Rehab

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Caitlin Carter seeks purpose. She needs to, or so her counselors at the VA keep telling her. Find a reason to live. Forget the past.

The past haunts her, especially because she lives in her old hometown. The place where the trouble started.

Until she finds exploring her past might help her find a future…just not the way she expects.

A powerful story about veterans and the traumas they continue to face even at home.

"Rusch's short fiction is golden."

—Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393082064

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Rehab

Rehab

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

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Rehab

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About the Author

Rehab

Not quite homeless. That’s how she described herself to herself. Not quite homeless but not quite home, either.

Caitlin Carter started her walk back from her appointment at the VA. The stately old building had been at the edge of mansion row for more than forty years, as the neighborhood slowly slipped into decline.

She barely saw it any more. She grew up only a few blocks away, and the mansions had never really been at their peak—not in her lifetime.

She wore two stocking caps over her skull, one pulled down almost to her eyebrows, and two pairs of gloves over her hands, which she still stuck in her pockets. One of the many gifts of her desert tours was a broken internal thermometer—light cold seemed too cold, harsh cold seemed warm, deadly cold felt welcoming—and she made sure she dressed like the sensible Midwestern girl she had been, back before she decided to chuck it all for the sake of some excitement or (oh, hell, let’s be honest) to tell her law-and-order father to go fuck himself.

So many issues, so little time. At least that was what she