“I can't wait to get you on the slopes and teach you how to ski,” she said. “You're gonna love it.”
“I know how to ski,” he said.
“Water skiing isn't the same thing as snow skiing, Massey.”
“You teach me to snow ski and I'll teach you a thing or two in the chalet.”
Her laughter was glorious.
Although Sean and Winter had only been married for eight months, he felt as though he had known her his entire life. They had met when Winter joined a witness protection detail and was charged with protecting a professional killer who was going to testify against an aging mobster. Sean had been married to the killer, and when the operation turned deadly and went as wrong as things can go, it had been Sean Devlin whose life needed protecting and only Winter who had been in a position to save her. That had happened a little over a year before. After their shared experiences-each having trusted the other and after each had saved the other's life-neither of them wanted to be apart from the other.
Winter believed that he had twice been married to perfect women, who had both been his closest friends. His first wife, Eleanor, had been killed in an airplane crash four years earlier. For three years he had lived with a deep grief that was only made bearable because of his love for their son, Rush. After Eleanor's death Winter's mother, Lydia, had moved into his home to help him raise his son and both of them took immediately to Sean.
After a short formal courtship, Winter had asked Sean to marry him, and she had accepted. Winter still thought daily about Eleanor, but he knew that Eleanor would have wanted for him to love someone and to again be loved by them. Someone who would be a good and nurturing mother to her son. And Winter knew that she would have approved of Sean.
“Hey, Massey, you know what?”
“No, what?”
“You know what, ” she said, hanging up.
“I love you too,” he said before he put the phone in his pocket.
He hoped mailing the letter would lift a great weight from his shoulders-that leaving the badge behind might somehow cause the ghosts of the people he had killed to vacate his mind.
He repeated a familiar prayer. God, please release me from my guilt and give them peace. In return, I promise that if there is any possible way to avoid doing so, I will never take another human life.
Winter Massey had asked God for favors before. He understood that although He had the power to do so, God might not take the deal.
Until 1802, Charlotte had been a sleepy community founded in the 1750s by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and German Lutheran farmers. That year, a farmer named John Reed discovered that a yellow rock the size of a shoe, which he had unearthed years earlier with his plow blade and had been using as a doorstop, was in fact a gold nugget. Until the California strike at Sutter's Mill in 1848, the mines in North Carolina supplied all of the gold used for coinage by the United States. The railroads made Charlotte a commercial hub. After the mines played out, textile and tobacco barons like the Cannons and the Reynolds turned the area into an industrial center. As a consequence of enterprising individuals, the banks filled up with money and began an expansion that had never stopped.
When Winter arrived at 10:55, the City Grill was nearly empty. He took a corner table near a front window. Five minutes later, Hank Trammel, who had been Winter's boss until he'd retired six months earlier, had been his superior officer, his mentor, and had become his closest friend, swaggered into the room like a sheriff in a Western movie, replete with a charcoal-gray handlebar mustache and gold eyeglasses with small round lenses and wraparound earpieces.
Hank Trammel was walking proof that being from south Texas wasn't something you could easily scrape off your boots. Although he hadn't lived there in over thirty years, Hank dressed like he still ranched in south Texas. Rain, shine, hell or high water, he wore cowboy shirts, khaki pants, sharp-toe boots, a hand-tooled belt with a turquoise-laden buckle the size of a man's fist, and a string tie. On formal occasions, he wore patent leather boots with his tuxedo. He had given up golf but had in his closet a pair of fire-engine-red Tony Lamas with metal spikes.
Hank was a substantial man who, at fifty-eight, still wore his hair in the same flattop he'd had in high school. Both his grandfather and father had died from gunshots. His grandfather had been ambushed by cattle rustlers, and his father, a Texas Ranger, had been shot in the back by a teenager on a thrill-killing spree. On duty, Hank had always carried his father's gun in the same hand-tooled high-rise hip holster. Trammels were stone-tough people who lived hard lives because they didn't know any other way.
Hank crossed to Winter's table, dropped his “Lyndon Johnson” Stetson on the wide window ledge next to a potted plant, and sat with his back to the glass.
“We ran into Sean outside, and she and Millie went to go powder their noses,” Hank said. “She's smoking a cigarette.”
Millie Trammel was a secret smoker. Hank had quit, and he acted like he didn't know his wife still did, and she acted like she didn't do it. It was sort of a sanctioned denial game.
A waitress with curly black hair and a silver bead on one side of her nose swept up and stopped in front of the men. “Our wives are joining us,” Hank told the young woman. “We'll all have tea.”
“Sweet tea?”
“What, darlin', don't I look sweet enough to you?”
“Don't pay my grampy any mind,” Winter told her. “Sweet tea.”
The waitress walked away.
“So you're really doing it?” Hank asked Winter.
“Yep.”
“I'd hoped you would change your mind.”
“No way. You're retired now, so why the hell do you care whether I'm still on the job? Ain't like there aren't fifty to take my slot.”
“I was looking forward to having you nearby in my golden years. In case I have a stroke and need somebody to bathe me, change my diapers.” Hank wiped his head as though there was some hair over his ears that needed pushing back. “I suppose Virginia or Maryland is close enough. You're going to miss the job.”
“I owe Rush and Sean my nights and weekends. And I've just been plain lucky for just too long. The odds of me walking away from another scrape like the last couple is slim. I've seen enough action to last me awhile.”
“My old daddy always said the only man you can't ever walk away from is one you kill.”
Without any words to add, Winter just shrugged. He didn't want to talk about the weight of the dead men perched on his shoulders. It was something no amount of churchgoing, psychiatry, or emptying bottles could lessen. Neither self-defense nor heat of battle made the slightest difference in the anguish that killing brought a normal man.
“Massey, I have to say that the idea of you teaching ex-football players how to protect executives whose biggest threat is not hitting a green in regulation gives me some pause.”
“It's done. I stuffed my resignation letter into that blue box right out there before I walked in. As of November the fifteenth, I will be a civilian.”
“Then congratulations,” Hank said, extending his hand across the table. “Those security guys want the best, that's what they're getting. I told them so back when they called me.”
“Millie excited about the trip to New Orleans?”
“Ask her yourself,” Hank said, rising from his chair.
As Hank's wife and Sean crossed the room together, Winter was aware of men's heads turning, their eyes following Sean. With her height, shoulder-length raven hair, almond-shaped golden eyes, slim build, and elegant features, she looked like a model. He stood and pulled a chair back from the table for her. Hank went to do the same, but Millie waved him off and seated herself. “It's much too late to make anybody believe you're a gentleman, Hank Trammel.”