What the hell?
“Carolyn Potter is one of my authors. I told both of you we were coming. Besides, Mona brought the whiskey up to my room. She opened the bottle. She poured the drinks. I didn’t feed her anything.” It hit him like a stone. “What do you mean, little girl?”
“That little girl turned sixteen the day after Thanksgiving. If I were you, I wouldn’t be here when her daddy gets back.” She tossed her head toward the back bar, toward a big framed picture of a marine staff sergeant holding up the head of a multi-tipped buck, probably the mountain warfare instructor the old man across the street had referred to.
“Jesus!” His soft whisper scratched his suddenly very dry throat.
The picture on the wall turned fuzzy.
He braced both hands against the bar and struggled not to tumble to the floor. He slid sideways onto a barstool and took several deep breaths. His dizziness passed and he looked back at the photo. “He was a mountain warfare instructor?”
“You know my husband?”
“I bought his rifle from across the street. I’m a former marine myself. That’s where I met John Potter.” He thought about what to say. “Look, I thought she was much older. If I’d known . . .” Kirby had no desire to wrestle with this bad-ass marine.
“Well, he’ll be back tomorrow. If I were you . . .”
IMPOSSIBLE.
How could Mona be so young?
The lights of Bridgeport disappeared behind them as he rounded a curve, driving toward the pass.
Carolyn turned off the makeup light and handed him a CD. He plugged it into the player.
Manheim Steamroller.
Fine.
How could his luck have turned so suddenly sour?
“You barely touched your dinner.” Carolyn sounded like she was speaking from some remote outpost on an old walkie-talkie.
“Excuse me?” He turned down the volume on the CD player and turned up Sonora Pass Highway, speeding up the grade toward the base.
“I said, you hardly touched your dinner. Don’t you like our beef?”
“Oh.” He didn't care to talk about it, thinking about that little girl. “It was fine. I started thinking about something else. You know how it goes.”
He needed to get back on track, his reason for driving all the way up to this miserable wilderness. “How was your lobster?”
“Wonderful. I guess the trout was good too. Jason ate his whole dinner.”
“That trout must have weighed two pounds. I probably would have had it stuffed and mounted, hang it behind my desk at the office.”
Ha, ha. Stupid!
He slowed passing the base, thick clouds dipping into his headlights. He glanced back.
The kid had rolled into a ball, sleeping.
She squirmed and turned toward him. “Is something bothering you?”
“Nice of you to notice.” He slowed for the wide turn at the top of Pickle Meadow and started up the steep grade toward the summit. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.”
“Oh?” She actually sounded interested.
“I’ve been doing some revamping at Kirby Publications and things have gotten a little overextended. It’s only temporary, of course.” Great, he finally got that seed planted and it sounded okay, no need to push.
Not yet.
“Revamping?”
Perfect.
Unbelievable.
“We’re starting a new line of books. I hired another editor to help out and I’ve reorganized the creative department. I even hired another printer.” The magazine section still owed three issues to their last printer and the company bookkeeper, Esther Greenberg, had been asking questions about the money she’d put into the operations account? Where had that money gone?
Jesus.
He needed to fire that witch.
“Are you moving away from children’s books?”
“No, no, no. Of course not. We’re now moving forward in three areas, fiction, poetry and non-fiction, you know, how-to books for middle school.” Kirby slowed to a crawl and turned on his fog lights. Dense fog had reduced visibility to two feet in front of his car. “Thank you for salting the road.”
“Our sheriff who recommended it. I told him you were coming up. They’re all looking forward to meeting you.”
Stupid.
He should never have changed the subject. He needed to get back on track. “We’ve been researching the young adult market. We need to expand or we start losing shelf space.”
What a crock.
“How many new authors have you published?” She'd gotten ahead of him.
Not good.
“Listen, I need to concentrate on my driving.” Like magic, the Rolls slumped off the shoulder and scraped against a rock. Kirby stopped, got out into frozen fog and looked at the damage. He got back in, nice and warm. “Not too bad.” He put it in reverse and backed away slowly. Metal ground rock getting back onto pavement. He shifted into low gear and drove slowly around a tight curve, continuing their climb into dense fog.
“What happened?” The kid was awake now, leaning through the opening between the seats.
Carolyn said, “Put your seatbelt on, honey.”
The kid slid back and buckled up. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Kirby couldn’t see past two feet, leaning forward, eyes sore from being so wide open. “Just a little scrape.”
The road flattened, nearing the summit where giant boulders loomed in dense clouds on both sides of the road.
Finally.
He turned off the highway and followed the well paved road down through overhanging trees, easier to see, fog thinning. They entered the village on a recently cleared road.
Clouds here formed a low cover above River Road, a tunnel lit only by his headlights. Kirby put it into drive and stepped on the gas.
They reached the end of River Road quickly, boulders stacked across were easy to see. “Hard to miss your place.” He turned up Carolyn’s driveway, rounded the curve and crossed the rise. He parked in front of her steps and got out, eager to help, too late again.
She opened the back door, unbuckled the kid and picked him up. His head dropped onto
