MITCH AND DENNY left DC in the old white Suburban before the sun had even come up that morning, with Denny at the wheel as always. He’d handed Mitch some easily digestible bullshit the day before, all about reconnecting with his people now that he was a “real man,” and Mitch had gobbled it up, even taken it to heart.

In truth, the less Mitch knew about the reason for this little road trip, the better.

It was about five hours to Johnsonburg, PA, or, as Denny thought of it when they got there, Johnsonburg, PU. The paper mills here put up the same sour stench as the ones he’d grown up around, on the Androscoggin. It was an unexpected little reminder of his own white-trash roots, the ones he’d ripped out of the ground twenty years ago. He’d been around the world more than once since then, and this small town was as close to going home again as he ever cared to get.

“What if she don’t want to talk to me, Denny?” Mitch asked for about the eighty-fifth time that morning. The closer they got, the faster his knee jacked up and down, and he clutched at the stuffed yellow monkey on his lap like he wanted to strangle the damn thing. It already had a tear in its fur where Mitch had pulled off the security tag at a Target in Altoona, right before he’d stuck it under his jacket.

“Just try to relax, Mitchie. If she don’t want you here, it’s her loss. You’re an American hero, man. Don’t ever forget that. You are a bona fide hero.”

They came to a stop outside a bleak little brick duplex on a block of bleak little brick duplexes. The front lawn looked like the place where old toys went to die, and there was a rusty blue Escort heaped in the driveway.

“Seems pretty nice,” Denny said with a frown. “Let’s go see if someone’s home.”

Chapter 60

SOMEONE SURE WAS. You could hear the music coming right through the front door, some kind of Beyoncé shit or something like that. It took a couple of rounds of knocking before the volume finally went down.

A second later, the door opened.

Alicia Taylor was prettier than her surveillance photo, by far. Denny wondered for a second how Mitch had ever bagged her in the first place, but then Alicia saw who it was on her stoop, and her face got ugly and nasty real quick. She stayed behind the screen door.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said by way of hello.

“Hey, Alicia.” Mitch’s voice was husky with fear. He seemed a little flustered, and he held up the stuffed monkey. “I, uh… brought a present.”