Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“What?”

“The pig. The US marshal.”

Andy felt a flush work its way up her neck.

“You fucked up his shit. That bitch was lying on my front porch for an hour.”

Andy leaned her head onto the table so that Paula couldn’t see her face.

Mike.

The Marshal Service was in charge of administering the witness protection program. They could make all the driver’s licenses they wanted because making new documents was part of their job—fake birth certificates and fake tax returns and even fake obituaries for a made-up guy named Jerry Randall.

Andy felt her bowels swirl.

Mike was Laura’s handler. That’s why he was at the hospital when she came out. Was that why he was following Andy? Was he trying to help her because she had unwittingly been in the program, too?

Had she taken out the only person who might be able to save them from this monster?

“Hey.” Paula rapped her knuckles on the table. “More questions. Spit ’em out. We got nothing better to do.”

Andy shook her head. She tried to put together Mike’s involvement since the beginning. His truck in the Hazeltons’ driveway with his rabbit’s foot keychain. The magnetic signs he changed out with each new city.

The GPS tracker on the cooler.

Mike must have planted it while Andy was passed out in the Muscle Shoals motel. Then he’d gone across the street for a congratulatory beer and improvised when Andy walked through the door.

She had assumed that he was friends with the bartender, but guys like Mike made friends wherever they went.

“Hey,” Paula repeated. “Focus on me, kid. If you’re not going to keep me entertained, then I’m gonna truss you back up and watch my shows.”

Andy had to shake her head to clear it. She lifted her chin up, rested it against her free hand. She didn’t know what else to do but return to her list. “Why did you send me to find Clara?”

“Bitch refused to talk to me back when she had her marbles, and Edwin threatened to rat me to my P.O. I was hoping seeing you would trigger her memories. Then I could snatch you up and you could give me the information and happy ending for everybody. Except Edwin got in the way. But you know what? Fuck him for working Jane’s deal to keep her out of prison for thirty years.” Paula crammed a handful of chips into her mouth. “Your mother was part of a conspiracy to kill your grandfather. She watched Alexandra Maplecroft die. She was there when Quarter was shot in the heart. She helped drive the van to the farm. She was with us one hundred percent every step of the way.”

“Until she wasn’t,” Andy said, because that was the part that she wanted to hold onto.

“Yeah, well, we took down the Chicago Mercantile before it was all over.” She caught Andy’s blank look. “That’s where commodities are exchanged. Derivatives. You’ve heard of those? And Nick was on his way into Manhattan when they caught him trying to blow up the Stock Exchange. It would’ve been glorious.”

Andy had watched along with everyone else planes hitting buildings and trucks mowing down pedestrians and all of the horrors in between. She knew that attacks like that were not glorious, just as she knew that no matter what these crazy groups tried to take down, it always got rebuilt—taller, stronger, better.

She asked Paula, “So why am I here? What do you want from my mom?”

“Took you long enough to get to that question,” Paula said. “Jane has some papers your uncle Jasper signed.”

Uncle Jasper.

Andy couldn’t get used to having a family, though she wasn’t sure the Quellers were a family that she wanted.

Paula said, “Nick’s been up for parole six times in the last twelve years.” She wadded up the potato chip bag and threw it toward the trash can. “Every single fucking time, Jasper Fucking Queller climbs up on his podium wearing his stupid Air Force insignia and American flag pin and starts whining about how Nick killed his father and infected his brother and made him lose his sister and wah-wah-wah.”

“Infected his brother?”

“Nick had nothing to do with that. Your uncle was a fag. He died of AIDS.”

Andy physically reeled from the invective.

Paula snorted. “Your generation and its fucking political correctness.”