The Breach

VERSE III
AN OCTOBER NIGHT IN 1992

Though the fog is thinner here in the elevated district west of downtown, and the streets are brightly lit, Travis is driving faster than he should. He doesn't slow, even after he's entered the subdivision, Empire Oaks, with its smooth asphalt lanes winding among ten-thousand-square-foot homes. He doesn't slow because he doesn't care who or what hears him coming this time-because either way, he's going to do what he came here to do.

He thinks of Emily and wonders if she blamed him in her last minutes of life, when she knew it was over. She'd have been right to blame him, of course, but every instinct tells him she blamed herself instead, and the thought of that generates more hurt than Travis knows what to do with. He has already mentally added it to the debt he will settle in the next few minutes.

He makes the turn onto Stonegate Court doing fifty, his back tires losing the wet street for a moment before they grip again, and the car surges forward.

Emily Price.

She is all that matters to him now, even though she's gone.

He thinks of all that she did for him. All that she saw in him, beneath all that he was.

He thinks of her father, using the word Detective as a slur. It cuts because it's true. Though that word has preceded Travis's name on his paychecks for three years now, he's been on someone else's payroll much longer. In fact Travis's sole reason for becoming a cop was to further serve the needs of his other employers. His first employers.

He'd have spent the rest of his life as a rat, without Emily's intercession. Without her light to lead him out of the maze.

She did lead him out.

And they killed her for it.

He makes the next turn and sees the house at the end of the street, blazing with light from all twenty-six of its exquisitely furnished rooms. Drug money spends like any other kind.

Travis is still doing fifty when he drives through the fence. He hits the brakes halfway up the yard, and when the needle drops below twenty-five, he shoves open the door and bails onto the lawn. He rolls and comes up just in time to see the car punch through the bay window and disappear completely into the house. Five seconds later he follows it in, gun in hand and eyes searching for targets.