Through a blur of tears, she saw Salem Swade standing, laughing, outside the Gold Pan. He always got a free breakfast at the Gold Pan. If she could have hugged him goodbye, she would have. She and Salem could be the town crazies together. She looked at him in the rearview mirror. Right now, a penniless, damaged man with a brokedown cabin for a home looked happier than she did. It warmed her heart that he could mine those nuggets somewhere inside himself.
In the sunlight, something shone in the passenger footwell. Ren looked down and saw the second set of keys to her room. A sign. But she kept driving and when she got to the red lights that opened the road to Highway 9, she turned back for one last look.
Breckenridge. Boom and bust.
The pretty red pines were dead pines. They broke up the green all across Colorado’s forests; millions of acres ruined by mountain pine beetles working their way through to southern Wyoming, a steady assault by a miniature army.
It was ninety degrees with a red-flag wildfire risk across Garfield County. Ren had left Gressett and Todd discussing the price of hay and driven east through Glenwood Canyon under clear skies and beating sun. Next she took a right down a wide dirt track until she reached a gate with a No Trespassing sign. It looked like any old rancher’s gate, but it had a sensor that worked with the card she had clipped to her mirror. Ren drove through and carried on a mile further, into a clearing. She jumped out of the Jeep and pulled three black cases from it, laying them on a wooden table set up close by.
The first time Ren had fired a live gun at Quantico, she thought she would hit the target. She blamed the delusion on her three older brothers who had battered a competitive streak into her from the time she was seven years old.
She walked across the hot dry earth to the target frames and pinned up four, side by side – the standard black outline of a man holding a gun in his right hand. An unarmed man could never be shot – even a paper one. Today he would represent the pervert at Hot Springs who’d taken pictures and exposed himself to a little girl earlier that morning.
Ren had one month to go before her fourth and final weapons proficiency test of the year. She had to follow scores of ninety-four, ninety, and ninety-two on the previous three. Another score over ninety was the only result that would make her happy.
She loaded the MP5 magazines and took out a Heckler and Koch MP5, a ten-millimeter fully automatic submachine gun, custom-made for the FBI. She put on ear protectors and walked up to the twenty-five-yard line. There was something satisfying in watching that red dot hover on her target. Ren blew all four heads full of holes. She fired another round, then replaced the targets with fresh ones – her paper men had lost their inky heads.
She loaded the thirteen-round magazines and took out her Bureau-issued Glock 23. She started at the twenty-five-yard line, shooting prone, kneeling and standing, then moved up to fifteen yards, seven, then three. Again, the heads were blasted.
Her shirt clung to her body in the heat. But it was the first day that week that she hadn’t regretted her new shorter hair cut. At least her neck could breathe.
The next case held a Rock River Arms M-4 rifle, her best friend in rural Colorado – deadly close-in or at several hundred yards. She loaded the magazine with two-two-threes: small, thin golden bullets; beautiful and stable until they hit the human body, then rapidly becoming unstable. Two-two-three. She couldn’t hold them without thinking: Paul Louderback.
Ren went through another course of fire with the M-4, then took the targets down, packed the guns up and put them in the back of the Jeep. Her cellphone beeped with a text message. It was Helen: Are you on your way?
Oh shit. To Denver. Two hours’ drive. Ren texted her back: Wrk stuff. So sorry. Cld we meet b4 my meetng 4 5 mins? 2pm.
Y.
Y. I’m so sorry.
OK.
By the time Ren reached Denver, violent winds had been whipped up by storm clouds rolling in from Central Plains. Hail pounded the car – deafening and relentless. A Denver afternoon could move from sunbathing to drowning and back again in twenty minutes. The previous week, the skies had dumped enough hail to trap people in their cars and flood the viaducts.
Helen had been waiting for ten minutes. Two hours and ten minutes. Ren sat holding a coffee, wondering if she really was in the humor for Helen.
‘So, how’s work?’ she said.
‘Ugh,’ said Ren.
‘Come on,’ said Helen. ‘I haven’t seen you all summer, you’ve talked to me only a handful of times. Have you been quiet … or just too busy?’
‘Working.’
‘OK, working. But what else?’
‘Look, I’m fine.’
‘How’s Glenwood?’
‘Well, I’m in the wonderful position of having a different personality clash with each of my colleagues. And it’s a small office.’ It’s Tiny.
‘Hmm.’
‘I mean, it’s fine. But it’s not Safe Streets. In Glenwood, I just get in there, do my work and leave.’
‘Are you seeing Billy?’
‘No.’
‘Are you OK with that?’
‘Not really. But I was afraid it was going to screw things up for me. And him.’
‘Have you met anyone else?’
Ren shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Have you been going out?’
‘Kind of.’
‘With who?’
‘I’ve made a few friends, so I’m hanging out with them.’
‘New friends?’ said Helen.
Ren nodded. ‘Some guys, nice guys, I met.’
‘OK.’
‘Platonic.’
‘Think about what has happened to you over the last few months,’ said Helen.
‘What do you mean? I’ve solved a lot of Jean’s cases, I’ve worked hard –’
‘Can you hear yourself?’ said Helen.
‘What? OK, I worked. I love my job. Big deal.’
‘And what about everything else? It wasn’t long ago that you left your boyfriend, you slept with a C.I., you moved locations again …’
Ren
