Shielded By The Lawman. Dana Nussio

want to say to me?”

      Larry’s Adam’s apple shifted a few times, and then his jaw tightened. “I thought maybe you’d like to thank me for coming all the way out here to pick up your sorry ass.”

      “You joking? I’d still have my own ride if you and your buddy—”

      “Hey, if you don’t want me to be here, I can...”

      “Nah. It’s over.”

      And if the guy believed that, he had a piece of land near Hyde Park with an active oil well in the backyard. Someone as indebted to him as the loser sitting next to him didn’t need a reminder of what he owed, anyway.

      “Thanks for coming to get me,” Michael said finally.

      He knew better than to piss off his so-called allies when he just might need them later.

      “Glad Clint found you a decent place to live,” Larry said.

      Michael’s jaw tightened at just the mention of the second officer’s name. This mess was as much his fault as Larry’s. “If that’s what you call decent...”

      Larry made a tight sound in his throat and handed Michael an envelope with cash for the deposit and the first month’s rent. “Anything’s better than another night inside, right?”

      He nodded. Any place would be better than spending another night in that concrete hellhole with fluorescent lights that held the place hostage in constant daylight, with those grating buzzes and steel-door clicks that could wake a corpse, and the rock-hard pad that passed for a mattress. But he suspected he would never be able to sleep again without those lights. Those sounds. That mattress.

      “The place will do for now.”

      Larry pointed to the computer screen on the dash. “Put in your address.”

      He looked from the contraption to the driver.

      “The GPS.” Then he slid a glance Michael’s way and grinned. “Oh. Right. You probably haven’t used one of those in a while. It was an upgrade on this model.”

      Michael didn’t need any reminders of the conveniences he’d missed out on. The things that were this guy’s fault. And Maria’s.

      “Doesn’t anyone use maps anymore?” he groused.

      He let Larry guide him through the screens to enter the address on that scrap of paper from his pocket. The information on the other side of the crumbled sheet was more important to him, anyway, but Larry didn’t need to know about that.

      “It’s going to take a few weeks to get used to all the changes since you...left.”

      “Maybe a month.”

      He wondered if he would ever reacclimate to a world that didn’t have prison’s clear rules. The order. Inside, each man understood his role, from the murderers holding court at the top of the social hierarchy to the guys playing Susy Homemaker for their meathead boyfriends. Even he had a place, as a master of demand-chain management for chemical life enhancers.

      Outside, he was just an ex-con with nothing at all. At least not yet.

      “Have you found any answers for me?”

      Larry shook his head, still staring at the road. “You’ve got to be patient.”

      “I don’t have to be anything. I’ve been waiting for years.”

      “Give me a little time.”

      “I got that request to you a month ago.”

      “Which was a stupid move, if you ask me.”

      “I didn’t.”

      “Your wife did a fine job of disappearing.” He slid a glance Michael’s way. “Do you think she might have had a good reason?”

      “You believed the bitch‘s lies, too?”

      The side of Larry’s mouth lifted, but he didn’t say more. Michael’s hands fisted at his sides.

      “My marriage is none of your business.”

      “Guess not.”

      At least Larry didn’t point out that he no longer had one of those. Good thing for him because Michael would have punched him in the throat.

      “Just let me know as soon as you find out anything, okay?”

      “I will.” Larry reached for a button on the dashboard, and a storage area popped open. He pulled out a burner cell phone and handed it to him. “So we can keep in contact.”

      He murmured his thanks, though they would have stayed in contact whether Larry liked it or not. The officer didn’t need to know that he wasn’t the only one searching for answers. Michael had made some buddies inside who had helpful friends of their own.

      Larry pulled the SUV to the curb and cut the engine. “That’s the place.”

      Michael could only stare through the rivulets on his window. The two-story clapboard house with its peeling paint had probably been showing its age in the fifties.

      “It ain’t much.”

      That it was a long trip from the apartment Maria used to keep pin neat was one hell of an understatement.

      “It’s just until you get a job and get back on your feet.”

      “And until my wife comes home where she belongs.”

      Larry’s shoulders shifted. “Now even if—I mean after—we locate Maria, it might be a while before you can convince her to, uh, come home. If—”

      Michael threw open the car door and grabbed his bag from the backseat before the jerk could say ever. She would come back. The police only knew the things his wife had said when she was upset. She always took them back. Always.

      “Just let me know what you find out about my wife.”

      He dodged the land mines of crumbling concrete on his way up the walk. Deciding that the cracked doorbell wasn’t worth a try, he knocked hard on the door.

      When no one answered, he considered bashing in the window next to it. But since the impact might have been enough to bring down the whole house, he knocked again.

      “You sure someone’s supposed to be there?” Larry called out the car window.

      “The guy said he’d be here...with the key.”

      Finally, a rheumy-eyed skeleton of a man opened the door a crack and pushed a clipboard out. Michael signed without reading it, plunking down the envelope of cash and reaching for the key in the man’s other hand. He could have wrung the weasel’s neck for closing his fist and counting the bills before handing the key to him and closing the door.

      With each creak as he climbed the apartment steps, Michael reminded himself that this was temporary, like that sentence he shouldn’t have had to serve. They would find her, and she would return to him, where she belonged. She would be sorry, too. For saying those things to the judge. For ignoring a court visitation order. But most of all, for keeping him from his money and his son.

      The instant he flipped the switch inside the apartment, he wished for his prison cell. Yellow, nicotine-scarred walls encased a sunken, stained couch and matching chair. A lone TV tray served as a side table, but there was no television, only a shadowy mark on the wall where one used to be.

      This would be fine, he decided, as he took in the lumpy looking mattress with a coverlet on top. From his bag, he pulled out a three-by-five photo of Maria, smiling on their wedding day, tresses of her hair curling around the lacy, borrowed veil. He always imagined her this way. Smiling. His.

      “It won’t be long now, sweetheart. We’ll be a family again.”

      Michael’s lips formed a grim line. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to make Maria understand that