The Riverboat Pub sat near the ferry dock at the edge of the St. Lawrence, but it was too late in the day to appreciate the water view, and I was too sloshed to notice it anyway. The ice in my third gin and tonic was cold against my bottom teeth, and the pungent scent of juniper stung my nostrils. Tim didn’t say anything when my sips got bigger and I leaned into the bar’s pleather bumper.

I’d never been out with Tim in town before, and was taken aback by the happy greetings and claps on the shoulder he got from the pub’s patrons. Having grown up in A-Bay, Tim knew everyone—including my ex. I wondered if his reluctance to join me in my drunken haze could be attributed to the attention he was generating, or if it was something else. He didn’t try to match my pace, not even when Matt gave him a beer on the house. He’d been nursing that same bottle for an hour.

As far as I was concerned, my keen desire to deaden the pain I felt was justified. I’d been desperate to go with Mac to the animal hospital. Whiskey’s breaths were shallow, and he wasn’t responding to her voice. When she told me she wanted to be alone with him, the rebuff sliced like a dagger to the heart. Tim had come back to Watertown with me, taking pictures of Mac’s broken backdoor window for the B&E report, while I inched a zipper around my bulging suitcase and tried to tell myself she didn’t blame me for what had happened to her dog. There was no way I was staying at her place anymore, not after what Bram had done. On the boat ride back to shore from Deer Island, I’d closed my eyes and hoped the rhythm of the waves on the hull would pacify me. Instead, my mind produced a picture show of friends and family in various states of demise. No matter how hard I tried to control my breathing and clear my head, I couldn’t shake the visions of the people I loved left to die.

And now, I couldn’t look Tim in the eye.

“You’re gonna burn through your savings pretty quick at that inn,” he said, rolling his bottle of Fat Tire between his palms.

“Sure, but it’s within stumbling distance of this place. I call that money well spent.”

“I don’t think this behavior is healthy.”

“Okay.”

“Isn’t your evaluation tomorrow?”

Fuck.

Gil Gasko had taken every opportunity to emphasize the importance of this interview. I couldn’t return to work without a formal all clear. After shooting a witness on my last case, I’d be lucky if I got reinstated at all. Weeks ago in Oneida, when I debriefed Lieutenant Henderson about Tern Island, he’d insisted that I focus on my mental health. Instead, I’d forced my way into not one new case, but two.

If I learned anything from my time with Carson, it was that I craved this job like a drug. I needed to be back at the station, rummaging through fresh case files while drinking coffee so strong it could beat Tim in an arm-wrestling match. What if Gil and Lieutenant Henderson deemed me unfit to return to duty altogether? If the past few weeks were any indication, I wasn’t sure I could survive an extended suspension. Tomorrow was about demonstrating reliability and consistency. I was supposed to prove I was of sound mind and could be trusted to perform my duties, under even the most taxing of circumstances. How the hell was I going to do that?