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By Root 1400 0

back into the house’s main room. Through the open door to the kitchen he could hear the clink of dishes and the low drone of the television. He spotted the sunscreen on the mantel above the room’s gigantic sandstone fireplace. The fireplace was dark and empty now, but winter wasn’t far off. Mitchell looked forward to those days, when there wasn’t much work to do outside. He would sit by the fire, mending a saddle, while Davis set up his computer on the coffee table and worked on his newest book. He had published two romantic Western novels with a small California publisher, and was working on his third. They weren’t great literature, but they had what Davis liked to call hot bull-on-bull action. All Mitchell knew was that, when he read the unbound pages sitting there on the floor, it wasn’t always the roaring fire that made him sweat.

The sound of clanking dishes floating through the kitchen door ceased. A second later came the sound of Davis’s voice, not loud, but hard and sharp.

“Mitchell, get in here.”

Had a prairie rattler gotten into the house? It wouldn’t be the first time. Mitchell dropped the sunscreen and covered the distance to the kitchen in long, swift strides.

Davis stood by the counter, a dish towel in his hands. “Look,” he said.

Mitchell followed his gaze. Anna Ferraro’s voice trilled over video showing a half-constructed building. Given the river and the tall buildings in the background, it had to be near downtown Denver. Mitchell drew closer.

“… that work on the Steel Cathedral is proceeding ahead of schedule. With miles of reinforced girders and tempered glass, it will be one of the largest enclosed spaces in the state of Colorado when it opens next year. As you can see, in this footage taken yesterday, the building—which is meant to mirror the Rocky Mountains—is beginning to take shape. And, like a mountain, its designers are hoping that the Steel Cathedral will help bring people closer to—”

“There,” Davis said. “There he is again.”

The camera pulled back, revealing a park near the construction site. The park was nearly empty: a woman pushing a baby stroller, a pair of rollerbladers, that was it.

No, there was one other figure. He was tall, clad all in black with a shapeless hat on his head. There was nothing remarkable about him, save for the heavy attire on a fine day. Then, almost as if he sensed the camera, the man turned around.

Mitchell drew in a sharp breath.

It can’t be him. Damn it, he doesn’t look the same at all.

But despite the changes, there could be no doubt about it. The man in black was Travis Wilder.

The video ended, and Anna Ferraro’s blankly smiling face filled the screen again. Mitchell switched off the TV and looked up. Davis’s expression was unusually grim.

“If we saw this and recognized him, then you have to bet others in town did as well.”

Mitchell sighed. Davis didn’t need to say any more. If Duratek had come to their ranch asking about Travis, then they would be asking others as well. Travis was in danger, but this was out of their league. They needed help, and there was only one place Mitchell knew to get it.

“Call the sheriff,” he said, and Davis reached for the phone.

22.

“Good morning, Mitchell,” Castle County Sheriff’s Deputy Jacine Fidelia Windom said into the chunky black receiver.

As always she spoke with crisp inflection. Jace did everything in her life with precision. Her honey-brown hair was cut in a short, even line just above her shoulders, and her khaki uniform was as neat and sharp-creased as a newly unfolded road map. Even her features had a preciseness about them: small but not delicate, regularly spaced in the oval of her face.

The main room of the county sheriff’s building was quiet. Jace had come in early to catch up on paperwork. There was something satisfying about the act of stamping papers, sorting copies into appropriate piles, and filing each in the exact place it belonged. Where there was order there was reason, comfort, and safety; without it the world would be an endless, churning ocean of chaos.

When she came in, she had