Page 56 of The Lonely Road

“And things are progressing.”

Which is true, in the sense that time has passed, and I am still in Wildflower Canyon, and I know considerably more about the valley than I did three weeks ago. What I have not done is anything materially useful to Jessup, and we both know it.

“Mason.” His voice drops a register. The charm stripped back, the real ugliness underneath. “I need more than progressing. The preliminary hearing is very fuckin’ soon. My legal team needs her strategy now.”

“Good intelligence takes time.”

“You’ve had three weeks.”

“In a town where everyone knows everyone,” I protest without heat, “you push too fast, the whole thing collapses. You want it done right or you want it done fast?”

Another pause. He’s calculating whether he has the standing to fuck with me and arrives at the answer that he doesn’t.

“I want results.” He sounds like a child now, sulking.

“You’ll have them.”

“By when?”

“When they’re ready.” I let the motherfucker process that. “I’ll be in touch, Senator.”

I hang up before he can reframe my answer as another question.

I sit on the edge of the bed and look at the phone in my hand.

Three weeks.

I have been in Wildflower Canyon for three weeks, and I have had coffee and meals with Taya Morningstar several times, a first date at a fancy French restaurant, a barbecue at Kincaid Farms, and one moment outside the Ridgeline Inn that I have thought about with unreasonable frequency since.

I have not photographed a single file.

I have not extracted a single piece of privileged case strategy.

I have not done the thing I was paid to do.

This is not who I am.

I am very good at this. I have been very good at this for years, in circumstances considerably more complicated than a small Colorado town, a water rights case, and a woman who says okay like it means something.

The problem—and I’m now willing to call it that, out loud, to myself—is that I know exactly how this is supposed to go, but I’m doing nothing to go where I’m supposed to.

Not because I don’t have the skill.

I do.

I’m not doing it because of her.

But I know I will have to.

Then I remember her saying how she needs to do better than her best. I warned her then that even if she lost it, it wouldn’t be her fault.

It’ll be mine.

And the truth is that it’s hard for someone like Clara Whitman to win cases like this. Taya knows this better than anyone, as she’s been on the other side of that equation enough times.

It sounds like a rationalization for doing what I need to do—and, in the process, hurting Taya.

She’s a big girl. Won’t be her first loss. Or her last. She’ll get over it.