Samantha Reeves didn’t need an alarm to tell her it was five o’clock in the morning. Even after a restless night of sleep, her body woke her up like clockwork. She rolled out of bed and onto the worn carpet, knocking out her morning workout of core and strength exercises since a gym wasn’t an option at the Lakeside Motel.

She cursed as she pushed her face away from the musty stench of the carpet. I have to remember my yoga mat next time.

She would have liked to go for a run instead, but Jeffrey Lindahl, her current subject of surveillance, was attending a morning golf gala, and she needed to be there. She was able to procure a ticket to the fundraiser through some friends of friends who knew a guy. It was one of those types of back-alley transactions that she was quite accustomed to at this point in her private investigative career.

After a quick shower, she pulled her long, dark, thick hair into a high ponytail, dabbed on a bit more makeup than usual to fit in with the crowd, and put on the designer golf dress she bought last week. Having never golfed, she wasn’t sure what to wear, but the perky saleswoman at the store insisted on the dress because “the soft coral color would be splendid with your jet-black hair.”

Sam checked her appearance one more time in the oversized frameless mirror hanging over the bathroom sink. She had to admit the saleswoman was right. It was a great color on her. Her summer tan still held, giving her usual pale skin a bronzed glow against the soft pastel color of the dress. Sam fussed over the pleats and hem of the dress. Her tall frame had the hem of the figure-hugging dress landing mid-thigh, which was much shorter than she appreciated, but she’d be blending in with the golf crowd, so it would have to do. I’ll be just like them, so who’s going to notice?

A knock on the door made her nearly jump out of her dress. She took her pistol from its holster that sat on the bathroom sink. She forced herself to even out her breathing as she made her way across the dingy motel room. As she reached the door, it rattled once again with rapid knocking, followed by a familiar voice, “Ms. Reeves, it’s Juan from the front desk.”

Relaxing slightly, but never fully, she exhaled and steadied her breath as she inched the door open slightly, keeping her leg pressed against the back to prevent it from being shoved open and someone forcing their way in.

“Hi, Juan,” Sam said through the two-inch crack that the flimsy door chain lock allowed.

Juan held up a small manila envelope so Sam could see. The printed label read, Samantha Reeves – 7B – Lakeside Motel.

“Hi, Ms. Reeves. There is a package here for you.”

“Oh, that’s odd.” She unchained the door and opened it another inch, motioning Juan to slide the envelope through. “Thank you. Did you happen to see who dropped it off ?”

“No, ma’am. It was sitting on the front desk this morning when I got here.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks again,” she said as she shut the door and slid the lock into place.

Sam walked over to the bed and carefully laid the envelope on the faded maroon bedspread along with her pistol. Sam squatted down and leaned back on her haunches as she considered this perplexing package.

Maybe it was Maggie Lindahl who sent it, she pondered. Sam would label Maggie as a trophy wife: well, ex-trophy wife, who had hired Sam to surveil her now ex-husband, Jeffrey Lindahl. Maggie felt her ex was increasing in violent behavior, and she was worried he would do something to hurt her or their two young daughters. Sam had been on this case for a few weeks, researching and looking through divorce papers, court transcripts, social media, text threads, and any other documents she could find. Most of what she found was some delicious upper-class tea, but nothing led her to believe Jeffrey was becoming violent. Just a straight-up d-bag lawyer. Which is what led her to the Lakeside Motel. Nothing in the digital world was adding up, so surveillance was the next step.

Jeffrey Lindahl. Sam’s lips curled up to one side, and her eyebrows squeezed together in annoyance at just the thought of him. “Gross,” Sam huffed out as she let her bottom fall to the floor and sat with her legs crossed in front of her.

She met this d-bag lawyer once briefly, about two years ago, just after he, his wife Maggie, and their two young daughters moved to the Twin Cities from Manhattan. It was at a fundraising dinner for the families of fallen police officers that Jeffrey’s law firm hosted every year. She had never attended before but ended up being a last-minute date for her mentor, Chief Mark Crane, when his wife was sick and couldn’t make it.

The tea at the time was that Jeffrey’s law firm had transferred him for nefarious reasons, but the happy cover story was a promotion.

“You fuck up, you move up,” Sam said to herself as she laid back stretching her legs out in front of her, never letting her eyes drift away from the mystery envelope on the faded bedspread.

Apparently, corporate folks used that tactic, too. She considered. You can’t really fire soldiers, so leaders would often promote the worst soldiers to get them out of their unit. Then they were someone else’s problem. To Sam, especially after researching and surveilling him the past few weeks, Jeffrey was indeed, a problem that was promoted.

Jeffrey was last year’s up-and-coming hot new corporate

lawyer, according to the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal. He was a regular at the Mendakota Country Club which was just down the road from the motel Sam was staying at. If he wasn’t in a courtroom or golfing, he occupied himself in various ways, often with the club president’s daughter or the wives of some of the other club members.

Sam leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs and her cheeks against her hands. Besides being a morally questionable lawyer and a narcissistic, controlling, cheating asshole, that’s all she could find so far. Nothing to support Maggie’s allegations of Jeffrey’s increased violent behavior.

She had spent the last few days tracking and following Jeffrey’s movements, which were very predictable at this point. Yesterday was a long day of loitering around the courthouse, following Jeffrey to the gym, then to a downtown bar for late- night drinks and listening to him compare case sizes with other lawyers, “Case sizes. Ha.” Sam giggled to herself. “Yeah, that’s what they were getting in pissing matches about.”

Thankfully, Jeffrey didn’t stay long. Sam’s patience had run dangerously low. Not enough food or evidence had been gathered yesterday. She was ready to be done with this case.

Sam followed Jeffrey to his house, and after he was in for the night, Sam returned to the Lakeside Motel, to her usual room 7B, with a late-night dinner, the empty take-out containers from the past few nights now filled the undersized garbage can by the front door.

But there was no way Jeffrey knew she was here at the motel. Sam guessed if Jeffrey had known she was following him, he would have approached her. Even if he had caught on to her following him, he still wouldn’t have known where she was staying.

And there was no way Maggie knew she was staying at this motel. Sam was careful never to share too much information about her processes or plans with her clients. Once Sam resolved a case, she would share some details but held onto most of her processes and never shared locations. So, it couldn’t have been Maggie, either.

She picked up the envelope, turned it over, and pinched the small metal tabs together so they slipped through the punched hole. The glued edge didn’t allow the envelope to open, so Sam tore the edge with care, letting the sound of the tearing paper echo over her breath. Her eyes caught sight of a bundle of folded, crisp black tissue paper. She tipped the envelope over and let it fall onto the bedspread. She sat at the foot of the bed and picked up the packaged bundle. A short, torn piece of clear tape held the tissue paper together. She pulled the tape and peeled back the layers of the black paper.

Inside, a stitched, subdued military police patch lay on her lap—the kind sewn onto the arms of army uniforms. She’d seen patches like this on hundreds of soldiers. She used to wear one every day when she was enlisted. This one, though, was well worn, with dark stains spattered on the tanned stitching.

Sam’s breath hitched as her vision blurred.

Sam could still see the patch as her vision started to clear, but now the patch was on Specialist Justin Sommers’s arm as she tried to pull him out of the overturned armored Humvee. His all-black sunglasses hung crosswise across his forehead. Shards of metal and glass riddled his camouflaged body armor like confetti. A steady stream of blood dripped from his ear, forming a bright red river flowing down his dangling arm. Sam leaned closer to Justin to cut him out of the seat belt that was holding him in place in the now upside-down truck. As she leaned across his blood coated face, her sight caught on a large piece of sharp, fragmented metal sticking out of the small vulnerable gap between the chin strap of his helmet and protective collared vest. Sam closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

When she opened them back up, she saw the scuffed walls of room 7B. She rushed over to the window, dropping the patch in her haste. She peeked out the dusty vertical blinds to the small square parking lot. The Lakeside Motel was a U-shaped building. 7B was on one top end of the U. Sam could see the motel lobby directly across the way on the other side of the parking lot. She saw her rented black sedan right out front of her room. She never used her car during surveillance cases. Sam parked her car a few blocks away in a park and fly lot for the airport. She didn’t need any angry ex, con artist, or cheater coming after her in the unlikely case someone spotted her. Always vigilant and prepared was her motto.

A few other cars were parked in front of the various rooms—the usual mix of high-end SUVs and then the ones with rusty duct-taped bumpers. The fancier ones usually only stayed for an hour or so before heading back home to their supposed loved ones. She had her fair share of cases that brought her to this hotel before. She met Juan from the front desk on the first case here, and he was helpful and discreet and continued to be Sam’s ally. He was known to avert his eyes, and considering why Sam was often there, she appreciated his discretion.

She exhaled meditatively to calm her accelerated heart rate. She stepped away from the window as she wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand. Nothing was dif- ferent outside, and Sam knew that. Sam bent over, picked up the patch, and sat back down. She peered inside the envelope, searching for more clues, but nothing was inside. Still, she knew. She knew what it was: a military police patch from her team’s failed mission in Afghanistan. It was nearly ten years ago when four young men lost their lives, and it was all because of her.

“I can’t process this right now. I have to get going.” She wrapped the patch back into the tissue paper and placed it in the envelope and shoved it deep into the bottom of her overnight bag. She grabbed the keys to her rental car and walked out of the motel room. As she pulled out of the lot, she hoped she had buried the patch deep enough in her bag so that she could forget about it for a long, long time.