The elevator doors opened in slow motion. Amanda got inside, pressed the button for the fifth floor.
The doors opened in a few seconds. She found the room at the very end of the hall, took a deep breath, and knocked.
“Room ser vice,” she said curtly, her anger still sharp.
No answer.
Amanda knocked again. “Room ser vice,” she said, a little louder. “Mr. Forester?”
Nothing.
“Jerry, open the damn door.”
Still nothing. Amanda slipped the card into the slot. The two lights at the top of the lock came on, both red, then green.
I shouldn’t go in, she thought to herself, placing her hand on the handle. She pushed anyway.
“Jerry?” she said. The light was on. “Why are you—” She stopped in mid-sentence. Her lover sat in the chair across from the door, a good portion of his mouth and head blown away by a bullet from the old-school.357 Magnum that sat on the floor below his open hand.
4
Charlie Dean pulled the strap of his bag over his shoulder and stepped out of the plane, ambling down to the concrete runway. A narrow man with thinning hair near the terminal bent toward Dean as he approached.
“Mr. Dean?”
“I’m Charlie Dean.”
“Red Sleeth.” The man stuck his hand out. “How are you?”
“When your girl said there would be a driver waiting, I didn’t expect it to be the guide himself,” said Dean.
“We’re a one-man operation,” replied Sleeth. “One man, one woman — the girl was my wife. I don’t think she’d be of-fended,” added Sleeth, reaching for the bag.
Dean insisted on carry ing it himself. He followed Sleeth as he walked toward a parking lot on the side of the terminal.
“I’m glad you had an opening,” said Dean. “I know this was kind of last-minute.”
“Happy to have you. Customer who canceled will be happy, too. We refund his deposit if we find someone else to take the slot.”
Sleeth’s battered Ford Bronco looked a few years older than the nearby mountains. Dean paused a few feet from the vehicle and looked around. The sun had already set, but he could see the tall shadows in the distance. It was beautiful country; you stood in a parking lot and thought you were at the edge of the world.
“Never been to Montana, have you, Mr. Dean?”
“No, sir. Beautiful land.” Charlie swung back to the truck.
“Yes, it is,” said Sleeth. “Ready to get yourself a mountain lion?”
“Ready.”
“Good. It’ll be the greatest experience of your life. There’s nothing as exciting as hunting a mountain lion. Everything else you’ve ever done will pale in comparison.” Dean knew that wasn’t true but smiled anyway.
5
During the sixty seconds immediately after she saw her lover’s dead body, Amanda Rauci acted like the trained Secret Service agent she was. Unholstering her pistol, she checked the rest of the room and made sure there were no intruders.
She then went to him, squatting just close enough to make sure he was dead.
There was no question. Blood, skull, and brain material from the gunshot’s exit wound had splattered on the curtain behind him. The back of the seat and floor were covered with thick red blood.
As Amanda straightened, the restraint imposed by the Ser vice training began to slip away. She felt many things: Shock and grief and fear. Panic. Her heart raced.
Why would he do this?
Why didn’t I realize he was suicidal?
Is it my fault?
Is it really suicide? How can that be?
His eyes gaped at her, as if they were accusing her of something.
I have to get away, she thought, and for the next sixty seconds the trained Secret Service agent shared the body of a panicking, guilt-stricken woman. She backed from the room, carefully making sure not to touch anything. She took a hand-kerchief from her pocket, opened the door, closed the door, walked swiftly down the hall toward the elevator, then came back and ducked into the stairway instead. Amanda descended all the way to the bottom floor, where the stairwell opened to the outside. She turned and pushed the crash bar with the side of her hip, then walked around to her car.
Amanda didn’t begin to cry until she was almost to her hotel. The tears slipped down her cheeks in ones and twos.
Then, as she waited to turn into the parking lot, they burst from her eyes in a steady downpour.
The driver behind her laid on the horn. Startled, Amanda went straight instead of turning, accelerating and then hitting her brake to pull into the lot of a Friendly’s restaurant. She left the car running but leaned her head on the wheel to weep.
Why did he kill himself? Why? Why?
Why did he have her wait for him?
Why? Why?
And why had she snuck away, as if she were guilty of something? As if she were the killer?
She couldn’t leave him like that. She should call the police.
But they’d want to know why she was there. And then everyone would know why she was there. It would be one more thing that would hurt his sons.
And the police would want to know why she didn’t report it in the first place. They’d want to know why she let herself in and then left. It would look like she was a murderer.
She could go back, she thought. Do it all over. No one had seen her.
She should do that for him. Not let him lie there for hours until he was found.
Amanda did her best to dry her tears. She decided she would go back, get into the room, and make the call. Everything would be more or less as it had really happened—
except she wouldn’t mention that she had left.
And she’d put the keys back, the room key and the car key. She’d completely forgotten about them.
Her resolve melted when she saw two police cars in front of the hotel, their red lights tearing up the night.
Now what should she do?
She looked back at the road just in time to see a policeman flagging her down. She slammed on the brake and jerked to a stop right in front of him.
Were they looking for her? Did they suspect her?
God, no one would believe her if she told the truth.
She hadn’t panicked.
Yes. Yes, she had.
Amanda reached to roll down her window, waiting for the inevitable question, waiting for everything that
