Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Wilde wouldn’t be easy to kill. River knew that and knew it well. What he needed was a plan where Wilde would never see it coming, never have a chance to react, and in fact wouldn’t even know it happened. He’d be alive one second and dead the next.
Something that fast meant a bullet to the brain.
It also meant River couldn’t miss.
He’d have to be close.
As he drove back to Denver with January at his side, the mountain topography was every bit as spectacular as he remembered. He really needed to get up here more.
January put her hand on his knee.
“You’re thinking about something,” she said.
He was.
He was indeed.
“I have to do something tonight,” he said.
“What?”
“Something that you’re not going to be involved in.”
“What if I want to be?”
He shook his head.
“Sorry, not this time.”
“That’s not fair.”
He tossed his hair and looked at her sideways, then gave her a peck on the lips. “Tomorrow, we’re leaving Denver.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I have some money stashed away. It’s more than enough to give us time to think.”
“Think about what?”
“About getting normal,” he said.
She laughed.
“Normal is boring.”
“I’m not talking about totally normal,” he said. “Just enough that we don’t have to keep looking over our shoulder all the time.”
The Rocky Mountain scenery rolled by, seriously riveting. When they got to the outskirts of Denver, River didn’t go home. Instead he turned south on Santa Fe.
“Where we going?”
“A graveyard.”
“Are you serious?”
Yes.
He was.
“Why, who’s there?”
“No one, yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it won’t officially be a graveyard until tonight,” he said.
She ran her fingers through his hair.
“You couldn’t get normal if your life depended on it.”
He smiled.
“You’re probably right.”
“There ain’t no probably about it.”