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  Adam brings the mug into the room, passes it to Gina. “Tea,” he tells her. “It’s hot.”

  “Thank you.” She wriggles to a sitting position, accepts the mug, and gives him a contrite look. “I’m sorry about what happened out there,” she says. “I mean, with the gun. I’m a police officer, and I didn’t know what your intentions were. I’m sorry if I frightened you and your children.”

  He nods.

  She blows on the tea and sips. “My name’s Gina, by the way.”

  “Adam Lengacher,” he says. “You’re warming up?”

  “Yes. Finally. Thank you.”

  He looks at me, not quite comfortable with all this. “I tossed more wood on the stove.”

  The window rattles with a sudden gust wind. Gina startles so violently tea sloshes over the rim of the cup. “Shit,” she hisses, glancing down at the spill. “Sorry.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Adam glance my way. Grabbing the towel, I move to her and blot the spill. “You expecting someone?” I say under my breath.

  “Not yet.”

  I stop blotting and meet her gaze. “So what aren’t you telling me, Gina?”

  Her laugh is short-lived. “Still have that suspicious mind, don’t you?”

  “I guess that’s why I’m a cop,” I tell her. “I’ve got a pretty decent built-in lie detector. You’d be wise to remember that.”

  Outside, the wind howls, hurling snow against the window, the panes trembling beneath the force.

  “I’m in trouble,” she whispers.

  “What kind of trouble?” I ask.

  Her gaze flicks to Adam and back to me, telling me she doesn’t want to discuss it in front of him. “It’s bad.”

  Realizing she’s asking for some privacy, the Amish man clears his throat. “I’ve got to drop hay for the cattle,” he tells us. “I won’t be long.”

  When he’s gone, I go to the door and close it. Pulling the chair from the sewing table, I drag it to the cot and settle into it. When I run out of things to do, I look at Gina. “I think you’d better start talking.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Trust is an elusive thing when you’re a cop. When I was younger, trust and friendship were instantaneous and uncomplicated. Life was straightforward, not yet cluttered with baggage. I could close my eyes and charge forward, my heart overflowing with conviction, any risks be damned. It was one of many things Gina Colorosa and I had been good at. Maybe a little too good, because a couple of times both of us paid a price for having that kind of blind faith when we shouldn’t have.

  I’m older now and not as foolish—or so I like to believe. I wonder where the last ten years have led Gina. Has she become as cautious as me or is she still the reckless dynamo I’d once admired?

  “I got involved in something.” She picks up the tea, grips it with both hands, and drinks. “I’m in deep, Kate. I handled it badly. I did some things I shouldn’t have done.”

  “Maybe you ought to start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

  She nods. “I’m with the vice unit now. Have been for almost five years. It was a big promotion. More money. More prestige.” She laughs. “Bad hours.”

  I’m familiar with the vice unit. Back when I was a rookie, it was a small but esteemed division of the Columbus Division of Police. It falls under the umbrella of the Narcotics Bureau and handles prostitution, alcohol, narcotics, and gambling. A lot of young cops clamored to be part of it, especially the adrenaline junkies. The unit saw a lot of action, serving warrants, setting up stings, even partaking in some undercover work.

  Gina continues. “The first year was great. Satisfying work. Exciting. I got to know the guys in the unit. We were tight, you know, like a brotherhood or something. We made a lot of busts, took out some very bad guys, did some good. A few years ago, I started seeing and hearing things I didn’t like.”

  “Like what?”

  “For example, in the course of a bust I saw two patrol officers steal cash from a known pimp,” she tells me. “On another occasion, a prostitute I arrested told me that in the course of an arrest, one of the male cops let her go in exchange for sex.” She shrugs. “At first, I thought they were isolated incidents. A cop stepping over the line, taking advantage of his position. But I kept hearing things.”

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  She hesitates, looks everywhere but into my eyes. “Not enough.”

  Knowing there’s more to all of this than she’s telling me, I rise and stalk to the window, look out at the whiteout conditions beyond. “You looked the other way.”

  “Pretty much. I made some bad choices.”

  “Bad choices? What is that, Gina? Secret code for your letting a bunch of dirty cops continue being dirty cops?”

  When she doesn’t respond, I get a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I turn to face her, the old anger stirring in my gut. “Even before I left the department, you weren’t exactly on the straight and narrow.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot more complicated now, Kate. I was odd man out. There were a lot of dynamics to the situation. A lot of pressure—”

  “Pressure? Are you kidding me?” I stalk over to her, jam my finger a few inches from her face. “What did you do?”

  Shame flashes in her eyes, but is quickly replaced by attitude. “Nothing. I let it happen. I’m not proud of it. I screwed up. I got caught up in it. Kate, you have to understand … they made it far too easy to look the other way and that was by design. That’s how they operate.”

  Needing a moment to process what I’m hearing—and the repercussions of it—I remove my parka, hang it on back of the chair, and sit. “Why are you here, Gina? What do you want from me?”

  She laughs as if genuinely amused, and for a moment she looks like the fun-loving, errant young woman I’d known a lifetime ago. The one with a raucous laugh and a sense of humor that was invariably inappropriate. The one who could make me laugh even when I knew I shouldn’t.

  “For God’s sake, you haven’t even heard the bad news yet,” she says.

  I stare at her, saying nothing, bracing because I know she’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. Something that’s going to bring an element into the situation that will fundamentally change a relationship I’d once held dear.

  “The things I saw—the things I heard about after the fact—were just the tip of the iceberg.” She sits up, intensity flaring in her expression. “I’m talking widespread corruption. The whole unit. Falsifying affidavits for search warrants. We’re talking no-knock warrants served in the middle of the night with SWAT on scene, so they can go in and make good on a threat or take what they want.”

  I let the words settle, try to digest them, make sense of them so I can decide how to handle this, but the revelations sit in my stomach like a plateful of bad food. I’m sickened by the thought of an institution I believe in—an institution I’d once been part of—being desecrated. Worse, a monstrous doubt that Gina isn’t telling the whole truth has taken up residence in the forefront of my mind.

  “What are we talking about here?” I ask. “Money? What?”

  “Over the last three or four years?” She shrugs. “I’d say hundreds of thousands of dollars. Titles to vehicles. Boats. Jewelry. Motor homes. Tickets to sporting events. Sex in exchange for a get-out-of-jail card.”

  When she looks down at her hands, they’re shaking. “That’s not the worst of it.”

  It’s the first honest reaction she’s shown, and I find myself bracing for what comes next.

  “Last month,” she says, “two people were killed in the course of a no-knock warrant. Happened in Franklinton. A couple. It’s been on the news.”

  A memory licks at the back of my brain. “What happened?”

  “One of the detectives wrote up a phony affidavit based on the word of a confidential informant by the name of Eddie Cysco. They got the warrant and went in, middle of the night no-knock. Vice unit raided the wrong house. The homeowner was armed—legally—and all hell broke loose. Everyone started shooting. The couple was shot to pieces. The vice unit covered it up. They planted drugs and no one was ever the wiser.”

  “Were you there?”

  “I was parked on the street. I heard it unfold. Saw the aftermath.” When she raises her gaze to mine, her eyes are haunted. “The Garners were good people. They worked. Led stable lives. Sandra Garner was six months pregnant. Looking forward to her first baby. Kate, I read the coroner’s report. Tox was negative. She’d been shot eighteen times.”

  The words strike a blow, but I deflect it, look away. “Do you have proof of any of this?”

  “I was working on it.” She sighs. “Until they came after me, anyway.” She raises a determined gaze to mine. “Here’s what I know: The real target couple—the couple whose house never got raided—had been told by the vice unit to stop selling heroin. Evidently, they were interfering with another dealer who’d been given preferential treatment by the unit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know because the informant they used to get the warrant is Eddie Cysco, my CI.” She taps her chest with her palm. “I recruited him. Two years ago. I brought him in. Groomed him. Got to know him. When I asked him about the raid, he denied knowing either couple. He has no connection to them and no reason to lie.”

  She sniffs a runny nose, runs her sleeve across her face. “The affidavit was bogus. The warrant was bogus. The cops covered it up and rewrote history. They murdered two innocent people, ruined their reputations. That was the end of it for me. I had to get out.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took everything I had to Deputy Chief Frank Monaghan,” she tells me. “I gave him names. Dates. Amounts. He seemed extremely concerned, supportive of me, and said
he would look into it. Keep everything confidential. He asked me to lay low for a few days.” She looks toward the window, where snow and wind pound the glass. “I should have known it was too easy.” She meets my gaze. “I guess that brings us to the bad-news part of all this.”

  The dread in my gut augments to something darker. I rub a hand over my face, shoring up, knowing she’s about to throw something terrible my way.

  “I knew there would be consequences if they found out I’d turned on them,” she tells me. “I knew they’d find a way to protect themselves. Destroy my reputation. My career. Or kill me.”

  A shudder moves through her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “I had no idea how it would go down. Best-case scenario, they’d threaten me, tell me to keep my mouth shut. Get me to resign. Worst case, I’d the get the ‘shot in the line of duty’ treatment. Some convenient friendly-fire incident. In the end, it came in the form of a no-knock warrant last night.”

  Wind hammers the window as she outlines in horrific detail the SWAT team descending on her house in Columbus at three o’clock this morning. “They thought they were going to catch me unaware, but I was ready for them. I had the pickup truck parked across the alley in my neighbor’s garage.”

  I listen, my heart pounding. My hands and feet are cold and yet I’m sweating beneath my uniform shirt. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “I don’t know. There was a lot of chaos. It happened fast.”

  “What was the warrant for?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes burn into mine. “Whatever the charge, it’s trumped up.”

  I stare at her, a plethora of emotions boiling in my chest. Disbelief that she could become involved in something so reprehensible. Once upon a time, Gina was an idealistic young cop who would no more partake in corruption than cut her own throat. I feel betrayed, too. I’d once looked up to her, loved her like a sister, and trusted her with my life.

  “What do you want from me?” I ask, trying not to notice the tightness in my throat.

  “I need your help,” she says. “I can’t do this on my own.”

  “Do what exactly?”

  “Stop them. Save what’s left of my reputation. My life. Kate, I know this puts you in a precarious position, but you’re the only person I can trust.”

  But can I trust you?

  I don’t pose the question, but it hovers on the tip of my tongue. Doubt is the source of the turmoil in my chest. “If you’re wanted, if there’s an active warrant, I can’t aid and abet you. You know that.”

  “I’m not asking you to put your career on the line. I wouldn’t do that. But I need some time to make this right.” When I say nothing, she adds, “Kate, I wasn’t supposed to survive that raid.”

  The words hang, damning and unfathomable. The silence is punctuated by the crash of wind against the house, snow pattering the window, and the hiss of our elevated breathing.

  After a moment, Gina leans over to set the empty mug on the table at the head of the cot. Her flannel shirt gapes and I notice the blood coming through the turtleneck beneath it just below her left shoulder. It’s bright red and wet and it’s sure as hell not from some sham nosebleed caused by the airbag.

  “When were you going to tell me about the gunshot wound?” I ask.

  Giving me a withering look, she settles back onto the cot and pulls the blankets up to her chin. “What are you going to do? Take me to the hospital? Turn me in?”

  A thread of worry goes through me as she pulls back the blankets and I take in the full extent of the bleeding. A red-black stain that’s soaked her shirt all the way to the hem at her hip. “How bad is it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Haven’t had a chance to look. Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  “There’s no way around your seeing a doctor, Gina.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Let’s get something straight right off the bat. You are not in charge and you are not calling the shots. Do you understand?”

  She looks away, seems to sag more deeply into the mattress. For the first time, she looks defeated, as if she’s come to the realization that she’s fighting a battle that can’t be won.

  I fish my cell from my pocket, glance down at the screen, drop it back in. Everything we’ve discussed spirals in my brain. Allegations of police corruption. A voluntary confession that she was part of it. All of it punctuated by the fact that I haven’t seen or spoken to her in ten years.

  The most pressing issue, however, is the gunshot wound. Unlike the way those kinds of injuries are depicted on TV and in movies, even a flesh wound can become life-threatening without immediate treatment.

  I think about my significant other, John Tomasetti—who’s an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation—and another layer of dread settles over me. I’m hesitant to involve him at this juncture, at least until I have more information and a better handle on what happened last night in Columbus. I won’t be able to put off calling him much longer.

  “Gina, do you have proof of any of this?” I ask.

  “I have some audio. On my cell. It’s not great. It’s not enough. But it’s a start.” She gestures toward her coat, hanging on a chair back. “If you want me to play it—”

  I shake my head. “We need to get that bullet wound looked at first. Let me make a call.” I’m thinking about Tomasetti as I pull the notebook and pen from my pocket. “I need to know who is involved. I need names. All of them.”

  “Damon Bertrand. Nick Galloway. Half a dozen patrol cops in the unit. I don’t have all their names.”

  An uneasy familiarity curdles inside me as I jot the names on the pad. Damon Bertrand was a patrol officer when I was a rookie. I didn’t know him well, but he was a solid cop, a few years older, well thought of, and on his way up. Nick Galloway was a patrol officer and also had a stellar reputation.

  I look up from the pad. “Who else?”

  She grimaces. “Ken Mercer.”

  The floor shifts beneath me and for an instant it feels as if the gale outside has ripped the house from its foundation and spun it. When I resigned from the Columbus Division of Police, Ken Mercer had just made detective. He was a few years older. Ambitious. Charismatic. Everyone knew he would move up. He and I worked together a dozen times. We were friends. We were more than friends for a short time. He’s the one and only cop I slept with in the ten years I was with the department.

  “In case you haven’t kept up with things, Bertrand and Mercer are detectives with the Narcotics Bureau. Galloway is a sergeant in the Patrol North Subdivision. Frank Monaghan is deputy chief.”

  Deputy chief is one of the highest positions in the Columbus Division of Police, just below chief.

  “They are the heart of this,” Gina says firmly. “They’re tight-knit and if you cross them, they will find a way to take you out.”

  I get to my feet, look down at her, and sigh. Gina Colorosa was always larger than life. Back in the day, I’d looked up to her. She was ambitious and unafraid. Flawed and unapologetic. I’d wanted to please her. Be like her. Now I look at her and I see woman who betrayed not only herself, but the institution we loved, and the laws we’d sworn to uphold.

  I think about Adam Lengacher and his children. Though I haven’t yet decided how much I believe of her story or what I’m going to do about it, I’m struck by the possibility that someone—law enforcement or some other unsavory individuals—is looking for Gina.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going until I ran out of options.”

  “When’s the last time you used your cell phone?” I ask.

  “I was still in Columbus.” She frowns at me. “Don’t worry. It’s a burner. No one knows about it.”

  “I’m going to make some calls. See what I can find out about that warrant.” I send a nod to the bloodstain on her shirt. “We need to take care of that gunshot wound.”

  She looks away, saying nothing.

  I stare at her a moment. She looks wiped out. Pale. Shivering again. Somehow diminished. Not just physically, but in ways that make me think less of her.

  Realizing I have nothing left to say to her, I leave the room.

  CHAPTER 4

  I find Adam at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, still wearing his barn coat, the shoulders of which are wet with melted snow. Lizzie and Annie are at the sink—Annie standing on a wood crate in order to reach—washing dishes. Sammy is nowhere in sight, but I hear him talking from the mudroom.