Jerry entered her life a month after she heard of Marcus’s death. They met in a bar and fell into a fast-moving relationship as she tried to escape the gnawing pain of her loss. Lonnie got pregnant, and a short time later, they were married with little ceremony by a justice of the peace. Jerry was no Marcus, but he was moderately handsome and was willing to take responsibility for their child.
Four months later, Lonnie learned that Marcus had escaped, and was alive. When he wrote the promised letter full of hope and vowing to keep himself for her alone, she was devastated. Lonnie wept for days. She did not tell Jerry why. He assumed it was a hormonal thing with the pregnancy.
The baby miscarried the week after receiving the letter. In time, so did the marriage. Trooper work was too demanding. Especially when the wife is the trooper and the husband works a nine-to-five cubicle job on the military base, surrounded by pretty young women feeling their first years of freedom from their parents.
Lonnie discovered that Jerry had been having an affair with a nineteen-year-old Air Force office clerk named Tonya for more than a year. The girl had been fresh at the base and only two months past her eighteenth birthday when they met. By the time they ran away together, he was thirty-five and she was still not legally allowed to drink alcohol. Jerry didn’t even bother to leave a note. Instead, Tonya text-messaged Lonnie after they had crossed the border into Canada to say that she could keep all of her soon-to-be ex-husband’s stuff.
Lonnie was glad to see him go. Jerry, as the years revealed, was a conceited, self-absorbed whiner. He was exactly nothing like Marcus, who still appeared in her dreams and walked into her thoughts at random. She was still in love with her Marine.
The sound of the frozen pavement rumbled under the tires of her cruiser as she drove down the highway toward Salt Jacket and the dreaded reunion.
“How am I going to talk to him?” she muttered to herself.
She would first check out the witnesses at the pump station on Johnson Road. The glow of the pipeline’s security lights shimmered in the distance through the tops of the spruce trees that hid the pump station buildings from view. Three massive five-ton concrete barriers were placed in a pattern twenty yards in front of the gate. Drivers were forced to zigzag through the obstacles in order to reach the gate. Moving through the barriers, she lowered the window of her cruiser. A uniformed security officer stepped from the guardhouse, an MP5 submachine gun slung around his shoulder. One hand rested on the pistol grip of the weapon as he held the other out, signaling her to stop.
“Good evening, ma’am. How can I help you?”
The guard spoke with a hint of caution in his voice as he eyed her over, peering into the cruiser as if to verify it was real.
“I’m Trooper Wyatt. I need to talk to Officer Bannock about some men he saw back at the TVEC substation a few hours ago.” She handed him her AST ID card to verify who she was.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied as he took the card from her hand and studied it in the light. He wrote down her name and badge number on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. Anyone could get a badge and uniform made up, and maybe even steal a police cruiser. The pipeline was one of the nation’s most valuable assets. Terrorism was not just something they heard about on TV. It was a real threat to these guards. They double-checked everything and everyone. He handed the card back and pointed into the gated compound.
“Over there is the watch room. Bannock is on duty at the cameras right now. I’ll phone ahead and let him know you’re coming.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
The officer stepped back to the guard shack, and the electric motor of the chain-linked gate slowly pulled the barrier open. Once it was wide enough, Lonnie snaked her cruiser through a couple more concrete barriers squatting silently inside the fence. She made her way over fifty yards of open area to the small, corrugated metal building the gate guard had pointed out.
Trooper Wyatt opened the door and rose from her cruiser into the cold evening air. Her left hand habitually adjusted the flashlight and nightstick in her utility belt as she straightened. Lonnie’s right hand rested briefly on the butt of her pistol as she scanned the surrounding area. Starting from the guardhouse to the left and behind her, her eyes ran over everything she could see until they came to rest on the door of the building nearby. She turned from the vehicle and pressed the record button on the small digital recorder kept in the right breast pocket of her parka. She always recorded investigative interviews.
As she pushed the car door shut, a figure appeared in the entry of the building. Bright light from inside silhouetted the shape in dark shadow. The man appeared massive and intimidating. As he stepped forward onto the landing, his features came into view . At first they were hard, tough looking but suddenly softened and Lonnie could see a smile come across the big man’s face as she approached. He was in his early forties, stood about six feet tall, and sported a military style crew cut and a very muscular physique. His arms bulged at the seams of the blue uniform shirt. The protective vest the security officer wore strained against his thick pectorals. Lonnie thought the guy must spend every spare minute of his time lifting weights.
“Well, now,” said the officer in a flirtatious voice, holding the door open for her, “if I’m going to be interrogated
