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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

I’ve always been a little competitive, so it was with a particular sense of triumph that I had given Carlo the anniversary gift of an evening on Kitt Peak. It’s hard to know what to get a philosopher as a birthday gift. Everything Carlo really treasured (except me, I assured myself) was inside his own mind. This would also get his mind off of Jane. I bet she never gave him a night on Kitt Peak. Of course he wasn’t interested in astronomy back then, so.

I also liked the idea of depositing Carlo on a mountaintop to keep him safely out of the way in case Mr. Nolan found I’d connected with Gloria and decided to get aggressive. So far, however, we hadn’t heard from him, and it had been a week since he came to dinner.

The skies are clear in Arizona and in many areas darker than most populated places on earth. Consequently, there are four major observatories within driving distance from our house, one that I can see on Mount Lemmon from our backyard. On a cloudless day, driving south from Tucson, you can spot a white speck that is one of the domes of the observatory on Kitt Peak. It’s about a two-hour drive from us, and is the most dramatic location open to the public. On that afternoon in early December we descended into the valley that is Tucson proper, and then ascended again slowly to the base of the mountain. After that the climb began rapidly to a height of a little over six thousand feet.

I’ve dangled from too many rooftops to suffer much from serious vertigo, but the narrow road that curved around the rocky outcropping on the left side and plunged thousands of feet to the valley below on the right still made a nerve in my neck tingle and made me happy I wasn’t in the passenger seat next to the drop. Even in my new Miata, nice and low to the road and with splendid maneuverability, I was more than happy to stay within the speed limit, which at some of the hairpinnier turns slowed to ten miles per hour.

Okay, maybe I would put the car to more of a test on the way down, but I wasn’t going to say this to Carlo. Despite my being poisoned, attacked by a therapy dog, and splashed with the guts of a serial killer—and that just since we were married—I still felt he worried unnecessarily about my safety. More than once, and especially these days, I thanked my lucky stars that Carlo had never actually seen me in action and what happens to the other guy at those times.