Trace

49

On either side of the pass are snow-covered mountains, and the late afternoon shadows are settling low and wide, and in the high ridges to the right of them it is snowing. There's no use skiing or shoeing past three-thirty, because darkness comes early in the Rockies and by now the road they are on is freezing over and the air is biting.

"We should have headed back sooner," Benton says, stabbing a ski pole ahead of his leading snowshoe. "The two of us are dangerous together. We never know when to quit."

Not content to turn back after the fourth avalanche marker where Benton had suggested they stop, they kept shoeing steadily uphill toward Maroon Lake, only to turn back not even half a mile before they could see it. As it is, they'll barely make it to their cars before it is too dark to see, and they are cold and hungry. Even Lucy is worn out. She won't admit it, but Benton can tell the altitude is getting to her; she has slowed down considerably and is having a hard time talking.

For a few minutes their snowshoes scrape over the crusting snow on Maroon Creek Road, and the only sound is their scraping and crunching and their poles puncturing the glazing rutted snow. Their breathing is quite smoky now but quiet enough, and it is only now and then that Lucy takes in a lot of air and blows it out. The more they talked about Henri, the more they walked, and they've gone too far for their own good.

''I'm sorry,' Benton says, the aluminum frame of his shoe clanking ice. "I should have turned us around sooner.' I don't have any more protein bars or water."

"I'll make it," says Lucy, who under ordinary conditions can keep up with him just fine, can more than keep up with him. "Those little planes. I didn't eat. I've been running and biking. Doing a lot. I didn't think this would bother me."

"Every time I come here I forget," he replies, looking around at the snowstorm to their right as it sinks lower over the white peaks, slowly moving toward them like fog. It is maybe a mile off and a thousand feet above them, if that. He hopes they make it back to their cars before the snow moves in. The road is easy to follow and there is no way to go except down. They won't die.

"I won't forget," Lucy says, breathing hard. "Next time I'll eat. Maybe not shoe the first hour I get here either."

"Sorry," he says again. "Sometimes I forget you have limitations. It's easy to forget that."

"I seem to have a lot of them lately."

"If you had asked me, I would have told you it would happen." He reaches his pole ahead and steps. "But you wouldn't have believed me."

"I listen to you."

I didn't say you don't listen. I said you don't believe. In this case you wouldn't have."

"Maybe so. How much farther? What marker are we on?"

"I hate to tell you, but only three. We've got a few miles to go," Benton replies. He looks up at the thick, smoky storm. In just a few minutes it has moved lower and the top half of the mountains has vanished into it and the wind has picked up. "It's been like this since I got here," he says. "Snows almost every day, usually late in the day, five or six inches. When you become the target you can't be objective. As warriors, we tend to objectify those we pursue the same way they objectify their victims. It's different when we are the ones objectified, when we are the victims, and to Henri you are an object. As much as you hate the word, you are a victim. She objectified you before you even met her. You fascinated her and she wanted to possess you. In a different way, Pogue has objectified you too. But for his own reasons, different ones from Henri's reasons. He didn't want to sleep with you or live your life or be you. He just wants you to hurt."

"You really believe he's after me and not Henri?"

"Yes, I do. You are the intended victim. You are the object." His words are punctuated with stabs of the ski poles and clanks of the shoes. "You mind if we rest for a minute?" He doesn't need to, but he's sure she does.

They stop and lean forward in their snowshoes, leaning on their poles, breathing in big puffs of white air and watching the snowstorm suffocate the mountains to their right about a mile off and close to their own altitude now.

"I give it less than half an hour," Benton says, taking off his sunglasses and tucking them into a pocket of his ski jacket.

"Trouble coming," Lucy says. "Kind of symbolic."

"One of the good things about coming out here or to the ocean. Nature puts things in perspective and has a few things to say," he replies as he watches the gray foggy storm smothering the mountains, knowing that inside the clouds it is snowing hard and soon enough it will be doing that where they are. "Trouble is coming. I'm afraid you're right. He's going to do something else if he isn't stopped."

"I hope he tries it with me."

"Don't hope that, Lucy."

"I hope it," she says, and she starts walking again. "The nicest thing he could do for me is try it on me. It will be the last thing he tries."

"Henri's pretty capable of taking care of herself," he reminds her as he takes big, sure steps, planting one shoe then the other into the crusting snow.

"Not as capable as I am. Not close. Did she tell you what she did at the training camp?'

"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.