Hot Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Nancy M. Finney

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group USA, Inc.

  Cover design by Claire Brown

  Cover photography by Herman Estevez

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

  First eBook Edition: January 2008

  ISBN-13: 978-0-446-51114-8

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  About the Author

  “Maybe you’re scared because I won’t quit.”

  John heard Turner catch her breath. “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t they all quit? The men in your life? Your father, your brother . . .”

  John braced himself for her to hang up on him.

  But she didn’t. “You’re very sure of yourself.” Her voice was cool. “And of me.”

  He smiled tightly. Oh, honey, you have no idea. “You’re anxious because I’m not going to quit until I have you in my hands.”

  “How do you know I’ll let you get that close?”

  “You’ll have to.”

  “You want to arrest me.” Was there a question in her voice?

  “I want to get to know you,” he said very gently. “I have to arrest you. It’s my job.”

  “You can’t do both things. You’ll have to pick.”

  She was right. He knew that. But . . . “Maybe.” Maybe he’d gone insane. “Maybe I can have both.”

  For HEATHER QUALE,

  the only woman I know willing to wander the backwoods of Wisconsin at a moment’s notice.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my editor, Melanie Murray, for her enthusiasm, and to my agent, Susannah Taylor, for bearing with me.

  Chapter One

  I n Turner Hastings’ opinion, the bank robbery didn’t go truly bad until Yoda shot out the skylight. Which was not to say that the robbery hadn’t had its problems up until that point.

  It started out as a typically busy Saturday. Turner was working the drive-through teller station, peering out the bullet-proof glass at the customers in cars. It was almost noon—closing time for the First Wisconsin Bank of Winosha. Nasty old Mr. Johnson had just pulled up and begun fumbling with the plastic canister in the pneumatic tube when she heard the commotion behind her. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see two men rush the bank counter.

  One was tall and spindly in that way some guys are. The kind of skinny where you can’t help but wonder what, exactly, is holding up their jeans because they have no rear end to speak of. He was wearing a black Eminem T-shirt and a Yoda mask, and clutching a sawed-off shotgun in an uncertain way, as if he’d never held one before. The second man was short and hairy. He had the thick black stuff growing on his arms, the backs of his hands, his fingers, and of course, his chest. Unfortunately, he’d chosen to wear a yellow mesh tank, which only served to highlight all that abundance of fur. Perhaps he’d wanted to coordinate with the cheery yellow of his SpongeBob SquarePants mask. He held his shotgun with a bit more knowledge than Yoda, but under the present circumstances, that wasn’t nearly as reassuring as it should have been.

  “This is a floor! Everybody on the stickup!” SpongeBob screamed in a disconcertingly hoarse voice, little tube-socked SpongeBob legs swinging back and forth on the mask.

  Everyone in the small bank paused, trying to digest those two sentences. Turner opened her mouth, thought better about it, and shut it again.

  Marge, the only customer inside the bank if you didn’t count the robbers, had no such inhibitions. “This is a stickup. Everybody on the floor.”

  And you really couldn’t fault her, because she was right. Marge was short and bottom-heavy and wearing turquoise stretch capri pants with a big T-shirt that had glittery pink and orange flamingos on it. She was in her late fifties, which was an age, as she liked to tell anyone who’d listen, when she no longer had to put up with guff from men or boys.

  Her correction seemed to make the robbers irritable.

  “On the floor! On the floor! On the floor!” Yoda yelled redundantly, the mask’s little sticky-out ears flapping.

  Turner flattened herself to the floor behind the counter because, really, it seemed to be a good idea.

  But that only made SpongeBob upset. “No, dickhead! They’ll hit the police alarm back there,” he told Yoda. “We need to get them out here in the lobby.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Okay,” Yoda said. “Come on out here, then get on the floor.”

  Turner crawled out after Ashley, the other Saturday teller. Ashley was looking peeved. Before the robbery had started, she’d been talking about her new leaf-green summer pantsuit. She’d found it on sale at the Wal-Mart up in Superior, and she obviously wasn’t too thrilled to be crawling in it now.

  Behind Turner at the window, she could hear Mr. Johnson’s tinny voice through the speaker. “Can I have that in fives? No, better make it ones. And I need some quarters, too, for the washing machines up at the Spin ’n’ Go. Make sure they’re nice new ones. Last time you people gave me a bunch of sticky change.”

  Those inside the bank were all out in the lobby now. Turner lay on her belly and contemplated the manure-brown floor tiles. They needed mopping. Typical. Calvin Hyman, the bank president, who naturally wasn’t working on a Saturday and thus wasn’t in danger of having his head blown off—more’s the pity—had saved money by cutting the cleaning to once a week.

  “
Here.” A black plastic garbage bag was thrust in front of Turner’s nose. “Fill this with, like, money.”

  She squinted over her glasses at SpongeBob. Did he realize that in order to . . . ?

  “We’re going to have to get back up to fill those,” Ashley said, loud, exasperated, and nasal. “Why’d you make us come on out here and get down on the dirty floor if—ow!”

  Ashley stopped talking to glare at Turner, who’d just kicked her in the ankle.

  “Shut. Up,” Turner hissed.

  “Don’t you go telling me to shut up, Turner Hastings. If you think—”

  “Ashley, honey,” Marge interrupted from her spot on the floor next to Turner, “just get the nice bank robbers their money.”

  Good idea. “I’m going to stand up and go get the money, okay?” Turner said to the robbers to give them plenty of warning. She didn’t want to make them any more nervous than they already were.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. Hurry up,” Yoda answered. She noticed for the first time that the mask’s right ear had a tear in it. It’d been Scotch-taped back together.

  Turner stood. She took the garbage bag gingerly and walked back behind the counter with Ashley. Behind them, Marge stayed on the floor. It sounded like she was muttering about dirt and men. Turner hit the release on her teller drawer.

  Mr. Johnson’s scratchy voice was still complaining. “Hello? Hellloooo? What’s taking so long? I ain’t got all day here, you know—some people have work to do.”

  Ashley huffed at her counter teller station and pulled out wads of cash.

  Turner put a bundle of twenties into her bag and glanced carefully at the big round wall clock—11:56. Fudge. Ashley’s boyfriend, Doug, came to pick her up for lunch every Saturday. And Ashley’s boyfriend just happened to be a—

  “Cop!” SpongeBob squeaked.

  “What? Where?” Yoda swung around to look, his shotgun going with him.

  Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Larson pushed open the tinted glass doors of the bank and paused. The little silver star on his khaki uniform winked in the sunbeam streaming in from the big skylight. His Smokey-the-Bear hat had always seemed a little too big on him to Turner’s eye, but that might’ve been because Doug had such a little pinhead. If you looked at him sideways, the back of his skull was totally flat. Something had to be wrong about that. A ludicrous expression of horror flooded Doug’s face, and Turner could almost hear the Oh, shit.

  Then Doug drew his gun.

  Turner decided to duck behind the counter at that point, so she didn’t actually see Yoda shoot out the skylight, but she did hear the BOOM! of the shotgun and the subsequent tinkling as glass rained down on them all.

  Beside her, Ashley was whimpering, but that soon turned to a shriek. “Doug!”

  Oh, Lord, thought Turner. Please don’t let Doug be dead.

  Then Ashley’s hollering continued. “Doug! Dougy! Don’t leave me! Goddamnit, Doug Larson, see if I ever let you take me out to the Ridge again!”

  Turner blinked at that information slip. The Ridge was the local makeout spot. She chanced a look over the counter. Doug, as Ashley had already indicated, was nowhere to be seen. Smart man. He’d probably calculated the odds and gone looking for some backup. Or at the very least, a bigger gun. Meanwhile, Yoda and SpongeBob were still milling in the lobby. Yoda’s right ear was dangling from the mask now. Evidently, the Scotch tape hadn’t survived the excitement.

  “What the hell did you do that for, you douchebag?” SpongeBob yelled. “Why didn’t you shoot at the cop instead of the ceiling?”

  “Hey, I was trying,” Yoda said. “It’s not as easy as it looks to aim a sawed-off shotgun—”

  “Yes, it is!” SpongeBob retorted. And BOOM!, he shot out the front doors.

  My, wouldn’t Calvin just be miffed when he saw that? Turner’s ears were ringing, and the bank filled with the acrid stench of gunpowder.

  “Shit,” Yoda muttered. “That’s not fair. You’ve had way more practice, dude.”

  SpongeBob had turned away to shoot the doors. In doing so, he’d revealed a stunningly lush growth of back hair.

  “Ew,” Marge said from the floor, which pretty much summed it up.

  “Fish!” Ashley yelled.

  SpongeBob jumped as if someone had poked him in the butt. He swung around to stare at Ashley.

  “You’re Fish!” Ashley was waving a bubble-gum-pink fingernail at him, apparently unaware that it wasn’t a good idea to identify a bank robber when he was actually in the process of robbing the bank. “I’d know that hairy back anywhere. I spent an entire year sitting behind it in sophomore social science. You’re Fish.”

  “Am not!” SpongeBob said, confirming for everyone present that he was indeed Fish.

  Wonderful. Turner grabbed Ashley’s plastic garbage bag from her.

  “Hey—!” Ashley started.

  Turner shoved both bags at Yoda and SpongeBob. “Here.”

  “What are you doing?” Ashley shrieked.

  Turner ignored her. She enunciated very carefully to the robbers. “Take the money. Run away.”

  Yoda lunged convulsively, grabbed the bags of money, and galloped out what was left of the front door. He was followed closely by SpongeBob.

  “Can I get off the floor now?” Marge asked plaintively.

  Outside, a car with a bad muffler roared away.

  “I guess so,” Turner replied. She looked around the little bank. Calvin’s manure-brown floor was covered in sparkling glass, and a hot August breeze was blowing through the skylight and doors. Hard to believe that ten minutes ago it had been a normal Saturday.

  “What’d you do that for?” Ashley demanded, fists on discount Wal-Mart hips. “You just handed them the cash. What kind of First Wisconsin Bank employee are you?”

  “A live one,” Turner replied.

  Ashley looked disgusted. “At least I got one of those ink bundles into my bag.”

  Turner stared. “You did?”

  “Yeah, why?” Ashley asked aggressively.

  Turner just shook her head and went to the drive-through window. “I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson, the bank’s closed now.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer.

  “Why, of all the—” Mr. Johnson began, but Turner switched off the speaker.

  There was a squeal of tires from out in front and then the rapid slamming of car doors.

  “Looks like the cavalry’s arrived,” Marge said to no one in particular.

  “Come out with your hands in plain sight!” Sheriff Dick Clemmons’s voice bellowed, amplified by the speaker on his squad car.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Turner muttered. It hadn’t been a good day so far, and she was getting a little cranky. She walked to the doors and peeked through broken glass. Outside, two Washburn County sheriff’s cars were skewed dramatically across Main Street. Predictably, a crowd had begun to gather behind them.

  “They’re gone,” she said.

  “What?” Sheriff Clemmons boomed, still using the speaker.

  “They’re gone!” Turner yelled.

  “Oh.” There was a crackle from the speaker, and then Dick stood, hitching up his black utility belt. The sheriff was a tall man with a sloping belly, and the belt had a tendency to slide below it. He looked a little disappointed. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No,” Turner replied in her best repressive librarian voice. She held open what remained of the shot-out bank door.

  Dick strode up the walk in an I’m-in-charge kind of way, trailed by Doug, who still looked a little spooked. Turner couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t every day that a man got shot at by a Jedi Master.

  The sheriff stepped inside the bank and squinted around. “Okay, now—”

  “Doug Larson!” Ashley had caught sight of her boyfriend.

  Doug sort of hunched his shoulders.

  “Of all the low-down, ratty things to do,” Ashley began.

  “Now, honey,” Marge interrupted. “You can’t go blaming the boy for not w
anting to be shot just so you wouldn’t ruin a pantsuit from Wal-Mart.”

  “But he left me!” Ashley wailed, tears running down her cheeks along with a bunch of black mascara.

  Marge began patting, Doug started explaining, and Sheriff Clemmons became authoritative. Then the paramedics arrived, crunching over the floor with equipment nobody needed. Two more deputies appeared, as did the volunteer fire department, most of whom had probably heard about the robbery over their scanners and wanted in on the action.

  Turner watched all the people running around, talking, arguing, taking notes, getting in each other’s way, and generally trying to look important. She thought about how easy it would be to rob the bank right at that moment when everyone was so very busy. She glanced at the surveillance camera in the corner, dumbly taping everything within the bank. Then she strolled to Calvin’s big fake mahogany desk and pulled out the middle drawer. There, sitting in plain sight, was the red paper envelope that held the key to his safe deposit box. She stared at it. She’d never have another chance like this one. She knew because she’d been waiting for this moment for four years. Turner smiled a small, secret smile and palmed the key.

  It was time for her own heist.

  Chapter Two

  T he problem with playing hoops on a Saturday afternoon with younger guys was not that they were in better shape, but that they had no fear of death. None. At. All.

  John MacKinnon feinted right, and when the tall blond kid guarding him shifted, he shot the ball over the boy’s right elbow. There was a breathless moment of hope, followed immediately by crushing disappointment. The ball bounced off the rim, the sound echoing in the gym. It headed back into the key as four guys collided, trying to nab the rebound.

  Not that he was out of shape. Far from it. He lifted weights twice a week, ran every day—well, nearly every day—and played pickup hoops on weekends. Lots of guys his age weren’t nearly as fit.

  The other team’s point guard, a rangy college kid with abs you could bounce a quarter off of—damn him—caught the ball and ran down the court. Nine guys followed, thundering in a close pack.

  But the thing was, once you reached a certain age—say, forty—you became more aware of death. Of the potential of death. That little twinge, high on your left arm, or the stitch in your side that might be a forewarning of something more dire. You worried about what you ate. Thought twice about the deep-fried cheese curds and considered—actually considered—getting the tofu burger for lunch. Young guys, in contrast, were so busy thinking of pussy and beer that there wasn’t a whole lot of room for anything else in their brains. Certainly not worry about trans fats and heart disease.