The Kraken Project

66

The snow had come early and hard to the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Wyman Ford stood in the window of the cabin, drinking his morning coffee and looking across the corrals and pens to the magnificent, snow-covered peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The rising sun set the snow on fire. Plumes of snow trailed off the three fourteeners dominating the center of the range. He and Melissa had climbed each one of them over the course of the fall, and he felt that they were now his friends.

Behind him, Melissa was reading the day-old paper that Clant had brought up from the main house, the pages rustling as she turned them. He could hear the freshly lit fire crackling on the hearth, throwing out a warmth that filled the room of the log cabin.

He turned from the window and looked at Melissa, sitting at the pine-plank breakfast table, the sun shimmering through her blond hair. She looked up from the paper.

“Today’s the day,” she said. “January twentieth. And I still have no idea what Dorothy was talking about.”

Ford shrugged. “The day just started.”

Melissa laughed. “And what, pray tell, is going to happen out here in the middle of the Colorado wilderness?”

“Dorothy said you would know.”

She laid down the paper. “The only thing happening today is the presidential inauguration.”

Ford took a sip of coffee. “When does it begin?”

She consulted the paper. “It starts at eleven-thirty Eastern, nine-thirty Mountain.”

“I think we should watch it.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand listening to that creep.”

“Who knows? Dorothy might have arranged a surprise.”