Patricia Cornwell - Trace

"I don't think so."

"Using the Gavin de Becker style of simulated combat, we're pretty savage," she replies. "None of the trainees are told what to expect, appropriately, because in real life we don't know what to expect. So after about the third time of siccing the K-9's on them, they get a little surprise. The dogs come and lunge for them, only this time they don't have the muzzles on. Of course, Henri had on the padding but when she realized the dog wasn't muzzled, she totally freaked out. Screamed, started running, got knocked down. She was crying and half crazy and said she was quitting."

"I'm sorry she didn't. There's the second marker." He holds up a ski pole, pointing at an avalanche marker painted with a large 2.

"She got over it," Lucy says as she steps in tracks made earlier, because it is easier. "She got over the rubber bullets too. But she didn't like that sim com much either."

"You'd have to be crazy to like it."

"I've had a few crazies come through who did. Maybe I'm one of them. They hurt like hell, but it's a rush. Why are you sorry she didn't quit? Do you think she should? I mean, well, I know I should fire her."

"Fire her for being attacked in your house?"

"I know. I can't fire her. She'll sue me."

"Yes," he says. "I think she should quit. Hell yes." He looks at her as he poles ahead. "When you hired her away from LAPD your vision was as covered up as the mountains over there." He indicates the storm. "Maybe she was a good enough cop, but she's not cut out for your level of operation and I hope to hell she quits before something really bad happens."

"Right," she says ruefully in a puff of frozen breath. "Really bad."

"No one got killed."

"So far," Lucy replies. "God, this is getting to me. You do this every day?"

"Just about. Time permitting."

"Running half-marathons is easier."

"If you run where there's oxygen in the air," Benton says. "There's the number-one marker. One and two are close together, you'll be happy to know."

"Pogue doesn't have a criminal record. He's just some loser. I can't believe it," Lucv says. "Some loser who worked for my aunt. Why? 'Why me? Maybe it's her he's really after. Maybe he blames Aunt Kay for his health problems and God knows what."

"No," Benton replies. "He blames you."

"Why? That's crazy."

"Yes, more or less, it's crazy. You fit into his delusional thinking, that's all I can tell you, Lucy. He's punishing you. He was probably punishing you when he went after Henri. We can't know what goes through a mind like his. His logic is all his own, nothing like ours. I can tell you he's psychotic, not psychopathic, impulse-driven, not calculating. Delusional with magical thinking. That's about all I can tell you. Here it comes," he says, and tiny flakes of snow suddenly are swirling around them.

Lucy lowers her goggles as gusts of wind rock aspen trees finely stenciled in dark shades of gray against the white mountains. The snow hits fast and is a small dry snow, and the wind is a crosswind that shoves them sideways as they move one snowshoe in front of another, picking their way along the frozen road.

Outside, the snow is piled high in the branches of the black spruce and in the crooks of the aspen trees. From her third-story window Lucy hears the crunch of ski boots on the crusty sidewalk below. The St. Regis is a sprawling red brick hotel that reminds her of a dragon crouched at the base of Ajax Mountain. The gondolas have not come to life yet at this early hour but people have. The mountains block the sun, and dawn is a blue-gray shadow with no sound except the cold, crunching steps of skiers on their way to the slopes and the buses.

After their crazy trek up Maroon Creek Road yesterday afternoon, Benton and Lucy got into their separate vehicles and went their separate ways. He did not want her to come to Aspen to begin with, and he certainly never intended for Henri, whom he scarcely knew, to end up here, but that is life. Life brings with it strangeness and surprises and upsets. Henri is here. Now Lucy is here. Benton said Lucy could not stay with him, understandably. He does not want her to cripple the progress he might be making with Henri, what little he might be making, if he has made any progress with her. But today Lucy will see Henri when it suits Henri. Two weeks have passed and Lucy can't stand it anymore, can't stand the guilt and the unanswered questions. Whatever Henri is, Lucy needs to see it for herself.

As the morning becomes lighter, everything Benton did and said is clear. First he wore Lucy out in thin air, where it was hard for her to say too much too soon or give vent to her fear-driven fury. Then, for all practical purposes, he sent her to bed. She isn't a child, even if he seemed to treat her like one yesterday, and she knows he cares. She's always known. He has always been good to her, even when she hated him.

She digs inside a duffel bag for a pair of stretch ski pants, a sweater, long silk underwear, and socks, and lays them on the bed next to her nine-millimeter Clock pistol with tritium sights and magazines that hold seventeen rounds, a gun she chooses when routine indoor self-protection is on her mind, when she wants a close contact gun with firepower, not knockdown power, because she wouldn't want to shoot a.40 or.45 caliber bullet or a high-power rifle round inside a hotel room. She hasn't figured out what she'll say to Henri or how she'll feel at the sight of her.

Don't expect anything good, she thinks. Don't expect her to be happy to see you or to be nice or polite. Lucy sits on the bed and pulls off her sweatpants and grabs her t-shirt, snatching it off over her head. She pauses in front of the full-length mirror, looking at herself and making sure she isn't allowing age and gravity to get the best of her. They haven't and they shouldn't, because she isn't quite thirty.

Her body is muscular and lean but not boyish, and she really has no complaint about her physical self but experiences an odd sensation whenever she studies her reflection. Then her body becomes a stranger, different on the outside from what she is inside. Not less or more attractive, just different from how she feels. And it drifts through her thoughts that no matter how many times she makes love, she will never know how her body feels, how her touch feels to her lover. She wishes she knew and is glad she doesn't.

You look all right, she thinks, walking away from the mirror. You look good enough to get by, she thinks as she steps into the shower. The way you look isn't going to matter today, not one bit. You aren't going to be touching anyone today, she tells herself as she turns on the water. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. God, what am I going to do? she says out loud as hot water blasts against marble and splashes the glass door and drives down hard on her flesh. What have I done, Rudy? What have 1 done? Please don't quit on me. I promise I'll change. She has secretly cried in showers for almost half her life. When she started out in the FBI she was a teenager who got summer jobs and internships because of her influential aunt, and she had no business living in a dormitory at Quantico and shooting guns and running obstacle courses with agents who did not panic or cry, or at least she never saw them panic or cry. She assumed they never did. She believed many myths back then because she was young and gullible and in awe, and now she may know better but her early programming twisted her in a way that can't be straightened. If she cries, and she rarely does, she cries alone. When she hurts, she hides it.

She is almost dressed when she becomes aware of the silence. Quietly swearing and suddenly frantic, she digs in a pocket of her ski jacket and finds her cell phone. The battery is dead. Last night she was too tired and unhappy to think about her phone and she forgot it and left it in her pocket, and that isn't like her, that is so unlike her. Rudy doesn't know where she is staying. Neither does her aunt. Neither of them knows the alias she is using, so even if they tried the St. Regis, they wouldn't find her. Only Benton knows where and who she is, and for her to cut Rudy off like this is unthinkable and unprofessional and he will be furious. Of all times, now was not the time to push him farther away. If he quits, what then? She trusts no one else she works with the way she trusts him. Finding the charger, she plugs in the phone and turns it on, and she has eleven messages, most of them left since six a.m. Eastern Standard Time, most of them from him.