Robert parked his truck in front of the modernized log cabin where Lucille had brought Katie, not quite ready to go in. The house sat on several acres in Taos Canyon, at the crest of a hill that dropped off into a narrow stream. He watched two elk drink from the water. The intensity of the night’s events, the morning’s pursuit, and the blindsiding revelation called Janeal left his head foggy. He was only slightly relieved that Janeal had not taken the Kia in pursuit of Katie.
He was still angry at Janeal, and why? Was any of what Sanso had engineered her fault? Even if it wasn’t, this woman he had once loved so much had lied to him outright, coming in that dyed-hair disguise yesterday and staring at him forever. Maybe she was still lying. He had no way to know for sure.
Fifteen years. Gone. What had she been doing this whole time? Whatever it was had aged her. Not physically, but some aspect of her personality had turned ugly. He thought back to the DEA’s interview with Janice: the tone of her voice, her posture, the way she dodged questions and moved her hands as if they were working on some magic trick.
Would he take those years back if someone offered them to him? And if Janeal could be a part of them, would he want her to be?
Kind of a dumb question right now. Robert didn’t trust her.
Also, despite the shock of rediscovering Janeal, Robert’s mind kept going to Katie. He pictured her enduring the earliest days of her burns alone, and he wished he had been there with her. For some reason he found that he could easily wish back those fifteen years. Not so she would have to go through it all again, but so she wouldn’t have to go through all of it with people who never knew her in any other condition.
All of the energies he had once poured into hunting Sanso down had morphed overnight into an equally driving desire to protect Katie and give her the kind of secure life she deserved. Not because she was incapable or somehow lacking, but because . . .
Just because. Just because he could, and he wanted to. Because it would be a more rewarding way to spend his life than the way he’d spent the last decade and a half. This reality seemed especially profound right now, with Sanso gone again, having slipped through his fingers twice. The possibility that he might stand in this same situation at age forty-nine held no appeal.
He recalled Katie standing in front of the Origins of Fire sculpture with her hands raised to feel the heat, smiling. Self-confident and happy to be with him.
Janeal didn’t need that kind of security from any relationship. He knew this because, now that he thought about it, that had always been the truth. Maybe that was what had divided his own heart. She could protect herself with this plan or that one, never needing anything from anyone beyond a promise to obediently play their part in her production.
Robert stepped out of his truck and entered the cabin. Lucille greeted him in the kitchen and showed him around. In spite of her protests, Katie was sleeping. Stubborn as she was, Lucille said, she knew the value of rest.
The modest three-bedroom home was owned by a grandmother who usually would be here to cluck over the Hope House staffers, Lucille explained, but she’d gone back to California to visit a grandbaby for a couple weeks.
Lucille left within minutes of Robert’s arrival and returned to the halfway house, where her help would be needed in Katie’s absence.
When she was gone he called Harlan, and then the agent leading the investigation into Sanso’s activities of the previous night, answering what questions hadn’t already been addressed. Around two o’clock he wandered back into the kitchen, planning to find some coffee to brew and then go look in on Katie.
“It was sweet of you to come,” she said from the hallway. He turned to look at her and smiled.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a guy like that,” he teased. She wore pajama bottoms and a cotton T-shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves that exposed the scars on her forearms, dark ridges of tissue mixed with pale seams like a topography map. Robert crossed the room, took her by the hands, and kissed her on the cheek.
She withdrew and tugged at her sleeves with one hand, head down. “I’ll make some coffee.”
“Wait.” He kept hold of her fingers and pulled her back to him, encircling her in a secure hug. He held her head against his shoulder gently until he felt her shoulders relax. When he dropped his hand to her waist, she stayed there.
They didn’t say anything for several seconds.
“You sleep okay?” he finally asked.
She nodded. “You could probably use some sleep yourself.”
“I’ll get to it.”
“I never asked you how long you plan to stay,” she said as she went to a cupboard and reached up for a wide coffee can sitting right at the front.
“It depends,” he said. The prospect of his four-hundred-mile drive back to El Paso made him feel tired. She scooped grounds into a paper filter, her back turned to him, and didn’t say anything. Katie filled the coffeepot with water, then turned it on, and they listened to the machine start to suck up the liquid.
“But I’ve been thinking,” Robert said.
Katie turned around, her arms tucked behind her as she leaned into the counter. “About?”
“About what I really ought to do next.”
“Do you mean like ‘Should I eat a sandwich or soup for lunch?’ or like ‘How should I spend the next forty years of my life?’”
He laughed. “I was thinking about my job.”
“You’ve built quite a career for yourself.”
“It’s not quite what I expected.”
She waited for him to explain.
“I’m starting to think the only reason I joined the DEA was to find Sanso.”
“Ah.”
“But we’re locked in this cycle that is going to repeat itself.”
“I would think in all this time you have done far more than be frustrated by the career of one criminal.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” she teased, going to a cabinet for mugs. “What’s so bad about all this great work you’ve done?”
“The fact that I’ve done it all out of anger.”
The answer surprised him; it was the first time he’d thought of it consciously in those terms. He debated whether to try to take it back as he watched Katie tip her head slightly and set the mugs on the counter.
“What are you angry about?”
Her ability to draw truth out of him made him uncomfortable. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “Well, Dr. Morgon, I’m angry about the ATM machine that chewed up my bank card last week, and the price I have to pay to fill up my gas-eating truck, and the fact that I can’t get my cell phone company to straighten out some charges . . .”
He stopped at Katie’s expression, which was disappointed. When he didn’t finish, she said, “I see.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“But I want to.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Before you do, I should tell you—”
“No, let me spit it out.” He raced ahead before he lost this opportunity to speak honestly with someone who would understand him like no one else could. “Everything I did, I did because I wanted justice against Sanso. I did it because of the satisfaction I thought I would feel when he finally went down. I did it because I was angry, and that was all the fuel I needed to keep me going. Anger’s like nitro in a street racer. There’s a lot of power in it, enough to keep you going for a long time. But when it burns out—what’s next? Where do you go after that kind of a rush?”
The pot gurgled.
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Katie? Were you ever angry about what he did to us?”
“Of course I was.”
“But you never were the street-racer type, angry like Janeal and I could get sometimes.”
Katie turned toward the coffeemaker and fiddled with the handle of the carafe.
Robert continued, “I never expected this . . . this complete dissatisfaction with getting the thing I wanted so much, and then losing it right away. Twice! I keep thinking, That’s it? This is what I’ve spent my life aiming for? This pursuit that might never end and certainly won’t matter if it does? ”
Katie shrugged. “I don’t think I have a magic answer for you.”
“Maybe it’s not magic, but you know something I don’t.”
Katie snapped back to face him. “Robert, the truth is—”
“No, wait. Hear me out. I watch you with these women at Hope House and it's so clear. You have something so few people have. You’ve lost everything that anyone values—your family, your home, your sight—but you still keep giving and giving. You seem happy! But they keep taking. Don’t you feel robbed?”
“Not at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am happy. What I’m doing isn’t about me, Robert. It never was. It's about these women. They’ve lost so much more than I ever have.”
“That seems impossible.”
“It’s true.”
“What is?”
“When we quit trying to meet our own needs, we find more satisfaction in meeting the needs of others. God shows us how much we have to offer the world, and how unimportant our own desires are.”
“I’d say you’ve mastered that.”
“If you knew the truth . . . I work in a comfortable house with a small number of women. It doesn’t take a saint.”
Robert moved across the kitchen to pour the coffee. “I like your brand of sainthood.” He lifted the carafe and poured the steaming liquid into cups. “It’s funny that you and I both ended up working on the drug problem in such different ways.”
She nodded and he risked an idea without looking at her.
“Maybe I could see myself doing something different from now on. Maybe here in New Mexico. With you.”
Katie blushed. “I think you would miss your old life. It can get lonely in the mountains, stuck in a house with a bunch of loopy women.”
He held her cup and lifted her hand to place her fingers on the handle, then paused, studying her face. Her beautiful, strong face. “Maybe taking that loneliness off your shoulders is something I could do for you. My first small act of selflessness.” Not that it would be a huge sacrifice. He bent and kissed her on the mouth, and when she put her fingertips to his jaw, he let himself linger.
For just a second this time, though in his mind he decided that he never, ever wanted to leave her.
Her eyes were glassy when he pulled away.
“I want what you have, Katie. You are . . . you are the brightest example I’ve ever seen of a life that matters. How did you ever get to this point, after all that you’ve been through?”
Katie sighed and accepted her cup from Robert, letting the steam caress her nose.
“A part of me had to die first.”
The answer confused Robert. “You mean that metaphorically.”
She took a sip of the scalding drink.
“Not exactly.”
“Tell me more.”
Katie frowned and touched the ring on her right hand. “We were together in the fire. Janeal and I.”
“Janeal was there?” Janeal’s shopworn but flawless complexion sprang to his mind. The story she had told about Sanso abducting her before Katie’s death heaped more questions on the pile. He wondered if he should disclose that Janeal was alive. “You mentioned Janeal the other night. What did you mean when you said she ‘tried’? She tried to help you get out?”
“In her own way. I don’t know what I meant to say.”
“What happened? Did she leave you there?”
“No! No. But she couldn’t . . .”
Her struggle was so apparent in her flustered shake of the head that he would have let it go if not for the hope that she was ready to talk. All the anger that had driven him to hunt Sanso down had burned out, and he felt stalled on the side of the road in the middle of the desert. Katie, he believed, was the only car that could stop and help him. Maybe they could help each other.
“Katie. Janeal is alive.”
Katie set her coffee on the counter. “I know,” she said.
“You know?” Robert sloshed some of his coffee onto the floor. “When did you . . . Did you always know Janice was . . . When were you going to tell me?”
“There’s so much we haven’t had time to talk about.” Katie shook her head.
“I talked with her. I’m so ticked. Why would she go to all the trouble of a disguise, and why is Sanso after her? I mean here, now, after all this time?”
Katie’s hands dropped to her sides, and her lips parted. Robert tried to decipher her expression—anxiety?
“Maybe the three of us should sit down and talk,” she said. It sounded lame once it was out there, hanging in the air in front of Katie’s blank eyes.
“Robert, there’s something I need to explain.”