CHAPTER ONE
REVA
Bad thingsalways happen at night. It’s an unwritten rule. Devils need the dark, after all, to cover up their misdeeds.
As I puke around the side of the ambulance following what has to be the worst call of my EMS career, I remember when I learned that truth.
I was only a little younger than the girl on the gurney, the one currently speeding down the road in the other ambulance on the way to the hospital.
I hate how life gave her the same kind of shit education I’d received. She’s twelve going on thirteen, instead of seven like I was when everything went to hell, but still. Things like that—the bad things we don’t like to look at and we don’t like to name—they harden you. Warp you. Strip away all the sensitivity and finer feelings.
Or they try to, anyway. Using the heels of my hands, Iwipe away the tears that are leaking from the corners of my eyes.
“You okay, Reva?” Griffin sticks his head around the edge of the vehicle, sees the puddle of vomit, and beats a hasty retreat.
I scrub my mouth with my sleeve and chuckle without humor. “I’m fine. Just gimme a sec.”
A second later, a bottle of water lands at my feet, bouncing once in the dew-wet grass.
Done hurling my guts up, I swish water around my mouth and climb into the front of the ambo, where Griff waits patiently in the driver’s seat.
I wave the water at him as I shut the door. “Thanks.”
He clicks his belt into place and starts the engine. “Ain’t no thing.”
After I lock in, he pulls out, heading back toward the station. The sun is starting to brighten the eastern horizon of the city, turn the black to navy and purple tinged with the faintest hint of orange.
“That was some shit,” he starts after a moment.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to think about it. Didn’t happen.” I snap the three rubber hair bands I keep around my right wrist, the quick snatch of pain anchoring me and holding me in the present.
He looks at me, one hand skating the top of the wheel, the other resting on the window ledge. “We have areport to write, baby girl.” I flinch, and he winces. “Shit. Poor choice of words.”
“You can write the report.”
“Reva…”
“I’m not doing it, Griff. She was a little girl. Twelve-fucking-years-old. I can’t—” My voice breaks and whatever Griff was about to say; he stops.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
He slams the steering wheel with his fist. “I want to kill that motherfucker.”
Fuck. “Come on, Griff. I’m like…three seconds from falling apart. I cannot hold you together, too.”
He goes silent, but it’s not for long. It’s like a sink has come unstoppered, and his words are water, flooding through. Inwardly, I hum, trying to block the sound of his voice.
Don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to?—
“…let’s forget for a minute that she was pregnant. She was going to have that baby in the goddamn toilet,” he’s saying, and I can’t shut him out. “And he was going to let her! What kind of daddy lets his little girl?—”
I stop him with a hand raised. “The kind who molestedand got her pregnant, I’d bet. The kind who didn’t want to go to prison.”
“At least he’s in jail now. He won’t?—”
