Chuck Logan - After the Rain

That’s when another sheriff called. This one was his neighbor, Tom Jeffords, up in Cook County, where Broker owned a small resort on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

Jeff had been called by the Cavalier County Sheriff’s office, in Langdon, North Dakota. It seems that Karson Pryce Broker, Broker’s seven-year-old daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in four months, had popped up in a motel room in Langdon.

Minus her mother.

A woman named Jane had complained to the cops that Nina Pryce had abandoned the child. Then, before he could contact this Jane person, some real life had intervened and Broker got shot. So he called Jane from an emergency room. Vague on details, Jane said she’d stay with Kit until Broker showed up to claim her.

Immediately, the red flags started popping up.

Jane’s voice came across with a relentless high-voltage undercurrent, the kind of energy that thrived on fatigue and crisis. A voice with a trained meter and cadence that she couldn’t quite disguise.

The last address Broker had for his estranged wife, Major Nina Pryce, U.S. Army-who had informal custody of their daughter-was in Lucca, Italy.

Goddamn sonofabitch Nina! What could be so damn important that she dangled Kit out there like a loose end? It was time to confront the thing straight on.

He hooked his injured hand in the wheel and used his good right hand to pry open his cell phone and thumb in the cell number for this Jane person.

“This is Jane,” answered the efficient voice.

“This is Broker. I have a fire mission. Can you copy. Over.”

Silence on the connection. Then she said, “Very funny.”

“Tell me one thing. Are you guys wearing uniforms?”

Broker listened to Jane’s second loud silence. Then he said, “My guess is you’re not wearing uniforms. So who are you, Jane?”

“I’m a friend of Nina’s.”

“Uh-huh. So where’s Nina?”

“Concerning that, ah, it’s better if you should talk to me first.”

“Not the cops who came looking for me?”

“I think it’d be best to talk to me first.” She was letting him fill in the blanks.

“Where’s Kit?” Broker could guess. The connection was good. He heard kids laughing and the sound of bodies splashing in water.

“She’s in the community pool here in town. You want to talk to her?”

“Sure.”

Broker counted to ten and then his daughter’s strong direct voice came on the connection. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hiya, hon, whatcha doing?”

“Auntie Jane is teaching me to dive.”

“Great. How’s your mom?”

“Ah…” There was a pause, in which Broker imagined Jane giving his daughter stage directions. “Ah, Mom’s working.”

“Great, hon, I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Bye.”

Jane came back on. “She’s good. We just got here, so we’ll hang for a while. She’s looking forward to seeing you. The pool’s in the park two blocks north of the highway. You can’t miss it.”

“So, Jane. What’s up?”

“See you soon, Broker. And like I said, come here first.”

Like he’d just received an order.

Right. Pissed, Broker immediately punched in the number for the Cavalier County Sheriff’s office, got dispatch, and left a message that he’d be there within the hour. The dispatcher informed him that Sheriff Norman Wales would be in his office and was looking forward to meeting him.

Hmmmmmmm.

A lazy herd of buffalo grazed behind an insubstantial barbed-wire fence. An unmarked but heavily fenced and abandoned-looking concrete structure bristled with antennae. The vast green rug of wheat. The endless clouds. Broker slumped behind the wheel.

So this was what his rodeo marriage came down to.

In the past, he and Nina had tried to work things out in a friendly manner. No lawyers involved. Ever since Kit had been born her father lived in Minnesota and her mother deployed all over the world. For the first four and a half years of her life she had stayed mostly with her dad.

About the time Kit started kindergarten, the battle lines were drawn. Nina wanting Broker to migrate to Europe and play “officer’s spouse” to her career. Broker wanting the family under one roof in the States, which would require Nina to give up the Army.

Standoff.

In the interim, Kit wound up traveling back and forth.

That arrangement was about to end.

Broker had been around. He was a trained, competent man who could be utterly unsentimental in action. But all his experience failed when he pictured his marriage reduced to pieces of human machinery that had stopped working.

They didn’t pack instructions on how to take a marriage apart.

His saliva dried up, his tear ducts started, and the muscles curled inward in his belly. Painful work, breaking a marriage apart and packing it into two separate boxes. Tearing a seven-year-old in half…

He pretty much knew what ripping a marriage in half sounded like. It sounded like Kit crying.

But goddammit, it was lawyer time. His kid wasn’t going to be raised by strangers in Army day care all over Europe anymore.

Or mysteriously pop up in North Dakota motel rooms.

It was time for Nina to choose. She could be a mother or she could persist in her Joan of Arc soldier fantasy.

She couldn’t do both.

But…

All the little hairs on the back of his neck had stayed at full alert since Jeff called. Because Nina wasn’t just your ordinary insanely driven, ambitious soldier gal clawing for recognition…

His cell phone rang. Thinking it was Jane again, he fumbled at it one-handed and barked, “Now what?”

“Phillip?”

He sagged and caught his breath. Only his mother called him that. “Hi, Mom.”

“Do you know more yet? About Kit?”

“I just talked to her. She sounded fine. I’m almost there. I guess Nina got called away quick…”

“It’s not her fault. She really can’t help it.” Irene Broker said. “Nina’s a triple fire sign and-”

“Yeah, Mom. You already told me.” Mom had a Merlinesque faith in astrology and believed that Nina was in thrall to her heroic stars.

“Her basic energy comes from Sun in Aries. Her inner feelings come from Moon in Sagittarius. And her behavior is anchored in Mars in Leo.”

Aries, Mars. He didn’t need a starbook to plot that trajectory. Plus she had the Scots bloodline. Well, fuck Nina and the meteor she rode in on. He pictured her going naked into battle, like her ancestors, with her pubes dipped in blue woad.

“C’mon, Mom, give me a break,” he said. Sun in Aries. Right. He looked up to where the sun should be and saw only gray woolly clouds.

“Well, are you going to drive Kit back? Because if you’re not for some reason,” she said presciently, knowing her son and the kind of work he still sometimes performed, “your dad is talking to Doc Harris about flying in and picking her up.”

“That’d be good to follow up, Mom.”

“I thought so. Now, just don’t get ahead of yourself. And give her a chance to explain. You know, practice your listening.”

“I will.”

“Good. Well, keep us posted.”

“Right, Mom.”

“And, Phillip, remember to listen.” Said it like she used to say “Make your bed. Wear a hat. Don’t talk back to your father” -the tone of her voice reducing him to about twelve years old.

“Goodbye, Mom.”

Broker ended the call and stared at the moody cloud cover. Calm down. Think. Listen. Okay.

Nina was not dishonest. She just omitted virtually everything about her last assignment to a classified military unit popularly known as the Delta Force. But ever since 9/11, communication with Nina had been increasingly spotty.

Broker was not dishonest either. But he also left a lot of things out. When people met Broker casually, he’d angle around direct answers. A sketch emerged of him suggesting a background involving a successful landscaping business in the St. Croix Valley to the east of the Twin Cities. Then he’d drop a few hints how he’d got out of landscaping and put his money in a little resort up on Lake Superior before the real estate up there went through the roof. This was the truth, up to a point; but the landscaping gig was a cover. In fact, Broker had left the St. Paul cops and joined the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension fifteen years ago. Then he proceeded to clock the longest run of deep undercover work in the history of Minnesota law enforcement.