“Just hang a right here and go the back roads the last couple blocks.”
Wolf followed her orders, a minute later coming up on her Jeep, still parked on the side of Mary Ellen Dimitri’s house. He pulled up to her driver’s door and stopped.
She was out of his vehicle before he’d come to a complete halt, and then into her Jeep in a flash. She started up, cranked the wheel, and spit dirt as she accelerated around him and back the way they’d come.
Two deputies sitting inside a cruiser parked along the street stared out the windows in muted awe.
Wolf gave a thumbs up, sitting with the engine idling. What could possibly have spooked her so bad? It had to be something to do with her father.
He slammed the accelerator, fishtailing a one-eighty degree turn and following the stream of dust.
He followed down Main, speeding back through town, past the casino, and out a dirt county road that shot left up the eastern side of the valley floor. The engine howled as he passed a row of cows munching grass along a barbed wire fence. When he reached a dirt straightaway he pressed the accelerator harder, the vibration of the cab humming.
The sun had dropped behind the mountains in his rearview and the dust trail clung low to the ground over the road. He sneezed and coughed, feeling like he’d inhaled pepper, as the dust billowed through his vents. He hung back a bit, confident he wouldn’t lose her now that he’d caught her trail.
Five minutes later the road broke into a wall of trees, the light dipping even more.
A short while later the trees opened up and he passed a sprawling yard that stretched up to a modern house surrounded by a white wraparound porch. His headlights illuminated the dust trail leading straight ahead, so he followed. A bend came up quick and he let off the gas.
Halfway through the turn he jammed the brakes and slid to a stop. Ahead, Deputy Cain’s vehicle was stopped and angled at forty-five degrees, her headlights illuminating a form shrouded in dust in the middle of the road.
Wolf stepped out into the choking air and shut his door.
"Who's that?" a male’s voice came from the center of the road.
Deputy Cain stood at the edge of her headlight stream, ignoring Wolf’s arrival as she approached the man with both hands up, palms facing him.
“He’s a friend,” she said. “Dad, please. Put down the gun.”
The dust rolled into the trees, revealing her father, naked save a pair of white briefs and sandals. He was tall and gaunt, ghostly white in the blazing lights, and he was holding a shotgun.
Wolf put his hand on his own gun, but saw Deputy Cain shaking her head, her eyes wide and pleading for him to stand back.
Wolf put his own hands up, showing her. But when he looked back at her father, his heart lurched, because the double-barrel was pointed straight at him.
“I said who’s that?”
“Dad, that's my boss. That's the sheriff."
Her father lowered the gun and put a hand up over his eyes to peer at him. “I can’t see him.”
A house stood on Wolf’s left, tucked inside the trees. Two elderly people were peering out the window, ducking low.
"Forget him. Listen, Dad, what are you doing? Why do you have a shotgun?"
Her father seemed preoccupied with something on the ground now.
Wolf stepped quietly to the side, coming up on Cain’s nine o’clock and into the edge of the headlight cone.
Her father pointed his shotgun at the dirt, tucking the stock into his armpit. Wolf tensed, every fiber in his being wanting to pull his Glock and start yelling, but her father aimed toward the other side of the road. Anything ricocheting would have hit the trees opposite the elderly couples’ house. Wolf opted to stay silent, giving the situation to Cain.
The silence seemed to intensify before the expected blast, but it never came. Instead, her father lowered the gun and looked up at his daughter like he’d just awakened from a deep sleep.
"Honey, what are you doing here?"
Cain's chest heaved as she clenched her mouth shut, then took a breath. "Dad, please come here."
Her father's face slowly turned to Wolf. The shotgun, still aimed at the ground, followed. "Ah, Jonathan," he said, "You're looking dapper tonight. Come. Come on in, boy."
That was different.
"You're looking very nice.” He held the shotgun in the crook of his arm. "Tell me. Where are you taking my daughter tonight?”
Wolf cleared his throat. “Um…I'm..."
“Speak up, boy. You gotta have confidence. Didn’t your father ever teach you that?”
Wolf looked at Cain, getting no ideas from her, he cleared his throat again.
“You're not just going to go to the dance, are you? Surely you're going to take my daughter out to dinner. Show her a good time on the town first, right?"
"Yes,” Wolf said. “We're going to the steakhouse, sir."
“Which one? Buck’s or Green Acres?”
“Buck’s, sir.”
Her father’s face lit. “Fancy. How are you paying for that? Do you work?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where at?”
Wolf looked at Deputy Cain. She stared back, resignation in her eyes.
Wolf remembered how she’d grown up in Summit County. The man was obviously living sometime in the past. “I’m on the ski patrol…in Breckenridge.”
“A little young for that, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Wolf said, offering no more explanation.
Her father looked at him skeptically, then smiled. “What else? Just dinner?
"No, sir. There is a community play at the Playhouse...it's an improv night that I’m taking her to.” Wolf drew on a high school memory of his and Sarah’s senior prom.
Her father laughed heartily. "I've seen the improv show there before. It's funny. You guys will love it." His face darkened and he gripped the shotgun, broke open the barrel just enough to check the shells inside, and show them, then snapped it shut again. "Then you'll have her home by 11, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"If you harm my girl in any way..." He pointed a finger
