EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE CHAPTER FORTY CHAPTER FORTY-ONE CHAPTER FORTY-TWO CHAPTER FORTY-THREE CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE CHAPTER FORTY-SIX CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT CHAPTER FORTY-NINE CHAPTER FIFTY CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE EPILOGUE COMING FROM PINNACLE IN 2012 Copyright Page
For Jessica Rose Wolfe
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following for their help with Closer Than Blood: Annette Anderson, Tina Marie Brewer, Charles Turner, Bunny Kuhlman, and Debra Gelbach.
And special thanks go to Michaela Hamilton, who came up with a wonderful solution at the eleventh hour, proving once again why she is my forever editor.
And finally (really), to Jane Dettinger, who knows that seeing double is sometimes a very, very good thing.
PROLOGUE
Kitsap County, Washington
Fifteen years ago
If Kitsap County’s road engineers had wanted to seek careers as Disney Imagineers, they might have served up Banner Road as proof positive that their designs could deliver the requisite thrill. The ups and downs of the Bactrian-camel-on-’roids roadway were only matched by its highs and lows. The stomach-in-throat feeling that came with motion and speed was delivered there every day without fail.
Truth be told, the roller-coaster effect owed more to the topography of that stretch of the south county, which chases up and down the hills as it careens along a nine-mile path just east of Colvos Passage from Sedgwick Road to the Olalla Bay Bridge. At about its midpoint, near the intersection with Fragaria Road, was a spot locals had long dubbed the Banner Jump. The Jump was a patch of asphalt that eggs on the lead-footed, as it literally begs those who traverse it to fly. A quick descent down the hill is followed by a slight rise, and then another drop. Even at the posted speed of 40 miles per hour, a driver and passengers can feel that tickle in the tummy that makes some people queasy and little kids cry for more. For as long as there have been teenagers with something to prove or fathers yearning to give their kids what they’ve wanted, there has been the invitation to push the pedal to the floor. Those with a ’70s TV or film reference flash on the opening moments of Starsky and Hutch or possibly the famed chase sequence of The French Connection.
Kids called it “going airborne.”
The Banner Jump was a buzz that required no alcohol to deliver the goods. No amusement park fee. Just a not-so-lazy drive past modest homes, equestrian estates with sprawling pastures, and mobiles, to and from Port Orchard. In rural places like South Kitsap County, cheap excitement was frequently the order of the day.
The thrill could be as short-lived as a spark.
A decade and a half ago, it was also quite deadly.
Mikey Walsh no longer cared what time it was. What day it was. Where he was. It was a week before Thanksgiving, and Mikey had little to be thankful for. He’d been tweaking for a week. Or maybe it was just three days. He’d never be able to swear to it. Not in court. Not anywhere. Crystal meth had been the solution to a problem of his own creation and he knew it. Certainly, it wasn’t his fault that he hurt his back at a construction job site for a new Taco Bell in Bremerton, a half hour to the north. But the fact that he’d tested positive for drugs was. He’d violated his employment contract—and that meant he had no insurance, no compensation. Mikey sat in his double-wide mobile home on a twisty gravel road in South Kitsap and started to contemplate just how it was that he’d be able to get himself out of the debt that threatened to take over his life. As far as he could tell, he had two choices.
Cooking methamphetamine or turning his life over to God.
Mikey thought about it long and hard, and in a moment of weakness and despair, he did what any addict would do. He didn’t choose God.
Crank, as most in his crowd called it, was like anything illicit. At first a thrill, then a curse. It kept him going when he wanted nothing more than to stop. Mikey was never a handsome figure, but bit by bit meth took every ounce of his youth. His hair thinned. His teeth yellowed. His eyes became languid pools of emptiness. When he wandered the aisles of the all-night Albertsons off Mile Hill Road in Port Orchard, everyone knew he was a tweaker. His empty stare, his bamboo limbs, and the fact that all he ever purchased was beer, chips, salsa, and wings were the giveaways that checkers make casual note of in the ceaselessly boring hours of a late shift.
The night everything changed for Mikey, he landed behind the wheel of his 1979 Chevy Silverado with a shudder and a thud. It was almost midnight when he found himself headed down Banner Road toward his mobile in South Kitsap. The roadway was shiny and he considered the possibility of frost. It was only for a moment. Meth impairs its users with a sense of invincibility, bravado, as it sends a steady flow of energy and false signals of well-being into a shell-shocked system. Mikey had been out on a drug run late that night, delivering, selling, and sampling his wares as he went from customer to customer swapping Baggies of drugs for crumpled twenties. He wasn’t tired. Hell,