Why did I think he was going to help me?

What stupid-ass worm crawled into my brain and told me that visiting him was a good idea? Six hours in the car for twenty minutes of run-around. My fingers were so tense on the steering wheel that they were turning white. I forced myself into a few deep breaths and relaxed.

You had to try, I told myself. You have to try everything. And now, you have to run. It's time to run, Misty-Lee.

Shit. Even just being around him had my brain reverting back to my childhood moniker. No one called me Misty-Lee. It was just Misty. I liked it better that way. But of course, he hadn't seen me since I was 18 and still shopped in the Junior's department.

Dammit, I still shop in the fucking Junior's department. I’m short and petite, and it’s cheaper.

Shit! Damn shitballs!

I was getting all upset again, cursing myself out, thinking in staccato expletives instead of full, coherent thoughts.

Calm your ass down, Misty-Lee, I thought, forcibly. Just thinking the name had Dad's voice ricocheting through my head. He always sang my name instead of saying it.

What do you think I should do, Pops? Is it time to run?

I honestly didn't know what he'd say. I knew he'd want me safe – which meant I should run. But I also knew Dad never ran, except from the cops. Sorghum Bend was his town. No one could chase him out of the house he'd built with his own damn money – a joke, because all Dad's money was other people's money. Still, the sentiment was a strong one, and it was drilled into my bones. All his talk about Costa Rica was just that, talk. He was bound and determined to stand his ground, no matter what the cost.

You don't run. Constatino never runs.

And maybe that’s why there aren’t any other Constatino anymore. There was just me. No layers of organization between me and everything that was coming. No big, bad, gun-toting men left behind to protect me. Any friends Dad left behind were only so loyal. If they knew who was after me, they cared too much about their own skin to step in.

I was pressing the speed limit, my knuckles white again.

Like I didn't have enough problems without a smart-ass con pushing my buttons and acting like the cock of the damn walk. Well, Rev, who's driving away, street legal, and who's still rotting away behind cement walls?

And who's bound for a long walk off a short dock, I reminded myself.

Fuck!

I couldn't hit the interstate fast enough. I would go home. I'd call Janie. We'd drink tequila and eat nachos and I'd pretend like I wasn't on someone's short list. Janie didn't know a damn thing about my life. She didn’t know about the world I never chose for myself, and that's what made her the perfect friend. We could bitch about work and I could pretend that I had nothing more to worry about than building up the funds in my Christmas Club account.

Once I merged onto the road, into the gently anonymity of mass transit and the steady thoughtless dance of merging lanes, I felt better. Driving always made me feel better. With four tires on asphalt you weren’t supposed to do anything except drive. Letting your mind wander could turn you into road meat. I turned on the radio and Patsy Cline was singing, which was a genuinely wonderful thing. And then I was singing, too, sliding down into my seat with my shoulders falling just a little bit looser.

I had no right to relax.

I had no right to let my mind wander.

But dammit, I needed to. 'Cause if my unknown enemy didn't kill me, freaking out about it just might.

Tequila. Melted cheese. A Lifetime made-for-tv-movie. Yeah, that sounded swell. And Purrloin was waiting for me, which brought a smile to my lips as soon as I thought of her. The one-eared, one-eyed, lint-gray hellion I called a pet cat. As rough around the edges as my old man, and twice as deadly to her enemies. When she wasn't bringing me dead things, she was finding things that smelled dead to roll around in. She was a stinking mess with a constantly blocked colon and a wail that could break glass.

But she also purred like a lawn mower and loved the ever-loving shit out of me. No one else, just me. We were soul mates, Purrloin and I. Meant for no one but each other. We took no men and made no excuses. We were soldiers, survivors.

I'd survive this, just like Purrloin survived whatever it was that claimed her ear and her eye. I just needed some help. Just a little bit of help. Just an answer, a thing to start working on. A hint. A clue. I couldn't afford a private investigator. Dad's inheritance wasn't much more than a safety net for me and my mortgage. Trust me, I priced every dick from Sorghum Bend to Asheville – and I don't mean male escorts.

I was doing this on my own, but I'd take every ounce of help I could get.

And dammit...

Fucking Rev. Now his head was shaved. Now he had a little bit of a five-o-clock shadow. Now he wore orange, with big black numbers over his heart. But he was still worth his nickname, able to rev lady engines from here to Olympus. Still a born Casanova.

Now, he was also a thorn in my side.

Was he screwing me around, or was he legit? If I leveled with him, would he tell me what I needed to know?

Could I even afford to wonder?

I had to go back. Dammit, I had to go back to him. I actually growled, audibly. Johnny Cash took Patsy's place on the radio. He was whining about his Folsom Prison Blues, but I had my own version of that song, named after Guvcheck.

Cash had Reno and lonesome whistles, I had Guvcheck Minimum Security Correctional Institution, and William “Rev” Daly.

I have to go back.

My gas bill was going to hate me, and I was likely going to hate myself, and I was pretty sure I already hated him. Maybe it'd bruise my pride and leave me looking the fool. Still, it was better to have a bruised ego than a snapped neck.

I didn't need my father's voice in my head to remind me of that.