She stared into the dark waters of her beer. How about this. Ill promise to give it due consideration if youll promise to respect my answer. She held up a hand before he could reply. That means no follow-up calls, no surprise visits, no case files slipped under my door. If Im done, you let me go in peace.

Newbury nodded. Scouts honor. He finished his cider, snagged one last pretzel, and stood.

You have a rare gift, Harley, he said. The thing about a gift like yours, it wont leave you alone. You can run from it, you can avoid it, but itll make you miserable if you dont use it. I suspect you know this already.

Harley stared at the bar, noncommittal. She didnt want to give him false hope, not until she had thought through all her options.

He squeezed her shoulder. When that itch gets to be too much, you give me a call.

She watched him go, disappearing into the current of faces moving through the airport. She checked the clock hanging on the wall above one of the tables and decided she had a little time left.

After giving the bar a quick scrub with a napkin, she pulled out a folder tucked beneath her purse and spread it on the beer-stained wood. Harley went through the divorce papers one by one, checking all the details again. At the bottom of each one, she signed her name in careful cursive next to Robs.

She had expected to feel some sense of finality after signing, but none came, perhaps because she had known for a while now that this was the inevitable outcome. She wished Rob only the best, and she would have worked to keep their marriage together if he had been willing. But he put her in an impossible position when he forced her to choose between him and the job. There was no outcome to that scenario that they could both live with.

As she left the bar, moving through the crowd of strangers toward her terminal, she turned her thoughts to that night. She would get into bed, maybe turn on a movie, and sleep as long as she wishedno phone, no alarm, no plans. That was as far ahead as she wished to think. Whatever happened on the other side of that sleep, she would deal with it when she got there.

As she sat down for the flight, she saw she had a voicemail from Santiago. She held her phone to her ear as she listened to the sheriffs voice, dry as desert sand.

This is Sheriff Luis Santiago from the Huerta County Sheriffs Department. While you were at our office the other day, we got on the subject of your sister, and it got me thinking.

He paused. The silence lasted only a second or two, but to Harley it felt like a lifetime.