He waved from several feet away. The window came down and

Walt saw an attractive woman smile nervously.

“Flat tire?” he asked.

The woman nodded. “I’m trying to get a hold of Triple A.”

“It’ll take me fifteen minutes to get your spare on. Twenty at most.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, still with her phone to her ear.

“I’m already in the queue.”

Walt sensed her trepidation.

“Years ago I used to be a police officer, so I’ve changed a lot of tires in my day. If you’d rather wait for Triple A, I’m happy to head back to my car and wait there to make sure they arrive. But way out here in the mountains on a holiday weekend, you’re likely looking at an hour or two wait until they dispatch someone.”

Walt pulled his wallet from his pocket and showed the woman his identification.

“FBI?”

He smiled. “I’m a field agent in New York. Walt Jenkins.” He extended his hand.

The woman reached through the open window. “Meghan Cobb.”

She smiled nervously. “Fifteen minutes?”

“Maybe twenty, but it won’t be a problem.”

A few minutes later, the jack tilted the car at an oblique angle. Walt was on his knees changing the tire. They talked the entire time, and then for thirty minutes more after the spare was in place. A getaway meant to be spent alone was instead spent with Meghan Cobb. She was untangling herself from a nasty relationship. He was three months post-divorce. By any stretch of the imagination, their relationship should have been a rebound for both of them. Instead, over the next year they fell in love. And then, on a hot summer night, just after his forty-fifth birthday, Walt was shot when he and his partner were on a routine surveillance operation. The bullets that found him had taken fortuitous paths through his body. The first entered through his sternum, exited through his scapula, and pierced his heart in between, miraculously missing his aorta. The second passed through his neck and had just as miraculously missed his spinal cord. No miracles, however, had been bestowed on his partner, who was sitting next to Walt in the unmarked car. The bullets that ravaged Jason Snyder’s body had found major organs and vessels. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

After that, Walt learned what true loneliness felt like.