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Something Borrowed

Lisa Landry

Prologue

The Wolf Beneath

“The past doesn’t stay buried – it sinks to the bottom and learns to breathe underwater.”

Sarah knew this truth in her bones, felt it in the tremor that sometimes shook her hands when she reached for her weapon, a subtle betrayal of the calm she projected. Her rage lived in layers, like sediment at the bottom of a dark lake. The surface might appear calm, professional, controlled, but beneath…

it was there in the way she cataloged exits in every room, a silent inventory of escape routes, and in the practiced casualness with which she always positioned herself with her back to a wall, a habit ingrained from a life before Boston, before the badge, before she learned to build cages in her mind.

She called it the Keeper’s work – a necessary ritual to maintain the fragile peace. Every morning, before facing the day, Sarah would close her eyes, take three slow deep breaths, and visualize a basement door, heavy and reinforced, bolted shut. Behind it, in the cold, damp dark, the wolf paced like a coiled spring. Its claws scraped against concrete, a sound only she could hear. She pictured its fur as dark as dried blood, its eyes like twin embers of ceaseless rage. A hunger for retribution that mirrored her own, a rage directed at those who preyed on the vulnerable, who silenced the weak. It was a rage she both feared and relied upon. With each exhale, she’d visualize tightening the bolts, reinforcing the door, suppressing the low growl that rumbled from the depths. “Not today,” she’d whisper, a mantra that was half prayer, half command.

But lately, the wolf grew restless. Texas – disturbing images seeping into her dreams. The radio on her dresser crackled, a news report of another missing bride, another “tragic accident.” Sarah’s jaw tightened. A familiar heat coiled in her belly – not fear, but a dark, potent energy she recognized as both a threat and a promise. The Keeper’s carefully constructed routines – the predictable rhythms of Boston’s streets, the familiar weight of her badge and gun – felt increasingly flimsy, like a thin wall holding back a rising tide.

Mark noticed, of course. His detective’s instincts picked up the subtle shifts in her behavior, the way her gaze sometimes lingered a fraction too long on shadows, how her situational awareness had sharpened beyond professional necessity into something almost predatory. He attributed it to their job, to the natural evolution of a good cop into a great one. He saw the steel in her, not the beast it barely contained. He couldn’t know that each successful arrest, each moment of justified violence, fed the wolf, not the Keeper. He didn’t understand that the lines between hunter and hunted had begun to blur in her mind, that the hunger for justice was becoming indistinguishable from a thirst for vengeance, especially justice for those who couldn’t defend themselves, for the women whose lives were cut short, their stories dismissed as accidents.

Mark wouldn’t know more. He would be dead in fourteen hours.

The irony didn’t escape her – how she’d become the perfect cop precisely because of what she was running from. Her trauma had honed her instincts to a razor’s edge, gifted her with a sixth sense for violence that made her exceptional. She needed the wolf, even as she feared its power. But as the walls between past and present thinned, Sarah wondered if she’d ever truly left Texas, or if she’d just found a more socially acceptable cage for the wolf, a place where its rage could be disguised as duty, its hunger masked as justice.

After Texas, Sarah understood anger on a molecular level – not the hot flash of momentary rage, but something deeper, more fundamental. Like the geological forces that shaped river valleys and carved canyons, her anger had transformed her, creating new landscapes in her psyche. The working-class neighborhoods of Boston, with their weathered triple-deckers and chain-link certainties, offered a different kind of sanctuary than the wide-open spaces she’d fled. Here, violence wore suits and drove luxury cars, predators hidden behind society’s polite masks. The wolf had evolved with her, learning the language of procedure and protocol, trading raw instinct for calculated patience. It no longer simply hunted – it investigated, analyzed, built cases that would stand up in court. But beneath this veneer of civilization, beneath the badge and carefully pressed uniform, something primal still stirred. The beast had learned to wear a detective’s face, to speak in probable cause and chain of evidence, but its hunger remained unchanged. Each morning’s ritual of containment felt more like negotiation than control, a delicate balance between the justice system’s methodical machinery and the wolf’s more direct approach to retribution. Now, as autumn painted Boston’s streets in shades of decay, that careful balance was shifting. The wolf tested its restraints with increasing sophistication, no longer content to simply pace its concrete cage. It had learned to think, to plan, to recognize patterns in the city’s darkness that The Keeper’s procedures couldn’t address. Soon, Sarah knew, she would have to face what that evolution meant – not just for her, but for everyone who mistook her badge for the only weapon she carried.

Since her time in Texas, rage had become an intimate companion. She understood intimately that all-consuming fury that made her want to shatter everything in reach.

These days, the predator within her – calculating, methodical, dependent on protocol and process – strained against its bonds.

Something Borrowed by Lisa Landry

Chapter 1, Scene 1: Last Watch

The clock was ticking for Detective Sarah Hernandez, a countdown to tragedy that only fate was aware of and had already written in blood. She had fourteen hours left with her fiancé and a secret buried deeper than any grave.

The Boston morning fog pressed against their apartment windows like a shroud, turning her partner’s silhouette into a ghost as he moved through their pre-shift routine, humming that damn Irish lullaby she’d never hear again. She ran her fingers over her badge, then her engagement ring. Two symbols of commitment, now joined by a third, nestled beneath her hand, a secret growing more precious with each passing hour.

If she had known it was their final morning, would she have committed more to memory?

The morning light dissected their kitchen into sharp geometries of shadow and revelation, each familiar surface now a palimpsest of memory and meaning. Sarah tracked Mark’s movements with a detective’s practiced observation and a lover’s intimate knowledge, cataloging details her mind insisted on preserving: the precise angle of his jaw when he smiled, the unconscious grace of his hands as they performed their morning ritual of coffee and keys, the way his presence filled their shared space with a sense of permanence she should have known better than to trust. Her body held its own secret vigil, the microscopic drama of cellular division beneath her heart writing a future neither of them could yet imagine. The badge at her hip carried a different weight now, its metal cool against her skin – no longer just a symbol of authority but a reminder of how quickly everything could change, how the thin blue line between order and chaos could blur in the space of a heartbeat.

She adjusted her uniform collar, the familiar ritual now charged with new meaning as she studied her reflection. The hallway mirror held secrets her trained detective’s eye couldn’t help but search for – some sign of the changes happening beneath her skin, some visible marker of how fundamentally different everything had become. Nothing showed yet, but her body felt like a crime scene, holding evidence only she could read.

Mark’s reflection appeared behind her now, a study in contradictions: the casual intimacy of his towel-clad form versus the gravitas of his Academy ring. The way his shoulder brushed hers spoke volumes about their shared history – partners in every sense, their bodies long ago learning the choreography of shared spaces. His smile, caught in the mirror’s truth, carried that particular shade of contentment that came from believing in permanence, in futures yet to be written.

“Looking sharp, future Mrs. O’Connell,” he called out, the nickname landing differently now, heavy with implications she alone understood. The car keys arced between them, their private ritual of shared responsibility. His Academy ring glinted on its chain, a talisman of their shared calling that matched her engagement ring – symbols of dedication that went deeper than metal and stone. “Ready to keep Boston safe for another day?”

The question hung in the moisture-laden air, innocent of its own weight.

Their patrol car waited in the gray dawn like a silent guardian, its windows latticed with frost patterns that reminded Sarah of crime scene photos – delicate, temporary evidence of nature’s indifference to human plans. Her fingers found the familiar tear in the steering wheel’s leather, a small imperfection that had become a touchstone over countless shifts. The rain transformed Boston’s streets into a monochrome canvas of shifting shadows and reflected light, while they settled into their chosen position with the precision of experienced hunters: the straight stretch of road where wealth liked to announce itself in German engineering and Italian horsepower, the old maples providing cover like silent conspirators, strategic streetlights promising evidence of infractions yet to come.

To Sarah’s mind, still processing the seismic shift of impending motherhood, it should have felt different – this last normal morning. But routine wrapped around them like a well-worn blanket: traffic stops, paperwork, the playful bickering over lunch duties that had become their love language. The universe, in its cosmic indifference, offered no warning signs, no premonitions of how this ordinary day would fracture into before and after. Sarah couldn’t know it would be their last morning together, that time was already measuring itself in heartbeats rather than hours.

Gunshots and Garters by Lisa Landry
In a land of grit and gunslinger's grace,
Where love blooms wild in a rugged space,
Sam Remington, a drifter with a carefree soul,
Finds his life entwined with a widow's role.
Through trials and laughter, fate takes its hold,
In a tale of the West, where hearts unfold.

Hidden in Oahu by Lisa Landry
Where ocean whispers secrets old,
And hidden treasures wait untold,
A journey starts, a heart takes flight,
Underneath the Hawaiian night.

The Great Chicken Caper by Lisa Landry
When chickens vanish without a trace,
And feathers fly, leaving an empty space,
Young Lily's quest takes a feathered turn,
A fighting hen now, a lesson to learn.
With friends by her side, and a blue moon's gleam,
They'll solve the mystery, fulfill a dream.
A fox in need, a community's call,
The Great Chicken Caper will captivate all!

The Wolf's Heir by Lisa Landry
In shadowed woods, where secrets dwell,
Minodora's fate, a tale to tell.
A wolf's mark, a witch's art,
A hidden lineage sets her apart.
Amidst whispers of vampire's lore,
She fights for love, on revolution's shore.
With potions brewed and powers strong,
Minodora's journey, where she belongs.

The curious Cat Caper by Lisa Landry
In Whispering Pines, where summer days gleam,
A curious cat, with a mischievous dream.
Scoober the sleuth, with fur black as night,
Unravels a mystery, with all his might.
Through lakeside cabins and boats adrift,
He'll chase the clues, a feline gift.
With whiskers a-twitch and paws quick to tread,
Scoober's adventure, lies straight ahead!