Wilde wouldn’t be easy to kill. River knew that and knew it well. What he needed was a plan where Wilde would never see it coming, never have a chance to react, and in fact wouldn’t even know it happened. He’d be alive one second and dead the next.
Something that fast meant a bullet to the brain.
It also meant River couldn’t miss.
He’d have to be close.
As he drove back to Denver with January at his side, the mountain topography was every bit as spectacular as he remembered. He really needed to get up here more.
January put her hand on his knee.
“You’re thinking about something,” she said.
He was.
He was indeed.
“I have to do something tonight,” he said.
“What?”
“Something that you’re not going to be involved in.”
“What if I want to be?”
He shook his head.
“Sorry, not this time.”
“That’s not fair.”
He tossed his hair and looked at her sideways, then gave her a peck on the lips. “Tomorrow, we’re leaving Denver.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I have some money stashed away. It’s more than enough to give us time to think.”
“Think about what?”
“About getting normal,” he said.
She laughed.
“Normal is boring.”
“I’m not talking about totally normal,” he said. “Just enough that we don’t have to keep looking over our shoulder all the time.”
The Rocky Mountain scenery rolled by, seriously riveting. When they got to the outskirts of Denver, River didn’t go home. Instead he turned south on Santa Fe.
“Where we going?”
“A graveyard.”
“Are you serious?”
Yes.
He was.
“Why, who’s there?”
“No one, yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it won’t officially be a graveyard until tonight,” he said.
She ran her fingers through his hair.
“You couldn’t get normal if your life depended on it.”
He smiled.
“You’re probably right.”
“There ain’t no p
127
From the warehouse, Wilde checked the BNSF office to see if Alabama had shown up there, which she hadn’t. When he got back to the office, she wasn’t there either. He paced next to the windows with a cigarette for all of one minute before the door opened.
London stepped in.
Her face was beautiful but serious.
She put a piece of paper on his desk.
“That’s the original map,” she said.
Wilde picked it up.
Compared to the two he’d seen previously this one really did look authentic. It had dirt smudges on it, reddish in color, not indigenous to Colorado.
“How’d you get it away from Bluetone?”
The woman lowered her eyes.
“I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to hate me,” she said. “I had it all along.”
The words slowly sunk in.
“Are you telling me you had this last night when we were busy giving the guy a fake?”
Her eyes met his briefly then darted away.
“Yes.”
Wilde pounded his fist on the desk.
“That little trick may have cost Alexa Blank her life.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why it’s here now.”
Wilde looked at her in disbelief.
“Is this really the original?”
“Yes,” she said. “No more tricks.”
Wilde studied it again.
“It’s time for you to leave,” he said.
“Wilde-”
“I’ll handle it from here.”
“But-”
“Go! Do it now before I say something I’d rather not.”
She gave him a short look, then walked out the door and closed it gently behind her. Wilde set a pack of matches on fire and lit a cigarette from the flames. From the window he watched London disappear down the street.
128
