Keep Her Safe

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  For all the Abraham Wilkeses out there, who risk their lives every day

  PROLOGUE

  Corporal Jackie Marshall

  June 1997

  “There’s gotta be a pound in each.” Abe nudges the ziplock bag of marijuana with the tip of his pen. The kitchen table is shrouded in these bags, along with bundles of cash. I’m going to take a wild guess and say there’s plenty more, hidden around this dive of an apartment.

  I peer over at the guy we just busted, handcuffed and lying on his stomach, under another officer’s watchful eye, waiting to be transported for booking. He’s a scrawny nineteen-year-old with a temper. “Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be beatin’ on my girlfriend if I had all these drugs in my house.” His neighbors heard glass smashing and him making threats of death, so they called 9-1-1. He gave us cause to kick in the door when he uttered a string of racial slurs and then spat in Abe’s face. That’s how we found the bloodied blonde girl and this.

  Now the paramedics are treating the gashes on her face, while we wait for Narcotics to swoop in.

  Abe smooths his ebony-skinned hand over his cheek. “What do you think this is worth, anyway?”

  “Depends how good it is. Ten grand? Maybe twenty?”

  He lets out a low whistle. “I’m in the wrong business.”

  “You and me both. We bounced our mortgage payment last month.” Blair told me we couldn’t afford that house. I ought to have listened to him. But I also hadn’t planned on getting pregnant when I did. Not that I regret having Noah. I just expected to have earned a few stripes before I was elbow-deep in diapers and formula.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be making the big bucks soon enough, Sergeant Marshall,” Abe mocks with a dimpled grin. He’s been calling me that for months, ever since I passed my test and was put on the promotion list. “Just don’t go forgetting about us beat cops when you start pinning those stars to your collar.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” I roll my eyes at him.

  “Am I? You are one damn ambitious woman, Jackie, and my money’s on you over half the clowns around here, present company included.” He sighs. “My days won’t be the same, though.”

  “I’m gonna miss being your partner, Abe.” After seven years, there’s no one else I trust more in the APD—and in life—than Abe Wilkes.

  He lets out a derisive snort. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me plenty enough. Heck, Noah’ll probably be at my house more than yours.”

  “Dina’s managing alright, what with a baby of her own? Don’t want Noah to be a burden on her.”

  Abe waves off my concern. “Dina’ll steal that kid away from you if you’re not watching. She insisted.”

  I can’t be sure if it was Dina or Abe who offered to mind Noah while Blair and I work. I’ve never seen a grown man dote on a little boy as much as Abe dotes on mine. Even Blair doesn’t pay that much attention, and Noah’s his son. “That beautiful wife of yours is a blessing. I wish you’d have knocked her up and gotten married years ago. Would have saved me a ton on daycare bills.”

  Abe struggles to keep that booming chuckle of his at bay—it wouldn’t be appropriate given current surroundings. “I’d say we’re movin’ plenty fast, don’t you?”

  Pregnant three months into dating and married at City Hall the week after finding out? I’d say so. “Your mom come around yet?” A good Christian woman like Abe’s mother was less than pleased when she found out her twenty-eight-year-old son had knocked up an eighteen-year-old girl. An eighteen-year-old white girl. I’ve met Carmel Wilkes. I don’t believe she has an issue with Dina, per se; she’s more worried about other people taking issue with Dina and Abe together, and the problems that may arise. As progressive as Austin is, there’s still plenty of hate to go around when it comes to the color of a person’s skin.

  Abe shrugs. “Slowly but surely.”

  “I’ll bet that gorgeous little Gracie is helping.”

  It’s inevitable, the second anyone says his daughter’s name, that Abe’s face splits open with a wide grin. He’s about to say something—probably tell another story about how cute she is—when our radios crackle with voices.

  “The cavalry’s here.” I pat my stomach. “Good thing, too. I’m starving. Let’s get this lowlife booked and then get some food.”

  “Hey . . .” Abe lowers his voice to a whisper. “I wonder, how honest do you think these narc guys are?”

  “Honest enough. Why?”

  His chocolate-brown eyes roll over the bundles of cash. “Wouldn’t it be easy for one of those to go missing?”

  It’s a question you don’t pose, especially not while you’re in uniform and standing in front of a pile of drugs. “Pretty dang easy, I’ll bet.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Noah

  April 2017

  Austin, Texas

  “Hello?”

  A garbled string of code words over the police scanner carries down the darkened hallway, answering me.

  My heart sinks.

  She’s still awake.

  Kicking my dusty sneakers off, I drag myself all the way to the back of the house. “Hey, Mom,” I offer as casually as possible, passing her hunched body at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering on the edge of a supper plate, a half-finished bottle of cheap whiskey sitting within her easy reach, her gun belt lying haphazardly next to it.

  I don’t know why I was hoping for something different tonight. I’ve been coming home to the same scene for weeks now.

  “Where were y’all at tonight?” That Texan twang of hers is always heavier when she’s been drinking.

  I yank open the fridge door. “It’s Wednesday.”

  She tilts rather than lifts her head and spies the basketball tucked under my arm. “Right. I can’t keep up with you.”

  I could point out that there’s not much to keep up with. I’m a creature of habit. If I’m not at work, then I’m with my friends, at the gym or doing laps at the pool, or tossing a ball around. I’ve been going to the same pickup courts every Wednesday night since I moved back to Texas to go to UT seven years ago.

  I twist the cap off the carton of orange juice and lift it to my mouth instead. Wishing she’d berate me for not using a glass. That’s what she used to do, back when she didn’t beeline for her liquor cabinet the second she walked in the door from work. She’d also remind me not to dribble my ball in the house and to throw my sweat-soaked clothes through the hot cycle of the wash right away, so my room doesn’t smell like a gym locker.

  Now she doesn’t even bother to change out of her uniform half the time.

  As if to prove a point to myself, I let the ball hit the tile once . . . twice . . . seizing it against my hip after the third bounce, the hollow thud of leather against porcelain hanging in the air.

  Waiting.

  Hoping.

  Nothing. Not a single complaint from her, as she sits there, her eyes half-shuttered, her cropped blonde hair unkempt, her mind preoccupied with something far beyond the oak table’s wood grain that she stares at. She doesn’t give a shit about basic manners anymore. These past few weeks, all she does is sit at the kitchen table and listen to the radio crackle with robbery reports and domestic assault calls and a dozen other nightly occurrences for the Austin Police Department.
<
br />   Her police department, seeing as she’s the chief. A female chief of police in one of the biggest cities in the United States. A monumental feat. She’s held that position for two years.

  And, up until recently, seemed to have held it well.

  Coughing against the lingering stench of Marlboros, I slide open the window above the sink. Crisp spring air sails in. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the smell of lemon Pledge and bleach.

  “Don’t forget to close it before you go to bed. Don’t wanna get robbed,” she mutters.

  “We’re not gonna get robbed.” We live in Clarksville, a historic neighborhood and one of the nicest in a city that’s generally considered to be safe and clean. I can’t blame her for being cautious, though; she’s been a cop for thirty years. She’s seen society’s underbelly. She probably knows things about our neighbors that would make me avert my eyes when passing them on the street. Still, even the worst parts of Austin are a playground next to typical city slums.

  I frown as I peer down at the filthy sink. The stainless steel is spattered with black specks. “Did you burn something in here?”

  “Just . . . trash.”

  I fish out a scrap of paper with perforations along one side. It looks like a page torn from a notepad. April 16, 2003 is scrawled across it in writing that isn’t my mother’s.

  “Biggest mistake of my life.” She puffs on her cigarette, her words low and slurred. “I should have known Betsy wasn’t the only one . . .”

  “Who’s Betsy?”

  “Nobody anymore,” she mutters, along with something indiscernible.

  I fill a tall glass of water and set it down in front of her, using it as a distraction so I can drag the bottle of whiskey out of her reach.

  She makes a play for it anyway, her movements slow and clumsy. “Give it on back to me, Noah. Right now, ya hear me?”

  I shift to the other side of the table, screwing the cap on extra tight, though she could probably still open it. For a woman of her stature—five foot four and 130 pounds—she’s all muscle. At least she was all muscle. Her lithe body has begun to deteriorate thanks to the daily liquid supper. “You’ve had enough for tonight.”

  “What do you know about enough? There ain’t enough whiskey in the world for what I’ve done.” She fumbles with the four silver stars pinned to her uniform’s collar, looking ready to rip them off.

  So it’s going to be one of those nights. But who am I kidding? Those nights, when she starts in on this incoherent rambling, about not deserving to be chief, are more and more common lately. I miss the days when all she’d complain about was stupid laws and lack of department funding.

  I sigh. “Come on, I’ll help you upstairs.”

  “No,” she growls, a stubborn frown setting across her forehead.

  It’s half past eleven. She’s normally passed out by nine, so this is an unusually late night for her. Still, if she downs a few glasses of water and goes to bed, maybe she’ll be ready for work by the morning, only a little worse for wear.

  I fold my six-foot-two frame into the chair across from her. “Mom?”

  “I’m fine . . .” she mumbles, her brow pinched with irritation as she fumbles with her pack of cigarettes.

  I wish I could be angry with her. Instead, I’m sad and frustrated. I’m pretty sure I need help, but I have no idea who to turn to. I was eleven the last time she hit the bottle like this. She and Dad were still married, so he dealt with it. But Dad has wiped his hands of her. He’s got a new wife and family and a meat-and-potatoes life in Seattle. He was never meant to be the husband of a cop, and especially not one as ambitious as my mother.

  She’d skin me alive if I went to any of the guys I know from the APD about her drinking. There are too many people looking for a reason to get rid of a female chief. This would be a good reason.

  I could go to Uncle Silas. He’s the district attorney; he wouldn’t want voters finding out that his sister the chief of police is a drunk. I should have gone to him already, but I hoped it was a phase, something she’d work out on her own.

  Maybe with a little push from us, Mom can get sober again. She did it once before, years ago. Quit cold turkey. She’s tough like that. She can beat this again.

  If she wants to.

  I turn down the volume on the police scanner. “Mom?”

  Her eyes snap open. It takes her a moment to focus on me, but she finally does. “How was basketball?”

  “They beat our asses.”

  “Who were you playing with?”

  “Jenson, Craig. The usual crew.”

  “Jenson and Craig . . .” she mutters, her gaze trailing over my arms, long and cut from hours of lifting weights and swimming laps. And she smiles. It’s sloppy, but I see the wistfulness behind the boozy mask. “You’ve become so strong and independent, Noah. And smart. So smart. You know I love you to bits, right?”

  I nudge the glass of water forward. “Take a sip, Mom. Please.”

  She humors me by downing half the glass, only to then reach for her glass of whiskey and knock back the shot.

  “What time do you have to be in to work tomorrow?” If I can catch her over her morning coffee, when she’s sober and still feeling the pain of tonight, maybe I can start a serious conversation.

  Maybe I can get through to her.

  “You’ve grown into a good, honest man,” she mutters, not answering me. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Here. Let me get you another glass of water.” I fill up three more, lining them on the table in front of her. “Drink. Please.”

  With reluctance, she reaches for the first.

  “I’m gonna grab a shower.” Without the promise of more booze, she’ll stagger upstairs and be passed out facedown in her uniform by the time I’m out, I’m betting. I dip down to grab the bottle from beneath the chair.

  “He was a good, honest man, too,” she mutters.

  “You’ll find someone else. You’re still young.” She does this when she’s drunk, too—talks about Dad, about how it’s her fault they divorced. Right after this, she’s going to say that she’s a terrible mother, because she abandoned me, let him take me to Seattle all those years ago. A boy needs his father, she believed.

  “No, not your dad . . . Abe.”

  I freeze.

  I haven’t heard her say that name in years.

  I ask cautiously, “Abraham, Abe?”

  “Hmmm.” She nods. Again, that wistful smile touches her lips. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” He was the tall man with ebony skin and a wide smile who taught me how to dribble a ball. He was my mother’s police partner for years, and one of her best friends for even longer.

  Until he was killed by a cocaine dealer, only to be labeled a corrupt cop after his death. I was eleven when he died. I didn’t understand what that meant, only that whatever Abraham Wilkes did was bad. It made statewide news and broadened an already perceptible racial divide within the community. It made Mom start drinking, and I’m pretty sure it broke apart our family.

  “He was a good man.” Her voice drifts off with her gaze, as her eyes begin to water. “He was a good, honest man.”

  I wander back toward the table. “I thought he was stealing and dealing drugs.”

  She chuckles as she takes another drag of her cigarette. It’s a sad, empty sound. “That’s what everyone thinks, because that’s what they made them think. But you . . .” She pokes the air with her finger, her normally neat and trim fingernails chewed to the quick. “You need to know the truth. I need you to know that he was a good man and we are bad, bad people.”

  “Who’s bad?” I’m desperate to pull the chair out and sit down across from her again, to listen to whatever it is she’s trying to tell me. But I also don’t think she realizes what she’s divulging. And I don’t want to give her pause to clue in and clam up.

  She dumps her cigarette pack out on the table, scattering a half dozen cigarettes before finding one t
o light. “You know he broke Dina. Ran her and that beautiful little girl out of town. She was so young when Abe died. Gracie. He always smiled when he said her name.” Mom smiles now too, reminiscing. “She has her mama’s green eyes and Abraham’s full lips and kinky curls. And her skin, it’s this gorgeous color, like caramel, and—”

  “Mom!” I snap, hoping to get her focus back. I vaguely remember Abe’s kid—a cute girl with big eyes and wild hair—but I don’t want to hear about her right now. “What are you talking about? Who did what?”

  “It didn’t start out that way. Or . . . I guess it did. But he made it sound right.”

  “Who? Abe?”

  Her head shakes back and forth lazily. “I don’t deserve to be chief, but it was one heck of a carrot. Better than the stick. Abe . . . he got the stick. He couldn’t be bought. He was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Because of me.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  Her jaw sets, and her eyes fix on a point behind my head. “What I let happen . . . I may as well have pulled the trigger.” She barely has the cigarette lit when she mashes it into the pile of ashes. “I sold my soul is what I did, and there ain’t no coming back from that.”

  “What—”

  “ ’Course I should have known he’d be waiting like a wily fox in the thicket to use it against me.”

  “Who—”

  “Just remember I meant to do good. And he promised me he didn’t know her age. He promised he’d never do it again.” She snorts. “I need you to know, Abe was a good man.” A tear slips down her cheek, and her gaze locks on mine. “I tried to make it right. But I couldn’t face her. After all this time, I couldn’t face what I’d done to her. I’m a coward. Not a chief. A coward.”

  A shiver runs down my back. “Who are you talking about, Mom?”

  She shakes her head. “She must hate her daddy. She don’t know any better. But I need her to know. Tell Gracie he was a good man. You’ll do that, right?”

  I’m speechless, trying to decipher the meaning behind her jumbled words. “Mom . . . what are you trying to tell me?” It sounds a hell of a lot like a confession. But for what?