Tears streamed down Dana’s face, blurring her vision. She’d run away from everything and everybody in her life who’d ever meant anything to her and had let everyone down. Again. People she could never look in the eye again. Bill Krugman. Gary Templeton. Bradley. Herself.
More than anything else, she needed redemption.
But how?
Dana’s heart ached in her chest for poor little Bradley. The boy with the silken blonde hair and enormous blue eyes so similar to her own. The sweet, precious little boy who’d promised to marry her one day, who’d promised her that after they’d gotten married they could live in a castle and ride horses and pick flowers all day long and go swimming whenever they wanted to. He’d needed her to stand up for him and she hadn’t been there. Could he ever forgive her?
Didn’t seem likely.
Besides, Dana knew for a fact that before she could even dream of taking care of Bradley, she’d first need to learn how to take care of herself again. Anything less that would be unfair to him. The little boy had already been through enough in his short life as it was.
Dana sniffled. With each passing, day the thought of lifting her Glock to her temple and pulling the trigger seemed less and less ridiculous. The previous night, she’d actually given it a dry run with no magazine in the gun. She’d been surprised at just how easy it had been to pull the trigger.
Shaking her head to chase away all the thoughts swirling around there, Dana ran even faster, fast enough to dry the tears on her face. She knew that she needed professional help, of course, but she didn’t know how to go about asking for it. Broken as she was, she had serious doubts anyone could ever fix her.
The heavy smell of sea salt stung her nostrils as Dana turned the corner onto Estero Boulevard and picked up her pace even more, the pounding surf across the two-lane street echoing loudly in her ears and the wind whipping through her short blonde hair. Hitting a good stride, she willed her legs to move faster, and then even faster still, until she broke out into a dead sprint. Her muscles screamed out in agony as tried desperately to outrun all the demons chasing her.
No good. The demons wouldn’t let up. Her thighs burned from the overload of lactic acid coursing through her system but Dana ignored the pain and pushed on.
Five hundred yards later, she finally came to a panting stop with her lungs on fire. Leaning over, she pressed her palms hard into her trembling thighs for support. Dizziness clouded her brain as the runner’s high flooded hot through her bloodstream. A faint, high-pitched ringing sounded in her ears.
Finally catching most of her breath, Dana looked up to see that she’d made it to just outside the sprawling, gated compound of Ascension Catholic Church. Twenty feet away, an elderly landscaper was tending to a large stand of bushes near the ornate, marble archway. The man smiled at her when he noticed Dana watching him and leaned his wooden-handled rake against an intricate hedge.
He mopped at his heavily sweating brow with one thin forearm. ‘Mass every morning at eight a.m. if you’re interested, young lady. The pastor’s an awful bore – a bit long-winded in his sermons and something of a doddering old drunk – but some say we have the best choir in all of Lee County. Even better than the Baptists, if you can believe that.’
Dana forced a smile, but even she could feel just how fake the smile must have looked on her lips. Still, she couldn’t pretend any more that she was happy when her soul had become a black hole of misery that completely sucked away whatever energy she’d once possessed. Besides, despite having lived with three different Catholic foster families when she’d been a kid, Dana hadn’t stepped foot inside a place of worship in more than ten years now. Why should she when there was still a God in charge up there who thought it perfectly reasonable to let innocent people die horrible deaths? Her parents. Crawford Bell. Eric Carlton. ‘Just looking,’ Dana said.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she immediately felt foolish, like she’d just been caught window-shopping by a salesman who knew she had no intention of buying. She wished she could reach out and snatch the words right out of the air, but