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The clerk had reached under the counter and lifted a baseball bat in her substantial fist and said, “If he comes by, just let me know.”

Shaw now powered his Yamaha up the hill where the infamous gun battle had occurred earlier, crested it, and then continued up the shallower incline to the shoulder where the camper was parked. He mounted the bike on the back and walked to the front to see if the bullet hole spidering had gotten worse.

It hadn’t.

But therewasa wrinkle.

A traffic ticket sat beneath a windshield wiper.

For real?

He snatched it off and read.

Violation of California Vehicle Code Section 26710. Defective Windshield.

Then he looked at the bottom of the ticket.

See other side.

He turned it over.

Just kidding!

LOL!

Text me. Want to stop by.

D.S.

Shaw sent the message and Debi Starr replied.

Be right there.

This would be about thanking him for his role in getting her the chief’s job. Shaw hadn’t intended that she find out about his involvement, the pressure on Han Tolifson, but had forgotten to tell him to keep mum.

Starr would be a few minutes so he made another call, gazing at the canyon that was now the rocky, largely water-free bed of the Never Summer, brilliantly illuminated by high-power work lights set up by the army engineers as they were going about their methodical efforts in preparing the ground for the new levee.

A click on the line.

“Colter!” Annie Coyne’s breezy voice flowed through the phone.

“Hey.”

She choked. “My God, I can’t thank you enough for what you did. You, your mother, your sister. For everything.”

He could only think of flippant quips. Like: all in a day’s work.

Never banter.

He got right to the reason he’d called. “Just wondering. I know it’s late, but if you’re interested in another beer, I could go for one.”

The pause was brief, but it was like a zipped computer file. Compressed but filled with mega data.

“Actually, I’m having someone over.” Another pause. “It’s sort of about the clothes…that got left.”

He noted the structure of the sentence, the word choice. Passive voice was always a tell—a way to communicate when you didn’t want to say something directly.

Coyne might have been offering that her professor friend was picking them up and taking them back to his place.