PRESENT DAY
1
Andrea Oliver willed her stomach to stop churning as she ran along the dirt trail. The sun pushed down on her shoulders. Wet earth sucked at her shoes. Sweat had turned her shirt into Saran Wrap. Her hamstrings were steel banjo strings that jangled with every pounding strike of her heel. She heard grunts behind her as the stragglers pushed themselves to keep up. Ahead were the strivers, the Type As who would ford a stream full of piranhas if there was at least a one percent chance that they could come in first.
She contented herself with the middle of the pack, neither a dawdler nor a cliff diver, which was an achievement in and of itself. Two years ago, Andrea would’ve been firmly at the rear, or more likely still sleeping in her bed while her alarm blared for the fifth or sixth time. Her clothes would’ve been strewn around the tiny apartment above her mother’s garage. Every piece of unopened mail on her kitchen table would’ve been stamped PAST DUE. When she finally crawled out of bed, she would’ve seen three texts from her father asking her to check in, another six from her mother asking her if she had been abducted by a serial killer, and a missed call from work telling her this was her last warning before she was fired.
“Shit,” Paisley mumbled.
Andrea looked over her shoulder as Paisley Spenser peeled off from the pack. One of the stragglers had tripped. Thom Humphrey lay flat on his back looking up at the trees. A collective groan filled the forest. The rule was, if one of them didn’t finish, they all had to go again.
“Get up! Get up!” Paisley yelled, circling back to either encourage him or kick him until he stood. “You can do it! Come on, Thom!”
“Let’s go, Thom!” the rest of them shouted.
Andrea grunted the sounds, but she didn’t trust her mouth to open. Her stomach was pitching like deck chairs on the Titanic. For months, she’d been doing sprints, push-ups, jumping jacks, rope climbs, burpees, and run approximately eleven million miles a day, but she was still a lightweight. Her throat filled with bile. Her back teeth ratcheted down. She clenched her fists as she rounded the last curve in the trail. Home stretch. Another five minutes and she would never have to run this grueling hell-course ever again.
Paisley flew by, going balls to the walls toward the finish line. Thom was back in formation. The line tightened. Everyone was digging deep.
Andrea had nothing left to dig. She knew her stomach would probably shit out of her throat if she pushed herself any harder. Her lips parted to suck in some air, but she ended up swallowing a cloud of gnats. She coughed, cursing herself because she should’ve known better. She’d spent twenty weeks killing herself at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, in Glynn County, Georgia. Between the mosquitos, sand fleas, gnats, palmetto bugs the size of rodents, rodents the size of dogs, and the fact that the Glynco FLETC was basically in the middle of a swamp, she should’ve known better than to try to breathe.
The sound of distant thunder roiled into her ears. She concentrated on her footsteps as the trail dipped down. The thunder turned into a distinctive staccato of claps and shouts of encouragement. The strivers had broken through the yellow tape. They were being cheered on by family members who’d shown up to celebrate their graduation from the grueling, Dante-esque torture that seemed designed to either kill them or make them stronger.
“Holy shit,” Andrea mumbled, her voice filled with genuine astonishment. She hadn’t been killed. She hadn’t dropped out. Months of classroom training, five to eight hours of hand-to-hand combat every day, surveillance techniques, warrant executions, firearms training and so much physical exertion that she’d gained four pounds of muscle, and now, finally, unbelievably, she was twenty yards out from becoming a deputy in the United States Marshal Service.
Thom streaked by on her left, which was such a fucking Thom thing to do. Andrea’s second wind rallied to spite him. Her brain felt dizzy from the burst of adrenaline. Her legs started pumping. She passed Thom and caught up with Paisley. They grinned at each other in triumph—three guys had dropped out in the first week, another three had been asked to leave, one had disappeared after making a racist joke, another after he’d gotten handsy. She and Paisley Spenser were two of only four women in the forty-eight-person class. Just a few more steps and it would all be over but for walking to the stage for graduation.
Paisley nosed just ahead of Andrea as they crossed the line. They both raised their arms in celebration. Paisley’s giant extended family whooped like cranes as they surrounded her in a warm embrace. All around her, Andrea could see similar scenes of joy. Every single face in the crowd was smiling but for two.
Andrea’s parents.
Laura Oliver and Gordon Mitchell both had their arms crossed. Their eyes followed Andrea as strangers congratulated her and patted her on the back. Paisley playfully punched her in the arm. Andrea punched her back as she watched Gordon take out his phone. She smiled, but her father wasn’t trying to take a photo of Andrea’s momentous achievement. He turned his back as he took a call.
“Congratulations!” someone yelled.
“I’m so proud of you!”
“Well done!”
Laura’s mouth was a thin white line as she watched Andrea move through the crowd. Her eyes looked moist, but these were not the tears of pride she had wept after Andrea’s first school musical performance or blue-ribbon win at the art show.
Her mother was devastated.
One of the senior inspectors offered Andrea a cup of Gatorade. She shook her head, teeth gritted as she jogged toward the row of bright blue porta-potties. Instead of choosing one, she walked around to the back, opened her mouth and basically threw up the lining of her stomach.
“Sh-hit,” Andrea sputtered, annoyed that she had figured out how to take down a bad guy using nothing but her fists and feet but she couldn’t control her own weak stomach. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her vision swam. She should’ve brought the Gatorade back with her. If she had learned anything at Glynco it was to hydrate. And also to never, ever let anyone see her throw up because this was the place you got your nickname for the rest of your career. She was not going to be known as Puke Oliver.
“Andy?”
She turned, unsurprised to find her mother offering her a bottle of water. If Laura was good at anything, it was rushing in to help without being asked.
“Andrea,” Andrea corrected.
Laura rolled her eyes, because Andrea had been telling her for the last twenty years to call her Andy. “Andrea. Are you okay?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m okay.” The water was ice cold inside the bottle. Andrea pressed it to the back of her neck. “You could at least pretend to be happy for me.”
“I could,” Laura allowed. “What’s the procedure on throwing up? Do the criminals wait until you’ve finished vomiting before they rape and murder you?”