Nothing was going right for Tally. Her brother was threatening to sell his kid off again if she didn’t pay up. She was afraid he’d do it this time, too, if she didn’t come up with the money. Now, the neighbors were fighting again. When the gun next door went off, Tally took a bullet. William Archer was already in a bad mood. The woman had taken a bullet for him, then slammed the door in his face. He would help her, and that would be the end of it. The entire family had been trying to marry him off, and the last thing he wanted was a wife. He made no bones about it, either. Tally didn’t like him much, either. And when he implied that the situation with her brother and her nephew was her fault and she should have done more, she knocked him on his butt. Realizing too late that he might have been a little harsh, William scrambled to rectify the situation, but Tally wasn’t having any of it

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Merce was a go-getter. She ran a contracting company with her father, and when she saw something that needed to be done, she did it. Archer’s company had a new product that needed to be produced, and Merce knew her company was in a perfect position to fulfill that order. She just didn’t understand why they weren’t on the list for consideration. She’d see about that.

When Heather Grey received the phone call from Merce Archer that her brother was dead, she wasn’t surprised, but when her sister-in-law, Judy Grey, claimed to be pregnant with her brother’s child, Heather knew better than that. There was no way in hell that child was his. Heather decided right then and there that she’d go to the small town and set things straight.

Elizabeth Monroe moved from Chicago to a small town in Ohio to live with her grandda, Bingo. He owned the construction company updating Peter’s house. Elizabeth was helping out until she could take her medical boards to transfer her license to Ohio.

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Prologue

There was no hope for it. Tally was going to have to go to Ohio and figure out
what the fuck was going on with her brother. The fucker. He’d better be sick or dead, or
she was going to get his ass in trouble again. All he had to do was tell her Clay was
doing all right in school and send her a list of things he needed for winter. She’d buy
them, never sending him money, then send them on to him.
Tally had been afraid that he was selling the things off instead of giving them to
her nephew. Since Allice had left Howie, he’d been using more. Not that she thought
he’d ever stopped, but he had some way of getting around Social Services when they’d
show up at his house when she called.

Letting the phone ring and ring, she tried to remember when the last time it was
that she’d been to see Howie. It had to be at least a month now. The bastard had made
her stay in a hotel rather than letting her bunk on the couch in order to see the little boy
who had come to mean the world to her.

“What the fuck do you want?” She wasn’t bothered by his tone anymore. It
didn’t even bother her that he sounded drunk. Recording each and every call to and
from him was something that the internet told her that she should do. “Tally, I’m busy.
What the fuck are you doing calling me when I know for a fucking fact that you can’t
afford to miss a day of work. You should be at work right now. My rent is coming due.”
“I’m not working right now.” She sat down while he began screaming at her
about his money. “Shut the fuck up.” That seemed to get his attention.
“What do you mean you’re not working? You’d better be. I’m telling you right
now, if I don’t have rent money from you, I’m going to sell off this fucking kid. He’s not worth spit as it is now.

Just last week, I had to go into a meeting with the school because
he wasn’t bringing himself any lunch in to eat.” She asked him if he’d packed him
something. “No. Why should I have to get him something to eat to take to school? He’s
old enough to know what he’ll eat or not.”

“He’s six, Howie. I don’t think I should have to point that out to you that a six-year-old doesn’t know that he’s supposed to hit all the food groups when making his
lunch. Why the hell aren’t you making it for him?” He said that he wasn’t getting up
that early. “Then make it the night before. Though I don’t know why you’re not getting
up to put him on the bus in the first place. Why aren’t you?”

“Ain’t none of your beeswax. Get off my back. When are you going to be
sending the money for my rent, Tally? I’m telling you right now, I won’t put up with
you delaying it again. You know that I’m serious about selling him off?” While she was
glad that he was saying these things for the recording, she wasn’t happy to know that
he would do just what he said he would again. “I need that five hundred dollar
pronto.”

“Your rent isn’t that much. It’s only one-fifty because you live in government-subsidized housing. Which you said you didn’t. And you don’t pay any utilities like
you told me, either. I’ve been doing some research, Howie. Nothing you’ve said to me
is true.” He didn’t say anything. “What have you been doing with the money that I’ve
been sending you? I was also informed that the school would supply him with a free
meal if you were to go in and fill out the paperwork for it. Why haven’t you done that
either?”

“I was told that it would affect my food card.” She hadn’t realized that he was
getting a food card either. It never occurred to her that he’d lie to her about so many
things. “With me and little Howie here, we get a nice size of money that can fill the
fridge up a few times a month. But it won’t go as far if I have to go in there and tell
them to give him some food when I ain’t got anymore left for him. He don’t eat much
anyway. And don’t think that I didn’t notice that you didn’t tell me why you’re not
working. I want that money, Tally. I deserve it for having to be around this kid all day.”
“He’s a good kid, and I doubt very much he wants to be around you either,

Howie. Will you stop calling him little Howie? His name is Clayton. There isn’t any
reason whatsoever that you call him that.” Howie told her that Beth should have named
him after him. “She should have kicked your sorry ass to the side of the road when you
went to prison for robbery. The very fact that she put your name on his birth certificate
at all is a surprise to me. You’re nothing but crap. Where is Clay? I want to talk to him.”
“Not unless you have some money for me, you’re not.” She cried then, careful
not to show her brother how much his words hurt her. “You’re not working. Why the
fuck not?”

“A big company bought the place and is tearing the building down to put in a
parking lot. I guess they think that a little grocery store isn’t as important as having
people have a place to park.” She wanted to scream about how it wasn’t her fault that
the building was as old as rocks.

It leaked like there wasn’t a roof on it when it only rained a little. The furnace
was temperamental, as in it would only work if you begged it to work. There was no air
in the place, but up front, when you first came in, and all that came from a window air
conditioner. The freezers had given out about a year ago, so they no longer had ice
cream. Meats were all right, she supposed, but that fridge was going out as well. Well, it
did go out the day that the new company that owned the building came in. Christ, she
didn’t know what she was going to do now.

With paying her brother a thousand dollars a month when she didn’t have to
was killing her on top of her own bills. If she never ate another peanut butter and jelly
sandwich, she’d be happy. Also, ramen noodles. Tally had a list of things that she could
do with them longer than she thought most people had thought of. All just so she could
save her nephew from being sold off like Howie threatened to do weekly. It was then
that she realized that he’d hung up on her.

When Beth had left Howie, no one believed Tally when she told the police that
she thought he’d killed her, the baby was left behind. Beth would never have left that
little boy, and when she did leave, she would have come to her and told her that she
was leaving. But Howie had won that battle, and he’d been stuck, his words having to
care for a little baby all on his own. She’d gone to help him for a while, staying in a
hotel that she could ill afford after buying diapers, formula, and other items that Clay
had needed.

But it only lasted for the first couple of months before she had to return to her
work. Each day she would care for Clay while Howie did whatever he did during the
day and at night. She’d hunt for clues that would tell her where Beth was. She’d been
close, she thought, when Howie had caught her looking around. Christ, she’d barely
made it home with all her injuries after the beating that she’d taken that day.
After that, he’d forbidden her to come around. But it didn’t stop her from having
to send him money. Then she’d found out, quite by accident, that Howie was getting
not just a food card but insurance and subsidized rent for housing.
Going to her cot, not even the size of a twin bed, she laid down on it to try and
rest. Tomorrow she was going to have to find a job, or she’d not even have this wreck of
a place to live. When the couple next door started their nightly fight, she got down off
the cot and hid under it. There were always guns involved in their kind of nightly
ritual.

The knock at her door sometime later woke her up from a nightmarish sort of
dream. It was nearly always the same. Beth begged her not to tell her brother that she
was having a son, and him finding out and chasing her all over the place with a gun.
Staggering to the door, she opened it without looking.
“You didn’t even ask who it was. For all you knew, I could have been a
murderer. Or come here to rob you.” She slammed the door in his face and went to the
bathroom. She could hear him pounding on the doors when she went back to her cot to
lie down again. “Open the fucking door. I don’t want to be here anymore than you
want to talk to me. It’s about the place you used to work. I have a check here for you to
help you get along until you find another job.”

“Fuck you. If you’d just left the place alone, I’d still have a job, and I wouldn’t
have to be wondering where my next meal is coming from.” She did get up, curious
about the check, had her opening the door and taking the envelope from the big man.
Tally was ready to slam the door in his face again when he put his foot in the door. The
couple took that opportunity to start firing at each other again, and she knocked the
man back when one of the bullets went by her nose. When the guns were finished, she
sat up and looked at the man beneath her. He had his eyes closed, so she smacked him
around—which actually felt pretty good, considering. He looked at her with one eye.
“You’re bleeding.” She shrugged at him. “You were shot. Is this something that
you have to put up with all the time?”
“No, I only stay in this house in the winter months. My summer home is much
more bullet-riddled. I’ve been shot before. If you don’t have anything else to impart to
me, I’d like to get back to what I was doing.”
“Plotting the deaths of other people?” She moved off of him, making sure that
she elbowed him at least four times before she was on her feet. “You’re really bleeding a great deal. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“Well, I hope you get in it on your own because I’m not going to be able to pay
the seven hundred bucks they’ll charge me for not taking it to the hospital. That is if
they show at all. This isn’t exactly the best of neighborhoods in the event that you didn’t
know that.” She looked at the blood on her blouse and then put her hand over the
wound. It hurt like hell, but she wasn’t going to go anywhere. “What else did you want
to tell me? That you’re all making it so that we don’t have to look for jobs? That there is
one that is providing transportation as well? Go home, whoever the hell you are, and
have a nice life.”

She did get to slam the door in his face this time, as he’d sat up enough so that
she could do that. When her neighbors started screaming about her making all that
noise, she didn’t bother speaking to them. They’d just fire into her room again, and she
didn’t have time for that shit. Going to the bathroom again, she pulled out her
dwindling first aid kit and looked at what she had to deal with.
The man must have left because when she went out of her place to go downstairs
to get her milk and eggs, the snow had already covered his prints leaving the building
to a parking lot. Getting her things out of the snow that had piled up overnight, she was
glad now that she’d been able to get some food the day before. Otherwise, she’d be shit
out of luck in getting out now. Taking it into the house to cook, she was suddenly not
all that hungry. Her wound was bleeding badly now, and she wasn’t sure that she
shouldn’t at least call someone to fix it for her.

The only doctor that she knew was the vet that lived below her. Well, he wasn’t a
vet any longer. He’d lost his license some time ago when he’d been doing illegal things
to the poor animals left in his care. Tally never asked, but she had a feeling that it
wasn’t just cutting them up but sexual things too. Shivering, she put her things out the
window onto the little deck—that was too dangerous to hold a plant—and warmed
herself up in her cot.

Sleeping fitfully, she had strange dreams about shit that she didn’t know what it
meant. There was a woman in white that was standing over her, yelling at the man that
had been at the door. Police had come in and were taking away her neighbors. An
elderly woman, a very beautiful one at that, was asking her why she was living here,
and she did remember answering her. What she said, Tally had no idea, but she must
have said something because she, too, disappeared.

“Don’t leave my milk outside. It’ll freeze up, and I won’t have any hot cocoa in
the morning.” Someone asked her if she had any coffee. “Who the hell can afford
coffee? I can barely buy a candy bar to melt down for my cocoa once a month after
sending my deadbeat brother everything I have. He’d better not be selling off Clay
again. I’ll murder his ass if he does that again.”

She remembered some questions about her health and had no idea if she had
answered them. It was the strangest dream that she’d ever had. When something warm,
like a big old warm fuzzy blanket that she would get from her mom every Christmas
seemed to float over her, she let herself dream about something else. Sometimes the
past would come up and kick her in the ass so hard that she’d want to just starve herself
to death rather than deal with it.
“It might be cheaper for me to just die, I think.”

“If you don’t calm your ass down, I’m going to knock you back on it and see
where that gets you. I said that I’d tell you what I knew, but I won’t be bullied into
giving you answers that I don’t have. Sit down and shut the fuck up, William, or so
help me. I’m going to call mom.” William looked around as if mom might pop out of
one of the rooms he was surrounded by. “Are you ready to listen or not?” Darrel would
just walk away from him without giving him any answers. So he told him that he was
ready. “All right. She’s dehydrated, undernourished, and has been shot before. The
bullet, this time, only hit her belly, where we had to remove a portion of her colon to get
it back to right. The other bullets, two different times, were removed as well. One was
lodged into her ribs the other was in her thigh. How she was able to get around after
that one is—keep your mouth closed, or I will walk.”

“Why the hell didn’t she get help?” He didn’t answer him. Anyone that had been
in her apartment or really a room the size of a closet would know that she was barely
making ends meet. “I offered to call her an ambulance to go in.”
“Were you like this? All pissy and in a shitty mood. I don’t know that I would
have taken you up on it, either. But she was right in telling you that they might not have
shown. There are records that indicate that one of her neighbors had died when it took
them three days to get there to offer treatment. She might well have only survived
before because she’s not stupid enough to think anyone is going to help her. Which
brings me to the question as to why you did? You don’t seem to like anyone anymore,
much less people that might want to depend on you. Even mom has been avoiding
you.”

“One of these women might be something to me, and I don’t need a wife in my
life. I think I like things just the way they are.” Darrel pointed out that his disposition
might keep the most determined away. “Don’t be a jackass. I’m not in the mood.”
After punching his brother in the face and walking away, knocking him back on
his ass, Darrel went to recovery where Tally Washer was. She was doing well,
considering she needed about thirty more pounds on her already slender body. When
he went to the nurses’ station to make sure they knew she was to have the best of care,
Elizabeth was there waiting for him.

“She all right?” Darrel told her everything that he’d said to William and more.
“I’ve had Del and Katie look into this brother of hers. I have a feeling that William
knows who the kid is. He was just talking to Robert about him yesterday.”
“Do you think that he really sold the kid off?” Elizabeth didn’t say anything,
which was saying volumes for her. “I see. So you believe this. Also, I heard from one of
the nurses that Beth Washer is missing and presumed dead. What can you tell me about
that?”

“Nothing. I did tell Del about it, and he’s pulling some strings to find out. If he,
Howard, killed her, then the little boy would be safer with Tally. That’s her name, too,
by the way. Not short for anything.” They moved down the hall to the office he used
when he was working here. “Tally had a job up until the store that she was working in
was closed down. I guess that the land was bought by the family. And the store, after
inspecting it, didn’t even hit any of the code parameters for being a store. No heat, no
air. The refrigerators were more than thirty years old and barely working. They had
coolers out with bagged ice in them for the customers to sort through when they
wanted something.”

“Christ.” She asked him if he wanted it all. “I don’t think I want to know any
more about that. Not right now, anyway. What about her story about the brother taking
her money? I’m sure you have something on that by now.”
“He apparently told her that his rent was too much for him to get around. Also,
she supplied them with food and other items. Buying them first and then sending them
to him so he’d not have the money. I don’t know why he’d fuck over his sister like that,
but some people just need to be killed. Howard didn’t work but stayed at home all day.
I don’t even want to think about what the house might look like when there isn’t an
inspection slated for him to come in.

He hires a group to come in and give the house a
good cleaning so he can live there without any trouble. You’d think he’d be using that
money on things for himself or Clay. Anyway, that’s what I know. Oh, Clay has been
picked up from school by Social Services and is on his way into the hospital to be
looked over. I thought you or I should do it, but the police told me that they didn’t want
us going to the house to kill him if there was a nail cracked or something. I’d like to
think I have a better hold on my temper than that.” He just stared at her. “All right, I
would have. But I’m telling you right now, I want to adopt that kid. He seems like he’s
been abused enough for someone so young.”

“I don’t know yet, but I believe you.” She asked him about Tally. “She’s going to
be all right. It’s going to take her a few days of her resting before I’d be happy with her
being released. But where she’ll go after that is beyond me. The complex where she was
living has been condemned, and they’re finding places for people that are there. I’m
sure she could be on that list, too, but I didn’t put her on it yet. I wanted to see if there
were other takers for her that could keep an eye on her.”
“You know that I’d love to do it.” Darrel thanked her. “You’re welcome. All
right, I need to get my ass home and put my feet up. Then I have rotations with you
tomorrow morning. Are we still up for that?”

“Yes. I can’t thank you enough for helping out with my practice while I take this
trip. I’ve not had a vacation since I got out of college. I need it.” She told him it was her
pleasure. “When the baby comes along, I’ll be there for you too.”
“I know that all of you will be.” The nurse said there was a call for Darrel, and
Elizabeth told him she’d talk to him later. “I’ll be home if you need anything from me.
I’m going to be working with the others on finding out some information about this
family.”

After saying his name in the phone, he had to pull it away from his ear so that he
wouldn’t damage his ear drum. Whoever was on the other end was not a happy person
with him. As soon as the man took a breath to no doubt start on him again, Darrel
whistled. That got his attention.

“Now, calmly tell me what the hell you’re going on about so that I can
understand. I don’t have a clue what it is you’re screaming at me about.” He said that
his name was Howie Washer. “All right. I know who you are. What do you want?”
“Someone told me that you took my kid from me. I’m going to make sure that I
own your wallet before the end of the day.” He said that he’d had nothing to do with
his son being taken out of school. “Then who is it I have to murder to get him back.
That kid is my ticket to a lot of things. One of them getting my sister in line with my
stuff.”

“You mean your sister, Tally Washer?” He asked him how he knew her name.
“She’s here at the hospital as well. She’s been shot. Not for the first time, either, it
seems.”
“Well, hell. How is she supposed to pay me if she’s lazing around the hospital?
You fix her up good enough that she can get out and get herself a job. I have things to
pay off.” He asked him why he didn’t have a job. “I have a kid to watch over. Didn’t
you hear me saying that?”

“I heard you, but I doubt very much that you watch him all that well. From the
report I’ve gotten, he’s barely eaten in a few days. Not to mention has anything to keep
his feet warm in the winter.” He told him that was Tally’s job. While Darrel didn’t have
any reports yet, he could guess. “Why is that? You said he was your kid. Why is your
sister paying for his things?”

“So I keep him.” That sent a chill so far down his back that he was sure he’d feel
it for a week or two. “I got to find out where I can find my kid. If you know anything
about him, you call me. I don’t deserve to be treated like this. I might just have to come
down there and hassle Tally some to find out what she’s done now.”
Darrel hung up the phone and then made a decision. “I don’t want anyone to be
able to come in and see Tally Washer unless it’s my family. Nurses that you trust too.”
Nurse Able said her son would come in and guard her door. “I don’t want anyone to
get into trouble. Just make sure that no one goes in there without permission. I’ll tell the
front desk too.”

“I’ll take care of the desk downstairs. I’ll even tell them that you said no
information either. That’ll keep his butt out of here. And Jeremiah won’t get in a bit of
trouble. He’s a bouncer for that bar in Columbus that’s so popular. I’ll just say that I
know her brother and that I don’t want any trouble for my staff. If anyone says
anything, I’ll have them talk to your momma. She’ll be on my side.”
She would be, indeed. After checking on Tally again, Darrell made his way
home. He’d been working a lot of shifts lately and was looking forward to going on his
trip. He’d not been skiing since he’d been in his last year of med school and was looking forward to it more than he could imagine. Not only that, but he was hoping to get laid once or twice. It couldn’t hurt him to be a little relaxed once in a while.