Almost every day after she got home from work, she’d get sick to her stomach. It was eating her up, working day in and day out with these people. With these men who’d raped her. This man who’d killed her Eldon. She’d take a shower, like she was washing the stink of them off her every day.

She was giving herself a year.

Eldon had died the last day of July. She thought, Maybe I can hang in until next August. Or until Gary starts getting suspicious. The dummy accounts, the fake invoices, it was all going very well. By the time she was done, he’d be fucking bankrupt and she’d have enough to start over with Katie someplace else. But if he started getting wise, started asking too many questions, the “Abort! Abort!” warnings would start sounding in her head. She had to be ready, in case she had to bail early.

But so far, so good.

When she started going crazy, when she thought she couldn’t stand being in the same building with them one more moment, she used thoughts of revenge to calm herself. She imagined Gary’s reaction the day she didn’t show up for work, went hunting for her, discovered she and Katie were gone. And then when he figured out what had happened, that she’d ripped him off. Big-time.

Oh, to be the fly on the wall.

He’d be too astonished to remember to stick his finger up his nose.

The other guys, they seemed wary of Gary lately. They could never figure out why he didn’t avenge the death of Eldon Swain. It had to be the Comets, right? They had to have done it. But Gary, he wasn’t ready to go to war. He was cool with it.

Didn’t seem like Gary.

Even Leo, who didn’t think too hard on anything, asked him one time, “Don’t you miss Eldon? I do. He was always nice to me. When he was going out and I asked him to grab me a burger or something, he’d always do it.”

“He thought he knew everything,” Gary said. “He thought he was the boss around here. Well, he wasn’t. I’m the boss around here.”

Leo pondered that. “If you’re the boss, shouldn’t you be getting who done that to Eldon?”

Gary said, “You want some pizza?”

Leo thought that was a great idea.

Miranda had to be strong. She had to hang in. And she had to be careful not to get too greedy. She had to know when to call it quits. Because if she blew this, she’d be ending up plastered to the front of a train herself.

Katie needed her mommy.

CHAPTER 20

20

ONE NAME KEPT SHOWING UP in all the stories I found about the Slots and the Comets: Michael Cherry, a detective with the Canborough police.