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couldn’t escape those, no matter what else was going on. The lodge is my real job. I never forget that.
    So I skated between responsibilities all day. Show guests the budding wildflowers. Grill Diaz on what he knew. Give shooting lessons at the range. Call Evelyn for background on Diaz. Take a group white-water rafting. Research the background on Quinn’s case.
    Yes, maybe calling Evelyn wasn’t absolutely necessary. Maybe I’d mostly been checking in to see if she’d heard from Jack. She’s a retired hitman and his former mentor. If I claimed Jack is the closest thing she had to a son, she’d treat me to a diatribe about the uselessness of children while getting in a few digs at Jack on the way. But theirs is the longest and closest relationship either of them has ever had. That didn’t mean he would call to chat, not unless he needed her help. He hadn’t.
    Diaz knew the basics of the case Quinn had been working on the side. As I researched, I could see why Quinn had jumped at it. Those with a vigilante bent often lean toward specific crimes. For me, it’s ones involving women and children, not surprising given my history. Quinn’s focus is similar, without the personal experience to explain it. If I whipped out my psychology credits and analyzed, I’d say it’s the frustrated family man in him. He had been married once, to his teenage sweetheart. They’d split before having kids, which I’m not sure is as much a symptom of the problem as a cause. Quinn comes from a tight-knit family and grew up expecting that for himself: wife, kids, house in the suburbs. It hasn’t happened, and while I think part of what he channels into his vigilantism is what made him become a cop, as it is for me, another part is that frustrated instinct to protect.
    It had been that sort of case that started Quinn’s vigilantism. A family friend’s daughter had been murdered by her abusive ex. When the ex was acquitted, the man asked Quinn to “help him find justice.” Quinn refused. The father killed the ex-husband and went to jail. His wife committed suicide. Quinn blamed himself.
    For the case Quinn was now investigating, take that old one and multiply it several times over. An abusive husband had murdered his wife, and everyone in his town knew it. Yet the police couldn’t dig up enough evidence to charge him. His wife’s brother had tried to take matters into his own hands. The perp shot and killed the brother, and the DA decided it was self-defense. The perp remarried and started knocking around wife number two. She disappeared. Again, no one could pin it on him. Then his daughter from his first marriage accused him of sexually abusing her. He accused her of fabricating a story because she blamed him for her mother’s death. The police didn’t press charges. The daughter killed herself.
    It’s easy to blame the cops in a case like that. But if the police can’t find the evidence, they can’t lay charges, as much as they might like to.
    For Quinn, this was a local case, about a hundred miles from his home. He’d have known about it and almost certainly would have thought, “I’d like to take that bastard out.” When someone came and asked him to do exactly that? He’d have accepted the job. No question.
    My research ensured Diaz was being straight with me—the case existed and it was one Quinn would take. Jack doesn’t trust Contrapasso—we butted heads with them on our last investigation—so I was extra cautious. Yet from everything I dug up, this was on the level.
    I also made sure Quinn really was out of contact. I phoned his personal cell. Phoned his work cell. E-mailed. Texted. I was careful in all of that, the calls going from the phone Felix gave me, which would scramble and reroute. Even then, I left no messages on voice mail, and my text and e-mail were vague, “Hey, you around? Call me.”
    I left the lodge right after dinner, but hit a post-weekend backup at the border and missed my flight. Diaz