Chapter 1
Sullivan
The cabin makes the same three soundsit’smade every morning for forty-one days.
The kettle hisses. The wood in the stove ticks as the heat finds it. A pine branch scrapes the back wall inthewind. I count them like a man checking the perimeter.
Three sounds.
Safe and predictable.
That’s how I know I’m alone.
I pour the coffee black into the blue mug Henry Sutton pressed into my hand the morning I left Havenstone. He didn’t say, “Be careful.” He didn’t say, “Come back.” He said, “If you want it, the program’s still there.”
Then he handed methe mug like a man passing a knife handle-first. The mug is the only thing in this cabinwith my name on it.
The logs atop the woodpile lean to the left.The woodpile leans to the left. Itwasn'tlike that last night.
I set the mug down andstepoutside. The cold bites through the floorboards and into the soles of my boots.
Second row, third log.It’s slippedforward enough to catch my eye.
I push it back, my palm flat against the rough grain.
The line straightens.
I linger for longer than necessary.
Then I go back inside.
I take the coffee to the front window and stand there the way I stand everywhere now, with my back to a wall and the door in my line of sight. Old habit. The kind that survives discharge papers, forty-one mornings,andalongdrive across two state lines.The kind I learned the daymyfriend bled out at my feet.
Below me, the valley is the color of a bruise thathasn’tdecided whetherit’shealing.
San Juan Mountains. Hollow Peak, Colorado. A town you reach by switchbacks and white knuckles, three thousand people stitched into the granite like a town pretending itisn’ta secret.
I came up here for a man named Marlon Ennis.The trail crossed the county line three weeks before I did, and by the timeI’dwalked the lumberyard, the lodge, and the back booth of the Switchback Café for two cinnamon rolls’ worth of small talk, I knew it.
Cold trail.
Long gone.
Four nightsago,I called Henry from the truck and gave him the report in the way the Suttons have learned totake it from me—short sentences, no decorations.
Trail’s dead. Staying through the thaw.
Henrydidn’task why. He just said,“Stay as long as you need.”
That’sthe thing about the Suttons. They give a man rope without making him explain how much he plans to use.
The whywas simpleenough.Havenridgehad four hundred acres and twenty good people on it, and not one of them deserved to be near me untilI’dput the worst of it down for good. The cabin gave me quiet by the gallon. I planned to keep drinking it until something in me went still again.
The coffee is still too hot.I set the mug on the windowsillto let it cool when a flash of movement stirs at the edge of the trees.
Gray. Low. Watching.
It’sthe same dog as yesterday. And the day before.
