“No, it won’t bother you or the cats.”

“And it might even stop something from harming them.”

“That’s right. There’s almost always one thing higher on the predator chain. Predators who prey on predators, you know? All the way up to the apex.”

After a moment, Mrs. Wish nodded and proclaimed, “Then it stays. If you’d please hand me that folder, though, while you’re up there.” She murmured something vague about “important documents” and “setting my affairs in order” and tucked the Reagan folder inside her robe like she was robbing a bank.

Tean carried the dining chair back to the front room, with Mrs. Wish dogging him.

“Violet will be very sorry to have missed you,” Mrs. Wish said. “She’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

Tean smiled and nodded.

“I’ll send her over with a plate of cookies.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“She’s already got age lines, unfortunately,” Mrs. Wish said, tracing them on her own forehead to illustrate. “But I imagine if you squint, or perhaps if you close your eyes when you kiss her, they won’t bother you too much.”

“Uh. Yes. Well—”

“Twenty-seven, poor dear. Practically a spinster. We tell everyone she’s twenty-five because it’s just too embarrassing otherwise.”

Edging toward the doors, Tean nodded.

“I think she’s had the one dead tooth fixed,” Mrs. Wish was explaining, “so you won’t be bothered by that, at least. Don’t get me started on her weird leg, though.”

“I hear Scipio barking,” Tean said, throwing open the door. “I’ve got to run.”

“I don’t hear—”

But he was already sprinting down the hall.

When Tean let himself into the apartment, Scipio was waiting for him, pressing a cold nose against his arm, snuffling, trying to scent out all of the Irreconcilables that had dared to get close to Tean. Tean thought of Mrs. Wish’s granddaughter coming over with a plate of cookies that were the sugary equivalent of hard tack. He grabbed Scipio’s harness and asked the Lab, “What do you think about another walk? A really long one, this time.”

2

“People suck,” Tean said, letting Scipio off the leash. The dog park was busy that day, and Scipio ran off to join Bear, a hundred-and-thirty-pound St. Bernard who dwarfed Tean’s black Lab but had still become a regular playmate.

“Ok,” Hannah said with a sigh. She was still removing the leash from her own dog, Divorcee. She worked with Tean at DWR, and she had called as he was leaving the apartment to ask if he was interested in being set up on a blind date with a guy she knew. When Tean tried to dodge by explaining he was going to the dog park, she had insisted on joining him. It was nice to have company, even if Hannah probably didn’t realize she was helping a fugitive.

October in the Salt Lake Valley was beautiful; the underbrush on the Wasatch Mountains to the east burned red, and the sun setting over the Great Salt Lake to the west painted everything else gold. Autumn in Utah was a precarious pleasure, always ready to slip early into winter and stay there. Days like this one, with the breeze coming off the mountains and the skies perfectly clear, made sure the dog park stayed busy.