Free Watch Your Back by Karen Rose

surprised,’ Alec said quietly. ‘Kid’s been through the wringer.’ His phone beeped and he checked it. ‘It’s a rental. The white Camry, I mean.’
    Clay shot him a surprised glance. ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘I got the license when it passed us by. I ran a search.’
    ‘On your phone. God, I am so old. Who did the renting?’
    ‘This search engine doesn’t give me the name. We’ll have to check the rental agency.’
    ‘The rental places at the airport will still be open on a Saturday night. We can head to BWI after we drop Cordelia off with her mother.’
    It was a relief to have a task already waiting for him, because staying busy seemed to be the thing that kept him sane each time Stevie Mazzetti shoved him out of her life. That she would again tonight was a certainty. He was calmly driving into a tornado, knowing the cost.
    And if that wasn’t true insanity, he wasn’t sure what would be.

Chapter Four
    Baltimore, Maryland, Saturday, March 15, 5.30 P.M.
    ‘ H ey, Mom?’ Standing in his mother’s kitchen, Officer Sam Hudson opened the door to the basement. ‘Are you down there, Mom?’
    ‘Yes, son.’ Out of breath, she was struggling with a laundry basket.
    Oh, for God’s sake . ‘Mom, stop that.’ He took the stairs two at a time and lifted the basket from her hands. ‘You’re not supposed to carry heavy things. You just had heart surgery. Triple bypass. Remember?’ Irritated, he started up the stairs without waiting for her reply.
    This was why he stopped by on his way to his own apartment after every shift and on his days off, too. He half expected to find her at the bottom of the stairs, passed out under a pile of laundry. Of course it would be clean laundry. His mother would be too embarrassed to be found passed out under dirty laundry.
    ‘Yes, son,’ she repeated, climbing the stairs behind him. ‘I remember. I was there, right there on the operating table. Just like I was there when you were born. Hmm. When would that have been? Let me think. Oh, right. Only thirty years ago. I’m sixty-two, last I checked. Which makes me both older and your mother. So stop telling me what to do. That’s my job.’
    He put the basket on the kitchen table. ‘To tell me what to do or to tell yourself?’
    ‘Both.’ She nudged him out of the way to open the oven, allowing wonderful aromas to escape. ‘And I have seniority so you’re not getting my job.’
    He took an appreciative sniff. ‘You made pot roast. You are a queen among mothers.’
    ‘I know,’ she said regally, then laughed.
    Sam smiled, finding contentment in the sound. He’d been so terrified he’d lose her during the surgery, that he’d never hear her laugh again. ‘You’re also a sneak, using the smell of pot roast to divert my attention from your bad behavior.’
    ‘Whatever works,’ she said cheerfully. ‘If you want to help me, then set the table.’
    Sam grabbed plates from the cupboard, pausing when the thick bubble-wrap envelope on the counter caught his eye. The envelope was propped up between the Washington Monument salt-and-pepper shakers he’d bought for his mother on a field trip to DC when he’d been eleven years old. They were only cheap souvenirs, but he’d bought them with money he’d earned himself because her birthday was coming up.
    And because he knew his father would have forgotten because he was too high or out looking for his next fix. His mother had made a fuss over those cheap souvenirs like he’d bought her solid gold and had kept them on the counter ever since.
    Sam picked up the envelope that read Samuel J. Hudson , cleanly typed on a mailing label. ‘When did this come, Mom?’
    She looked up from the potatoes she was mashing. ‘Today. There’s no return address. I thought it might be junk, but I wasn’t sure. It’s got something in it. Too heavy to be anthrax.’
    He stifled his laugh because he knew she was serious. His mother watched entirely too much television. ‘Come on,