Denver, Colorado
OCTOBER 27
A lot of things had changed since Mason left Arizona. He’d changed. He no longer cared about his professional cap, let alone how many feathers it had. He could effectively do his job in the shadow of the Rockies, and there was no denying that he needed to spend more time with his wife. Or at least make more of an effort to do so. Besides, his wasn’t the only career to consider. He had to break down doors and shout at the top of his lungs to strike fear into the hearts of his adversaries. His wife could do so with a mere phone call. She represented the arm of the government whose reach crossed state lines and international borders, a three-letter entity that elicited terror in criminals and law-abiding citizens alike, an agency that served the principal and nonpartisan interests of the United States of America.
His wife was an IRS agent, and a damn good one at that. Agent Angela Thornton Mason specialized in corporate fraud criminal investigations. She liked to say she could find a single dollar bill filtered through a dozen shell companies and offshore accounts in less time than it took to do her hair. Mason had no reason to doubt her. He’d witnessed her following paper trails so creative and circuitous that he doubted even the team of accountants who hid the money knew where it was anymore. He’d also spent roughly a quarter of his adult life waiting for her to do her hair.
Unfortunately, there was one thing she could do that he simply couldn’t. She’d figured out a way to leave her work at the door.
Mason, on the other hand, was unable to turn his mind off. No matter which line of thought he followed, it always led back to the nightmare in Arizona. Were it one of those things he could simply switch off like the ignition in his car when he pulled into the garage, he would have done so in a heartbeat. Without hesitation. A guy should only have to relive the deaths of his friends and colleagues so many times.
He wasn’t so out of touch with the world around him that he couldn’t see what he was doing to Angie. She reached out, and he pulled away. She wanted to help him, to break down the walls he’d erected around himself. He understood that on a conscious level. The problem, however, was that the only way to bridge the growing chasm between them was to tell her what had happened at the quarry. Not the sanitized story that had garnered commendations for those who had survived. The truth. And even he wasn’t entirely sure what that was anymore. All he knew with any kind of certainty was that he was directly responsible for Kane’s death, that his split-second decision had cost his partner his life, that it was his fault there hadn’t even been enough of him left to bury.
Maybe a part of him believed that needing her help was a sign of weakness. More likely, he subconsciously recognized the enormity of his failure and realized that it was only a matter of time before he failed her, too. He told himself that he was somehow insulating her from the knowledge that there were monsters out there smuggling horrible diseases into the country, sociopaths like the men in the quarry who didn’t spare a thought for their victims. He didn’t know what their endgame might have been, but every fiber of his being screamed that whatever it was, it wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
But while Mason was chasing ghosts, he lost sight of the living. It wasn’t until one morning, while he and Angie sat across a table set with their untouched breakfasts, that he noticed her staring into her lap and unconsciously twisting her wedding ring. A ring wasn’t a complicated piece of equipment. It was like a light switch in that sense. It was either on or it was off. Twisting implied a measure of uncertainty, and since the ring was on her finger at the time, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the alternative she was contemplating. He knew right then and there that either he changed something in a big hurry or he was going to lose her.
If he hadn’t already.
“Remember the day we met?” Mason asked.
She continued to look down, but he saw the hint of a smile on her lips. The way the sunlight passing through the window of the eating nook fell on her auburn hair made it appear to glow. She was every bit as beautiful as she’d been the first time he saw her.
“You were sitting in the bleachers, two rows back from the bench. We were down by one at the end of the second period. The buzzer had just gone off. I was heading toward the locker room when I looked up and there you were. Red sweater. Black snow cap. And the most amazing emerald eyes I’d ever seen.”
She looked up, and he realized how long it had been since he’d actually made eye contact with his wife. Her hands ceased their restless movement.
“You remember what I said?” he asked.
“Of course I do. You were the most arrogant man I’d ever met.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
She shook her head and allowed herself to smile.
“You said, ‘I’m going to win this game and then I’m going to take you out.’”
“So I came out in the third period—”
“And got checked so hard, you were barely able to make it off the ice.”
“But I did exactly what I said I was going to do.”
“You did nothing of the kind. You lost by three.”
“Yet you were still waiting for me outside in the snow.”
She smiled and reached across the table. He took her hand in his and felt her ring press into his palm.
“I’m still waiting for you.”
She squeezed his hand one last time and then rose and started clearing the dishes. He would have done anything for her. Anything except for the one thing she needed him to do.
He was halfway up the stairs when she spoke in a voice so small, he couldn’t be entirely certain he’d heard it.
“But I can’t wait forever.”