Upgrade(66)

IT WAS RAINING AS I pulled into Silverton, Colorado, an old mining town of five hundred people. It sat in a high valley surrounded by the jagged, broken peaks of a thirty-million-year-old mountain range formed when two continental plates slammed into each other.

I drove through the quiet town.

Nothing open but a shitkicker bar at one end, a diner at the other. Half the buildings stood in varying states of disrepair. It felt like the kind of place that hadn’t meaningfully changed in a hundred years, one that stood in defiance of the future.

And it was dying.

At the end of town, I pulled over to the side of the road.

According to my GPS, 58 Eolus Way was just 3.2 miles north of my current location, and as I looked around at this empty, dying town, I couldn’t escape the thought that Andrew had lied to me. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe I was playing right into Kara’s hand.

Either way, I’d know soon enough.



* * *



—

A mile north of town, the pavement ended. The dirt road was muddy, flooded in places, the rain falling harder now as the road wended through an evergreen forest.

The clouds were low and baleful. They decapitated the highest peaks.

I passed the base of an abandoned ski hill. The lodge was dark, its windows broken out, chairlifts swaying in the wind. Two long-neglected snowplows quietly rusting away.

After another two miles, the GPS alerted me that I’d reached 58 Eolus Way.

I didn’t stop.

On my right, a one-lane road branched up the mountainside before vanishing into a blackened forest—no street address that I could see, but a gate blocked entry to the driveway, and there was a keypad and an intercom next to it. I’d seen all of this at lower resolution from the satellite map when I stopped to make my preparations yesterday.

I drove a couple hundred yards farther up the road, finally parking the Sprinter a safe distance from Kara’s driveway.

Rain hammered the windshield.

I went into the back of the van and opened Andrew’s bag. He’d taken my weapon apart in Tiffany’s house in Glasgow, but now I had his 9mm Kimber Micro. I checked the load: 7 + 1 capacity. It was a tiny weapon, but at the moment, an improvement over nothing.

Stepping outside, the air was redolent of wet spruce and burned wood. I plunged into the charred forest, making my way steadily up the steep, wooded mountainside.

After fifteen minutes, I was several hundred feet above the road, and I could see, in the distance, the driveway to 58 Eolus Way making its winding ascent through the trees. I suspected there were cameras and IR sensors all along the drive.

I continued my slog up the mountain, keeping the road in sight while remaining hidden in the trees.

An hour later, I finally came to the edge of a glade. Straight ahead of me stood the mountain lodge. From inside, lights shone dimly through the windows.

I sat down against a tree, letting the canopy of branches shield me from the frigid rain. As the afternoon turned toward evening and the light drained away, I took a pair of binoculars out of my pack and glassed the house.

No movement inside.

I’d run a title search on the house. It had had a single owner since its construction twelve years ago, an entity called J6, which was an anonymous LLC with a registered agent in Delaware and no other information available. I’d hacked into the records of the Silverton building inspector’s office and found the floor plans. Assuming the builders had stuck to them, I’d know my way around.

As I waited for darkness, it occurred to me that I was on a mountain in Colorado, above ten thousand feet in January, and it was pouring rain instead of snow. Once upon a time, these mountains would’ve been buried under meters of fresh powder. Once upon a time, the forests would’ve been green. But the wildfires of overlong summers had crisped them.

Evening arrived.

I came to my feet, staying in the trees and skirting the perimeter of the glade until I reached the side of the house.

Moving along the stone wall, I turned the corner into the backyard. A sprawling deck extended from the house, right up to the edge of the forest. I stopped at the first window I came to.

And there she was.

Her back was to me and she was cutting vegetables at a granite island—just ten feet away.

I moved on. If the architectural plans were to be believed, there was a door at the far end of the house, which opened into a solarium. It would give me the best cover for approaching Kara, and if I had to break glass, it was unlikely she would hear it from the kitchen.

I crossed the deck and ran along the back of the house, finally arriving at a dark wall of glass that was steamed up on the inside.

Pulling the Kimber Micro out of my jacket, I reached for the French doors.

The handle turned.

Warm air swept over my face.

I stepped inside, the door clicking shut softly behind me.

I was in a music room, where a grand piano with a satinwood case stood surrounded by walls of glass. A collection of framed photographs had been carefully arranged on its closed lid.

I inspected them in the darkness.

Max and me at eight years old on a horseback-riding excursion in the Sierra Nevada.

Kara in cap and gown at her high school graduation.

Our father, Haz, at the cockpit of the sailboat he loved in San Francisco Bay, smiling behind sunglasses.

Birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings, Halloweens.