Copyright 2026 by DJ Rawlings
The Night Before
I should have canceled dinner.
Vic would walk into Denson Park alone tomorrow afternoon and wait for instructions from a man we had spent two years trying to identify. Sitting in a crowded restaurant pretending to care how long the wait would be felt like a misuse of whatever attention I had left.
Carmen knew where my mind was. Jason did too.
We found him and April outside beneath the restaurant awning, where they had claimed one end of a bench. Jason watched me approach and shook his head.
“You’re working.”
“I’m standing in front of a restaurant.”
“Your body is.”
Carmen slipped her arm through mine. “He’s been somewhere else all day.”
“Tomorrow’s a big one,” I said.
April gave Jason a look that stopped whatever question he had been about to ask. Carmen knew about Oscar. She knew Vic was a cop and my closest friend. His assignment was one of the things I never brought home.
“I hope you finally get him,” she said.
Something in her voice made me turn. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You sounded angry.”
Her expression softened. “People like him destroy families, Steve. A kid takes one pill at a party because somebody tells him it’s harmless, and his parents spend the next week planning a funeral. I don’t have much sympathy for the man making money from it.”
Neither did I.
She glanced toward the restaurant doors. “Will you be home tomorrow night?”
“I can’t promise.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Depends how the day goes.”
April rescued the conversation without knowing it. “Speaking of people trying to kill me, our house alarm is possessed.”
Jason groaned. “One false alarm.”
“Two. Both after midnight.”
“What kind of system?” Carmen asked.
April stared at her. “The kind that screams until my husband remembers the code.”
“Hardwired? Separate keypad?”
“I think so.”
“Probably a bad contact on a door or window. I installed alarms for a couple of years in college. I can look at it.”
April brightened. “Seriously?”
“Sure.”
Jason pointed at me. “Why can’t your girlfriend have useless hobbies?”
Carmen laughed. Every few weeks I discovered another piece of her history. Yoga instructor. Business owner. Former alarm installer. A woman who could spend ten minutes discussing meditation and then beat everyone in the room at sports trivia.
The pager in Jason’s hand buzzed.
“Saved by dinner,” he said.
Inside, the noise helped. So did Jason, who could keep a conversation alive long after everyone else had run out of things to say. April complained about a neighbor who had begun feeding squirrels close enough to their house that the animals now treated the porch as inherited property. Carmen described the contractor renovating her yoga studio and his developing belief that deadlines were philosophical concepts.
“He wants the chair class moved upstairs,” she said. “As if the people who need it are going to climb a flight of stairs to get there.”
“Can’t you use the main room?” April asked.
“That’s where he wants the expensive flooring.”
Jason reached for the bread. “Expensive floors hate chairs?”
“His do, apparently. I told him the chairs stay.”
I offered to talk to the contractor. Carmen pointed her fork at me.
“You can carry the chairs when they arrive. I can handle the argument.”
She turned back to April and began explaining the room she wanted, down to the space a walker needed between the mats. I had never seen the finished studio so clearly.
For half an hour, I almost stopped watching tomorrow arrive.
Then the waitress brought the check.
She set it beside Jason, collected two empty plates, and slipped a folded piece of paper into my hand while Carmen was turned toward April.
Jason saw it.
His grin started before the waitress reached the next table.
“Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re about to.”
Carmen looked between us. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Jason leaned back, pleased with himself. “Steve has a secret.”
I handed Carmen the folded paper unopened. The waitress had written her first name and phone number beneath a short message. If the woman with you isn’t your girlfriend.
Carmen read it twice, then folded it again. “Smart girl.”
“I thought so.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“No.”
“Not even curious?”
“I’ve learned to recognize situations with no good ending.”
She smiled and handed the note back. “You can keep it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Better answer.”
That was the end of it. No test, no argument, no performance. I dropped the paper into the trash on our way out and took Carmen’s hand as we crossed the parking lot.
Traffic thickened less than ten minutes later.
Brake lights stretched ahead of us in two red lines. Cars began shifting left, some too abruptly, and I slowed enough to see an overturned BMW on the shoulder. A semi had stopped fifty yards beyond it. Several drivers stood outside their vehicles with phones in their hands.
Nobody was approaching the car. Smoke curled from beneath the hood.
Carmen straightened. “Steve.”
I pulled onto the shoulder. “Call 911.”
“People already are.”
“I need to see if anyone’s inside.”
Her hand caught my sleeve, but I was already opening the door.
The smell reached me halfway there: gasoline, hot rubber, something electrical burning. The BMW lay upside down with the driver’s side crushed against the pavement.
I crouched near the window. “Can you hear me?”
A woman shouted from inside. “I’m trapped!”
The side airbag blocked most of her face. Blood ran from a cut near her temple, but she was awake and moving.
“I’m going to get you out.”
“It’s burning.”
“I know. Keep talking to me.”
The door wouldn’t move. I pulled my knife from my pocket and struck the lower corner of the window with the butt. The remaining glass collapsed inward. I cleared what I could with my forearm, cut through the hanging airbag, and reached for the seat-belt release.
It wouldn’t depress.
Flames appeared beneath the front end.
“Cover your face.”
I braced an arm beneath her shoulders and sawed through the belt. Her weight dropped suddenly. I almost lost my grip, caught her beneath the arms, and dragged her through the broken window.
We made it twenty yards before I lowered her onto the grass.
“Stay here.”
She seized my wrist. “My dog.”
I thought I had misheard her. “What?”
“Back seat. Esther. She’s in a carrier.”
I turned toward the BMW. Flames were beginning to lick up the front quarter panel.
“Please.”
There are decisions you make after weighing consequences, and there are decisions already made before your mind joins the discussion.
I ran back.
The rear glass had broken during the rollover. I knocked loose what remained and leaned inside. Smoke burned my eyes. Somewhere beyond the overturned seats, a small dog barked.
The carrier was strapped in. Good owner.
I reached through, released the belt and pulled. The carrier caught against the roof. I changed the angle and yanked harder. It came free.
A tire exploded.
The sound hit hard enough that I ducked, nearly dropping the carrier. Then I was moving again, carrying it away from the car as sirens rose over the traffic.
The woman started crying when I set Esther beside her.
A frightened shih tzu stared through the carrier door.
“Everybody out?” a patrol officer called as he ran toward us.
“Driver and dog. No other occupants.”
I showed him my badge.
He glanced toward the burning BMW, then at the carrier. “You went back for the dog?”
“She asked.”
Paramedics took over. Only then did I notice blood running down my forearm where the glass had caught me.
Carmen stood beside my truck.
She was furious.
I knew enough about her by then to recognize fear when it put on something louder.
“You went back.”
“It was a dog.”
“I didn’t know that. I watched you pull a woman from a burning car, then turn around and run back toward it.”
“She couldn’t get Esther herself.”
“Esther?”
“The dog.”
“I gathered that.”
I tried a smile. It failed immediately.
Carmen stepped closer and touched a singed patch near my temple. “Your hair is burned.”
“Barely.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Also barely.”
She dropped her hand. “You could have died.”
The answer I almost gave her was that I hadn’t. I managed not to.
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
Some of the anger left her face.
“Why do you always have to be the person who runs toward something?”
Behind us, firefighters were attacking the BMW. People still stood beside their cars recording it.
“Because sometimes everybody else is waiting for somebody to go first.”
Carmen studied me, then shook her head.
“I’m not sure whether that’s admirable or incredibly irritating.”
“They can coexist.”
“That sounds like something Jason would say.”
“That’s insulting.”
It finally earned the beginning of a smile.
***
Back at our apartment building, Carmen took me into her place and sat me at the kitchen table.
Brutus appeared from the hallway, sniffed my shoes, then seemed to decide smoke and gasoline were beneath him. Carmen cleaned the cut on my arm while I tried not to react.
“This will sting.”
“It already does.”
“Good.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
She covered the cut with gauze, taped it in place and sat across from me. The apartment had gone quiet except for the refrigerator and the faint sound of a television through the wall.
Carmen gathered the torn wrappers and dropped them on the table.
“If something happened to you, who would I call?”
I looked at her. “Something just happened to me.”
“You cut your arm.”
“And damaged my hair.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
She folded the unused gauze back into the first-aid kit.
“I know Jason. But if Jason is with you when something goes wrong, who’s next?”
The question made sense after the evening she had just spent watching me run toward a burning car.
“Rich.”
“Your chief?”
“Yeah.”
“You trust him that much?”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“And Vic?”
I almost laughed.
“Vic doesn’t make the list.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“He is the list.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“We’ve known each other since we were fifteen.”
“I know.”
“If I called him at three in the morning and said I needed him, he’d complain for the entire drive.”
“But he’d come.”
“He’d already be putting on his shoes.”
Carmen smiled.
“So Jason, Rich and Vic.”
“For what?”
“The people you trust without having to think about it.”
I considered correcting her.
I couldn’t.
“Yeah.”
She closed the first-aid kit.
“That’s a short list.”
“It should be.”
She looked at me for another moment, then pushed the kit aside.
“You know what’s ridiculous?”
“What?”
“Us living twenty feet apart.”
“We spend almost every evening together,” she continued. “You eat here or I eat there, and then sometime around eleven you walk across the hall because apparently that last twenty feet protects civilization.”
“For me, it protects a promise.”
She already knew the rule. She knew less about where it came from.
“My mother had me before she was married,” I said. “My father left before I knew him. A few months before she died, she made me promise two things. Stay away from street drugs and wait until marriage.”
Carmen’s expression changed. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“And you’ve kept both?”
“Yes.”
She reached across the table and rested her hand over mine. “Then I’m not asking you to break either one.”
“I know.”
“I reserve the right to complain about the inconvenience.”
“That seems fair.”
She smiled, but it faded quickly.
“You really want all of that someday? Marriage, kids?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
There were questions that needed time. That one didn’t. “Yes.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “That sounded dangerously confident.”
“You asked.”
“I’m not saying I’m ready.”
“I didn’t ask you to be.”
“Good.”
She leaned across the table and kissed me. When she pulled away, she touched the bandage once more. “Go home. Get some sleep.”
“I need to review the operation.”
“You have reviewed the operation.”
“Not tonight.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
I stood and kissed her again before heading for the door.
Across the hall, my apartment felt colder than hers.
I checked my phone.
No message from Vic. Nothing from Fritz. Harding hadn’t called. The plan remained exactly as we had left it.
At four tomorrow afternoon, Vic would enter Denson Park alone.
I set my alarm and lay down.