Page 181 of The Lonely Road

“Always gonna be jealous of any man who lays a hand on you, sweetheart.”

She smiles shyly.

We’re not there—the promised land. We’re working toward it, but the signs are damn good. I’m still sleeping at the inn, but we have breakfast together, and I sit in her office. I’ve helped her with some filing, which was a big step, which was her telling me she trusts me now, that she’s forgiven me.

She twirls a pen in her hand. “I wonder what this means with regards to High Mesa.”

“Still standing legally. But without Jessup’s political infrastructure, they are weaker.” I pause. “I’m going to go see Tannenbaum this afternoon.”

Her expression fractures, surprise slipping through the cracks.

“Not officially,” I explain. “Just a conversation.”

“Mason—”

“Just a conversation,” I repeat.

She holds my gaze for a long moment.

“Don’t do anything that creates a problem for the hearing,” she warns.

“I won’t.”

She nods once. Back to her laptop. Back to work.

It’s there again. Her trust. In me.

It’s everything.

Tannenbaum is at the St. Regis Aspen.

Of course he is.

When men like Shane Tannenbaum and Otis Jessup need to be somewhere in the mountain west and want to feel the ground is still solid under them, they go to the most expensive address available.

The St. Regis is that address in Aspen—marble lobby, mountain views, the hush of a place that costs enough to keep certain realities at a distance.

Certain realities are about to close that distance considerably.

I get Tannenbaum’s room number from a contact who doesn’t ask why I need it.

Fourth floor.

End of the corridor.

Mountain-facing, which means he paid extra for the view, which means he came here to feel powerful and is using the landscape to help him get there.

I knock at four in the afternoon.

He opens the door in a bathrobe that has the St. Regis logo on it, his phone in his hand, and the expression of a man expecting room service.

He sees me.

The expression changes.

He knows who I am.

I’ve been watching faces process my arrival for years, and I know every version of it—the aggression, the performance of confusion, the careful blankness of someone who has done this before. What moves through Tannenbaum’s face is something different.