“They better not, ’cause I’m ready if they do.”
Shannon was going to say something, but decided it would be a waste of breath. He gave Emily a short salute and headed back to his apartment. When he got inside, he found that his spy cameras hadn’t been activated, and felt more relieved than he would’ve guessed knowing that the two Russians hadn’t bothered breaking into his apartment. He then checked his email and saw a reply from Kathleen Tirroza. She was glad to hear he hadn’t fallen off the face of the planet like she had feared, and would get back to him when she had something about either the cult leader or the Russian. At the bottom of the email she included a photo of herself standing next to a good- looking guy about ten years older than her, an engagement ring prominently displayed on her finger as she smiled her typical cat-ate-the-canary smile. The guy next to her had a hardness about his face, and Shannon knew instinctively he was a cop. The tagline added to the bottom of the photo was:
He knew she was joking about the tagline. They had developed a closeness during the four months they’d worked together, but it was strictly a big brother-little sister type relationship. Tirroza was stunningly beautiful, but this followed the aftermath of Charlie Winters. He’d just been released from the hospital, and Susan had already filed for divorce and had moved to God knows where. He was too messed up emotionally to get involved with anyone. He also still had too many unresolved feelings about Susan. In the emotional state he was in, the only thing he wanted to do was stay busy and work twenty-four hours a day if possible, and many times he and Tirroza did just that. When they were done, he had helped her tie Winters and his cousin, Herbert, to over a hundred other murders across the country. After that, he officially went on disability and moved out to Boulder. He spent the next eight months trying to work out his feelings about Susan, and ended up realizing that even with the hell Winters had put them through he still loved her as much as he ever did. Fortunately she must’ve come to the same conclusion about him because around that time she visited him in Boulder and never left.
Shannon sent Tirroza a reply that it would take something momentous like her getting married for him to take a trip back to Boston, and that he expected the invitation was already in the mail. After that he reset the spy cameras and left.
As he drove back to the Boulderado he kept thinking of the messages Pauline Cousins had left him. There was something about the tone of her voice that bothered him, especially her last message. Calm, but resigned. It reminded him of a jumper he’d once tried to talk down while he was on the force. He pulled over to the side of the road and tried Pauline Cousins again at her motel. When he still got no answer, he got back on the road, swung a left at the next light and drove towards Baseline Reservoir. The moon was in a waxing crescent, and with the area mostly undeveloped with no streetlights, he almost missed the Chevy Impala parked a few hundred yards from True Light’s compound. He pulled over, took a slim jim from his trunk and made his way quickly back to the Chevy. Seconds later he had the door unlocked and was checking the glove compartment. He found paperwork there showing that Pauline Cousins had rented the car. Dropping the slim jim back in his trunk, he got a flashlight, and started towards True Light’s compound in as fast a run as his bruised ribs allowed.
The flashlight caught her face about twenty feet from True Light’s main gate. She stared wide-eyed at Shannon, the muscles tight along her mouth and jaw. Shannon lowered the flashlight and saw the knuckles on her hand bone white as she gripped a handgun. From the size and shape of it, he guessed it was a.38 caliber snub nose; more than powerful enough to knock her over if she tried firing it.
As calmly as he could, he asked her to give him the gun, and held his hand out to her, palm up. Indecision froze her, then she took a step away. “I’m getting Melissa out of there,” she said, her voice cracking, barely above a whisper.
Shannon looked from her to the main gate. He knew what she was trying to work up the courage for: buzz the main gate until someone came out and then use the gun to force her way in. “You need to give me more time to do things my way,” he said.
She didn’t bother to respond-just stared straight at him, her lips pressed hard enough together to make them as bloodless as her knuckles.
“It won’t work. You’re only going to get yourself killed, maybe a couple of other people along the way.”
“It will work,” she said. “It has to.” In the glow of his flashlight he saw her swallow hard, saw the tenseness in her face and shoulders. Her gun arm jerked in kind of a nervous twitch and the thought flashed through his mind of her accidentally pulling the trigger and blowing off one of her toes, maybe even one of his. His own voice tightened as he told her again to hand him the gun, that he would get to Melissa without having to do it this way.
“How?” she asked. “They won’t even let the police see her. And look at you. They did that to you yesterday, didn’t they?”
“They did,” he admitted. “You know as well as I do there’s something very wrong about this place. But I’m going to find a crack into it, and I’m going to speak to Melissa. I promise you that.”
“How can you possibly promise me something like that? I tried calling you today and couldn’t even get a hold of you.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I was out of state today working on another case.” He smiled good-naturedly at her. “I do have good instincts sometimes. I knew you were here, didn’t I?”
The resolve bled out of her as she thought about that. Shannon saw the change in her eyes, stepped forward, and gently took the gun from her hand. He was right; it was a.38 snub nose. He cracked open the cylinder and dropped the bullets into his hand.
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“I asked around and found a pawnshop in Denver that was willing to sell it to me.”
He grimly studied one of the bullets. It was a hollow point. She would’ve done a lot of damage if she had gotten in there. He dropped the bullets into his pants pocket.
“Let’s get back to your car,” Shannon said as he lightly held onto her arm, both supporting and guiding her.
“They could be doing anything to Melissa in there,” she said, half under her breath. “I can’t feel a connection to her anymore. I have no idea if she’s even still alive.”
Something furry and thin, maybe a foot and a half long, darted past their feet. Shannon flashed his light on it as it scuttled away into some underbrush, and saw from its tail and the shape of its head that it was a weasel.
“Let’s keep the faith that she’s okay,” he said to her. “And I have someone in the FBI helping me with this. We’re going to get to Melissa. Until then, maybe you should go back to Portland and be with your husband.”
“If I went back home now I’d kill him. I can’t believe I let him bully me for six months not to do anything. No, I’m staying in Boulder until I see Melissa.”
They arrived back to her car. Shannon watched as she got into the driver’s seat. “You going to be okay driving back?” he asked. She nodded, her face bloodless and frail. “I’ll hold onto the gun for now,” Shannon told her.
He went back to his car, reloaded the.38 and hid it under his spare tire, then followed Pauline Cousins down Baseline until she turned onto 28th Street. Satisfied that she’d make it to her motel in one piece, he headed back to the Boulderado Hotel. He checked the dashboard clock, and saw that somehow he was going to be on time.
Susan was waiting for him in their room. The tee shirt and cutoff jeans she wore accentuated all the wonderful curves of her small, slender body. She flashed him a dazzling smile as she gave him a hard embrace and even harder kiss. Stepping back, she placed her palms lightly on his face and studied him. “Your swelling’s gone down,” she said, her smile more of a playful kind. “You almost look presentable. Have an eventful day?”
“Thanks, and yeah, I did,” he said laughing. “Damn, it’s good to see you.” He picked her up, spun her around in the air several times, kissing her again on the mouth, then on the neck and earlobe. Dropping her to the floor, he leaned back in and sniffed her hair.
“You haven’t been smoking pot, have you?” he asked.
Her smile changed from playful to something wry. “Of course not, my darling. Since when in all the years you’ve known me have I ever smoked pot?”
He made a
“We could do that. I was kind of in the mood for pizza, though.”
“Pizza it is, then,” Shannon said.
They were out of the room and walking down the hallway when it hit him what that odor was. Their eyes met as he turned to her, Susan still grinning her Cheshire-cat grin.
