I remember needing to know. I remember needing more answers. The truth was addicting. And the need for truth is the reason I remember the twenty-third of January.
It was late afternoon when I contacted her. The winter sun had already ducked behind the mountains, casting a calm twilight on Otter Ridge. I sent a text message asking her to meet.
Your place? she responded. The prompt reply gave me relief.
No, I said. The Mitchum pass trailhead, from our hike last summer.
It’s closed. It’s winter.
Trust me, I said, and waited three minutes.
20 mins. Better be good.
I grabbed my coat.
I had grown so used to carrying the .45 in my waistband, I was hardly aware of it. When I reached the trailhead, the sun had set fully, and day had peacefully rolled into night. The temperature was crisp but still bearable. I walked to the trail and could see my breath.
She hadn’t arrived yet. Alone on a closed trail, covered in packed snow and surrounded by forest, I stopped and listened to the silence. The parking lot was out of sight from where I stood. I leaned on a wooden post marking the start of the trail. It hadn’t been used in months.
I scanned the surroundings and was satisfied with the level of isolation. I was alone.
“What is it?” she asked, appearing through the trees, the snow crunching under her designer boots. “You want to fuck out here?” Her top lip curled into a half smile, half snarl.
“Might be fun,” I said. I played along.
She stopped in front of me. “Seems overly complicated.”
“How are things on the mountaintop?”
“Fine,” she said. “Normal. You’re up there, you should know.”
“I’m not in the master suite.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Not all it’s cracked up to be.”
I looked her in the eyes. Her dark blonde curls spilled gracefully out of a knit hat, like a model in a ski magazine.
“So what is this?” she asked, looking around. “Really. Some clandestine meeting in the woods? You think you’re living a Bond movie, Julian? You gonna kill me out here or something?”
I laughed. She did too.
“I get it,” she said. “We can’t be together, it isn’t right, blah blah blah. Fine. To be honest, I’m over it. But you didn’t have to drag me out to the woods in the middle of the damn winter.”
“Where’s the money going, Adeline?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“Why is the business losing money?” I stared into her.
“It’s not,” she said. “You know it’s not. You do the finances. Profits are slowing, yeah…”
“For the first time ever,” I said.
She took a moment to reset. “Well, our distribution has leveled off. That’s about the extent of it, from what I know. We’re reaching as far as we can, already overextended as it is. You can’t force them to shoot up.”
My jaw was tense. “You’re full of shit.”
“How?”
“I see the books. I keep the books. I know what’s in them. We’re moving more product than we ever have. And it’s still growing.”
She scoffed. “Listen, if you drug me out here just to bitch about profits, I’m afraid I don’t have the time.” She turned to leave.
“You’re skimming off the top,” I said.
She stopped and turned back halfway. “Excuse me?”
“Someone is,” I said. “Numbers don’t add up. My guess is it’s you, Miss I’m-in-charge-here.”
“If you actually think I’d steal from my own business, you’re dumber than I thought.”
“It wouldn’t be stealing, really. Just taking a little off the top. Something for the effort. Make it worth your while, for everything you do. Why should Vince get all the glory?”
“We’re partners,” she said.
“You get paid like a partner?”
She looked at the ground.
“Look,” I said, “Adeline, I don’t really care. I get paid no matter what. I’m not going to go to Vince with this or anything. I just need to know.”
She looked back up. “Can I go now?”
“Sure. But you’ll be admitting I’m right.”
She approached me and smiled. The snarl was back, along with the swagger. “Just what in the hell are you trying to do? Are you trying to scare me?”
“No. Honestly, no. It’s just…there are things happening…”
“You think you could ever scare me?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is like that.” She became taller. The momentum had shifted. “You’re a manipulator. You’re trying to get past me in the business. You have been for a while.”
“I can promise you that’s not true.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she said. “I know what’s going on. Vince has had a hard-on for you since you showed up. And you think you’re gonna be his successor.”
She stepped closer and stared into my face. She was less than a foot from me now. Our noses could have touched.
“That’s what you’ve wanted the whole time,” she continued. “That, and me.”
Adeline reached over and grabbed my belt. Her slender fingers sunk beneath my waistband and touched the gun.
She knew immediately.
I tried to jerk away but she already had it in her hands. Quickly, in one motion, she stepped back and pointed it at me with both hands. She held the gun high, level with her eyes. Her expression hardly changed. It was not an awkward fumbling but a slick pickpocket; she just lifted the gun right from my waistband. And now she was pointing it at me.
“Hands up,” she said. Her breathing was normal. Her face was relaxed. How in the hell did she take it from me so easily?
I put them up.
“Higher.”
I raised them higher.
She smiled and glanced at the gun. “I know this wasn’t issued by us. That’s a big no-no, you know.”
“Okay, just listen.”
“What exactly were you planning on doing with this shiny pistol?”
“Just…nothing. Let me explain.”
“Nah,” she said. “I think I’ll just tell Vince about this.”
My hands were numb. “Adeline, you can’t.”
“I think I’ll just tell him about all of this. And about us.”
“Please,” I said, dropping my hands. “Please, you can’t tell him.”
She shook her head. “So sad. Your days as the golden boy will soon be over. Hands up.”
“Listen,” I said. “Something’s going to happen. I can…I can help you.”
Adeline tilted her head back and laughed. She started backing up through the snow, the gun still pointed at me. “Goodnight, Julian.”
That was it; she was walking away. So I walked after her, because I had no choice.
“Ah ah ah,” she said. “You’re going to stay right there.”
I kept walking. “Shoot me,” I said. “Shoot me, you heinous bitch.”
On one level, it would have been a relief.
Her face changed. Only a little, but it changed. “Julian, stay there.”
“Shoot me, Adeline. Do it. Shoot me.”
“Stay there.”
“Shoot me.”
She tried to walk faster and said nothing.
“Shoot me, dammit.”
I caught up to her and made my move. I shot my hands out beneath hers and shoved the gun out of the way with a grunt. I forced it upward, both of us holding it now, pointing at the sky. The trigger pulled and the pistol shot once, a deafening, deep explosion that sounded like a cannon, sailing off into the night.
We wrestled for a moment; I wasn’t prepared for her strength. Our arms swayed the weapon from side to side, until she caught me with an elbow across the face. My vision flashed white and I fell down in the snow.
The gun was no longer in my hands. Face down, I waited to be shot from behind, for the darkness of death to take me. It did not. I rolled over and expected to see her there, standing over me. She was not. I pressed my hands down on the snow to get up, and my left hand touched the .45.