Read Beyond Reach for Free Online Page A

bare mattress. The bathroom was filthy. Mold blackened the grout, pieces of wet plaster hung from the ceiling.
    She stood outside the closed kitchen door, Glock at the ready. “Hank?”
    No answer.
    The hinges creaked as she pushed open the swinging door.
    Hank was slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. AA pamphlets were stacked hundreds deep in front of him, right beside a closed metal lockbox that Lena instantly recognized from her childhood.
    His kit.
    Junkies loved their routines almost as much as they loved their drugs. A certain type of needle, a particular vein…they had a habit for their habits, an M.O. they followed that was almost as hard to break as the addiction. Thump the bag, tap out the powder, flick the lighter, lick your lips, wait for the powder to turn to liquid, the liquid to boil. And then came the needle. Sometimes thinking about the rush was enough to get them halfway there.
    Hank’s drug kit was a metal lockbox, dark blue with chipped paint that showed the gray primer underneath. He kept the key in his sock drawer, something even a seven-year-old girl could figure out. Though the box was shut now, Lena could see the contents as clearly as if the lid was open: hypodermics, tin foil, torch lighter, filters broken off from cigarettes. She knew the spoon he used to heat the powder as well as she knew the back of her hand. Tarnished silver, the ornate handle bent into a loop that you could wrap around your index finger. Hank had caught her with it once and spanked the skin off her ass. Whether this was because Lena was messing with his stuff or because he wanted her to stay clean, she still did not know.
    She was leaning against the kitchen counter, gun still in her hand, when Hank finally stirred. Milky eyes looked up at her, but she could tell he couldn’t focus, couldn’t see, didn’t care. Drool slid out of his open mouth. He hadn’t put in his teeth, hadn’t bathed or combed his hair in what looked like weeks. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and she saw the tiny scars that needles had left so many years ago mingling with new punctures—ulcerous, gaping holes—where the drain cleaner or talcum powder or whatever the hell had been used to cut the shit he was putting into his veins had set up an infection.
    The gun raised up into the air. She felt outside herself, as if the weapon was not connected to her hand, as if it wasn’t her finger on the trigger, and her own voice saying, “Who the fuck was that man?”
    Hank’s mouth opened, and she saw the dark red gums where his teeth had been, teeth that had rotted in his mouth because the drugs had eaten him from the inside out.
    “Tell me!” she demanded, shoving the Glock in his face.
    His tongue lolled outside his mouth as he struggled to speak. She had to use both hands to keep the gun steady, keep it from going off in her hands. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Lena didn’t know; she was incapable of keeping time, figuring out if she was in the present or somehow trapped in the past, back thirty years ago when she was just a scared kid wondering why her uncle’s grin was so wide when blood was streaming from his nose, his ears. She felt her skin prickling from the heat inside the house. The odor coming off Hank was unbearable. She remembered that smell from her childhood, knew he wouldn’t take care of himself, didn’t want to bathe because the layer of grime on his skin clogged his pores and helped hold in the drug longer.
    Lena forced her hands to put the gun down on the counter, keeping her back to him as she tried to stop the memories that came flooding back: Hank passed out in the yard, children’s services coming to the front door to take them away. Sibyl crying, Lena screaming. Even now, hot tears slid down her cheeks, and she was suddenly that little girl again, that helpless, powerless little girl whose only hope in life was a useless fucking junkie.
    She swung around, slapping him so hard that he fell into a heap on the