Taking the Heat. Brenda Novak

idea of her leaving Phoenix to move to Florence, an hour and a half to the southeast. He’d liked the idea of her becoming a prison officer even less. It wasn’t exactly most men’s number-one job choice for the mother of their children. But then, he didn’t understand what was driving her, didn’t understand why she needed to support herself, why this strange, rather barren place somehow felt like home to her.

      “Come on,” he coaxed. “I’m not going to say anything. You’ve already heard all my arguments against what you’re doing.”

      Gabrielle handed Allie a toy and set her in the middle of the floor, then sank onto the couch. She generally told David everything. Holding out now was only delaying the inevitable. But when she finished relating the day’s events, he didn’t react as she’d expected. He was completely quiet at the other end of the line.

      “David? You said you weren’t going to say anything but I didn’t think you meant it quite so literally.”

      “I’m thinking,” he said, “and I’m fighting my natural tendency to beg you to get the hell out of there and come back to Phoenix.”

      “You know I can’t do that. I came here for a reason.”

      “And have you done anything about that reason? Have you spoken to your mother, at least?”

      Gabrielle closed her eyes. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “No, not yet.”

      “Gabby, the investigator found her weeks ago. How long is it going to take to summon the nerve to let her know you’re there?”

      “I’m not sure. I’ll do it someday. It’s not that easy, David. She abandoned me when I was three.”

      “I know that was rough, but it isn’t as if you weren’t adopted within months by a good family.”

      Gabrielle had no concrete complaints about the Pattersons. Her adoptive parents, Phil and Bev, owned a successful sandwich shop by the wharf in Newport, Oregon, and had, for the most part, provided for her physical needs. They’d never been abusive or overtly neglectful. They’d just never really embraced her as their own. They doted on their twin girls, who were only eighteen months older than Gabrielle. And the natural affinity between Tiffany and Cher had always made Gabrielle feel like an unwanted tag-along. She felt as though the whole family tolerated her presence, but didn’t really want her. Especially when she’d reached her teens and begun to rebel. Then she could definitely sense a limit to the Pattersons’s acceptance. They’d taken her in to do a good deed and had felt it highly unfair that she’d give them any trouble at all.

      But she hadn’t been trying to give anyone trouble. She’d only been searching for a place where she would truly belong.

      “It wasn’t the same,” she said, knowing from past experience how hard it was to describe the subtle difference in the way the Pattersons had treated her compared to their own children. David had met them a few times and couldn’t see anything wrong with them. The Pattersons had come to their wedding and been polite, grateful she was “settling down.” But Gabrielle and David had paid for everything, and David hadn’t really had a chance to get to know them. Since then, Gabrielle had gone back for Tiffany’s wedding, but David had been too busy with work, so she went alone and returned the next day.

      “It’s in the past, Gabby,” he said. “You’ve got to let it all go at some point.”

      “I will when I’m ready.”

      “Then introduce yourself to your birth mother, if that’s what it’s going to take.”

      “I will eventually. I’m just hesitant, okay? I’ve never known my father. He wasn’t around when I was little, so she’s all I’ve got. And she obviously didn’t want me to disrupt her life twenty-five years ago. She probably doesn’t want me to disrupt it now.”

      “I don’t want to sound hard-hearted, but if she’s not interested in getting to know you, that’s her loss. Face it and get over it. Then you can leave Florence and that damn prison and come back to Phoenix where—”

      “David, I’m not coming back,” Gabrielle interrupted. “You know that. I want to be here, at least for now. I want to build my life on my own, see where I can go with it. Besides, I could have sisters, aunts, uncles, a whole family here in Florence. You don’t know how much that means to someone who’s never felt connected.”

      He sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get into an argument. I grew up with both my parents, so I can’t pretend to know what being adopted means to you. I only know that I don’t like having you and Allie so far away. I don’t like you working such a dangerous job. I—”

      “We’re less than two hours away. That’s not far. And it’s not as if what I do is anything unusual. Thousands of people have the same job. Someone’s got to do it. Besides, I thought you didn’t want to argue.”

      “I don’t.”

      “So ease up, okay?”

      Silence, then, “What do you plan to do? About the problem at the prison, I mean?”

      Gabrielle let her hair down from its ponytail and ran a hand through it. “I’m thinking I have to report it to the warden.”

      “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Why don’t you file a complaint with Hansen’s boss?”

      “Working my way up the ladder could take months. Tucker needs help now. Besides, Warden Crumb has an open-door policy, and I feel he should know what’s going on. There’s more at risk than Tucker. Someday Crumb might be facing allegations of major corruption. I’d want a chance to deal with the situation before I was hit with something like that, wouldn’t you?”

      “I don’t care about the warden. I care about you, and I don’t want you to go to him even if he’ll see you. What if this Hansen guy denies what happened? Won’t the other officers back him up because they’re guilty, too? It’s you against the rest. Not even Randall Tucker can substantiate what you say. A murderer sentenced to life doesn’t exactly possess a lot of credibility.”

      “I can’t let this kind of thing go on. It’s not right. Randall Tucker was seriously injured. He could’ve been killed.”

      “I doubt Hansen would’ve let it go that far.”

      “So that makes it okay? Tucker accused him of staging fights. The only thing missing is the bookie.”

      “I understand that. But you’re new there, Gabby. You don’t know how everything works yet. Why not lie low for a while and see what happens? Maybe it was a personal thing between Hansen and Tucker. Now that Tucker’s had his beating, it might be over. For all you know, Tucker deserved what happened to him.”

      “That’s not for us to decide.”

      “So don’t. Just wait a week or two, that’s all I’m asking. See what happens,” he said again. “If you won’t do it for me, do it for Allie.”

      “You and Allie are the only reasons I didn’t go to the warden today.”

      “Thank heaven for small favors,” he muttered. “You don’t want to alienate everyone your first week, Gabby. Did you get my child support?”

      “I did, but you sent more than we agreed.”

      “I don’t want you eating noodles every day.”

      “I’m not your responsibility.”

      “You’d send it to me if you thought I needed it.”

      That, at least, was true. “I’m working now. What makes you think I need money?”

      “I helped you move into that piece of junk you call a trailer, remember?”

      David was right about the trailer. Nearly eighteen years old, it had brown shag carpet, fake wood paneling and pieces of tattered, mismatched furniture. A small awning covered Gabrielle’s white