1 Chapter 1

1

Angela Mastriano was a formidable woman, taller than average, with broad shoulders and heavy bones. Yet in spite of that, she carried herself with elegance and grace. Something about her made me think statuesque, and it fit. She was still beautiful, despite her more than sixty years, and the only hints of her age were the crow’s feet at her eyes and the deep laugh lines around her mouth. There wasn’t even much gray to speak of in her long, dark brown locks.

Her warm smile softened her fathomless brown eyes, and she was always ready with a hug and a kind word. As long as you weren’t in trouble, that is. Her tongue was sharp, and a scolding by her left you feeling guilty and miserable. She’d taken in a scruffy, unkempt ten-year-old boy—the best friend of her second eldest son—and made him one of her own. In the twenty-five years since we met, she’d been the closest thing I had to a real mother.

I’d dozed off because the drugs were just that good, and to wake and find her sitting at my bedside was both comforting and disconcerting. I expected Joe, but I wasn’t exactly surprised to see her instead. I knew she was there because she was worried, but I also knew I was in deep trouble.

She sat knitting a baby blanket, and her hands moved quickly, making stitch after precise stitch. But her gaze remained fixed on me, and it did not waver. I saw the displeasure there. The hurt and worry and fear. I swallowed hard, wanting to crawl under a rock. I hated that I’d put that look in her eyes.

“A week before Thanksgiving, Travis.” Her voice low and even but full of irritation. I fought the urge to squirm, but only because I knew it would hurt. I was going to strangle Joe for telling her I was in the emergency room in the first place. My best friend could have saved that information until after I’d gotten released.

“It’s not my fault,” I defended. I sounded raspy and I tried to clear my throat. Angela clucked her tongue and put her knitting down to reach for the bedside table. She came back with a cup, and spooned up an ice chip to feed me. It took a second for my morphine-addled brain to remember that I couldn’t have liquids until they were sure I wouldn’t need surgery. I sucked on the chip and nearly sighed in relief. I never knew how good that would taste or feel.

Angela’s eyes narrowed, but she returned to her seat and once again picked up her knitting. She kept her glare fixed on me, and I knew better than to try to defend myself further. For anyone else, getting hit by a passing car during a routine traffic stop for speeding would have garnered sympathy. But for the woman who claimed mothering privileges over me, it didn’t matter that I was thirty-five years old and a decorated state trooper. She only saw that one of her children was hurt, and that always made her grumpy.

“How does something like this happen?” she muttered, her gaze dropping to the fabric in her lap. She could knit even faster when she was watching what she was doing, and I always found myself fascinated by the way her hands moved. It was even better now that I was kind of high.

“The asshole didn’t watch where he was going,” I responded, even though her question had been mostly rhetorical. I didn’t have to check my language with this woman. She might be my pseudomother, but she never chastised for word choice unless it was disparaging or derogatory. Curse words were just fine in the Mastriano house when there weren’t little ears to hear. “At least the guy I had pulled over called 911 and gave me first aid until the ambulance arrived.”

She harrumphed as if that was little consolation. I supposed it was.

I’d been patrolling that stretch of road because it was a notorious spot for speeders. It was long, straight, and fairly isolated. From now until the middle of January, there would always be one of us keeping an eye on that spot. The holidays brought out the reckless and drunk drivers, and we did our best to keep people safe. Part of that was making sure we enforced the speed limit.

The little Camry had been going sixty-five in a forty, and I turned on my lights to pull him over. The man had been nervous, apologetic, and cooperative. I was just heading back to his car to return his license and registration, as well as give him a ticket, when I heard a roar seconds before getting clipped. I hadn’t lost consciousness, but things were a bit blurry after that. The motorist giving me assistance, being loaded into the ambulance and brought to Upstate University Medical Center—it was all kind of fuzzy. I’d spoken with my captain, who had assured me the dashboard camera from my cruiser had caught the whole thing, and other troopers were already on their way to arrest the negligent speeding driver.