She didn’t feel like a lawyer.
Even though, technically, she had been one since 2:00 P.M. on Friday when she got sworn in.
She wore a gray pinstriped skirt, a matching jacket, a crisp white blouse, and black leather shoes with a one-inch heel, all purchased with plastic on Saturday. She had minimal makeup and styled her shoulder-length brown hair close to her head, to give it a trim professional look, even though she didn’t particularly like it that way.
The clothes felt foreign, as if they belonged to someone else.
They were a far cry from the usual jeans and T.
She pushed through the glass doors into the reception area, got informed by a way-too-cute receptionist that the office manager hadn’t arrived yet, and was invited to wait in the lobby.
Instead, she walked down to the 44th Floor to see if Rachel Ringer was in.
Having served as a summer law clerk for the firm a year ago, between her second and third years of law school, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to the office-although, she had to admit, most of that two-month tenure had been spent stuffed inside a windowless cubicle surfing Westlaw and cranking out memos.
Summer law clerks came and went.
Most of the firm’s attorneys didn’t have the time or inclination to find out much about them, other than whether they could do the work and do it quickly.
Rachel had been different.
She’d taken an actual interest in Aspen.
Aspen stopped in the kitchen to get coffee, hoping to see someone she knew, but found no one. She filled the a cup, took a sip, found it to her liking, and then trekked down the hall to Rachel’s office. As she got closer, she saw that the light was on.
Excellent.
She walked in, beaming, anxious to see the look on her face. Except it wasn’t Rachel sitting behind the desk. Instead, it was someone else, a young Asian woman with captivating almond eyes and shiny black hair, dressed to impress. She appeared to be more curious than startled when Aspen walked in.
“Oops,” Aspen said. “Wrong office, sorry.”
Embarrassed, she ducked out before the woman could say anything, then got her bearings and realized it wasn’t the wrong office after all.
She edged back over to the door and stuck her head in.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said. “I’m looking for Rachel Ringer.”
“Rachel Ringer?”
“Yes.”
“She hasn’t been here for months,” the woman said. Aspen must have had a puzzled look on her face, because the woman added, “Haven’t you heard?”
No, she hadn’t.
Heard what?
The Asian woman turned out to be a third-year associate named Christina Tam, an exotic woman of moderate build and an incredibly small waist, who wore expensive designer glasses. Ivy league diplomas and awards filled the wall behind her.
“No one’s seen or heard from Rachel since April,” Christina said.
“Why? What happened?”
Christina looked stressed. “No one knows for sure, other than she just suddenly vanished.”
Aspen wrinkled her forehead. “Vanished where?”
“She had an eight o’clock dinner meeting scheduled with two of the firm’s partners at The Fort one night. You know where The Fort is, right?”
Aspen shook her head.
No, she didn’t.
“It’s sort of out in the foothills off Highway 8, south of Red Rocks,” she said. “It’s one of those fancy-schmancy places where people go on special occasions. They serve buffalo, that’s their big thing.”
Aspen shrugged.
She still didn’t recognize the place.
“Anyway,” Christina said, “they found Rachel’s car in the parking lot. But she never showed up inside the restaurant.”
“What are you saying? That someone took her?”
Christina nodded.
“That’s the theory.”
“Who?”
Christina held her hands up in surrender. “She didn’t have a boyfriend, or money problems, or health problems, or anything that might explain it. Reportedly, she had been in a good mood all day, suspecting what was going to happen at the restaurant.”
“What was that?”
“The partners were going to tell her that they were putting her name up for partnership at the annual meeting that was coming up in a couple of weeks,” Christina said.
Aspen pondered it.
Rachel would have been ecstatic.
That’s all she ever wanted.
And had worked her ass off for eight years to get it.
No one deserved it more.
“Who were the partners she was going to meet?”
Christina wrinkled her forehead, reaching deep, then said, “Jason Foster and Derek Bennett, if my memory’s correct. Why?”
“Nothing, really,” Aspen said. “I’m just going to ask them about it, if I ever get a chance.”
Christina shook her head in doubt.
“The cops assigned to the case were way out of their league,” Christina said, “so the law firm actually hired a couple of private investigators and threw some serious money at it. In the end, no one knew much, other than what I just told you. Rachel disappeared somewhere between her car and the front door of the restaurant. How and why, no one knows. Maybe we’ll learn more when her body shows up.”
Aspen looked out the window.
Then back at the attorney.
Aspen must have had a look on her face, because the attorney added, “She’s been gone for more than five months.”
3
DAY ONE-SEPTEMBER 5
MONDAY MORNING
Jack Draven didn’t know if he was an Indian, a Mexican, or just a really dark white-man, nor did he give a shit. Most people took him for an Indian on account of the high cheekbones, the thick black ponytail, and the scar that ran down the right side of his face, all the way from his hairline to his chin. It had been there ever since he could remember. He had no idea how he got it, but did know that he wouldn’t erase it even if he could.
It was part of him.
Somehow he’d earned it.
Now it was his.
Driving south on I-25, the traffic thinned after he passed Colorado Springs and the speed limit increased to 75. He set the cruise control at 88, looked around for cops, found none, brought a flask up to his mouth, and took a long swallow of Jack Daniels.
It burned his mouth and then dropped into his stomach.
Damn good stuff.
A knife with an eight-inch serrated blade sat on the seat next to him. He picked it up and twisted it around in his hand as the arid Colorado topography shot by. To the left a river snaked through the land. Hundreds of ugly cottonwoods-nothing more than 50-foot weeds, in his opinion-sucked up to it.
A hint of yellow had already snuck into the leaves. Fall was coming. Lucky for him, he’d be in California before the first snow fell.
This most recent hunt was going to be a little tricky. He was searching for an Hispanic woman, nice-looking, under thirty, heavily tattooed. Tons of tattoos, that was the most important thing. The more goddamn tattoos, the better.
That would be a tall task in Denver.
But in Pueblo, not so much.
There was more Hispanic pussy down there than the law allowed. Not to mention a biker bar on every street corner-tattoo magnets.
He rolled his six-three, 225-pound frame into the blue-collar town mid-afternoon and checked into a sleazy rat-in-the-closet hotel, paying cash-the kind of place where no one noticed anything and remembered even less. He tried to take a short nap, but some hooker in the next room kept screaming fake orgasms. So he drove around to check out the tattoo shops, just in case the perfect woman happened to be hanging around one of them. He’d hit the biker bars tonight.