kind of neighborhood left no doubt in anybody’s mind that this cop car was hunting.
Ranucci strained against the metal chain that secured the handcuffs to his waist. He pushed the bologna sandwich toward his mouth with the tips of his fingers, craning his neck down in an effort to reach it. This jailhouse lunch was a far cry from bucatini carbonara, but it was food, and anyway, it was nice to eat it somewhere that didn’t smell like farts. The marshals would probably have him out past evening chow too—which was okay. The jail would just hold another sandwich for him if he missed whatever slop they happened to be serving that night.
The big marshal looked over at him across the back seat, sun-bleached hair mussed like a surfer who’d been chillin’ on the beach. His name was Cutter, and if his stony expression held anything, it was the remnants of a disappointed sigh, like when you let your grandma know college wasn’t in your cards—or told your mom that you’d just burned down her house. Deputy Cutter said nothing, but his disgust was apparent in his narrowed eyes.
Nobody liked a snitch, not even the cops.
Alaska state court judges were notoriously soft with their conditions of release, but Ranucci’s record was “deep, wide, and continuous” enough that he didn’t qualify to bond out on his own recognizance. That was kind of a joke anyway: nobody but a judge was ignorant enough to believe that a tweaker who’d rip off his own mother for a score could be trusted to show up for breakfast, let alone a court appearance. In the end, the judge had set a five-hundred-dollar cash bond. It was low enough to elicit an eye roll from the arresting officer, but, considering the fact that the forty-three dollars Ranucci did have went up in flames with his mother’s Crown Royal curtains, bond may as well have been set at a million. He’d been forced to turn to the only coin he had to trade when it came to dealing with “the man.” It was good information, the stuff he was offering about Twig, but Deputy Cutter didn’t seem all that happy to get it. Maybe he just wasn’t a happy guy. Ranucci didn’t care, so long as they let him out once he’d cooperated.
The muscle under his right eye began to twitch. He rattled the restraints, softly; some cops took it real personal when you made noise with the chains.
“Any chance I get you to take these cuffs off so I can get a drink?” He shrugged, but it came off as a sort of spastic twitch. “Seeing as I’m helping and all. That jungle juice they have me take at the jail gives me a powerful thirst. Know what I mean?”
The lady marshal behind the wheel glanced in the rearview mirror, catching his eye. Ranucci had heard the others call her Lola. She wore her black hair pulled back in a tight bun, which made her look a little stark for Ranucci’s taste. She couldn’t be over twenty-five, and even in his present circumstances, he couldn’t help but imagine her shaking out the bun and letting her hair down. Nicky, sweetie, how about you and me . . .
“Jungle juice?” she asked.