Chapter One

The question was whether to steal. Ginger Peet thought of the bottle blonde sitting on the yellow

love seat and then focused on the purse full of money in her hands. She bit her lip and waited for

the angel and devil tag team to show up and give her the finger. Nothing happened, and didn’t it  just make sense? 

Her conscience crawled out of her chest and crossed the room to sit on the huge, unused stereo  from 1992. She crossed her arms and shrugged, like she was saying, “It’s Union break, you get it.” 

Peet cocked her head, her imagination already making up for the absence of a conscience. She

flopped down on the rickety carpet and pulled her knees to her chest and took a deep breath. It was

a typical night in downtown Nashville, with the bachelorette party and frat boys from Vanderbilt  yelling at her until 4 in the morning. 

Most nights she was screaming along with them, playing the role, laughing at the jokes she couldn't

even hear over the honky tonk music, giving as much as she could. Was it really a coincidence that

she came home that night with a pile of money waiting for her, when she hadn't been able to smile  at her good ol' boy regulars in months? 

She hadn't darkened their door for months, but she chose that night to stop by to take a nap. Last

time Ginger had spoken (okay argued) with Valerie, she was stripping to make some money. If

she was living through a drug-and-alcohol-induced haze of life, at least she'd passed out with grace  and didn't wake Ginger's seventeen-year-old sister Willa. 

Willa hid her depression well, but Ginger could tell she was hurting. 

Ginger did not like it when anyone hurt her sister, mother or not. 

She narrowed her gaze once more at the cash-filled purse. No way had Valerie pulled in this much

cash twirling around a pole. She sifted through the bulging rolls of hundred-dollar bills held

together by rubber bands. What she wouldn’t give to have this much money. The pile of cash in

front of her represented freedom. Change. A chance to pursue something other than pouring drinks  to support herself and Willa. 

Willa.

This might be Ginger's only shot at getting her sister out of this shambles that is a house. Out of

the danger of strange men that her mother brings home when she really should be at home, out of

the danger of passing out on the couch while your 23-year-old daughter contemplates ripping you

off with that money. And yet, Ginger knew that if she just walked away with that money, it was

going to come back to bite her in the ass. And Ginger also knew that this one bad decision brought  her one step closer to the biggest fear she had: becoming her mother.  

Ginger wanted to believe that the skin and bones piled on the couch once had some sort of dream,

some sort of ambition. And then one bad choice left her in a G-string, pasties, and shaking it for a  trucker called Dirk to some played-out 80s song. 

If only Ginger could be a good person for a while, she might be able to turn things around for

Willa. Willa, who skipped the sixth grade and cursed like a sailor and took pictures that made  Ginger cry, would have a chance to become someone. 

Ginger looked around at the faded paint, the stained carpet, and the two-pawned TV set. If she

hadn't had the responsibility of being her sister's parent, she would have turned her back on  Nashville a long time ago.  

The thought of going to bed in the squeaky twin bed she shared with Will and waking up tomorrow

to the same grim routine of working a double shift and still struggling to put food on the table and  pay rent, all while taking care of her sister, made her sick to her stomach.  

I can't see past tomorrow, and that's not good.  

Dolly Parton said it best, “if you don't like the road, you're on, start paving another road.”  

Ginger knew she was going to need a lot of cement mixers and would need a fleet of them. 

Ginger held the purse in front of her, breathing in its musty smell. She knew the guilt would come

and she would stuff it back into Valerie's arm and pretend she had never seen it. She would go to

sleep with a clear conscience, hoping that her mother had changed her ways and used the money

to give Willa a better life, or to move her sister to a better home. Or she could take the chance that  fate was giving her and get out of Dodge.

As Ginger lifted the purse over her shoulder and started to pack, she learned something important

about human nature: sometimes people make bad choices, and even though they know they are  about to eat a fat regret sandwich, they do it anyway. 

She gave her shaking, wide-open eyes the finger and walked away. 

Lieutenant Derek Tyler looked down from the bathroom sink into his own bloodshot eyes,

thinking, oh, right, that's why I don't drink whiskey on a hangover night. He didn't like the thought

of his own foolishness and didn't have much time to think about it since he had less than an hour

before he had to be at Saint Luke Cemetery. He quickly took three more pain killers and

straightened the tie on his wrinkly uniform. Chicago PD was burying one of their own today, and

Derek had never before lost a man on the job, and the memory of losing a man in last week's raid

on Chicago's most vicious crime syndicate was acid in his stomach. Unlike Derek, the cop had a

family, a family with whom he would be meeting in less than an hour. Being a homicide cop meant

that such tragedies were more likely to happen than not, especially considering he was only thirty  and still had a long way to go in his career. He hoped that he would never get used to this. 

He was coming out of the bathroom to get his uniform hat out of the closet when he heard high pitched laughing from the apartment building across the street. Derek had chosen the building, a

large brick colonial in the heart of Hyde Park, because it was far enough away from the bustle of

the city that he preferred silence. Especially now, when he felt as if someone had stuck an ice pick  in his head. 

"Pick up the end, Skunk-Vag! I can't carry the whole thing!" 

"Shut up! You're using one hand to flip me off!" 

"I can't argue with multitasking!" 

"You'd argue with the Pope's mom!"

God, these girls had it in for him! It was a shame he didn't let his men swear while on duty, too.

Did one of them just call him a donkey-queue? He would never drink whisky again. His only vice  had been against the Chicago Cubs, and that had been punishment enough. 

He cursed and walked to the open window of his sparsely but functional living room. He rarely

spent time at home due to his job, and the room was furnished with a couch, a flat-screen TV, and  a neatly arranged desk. 

As Derek peered through the window, he saw a teenage girl dragging a lava lamp out of the bed

of an old, rusty pickup truck. The girl's thick black hair was pulled down over her shoulders,

making it hard to make out her face. She was wearing black knee-high combat boots laced up over  a purple fishnet stocking. 

By the furnishings and household items scattered along the sidewalk, Derek could tell that the girls

who cursed a blue streak had moved in. The only female he saw did not match the building

demographic at all. Most residents worked in the town and kept consistent hours. There was no

loud music, no parties. How did these two manage to slip into the building undetected?