Bluegrass Undercover (Bluegrass Brothers)

neat airport. There were no signs in Spanish. There were no lines at a Starbucks. And there were no noisy people yelling the finer points of LeBron James’ game. It was so foreign. It made her nervous that everyone she passed smiled as they went on their way. From the plane she saw large tracts of land surrounded by white and black fences. The land was not covered with tall buildings or sprawling apartment complexes. Was there even a downtown? Looking at the artwork on the walls as she waited for her bags, she guessed there was a small one at least with one very tall blue building.
    “Miss Hill?” Annie turned and saw a short woman with caramel-color skin and dark brown hair looking at her.
    “Yes?”
    “I am Margaret Lopez, the principal at Keeneston High. I’m so very glad to meet you.”
    Annie shook her hand and smiled. She seemed very nice and very matronly, like she would feed you in an instant if you said you were hungry.
    “Let me help you with your bags. We’re really excited to have you join our staff. We’re like a family, so if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” Margaret picked up some of her bags and led her to a silver minivan.
    Annie looked around and couldn’t believe there was so much green space everywhere. Colorfully painted horse statues stood nearby, and just off in the distance the real thing ran in pastures surrounded by white fences.
    “We’re so lucky we found you. I have been interviewing, but no one has been qualified. We start on Monday with new student orientation. We have ten groups of kids scheduled. We’ll start at nine in the morning and go until three in the afternoon. We’ll show the kids the school, tell them about the services we have and sign them up for their electives. It doesn’t give you much time, but I put together a folder for you with information about the school and town. I thought we could meet at seven thirty and I could show you around.”
    “Thank you. That will be a big help.”
    “Your principal at your old school, Mr. Cruz, said you were seeking the transfer to be closer to your family. I believe he said they were in Louisville?”
    “Yes, I have a cousin in Louisville.”
    That much was true at least. It didn’t matter that she’d never met her or that she didn’t even know if her aunt was still alive. She’d been raised in a series of foster homes until she turned eighteen, foster homes filled with fighting and foster parents who only cared about when the next check was coming. Not all homes were like that-- she had heard of the good ones, but because she refused to be a victim and fought back when her foster siblings started beating on her and stood up to an abusive foster dad, she got labeled a “bad kid” whom the system couldn’t help. The result of being labeled bad was a constant string of houses where the parents were essentially absent or just turned a blind eye to a boy beating up his sister. Annie thanked God every day that she had been able to fight. Some of her foster sisters had not been so lucky. They ended up severely injured, or some ran away never to be heard from again.
    When she turned eighteen and graduated from high school with honors, she headed to Florida State University on full scholarship. She majored in chemistry, and upon graduating six years ago, she started working for the DEA after graduating from DEA Training at Quantico. She had been moved from office to office ever since. She had never looked back and had never kept in touch with anyone from her past. As far as she was concerned, her life started when she went to college. No one knew about her before then. It seemed no one cared, no one until Chrystal Sharp.
    Chrystal had sent her an email two years ago. In it she told Annie that they were cousins, that she lived in Louisville and was researching the family tree and had tracked her down. She wanted to get in touch, get to know one another, wanted to become family. That all sounded nice, but Annie knew it wasn’t the truth. If Chrystal and her mother hadn’t cared enough about her when Annie was ten, and her mother went on a weeklong bender that took them from Indianapolis to Orlando where she finally died from an overdose in an alley behind Disney World, then screw them. She had fought and won against staggering odds, and she wasn’t about to forgive and forget.
    See, what her social worker didn’t know was that Annie had heard her on the phone with her aunt while at the hospital. Her