Vengeance Road. Rick Mofina

      “It hurts. I ache. I need something to get me through one more day. I need the money. I’ll start after tomorrow.”

      “No!”

      A few people cast sleepy glances at them. Jolene lowered her voice.

      “That’s a lie you keep telling yourself. Promise me you won’t go dating tonight, that you will go home.”

      “But it hurts.”

      Jolene seized Bernice’s hands, entwined their fingers and squeezed hard.

      “You’ve got to do this, honey. You can’t accept this life. Promise me you will go home. Promise me, before I get on my bus and leave town.”

      “Okay, I promise, Jo.”

      “Swear.”

      “I swear, Jo.”

      Jolene hugged her tight.

      But after getting into her taxi and traveling several blocks, Jolene was uncertain. She told the driver to go back so she could check on Bernice.

      Sure enough, there she was. At the mouth of a dirty alley, on Niagara, hustling a date. The cab stopped at a light, Jolene gripped her door handle, bracing to jump out and haul Bernice off the street.

      But she didn’t.

       To hell with that girl.

      Jolene told the driver to keep going to the terminal. She didn’t need this shit. Not now. She was leaving for Florida tonight to build a new life for herself and her little boy. Bernice was an adult, old enough to take care of herself.

      Jolene had tried to help.

      She really had.

      But with each passing block, her guilt grew. Soon the neon blurred. Brushing away her tears, Jolene cursed. She couldn’t leave Buffalo tonight with that last image of her friend standing in her memory.

      Bernice was an addict. She was sick. She needed help. Jolene was her lifeline.

      And tonight, every instinct told Jolene that something was wrong.

      The driver muttered when she requested he take her back to the alley. But by the time they’d returned, Bernice and the man she’d been hustling were gone.

      Jolene had a bad feeling.

      But she knew exactly where they’d be.

      Down here, by the creek.

      Funny, Jolene thought, during the day this was a middle-class sanctuary where people walked, jogged, even took wedding pictures near the water.

      And dreamed.

      Most locals, living their happy lives, were unaware that after dark, their park was where hookers took their dates.

       It was where you left the real world; where you buried your dignity; where each time you used your body to survive, a piece of you died.

      Jolene knew it from her former life; the life she’d escaped when she had Cody. He was her number-one reason for getting out. She’d vowed he would not have a junkie mother selling herself for dope.

      He deserved better.

      So did Bernice.

      She’d been abandoned, abused, but had worked so hard to get into college, only to face a setback that led to drugs, which pushed her here. The tragedy of it was that she was only months away from becoming a certified nurse’s aide.

      Bernice didn’t belong in this life.

      Date or no date, Jolene was going to find her and drag her ass home, if it was the last thing she did. Jolene was not afraid to come down here at night. She knew the area and knew how to handle herself.

      She had her pepper spray.

      She arrived at the dirt parking lot, part of an old earthen service road that bordered the pathway meandering alongside the creek. The lot was empty.

      No sign of anybody.

      As crickets chirped, Jolene took stock of the area and the treetops silhouetted against a three-quarter moon. She knew the hidden paths and meadows, where drugs and dates were taken and deals completed.

      Through a grove, she saw a glint of chrome, like a grille from a vehicle parked in a far-off lot. Possibly a truck. Jolene headed that way. She was nearly there when a scream stopped her cold.

      “Nooo! Oh God nooo! Help me!”

      The tiny hairs on the back of Jolene’s neck stood up.

       Bernice!

      Her cry came from the darkest section of the forest near the creek. Jolene rushed to it. Branches slapped at her face, tugged at her clothing.

      The growth was thicker than she’d remembered. Her eyes had not adjusted; she was running blind over the undulating terrain.

      She stepped on nothing and the ground rose to smack her.

      She scrambled to her feet and kept going.

      There was movement ahead, shadow play in the moonlight.

      Noises.

      Jolene didn’t make a sound as she reached into her bag, her fingers wrapping around her pepper spray.

      A blast to the creep’s face. A kick in the groin. Jolene had done it before with freaks who’d tried to choke her.

      She swallowed hard, ready to fight. Heart pumping, she strained to see what awaited her. Someone was moving; she glimpsed a figure.

      Bernice? Was that her face in the ground?

      A metallic clank.

      Tools? What was going on?

      The air exploded next to Jolene with a flap and flutter of a terrified bird screeching to the sky. Startled, Jolene stepped away and fell, crashing through a dried thicket.

      She was unhurt.

      The air was dead still.

      A figure was listening.

      Jolene froze.

      The figure was thinking.

      Her blood thundered in her ears.

      A twig snapped. The figure was approaching.

      She held her breath.

      It was getting closer.

      All of her senses were screaming.

      Her fingers probed the earth but she was unable to find her bag. Frantic, she clawed the dirt for her pepper spray, a rock, a branch.

      Anything.

      Her pulse galloped, she didn’t breathe. After several agonizing moments, everything subsided. The threat seemed to pass with a sudden gust that rustled the treetops.

       Oh, thank God.

      Jolene collected herself to resume looking for Bernice, when she was hit square in the face by a blazing light.

      Squinting, she raised her hands against the intensity. Someone grunted, a shadow strobed. She ran but fireworks exploded in her head, hurling her into nothingness.

      2

       What was that?

      The next morning, Jack Gannon, a reporter at the Buffalo Sentinel, picked up a trace of tension on the paper’s emergency scanners.

      An array of them chattered at the police desk across the newsroom from where he sat.

      Sounds like something’s going on in a park, he thought as a burst of coded dispatches echoed in the quiet of the empty metro section.

      Not many reporters were in yet.

      Gannon was not on cop-desk