No Ordinary Sheriff

Last week, she’d gone shopping one hundred miles east instead.

She picked up a couple of packages of a cold medication containing ephedrine at the local drugstore, showing a fake ID to make the purchase. She’d bought the ID from a biker. Since she was making meth for them to sell, they’d been accommodating.

Before heading home today she’d pick up more cold medication in a town ten miles west, also. She shopped different towns every week, miles and miles apart so no one could ever connect the dots.

That, along with what she ordered through her husband’s pharmacy and what she’d ordered online to be delivered to her parents’ old farmhouse, put her in good shape.

* * *

WHEN SHE FINISHED with her purchases, she didn’t head straight home. Instead, she drove to her parents’ farm. They were dead now, killed in a car accident two years ago.

They’d left the property to Brad in the will. Why? This wasn’t the 1900s. They should have trusted her to take care of this place just fine on her own. But no, they’d left it to her husband as though she were too dim-witted, too gently-bred, too female to be of much use. She would have loved having a piece of land in her own name.

She was the one with the brains. She was the one who’d excelled in school, who’d adored math, science, everything. But she was the one who stayed home to care for the children while Brad had a career, while the town looked up to him, while he made money and she went to him every week for handouts.

They’d raised her to be sweet, to be demure and supportive of her husband, but she was smarter than Brad.

Her parents had never seen that.

She stepped into the RV parked a dozen yards away from the house and turned on a light. A sense of satisfaction ran through her. She was a businesswoman. A clever one.

In the small narrow space, she’d made the sweetest little chemistry lab.

She’d seen photos of meth labs, had done a lot of research before building her own. In every photo the labs had been a mess. Not hers. Hers was clean and tidy and perfect, everything lined up exactly as it should be. Three large plastic jars with lids sat beside an eyedropper, coffee filters, glass dish and funnel.

Her ingredients were precisely lined up in a row along one wall. Iodine. Red phosphorous. Ether. Hydrochloric Acid. Sodium Hydroxide. Methanol. On hooks in the wall, she stored her clean tubing.

She placed her purchases on the end of the table and opened the windows. She dressed in protective clothing and secured a mask around her mouth and nose before starting on her next batch of meth.

First she washed her cold medication tablets in ether to get rid of the red dye covering them and to break the pills down to pure ephedrine.

Then she crushed them into powder and put it into a jar with methanol. Before she started shaking the jar, she checked her watch.

Too bad so many parts of this process were slow and tedious.

She wouldn’t have time to clean up after herself today. Her days were a bit longer on Fridays because the boys stayed after school for sports, and she picked up fried chicken and chips for dinner, so no cooking. Even so, she was cutting it real close today.

She’d have to come back on Sunday to clean up. Time to start coming up with an excuse for not attending church services.

* * *

SHANNON PULLED ON a red leather skirt that showed too much leg and too little modesty. Ditto for the black tank top that displayed too much cleavage. She covered it with a fake fur jacket and checked herself in Janey’s full-length mirror.

Her legs looked long and sleek thanks to her six-inch stilettos.

Ruby lipstick made her lips look full.

Dressed and ready for the biker bar in Monroe, she still had to press her hand to her stomach to settle the butterflies roiling there.

She knew men. She knew bars. She knew alcohol. The three could be a deadly combination. She’d had plenty of experience dealing with all three in her career. That experience, and her training, would get her through tonight.

Sheriff Kavenagh wanted her to leave this alone, to let him take care of it, but that wasn’t in her nature. Tom was her brother. She was going to Monroe.

Not ideal going alone.

It is what it is, she told herself.

She’d been in—and handled—tough situations before and had survived.

Not without backup.

True, so she had to be smart. She stuffed her gun into her purse before heading to the bar.

Meth wasn’t called Biker’s Coffee by accident. It made sense for her to look at the biker gang first, but she couldn’t exactly walk out to the farm where they crashed and ask to see where they were cooking the stuff.

She drove to the bar in the next county wishing she’d rented something sexier to drive than the Fiesta she owned. It didn’t make a ballsy statement, wasn’t really in character with the clothes.

She cruised a long square of rural roads around the bar to check out escape routes.

A couple of cop cars were parked off the small highway on a side road just yards away from a flashing neon sign. No doubt waiting for Friday night trouble at the biker bar. Perfect. Backup was close.

When she arrived at the bar, the first thing she noticed was the neon sign flashing red and yellow beside the highway—sASSy’s. Great. A strip joint. Not her cup of tea, but so what? She was here to work.

The lot was full to the gills with hogs and pickup trucks. The only available spot was a dark corner around back, which she didn’t care for. Nothing about this evening thrilled her except the possibility of catching a lead.

She patted the purse she’d slung across her chest messenger style and drew confidence from the bulge of her Glock as she walked around the building to the front door.

Cops advised women not to carry guns in their purses. A purse could be taken away from a woman too easily and the gun used against her. But Shannon was no amateur. She knew what she was doing.

A group of bikers wreathed in smoke and wearing enough black leather to keep the ranchers of Montana in business for years blocked the entrance.

She struggled with her nerves. She didn’t want just the dealer, she reminded herself. She had no choice, she needed to do this if she wanted to nab the creep who was making the stuff.

When she stepped forward and got the bikers’ full attention, the competition and posturing started. She planned to use it to her advantage.

“Hey,” she said. “Where can a girl get a drink around here?”

“Right here, babe.”

“I got it.”

“Hey, lady. I’m buying.”

Cologne swirled around her, mingling with a whiff of sweat from one of the bikers.

One man went through the door and the rest parted long enough for her to enter the bar, then closed around her after, blocking her exit. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Her heart rate kicked in hard. Easy. Don’t panic. Panic is the worst way to handle this. Jammed in the middle of too many oversize bodies, she forced herself to wrestle her fear under control. She could do this.