"Hale."
"Chief."
"I am ordering you to end it. Set her free.”
I look up. My heart drops.
I cannot see her face. I can see the shape. I can see the way she is holding her hands in her pockets and the way she is set on her boots, and I have known this shape on her in front of me for fourteen years and the shape has always been the shape I followed.
I do not speak.
"Tonight," she says. "You go in. You wake her. You tell her you cannot keep her. You drive her to the bus station in Boise in the morning. Lena will come and drop you cash and a pre-paid phone and a name. You put her on a bus. You tell her not to come back. You do not write to her. You do not pick up if she writes to you. You do not look for her. In a year, if she has not been found by anyone else, you ask me if you can have her. In a year. Not before."
I sit. A year.
"You hear me, Hale?”
"I hear you, Chief."
"Tomorrow morning at six you come to my house and you tell me she is gone."
"Chief?”
"Yes."
"I cannot do that.”
She does not move.
I have said the sentence I have never said to her before.
Never.
I have said the sentence in the dark on a chopping block to the woman I have followed for fourteen years and the sentence is out of me and I cannot put the sentence back in.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"Say that again."
"I cannot do that, Chief."
"You cannot?” Her voice is ice.
"No, Chief."
"You cannot follow my order?” She seems shocked. And she must be. I wonder what my punishment will be. I am burning everything down for Evangeline and I can’t stop.
Won’t stop.
"No, Chief."
"In fourteen years, you have followed every order I have given you."
"Yes, Chief."
“But not this?”
