Chapter 1: Alex Logan

“Are we there yet?”

I glanced up at my twelve-year-old daughter Kelly in the rearview mirror, her eyes glued to her phone. The frown on her face reflected the frustration I felt at being asked the same question for maybe the tenth time in the last hour, and a part of me wondered if it ever got old.

Whine much, Kelly? I wanted to say, but held my tongue. If there was one thing I had learned over the years, it was that my daughter had a tongue as sharp as mine, and my sarcasm was only going to be returned ten-fold. So, I didn’t reply and returned my attention to the road.

I could hear Kelly shift in the seat, moving about loud enough to reflect her discomfort before she followed it with a deep and annoyingly loud sigh. The trip to Connecticut was taking its toll on the both of us, and between cheap motels and hours on the road, we were this close to snapping at each other.

She’s just a child, Alex.

My wife Janice’s soft voice whispered in my ear. It was so real I turned toward the passenger seat, almost believing I’d find her sitting there.

I let out my own sigh. No, she wasn’t there. She’d never be there again. It was a fact I was still trying to reconcile, her death, even after all these years. I glanced in the rearview mirror at Kelly, the physical clone of her mom. Twelve-year-olds were the new sixteen, and this early bloomer was quickly turning into a miniature copy of yours truly. She had her mom’s beauty and my bad attitude. It was turning out to be a scary combination.

“Dad?”

“We’re an hour away, sweetheart,” I replied, trying to smile as best as I could.

“You said that an hour ago!”

“Then I guess it’s obvious that asking me that question over and over again will get you the same reply,” I shot back.

I caught her in the rearview mirror, rolling her eyes and folding her arms across her chest. “Walking would probably be faster than this.”

“I can always pull over and put that to the test,” I said.

“Or you could step on it, grandpa,” Kelly said.

Whoever said that being a single dad was hard had no fucking idea what he was talking about. Hard didn’t even scratch the surface. No, it was not cute when random women came up to me in the street and oohed and aahed at me after I had spent a night cleaning up baby barf. It was never easy being called into the school because my daughter had punched a classmate, only to get that condescending nod of understanding when I told them that Kelly’s mother was no longer with us. Nothing about raising a little girl alone was easy. And with my job, it only made things more difficult.

You should stop blaming her. It’s not her fault that she had to grow up quickly.

I’d come to hear my wife’s voice more and more over the years, somewhere in the back of my mind, consoling me and telling me that everything was going to be just fine. Deep down, I knew it was only my subconscious trying to let me know that I wasn’t fucking this up too much. But it made it a lot more believable when I used Janice’s voice for these little pep talks. She was the voice of reason to my instinctual desire to shoot first and ask questions later.

You can’t shoot your daughter.

“I know,” I replied to no one in particular.

“What?”

I looked at Kelly and shrugged. “I know I can step on it,” I said. “My leg’s acting up again. Sorry.”

“I can take over if you want,” Kelly said enthusiastically, leaning in between the seats as if I wouldn’t object to her suggestion of letting a twelve-year-old drive.

“Nice try, chipmunk,” I said, giving her a quick look. “I’ll be fine.”

Kelly slumped back into her seat and huffed.

One hour. Just one hour.

I leaned back in my seat, feeling my muscles scream at me, wondering what Kelly would do to me if I stopped for a few minutes to stretch. My leg really was starting to give me hell, the right thigh clenching around my healing bullet wound. Most days I could go a good twenty-four hours without it giving me much stress, but driving for almost two days was not the kind of stress it would let me endure without protest.

I let go of the wheel and rubbed at my thigh, willing the pain to stay at a tolerable level without the need to reach for my pain killers or stop the car. The doctors had told me it would get easier, back when I would wake up screaming from the pain and Kelly would have to help me with the meds because I was in too much agony to do anything for myself.

I looked up at the freckled face of my daughter, her brown hair falling to her shoulders in waves, and her green eyes locked on the phone’s screen. She really had grown too fast. It always surprised me when I thought about it.

And she’s turning into you.

Stubborn, mischievous, and always ready for a fight.

Unfortunately, all true. And being a DEA agent, constantly in the line of fire, didn’t help. My partner, Raul, had always told me to take it easy, to cut back on the workload, to not take the risks I was prone to taking.

“You have a little girl at home, man,” he would always say. “I’m not ready to tell her that her father’s dead because he was being a reckless asshole.”

It was the only way I knew how to do my job, though. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care what happened to me. Being a father changes you, in more ways than one, and I would have gladly given my life for Kelly if I had to. Dammit, I’d kill for her. But sometimes, instinct just kicked in, and for a few seconds, a few stupid seconds, I’d forget that I had a little girl waiting in the neighbor’s apartment for me to come home safe.

Which was probably why the captain had asked me to take a leave.

Or the fact that you had survived four bullets and no one on the force wanted to be the bearer of bad news if things had gone south.

That, too.

I could still remember my conversation with the captain a week ago, when I was finally able to walk on my own two feet again and could trudge into the precinct. I had tried to assure him that I was fine enough to come back to work, maybe even take a desk job for a while. But I wasn’t very convincing, and I doubt the cane I was using to help me get around made it any better. He had literally kicked me out of the office, told me to take a break, stay with family, heal first, then talk about coming back to work.

“And for fuck’s sake, Alex, look after your goddamn daughter!”

It seemed like everyone was always chastising me to be a better dad, telling me what I was doing wrong and what I should be doing right. I appreciated their concern and tolerated their words. What they didn’t seem to understand was that no one chastised me more than myself. I started asking myself what would my dad do?

That’s when I started thinking about going home for a while.

Not home to the house Kelly and I shared on Beaker Street, but home to Connecticut, where I grew up. I had called my father a few days after I took leave and told him we were coming home to visit.

Kelly was great company, usually, but with the start of summer holidays and both of us in each other’s faces all day, the house was quickly turning into a warzone. I blamed it on puberty, she blamed it on the fact that I wasn’t taking enough meds. Or that I was just being an asshole intent on ruining her life.

It’s like I’m married all over again.

“We could’ve taken a plane, you know,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“You don’t say,” I replied. “Jeez, I should’ve thought of that.”

Kelly leaned in again. “You know, sometimes I wonder which one of us is the adult in this relationship.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll pretend to be the father whose credit card pays for all the stuff you have, and you pretend to be the daughter who is always grateful that her father loves her so much to spoil her in every possible way.”

She huffed at me. “Spoils me so much that he’s trapped us in a car for two days?”

“So much that he hasn’t stopped two states back and told the closest trucker to drive you back to Miami,” I replied. “Do you know what happens to little girls whose parents don’t keep their eyes on them all the time?” I looked at her in the rearview and frowned. “Do you know?”

“I’m twelve,” she replied. “I’m not living under a stone.”

“I’m going to have to rethink giving you your own phone,” I said, shaking my head.

Kelly threw her hands up. “Sure, take it,” she said, slumping back. “Just what I need to make my life even more miserable.”

“Your life is not miserable,” I countered.

“I’m in a car for two days,” Kelly shot. “What’s your definition of miserable?”

This conversation for starters, I wanted to reply, but just smiled and shook my head.

We passed a road sign that read “Kent 30 Miles” and I let out a sigh of relief. Kelly had noticed it to, because she let out her own frustrated “finally” before shifting closer to the window to get a look at the world around us. I think it was the first time she had peeled her eyes away from that damn phone in two days.

Connecticut was beautiful in the fall, peaceful, the complete opposite of Miami with its year-round flow of tourists, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and the scorching tropical heat. I had grown up in Kent, my parents’ house a constant reminder of the youth I had spent scraping my knees and bruising my elbows.

Moving to Miami had never been an easy decision, especially since leaving my dad alone was pretty much like giving a child a gun and asking him not to pull the trigger. Ever since my mother’s death back when I was in middle school, I had come close to losing a finger, breaking bones, and literally running a man over because my dad had thought it would be funny to let me drive his truck.

The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, eh buddy?

I looked at Kelly again in the rearview and wondered just how much of my dad was in me, how much of me was in her, how close I had come to ruining both of our lives, and shuddered. She definitely had a guardian angel watching over her, because more times than not, I wasn’t.

“Looking forward to seeing your grandfather again?” I asked.

The last time Kelly had been around my dad, the two had hit it off quite nicely. Well enough to the point where they had ganged up on me on numerous occasions. Sometimes I felt like he understood her a lot better than I did, and I usually wrote it off to the fact that he had been through the whole ‘single dad’ phase and had enough experience to handle situations I literally sucked at. Needless to say, he was thrilled when I told him we’d be spending a couple of months with him at home in Connecticut, a place I had not been back to in years.

“At least I’ll have someone to talk to that might actually care about what I have to say,” Kelly said, a hint of spite and accusation in her voice, like always. “And might actually listen to me once in a while.”

“What are you talking about? I care about what you have to say,” I said in a hurt tone. “And I always listen.”

“It would just be nice to have a conversation with someone who won’t end up yelling at me or think that talking about bad guys with guns is appropriate conversation for a kid my age.”

“You just told me that you know what happens to little girls who get left at truck stops,” I scoffed.

“Sure, dad. Whatever.” Kelly rolled her eyes at me again. “Your father of the year trophy is waiting for you to pick it up.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder if maybe I talk to you a little too much,” I said, frowning at her sarcasm, but on the inside secretly proud of her strength and guts.

I hated how much she took after me, but there were some things I was grateful she had picked up. Including having the balls to not let anyone take advantage of her, even her pain in the ass old man.

“Kent, next exit,” she said, nodding toward the exit sign.

“I see it,” I said. “I’m not blind.”

“No, you’re just deaf and dumb,” she said. I frowned at her in the rearview and caught her smiling without looking at me.

“Fine, I’ll take that one,” I said, shaking my head without letting her see the grin on my face. “Now play with your phone and let me drive.”

“Sure. No problem.”

I turned off the Interstate and cruised toward the town I had left behind almost twenty-five years ago. My leg protested a little more, but I quickly pushed the pain away.

In a few minutes, I’d be back home.