“I’ve learned some upsetting things in the past half hour. I haven’t even begun to understand them yet. All I know is that I want to nail that son of a bitch more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, other than to save my wife from dying. And that was beyond my power.”

“Maybe this is too,” Kelly says gently. “I wouldn’t mind bringing that bastard down a peg myself. But things seem pretty seriously stacked against you. Sometimes you’ve got to pull back. Regroup. Fight another day.”

“No,” I say doggedly, perhaps stupidly. “If I let the momentum die, Marston and Portman will never pay for whatever they did. Any evidence that exists will disappear.” Althea Payton’s words sound in my head like a ghostly refrain. “If not now, when. You know?”

A skeptical grunt. “Yeah, maybe.”

“I’ve got one shot left, Kelly.”

“What?”

“Dwight Stone. He knows the truth. He could bring down the whole damn temple.”

“Caitlin says he won’t testify.”

“He wants to help me. I know he does. But he’s got a daughter in the FBI. That gives Portman total control of her life, and by extension, Stone’s.”

“So, what can you do?”

“I’m going back to Colorado.”

The old Kelly smile returns to his lips. “Well . . . I was ready for a change of scenery anyway.”

“Do we still have FBI surveillance covering us?”

“I’ve seen them three times today. They’re good.”

“That’s okay. You’re going to keep them nice and busy for me.”

“Yeah, and . . . ? How do we lose them?”

“We don’t. This time I’m going alone.”

CHAPTER 34

The American Eagle ATR plows into a trough of turbulence, drops like a stone, then catches an updraft from the Rocky Mountains below and settles out again. I and my fellow passengers are thirty miles from Crested Butte, Colorado, and I can’t wait for the wheels to hit the runway. When I flew out of Baton Rouge, it was ninety degrees. When I changed planes in Dallas, it was sixty-eight. In Colorado there’s two feet of snow on the ground, my plane is three hours behind schedule because of the unexpected storm, and the only thing I know about ATR aircraft is that they fly like hogs with ice on the wings. But that isn’t the only reason for my anxiety. In less than an hour I will be face to face with former special agent Dwight Stone, the only man on earth who can give me what I need.

The desire for revenge I felt when I attacked Leo Marston at Tuscany yesterday seems trivial now. I am a different man than I was yesterday. The past I thought I knew is dead. Because last night I faced a truth so terrible I can hardly accept it even now.