Chapter One

The rain started to let up again. Sarah gripped the steering wheel of her car and fidgeted. It looked like she might be able to get out and make a dash across the city street to the entrance of that tavern without getting soaked through now, but every time the rain had let up before it was as if it was just catching its breath before coming down in another heavy downpour. It gave her an excuse to stay where she was. She scarcely needed any such excuse. It had taken the last fractured bits of resolve that she had just to drive here and park. She had to get across the street. Shehad to go into that tavern. Shehad to see Mack and beg for his help, and right now she couldn’t even bring herself to get out of her car. She had a powerful urge to just drive away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that either. It all seemed so hopeless, so useless, and so damned inevitable. If she just drove away, whether she went back home or anywhere else it was only a matter of days before the sky fell on her and her life would be over. If she went in that tavern, what if Mack wasn’t there? The PI she’d hired to find him had told her that it was his usual hangout in the evenings, but her luck had been so very, very bad of late that this might just be the night he’d decided to go somewhere else. If she went in there and asked for him and they told her he wasn’t there, she just knew that she’d lose it right then in front of everybody. And if she went in there and hewas there, what then? What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he didn’t want to hear her out? And what if he did hear her out and then told her to go to Hell? She couldn’t really hold it against him if he did that, not after what she’d done to him. But all of her choices, all of the possibilities, had fallen away until there was just this one, wild, desperate chance left. She had to go in there. She had to. She’d already come all this way. Why was it so hard for her now to just cross the street?

The rain suddenly slackened to a light drizzle. Before she knew what she was doing, she was out of her car and shutting the door. It was easier now, once she’d started. She quickly glanced up and down the narrow city street before quickly crossing over to the other side. There was a dark red awning with the name of the tavern printed on it in big white letters. She had just reached the shelter of it when the rain began pouring down heavily again, beating against the fabric of the awning and cascading off of it onto the sidewalk.

The front of the tavern had two big picture windows flanking the double doors of the entrance. Dark blue curtains were hung from brass bars halfway up each window. Now that she was this close to the building, Sarah could just see over the curtains. Inside it was full of people. Some sat at small round tables, others were perched on stools at the bar. Waiters and bartenders in dark red vests and long-sleeved white shirts bustled about, bringing food and drink to the customers. It all looked warm and welcoming. It was chilly and lonely out here in the street. Sarah took a deep breath and went to the entrance. She reached it just as a happy, laughing young couple came out, the eager, dark-haired young man holding the door for his lovely blonde companion. The sight wrenched at Sarah’s heart. She and Mack had been like that once, and she’d thrown it away because she hadn’t wanted to wait to live the good life. The good life! She’d be lucky now if she had any kind of life left ahead of her that wasn’t spent behind bars and fending off the advances of women who were bigger, stronger and meaner than she was. She went in as