Loree Lough: Raising Connor

He grabbed his shoulder radio, talking as he crouch-walked toward the store’s entrance. “C-four-two-one. We have a 10-10 at the farm store, 9164 Baltimore National Pike. Shots fired. Robbery in progress.” Then he drew his weapon, took a deep breath and abruptly shouldered his way inside.

Big convex mirrors, hung in all four corners of the store, helped him take quick inventory: a male clerk cowering at the register, two women—a bleach-blonde in her early sixties and a brunette of forty or so—huddled beside the ice-cream freezer, an overweight guy hunkered down near the coffeepots.

What was so important that they couldn’t wait for the safety of daylight to shop?

A skinny wild-eyed male in a baggy ski mask leaped onto the counter, shouting and waving a 9 mm Glock. Hunter, who had managed to get inside and behind an endcap display of candy bars without being seen by the guy, recognized the weapon instantly because he was holding one just like it. Unless he’d miscounted, the guy had already fired four rounds....

“Empty the cash drawer!” the masked man snarled. “Do it now.”

The terrified clerk didn’t move fast enough, and the robber shot him. Hunter had to resist the urge to charge directly into the action. Just stick to the rule book, he told himself as the clerk collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain. The robber jumped down on the other side of the counter. While he was busy stuffing money, cigarettes and methamphetamine-based cold remedies into a ratty backpack, Hunter ducked behind a rotating rack of batteries. By the book, he reminded himself. Do it by the book...

“Jack,” he whispered, creeping down the bread aisle. “Psst...Jack...”

The dark-haired woman caught his eye, gave a barely discernible nod toward the dairy case. He could see a man’s leg on the floor protruding out from behind it. Instantly, he recognized Jack’s spit-shined department-issue black shoes, unmoving and pointing at the glaring overhead lights. Hunter’s brain had barely had time to register he’s dead when the brunette made a run for the door...and another eardrum-splitting shot spun her around. Her gaze locked with Hunter’s as she crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her lips parted, formed the word help, but even before she hit the gray tiles, the vacant stare in her big unblinking eyes told him she was dead.

Hunter, who’d turned twenty-three on his last birthday, had just completed the sixth month of his eighteen-month probation. Did he have the experience—was he man enough—to take out the gunman before he killed again? He saw Jack’s motionless foot poking into the main aisle.

“This is for you,” he muttered, steeling himself down on one knee. One of his partner’s favorite expressions came to him: If I have to shoot somebody, I want them to stay shot. Hunter took aim at the robber, held his breath and squeezed off two rounds.

* * *

HALF AN HOUR LATER, amidst the crackle and hiss of radios and the rapid-fire questions of a gap-toothed detective, his heart was still hammering against his ribs.

“Three dead,” said the grizzled sergeant, “counting the perp.” Eyes on Hunter, he added, “Great shots, rookie. Bet he fell over like a tree, huh.” He faced the suit. “You got somebody lined up to do notifications?”

Hunter didn’t hear the answer, because his brain had seized on three dead. The woman, the perp... He hung his head. And Jack.

The detective blew his breath out through his teeth and studied Hunter. “If we do things right, maybe it won’t have a negative impact on your probation.”

If he could find his voice, Hunter would have told him that his police career had ended the minute he closed his eyes in the car. Cops—his brothers among them—would never let him forget he’d fallen asleep on the job. He would never let himself forget.

If he’d gone into the convenience store with Jack, the holdup probably wouldn’t have gone down. Surely not even a strung-out thief was idiot enough to take on two armed cops.

His little nap cost his partner and a civilian their lives.

CHAPTER TWO

Fifteen Years Later

Brooke watched her father fall to his knees, sobbing. Heard her sister, Beth, wail as the surgeon said, “We did everything we could, but...” Mom had only gone to the 24/7 store because they ran out of ice cream halfway through their straight-A girls’ movie marathon. The young uniformed officer in the waiting room kept repeating, “Sorry. Sorry. Oh, my God, I’m sorry....”

IT WASN’T THE young cop, she realized, groggily coming to, but the phone ringing.

Grabbing it, Brooke glanced at the bedside clock. Who but that idiot Donald would call at ten past three?

Still reeling from the haunting images of her recurring nightmare, she hauled herself out of bed and clicked Talk as she headed downstairs.

“Are you aware what time it is?” she whispered into the handset, determined not to wake her sleeping nephew.

There was a pause, and then an unfamiliar voice said, “I, uh... Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”

So it wasn’t Donald after all. Now she wished she’d taken a second to put on her slippers, because the tiles felt like ice beneath her bare feet. Wished it had been Donald, because no one called at this hour with good news. Her thoughts went to her grandmother. Day before yesterday Deidre had been down on all fours giving Connor a piggyback ride, but at seventy-five—

“I’m trying to reach Brooke O’Toole?”

“That’s...me.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat and then identified himself as a deputy sheriff of Monroe County. Before she had a chance to visualize the dot that marked Monroe County on a map of Florida, he explained how a Miami-bound charter flight had gone down in the Atlantic, just off Key West. There had been no survivors, he was sorry to say, and, as next of kin, she needed to give him her okay before he could release the bodies.

Brooke didn’t hear much after no survivors. Her sister and brother-in-law had decided to end their island-hopping trip with visits to Ernest Hemingway’s favorite haunts, including Sloppy Joe’s saloon.

On Key West.

Heart pounding, Brooke squeezed her eyes shut. Before turning in for the night, she’d been online, checking her email. Wouldn’t a story like that have popped up on her search engine’s opening page?

Any minute now the deputy would realize his error and apologize for contacting the wrong Brooke O’Toole. Or she’d wake from this ghastly dream and eighteen-month-old Connor would still have his mom and dad, and she would still have her little sister, and Beth and Kent would come home tomorrow, exactly as planned.

“Ma’am? You still there?”

“Yes. Still here.”

The deputy listed all the agencies that had participated in the search—FAA, Florida Fish and Wildlife, the sheriff’s department—and had cooperated to keep their findings from the media until after next-of-kin notifications had been made.

During her years as a nurse in Virginia Commonwealth University’s shock-trauma unit, Brooke had learned that state troopers were normally assigned the sensitive task of informing relatives about tragedies. She was about to ask why the deputy had made this call instead of passing the information to the Maryland State Police when he told her that a Coast Guard diver had pulled a Ziploc bag out of the water. In it, he said, the authorities found passports, boarding passes and baggage claim tickets, a computer-generated itinerary that confirmed the Sheridans’ names on the passenger manifest...and the photograph of a young boy.

In the silence that followed, Brooke realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled. Swallowed, hard.

“It says ‘Connor, 14 months’ on the back of the picture,” the deputy added. “And it was paper-clipped to a list of people to contact in the event that...”