“They still include you?” she asked as she checked the highway exit signs and saw that her ramp was coming up.

“It’s as if having me at the table is keeping a part of her at the table.” He glanced out the passenger window. “Makes it hard to move on.”

Bernadette navigated the truck off Interstate 35. “I’ll bet.”

He turned his head back around and looked at her. “What about you? My wife’s been gone six years and Michael’s only been gone three. You must still keep in touch with his people.”

“His people never liked me, and they blamed me. They said I should have been paying better attention.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah … well.”

“With all the, uh, folks you’ve seen—Murrick and Creed and I don’t know who else … Have you ever wondered?”

She hung a right on a county road. “If I’ll ever set eyes on my dead husband?”

“What would you do?”

She jerked the truck to a halt at a stop sign, braking harder than she intended. “I’d have a helluva a lot to say to him, and he’d probably never show his face again.”

“He really pissed you off.”

She checked both ways and rolled through the intersection. “He dumped me in the most permanent way possible.”

“Maybe it wasn’t about you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she turned the conversation around and asked him a tough question. “If you could talk to your wife again, what would you say to her?”

“That I love her and miss her. That I’m sorry.”

Bernadette frowned. “Sorry for what?”

“Sorry for the accident. Sorry for not getting the idiot who ran her car off the road.”

She hung a left onto a gravel stretch, glad to get off the subject of dead spouses. “Ready to rumble?”

SHE WAS PLEASED there weren’t many other people riding. Garcia had rented a big beater of a bike, and Bernadette didn’t think he could do anything to the Yamaha that hadn’t been done before. The trails were muddy and there were a lot of ruts, but the hills weren’t unmanageable. She looked up at the slate sky; as long as there was no storm, they’d be good.

Made up of more than a hundred acres of rolling land, the private riding area belonged to a retired farmer who was making a second living running the dirt bike park and renting out vehicles. Some of the trail wound around open fields while other sections looped in and out of stands of trees. A creek bordered the southern swath, and Bernadette had no intention of taking Garcia there. With all the blind corners, an inexperienced rider could easily end up in the water.

They rode together through a wide, straight trail. When they reached the start of a modest incline, she gave him some tips and then stayed at the bottom to watch how he handled it. Keeping both feet planted on the pegs, he shifted into low gear and sped up before ascending. He stopped at the top and turned around, waiting for approval.

She gave him a big thumbs-up and followed him.

Garcia performed just as well descending the hill. He shifted into low gear and went down with the throttle closed, applying the brakes to reduce his speed.

The bottom of the incline was a mud puddle. Garcia’s big bike began to bog down, and when he opened the throttle suddenly to maintain his momentum, the front end got out from under him. He fell off the back, and the bike tipped on its side in the mud.

She came up behind him. “You okay?”

He nodded, fired the bike up again, and kept going.

She was nervous when they faced climbing the steepest hill in the park. If Garcia didn’t do it just right, the front wheel could lift on him again. “I don’t think you’re ready for this!” she hollered over the engines.

“I can handle it!” he yelled back.

“Don’t forget,” she said. “Ease up on the throttle while shifting, or you’ll end up on your back—maybe with the bike on top of you!”

Garcia started up. He stood on the pegs and leaned forward over the front wheel. He got to the top, waved at her, and kept going. She went up after him.

When they got to an area with a lot of closely spaced humps—moguls—she knew he’d need help. They stopped their bikes next to each other. “Stand on the pegs when you take these, or you’ll never father children!” she yelled.

He laughed. “I want to have children.”

He bumped and bounced over the mounds, and she followed, going slow in case he took a spill. He didn’t.

HE RETURNED the rental bike while she rolled her Honda up the ramp and onto the bed of the pickup. Garcia was so caked with mud, she wouldn’t let him sit down until she’d spread an old blanket over the Ranger’s seat.

Before they got back on the highway, she drove into town to use the self-service car wash. She pulled into the bay, plugged a fistful of quarters into the power spray, and used the hose to clean her machine while it was tied down on the bed of the truck. She climbed back into the truck and looked at her dripping Honda through the rearview mirror. “It’ll be dry by the time I get home.”

“Maybe you should’ve hosed me down,” said Garcia, slapping his caked thighs.

AS SHE TURNED onto the freeway for the drive back to the Twin Cities, the subject of the tower mess finally came up.

“It’s an FBI case, so we can color it any which way we want,” said Garcia. “Araignee carved up a woman in his bathtub and fired at a federal agent, so it was a justifiable shooting. The part about him doing the high dive, we’ll work that into something believable. It was a suicide.”

“It was,” she said.

“When it comes to that fire, if there’re any follow-up questions from the cops or the fire department or the ME’s office, I’ll handle them.”

“Do you really think it was just the publicity that pushed the doc’s self-destruct button?”

Garcia threw an arm up over the top of the bench. “What do you think set him off?”

“All of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. If a guy had strolled into Luke’s office carrying the baggage the VonHader boys were dragging around with them, the doc would have put the guy on meds and booked him for a lifetime of counseling. Remember his letter to his wife? That stuff about his demons?”

Garcia nodded. “But instead of seeing a shrink, Matt deals by becoming a party boy and Luke doesn’t deal at all. He pretends his parents’ bullshit was minor. Then one of them ends up pushing their bastard old man down the stairs, and the other covers for him. More ugly luggage.”

“I’m done with this,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Garcia pointed ahead. “There’s a great greasy spoon right off the next exit.”

She thought about the last time the two of them tried to enjoy a restaurant meal. The prospect of Creed sliding into a truck-stop booth wasn’t boosting her appetite. “I can fix us something at my place.”

THEY PULLED UP next to his car, parked on the street in front of her loft. He looked down at his muddy jeans. He’d kicked off his boots and was in his stocking feet; even his socks had managed to get muddy. “I’ve got a change of clothes in my car, but I’m filthy all the way through.”

“Shower at my place.”

“You sure?”

“Quickly grab your stuff out of your car and hop back in. I’ve gotta pull around and park the truck in the ramp for the night. You can help me roll out the bike and take it back upstairs.”

He popped open the passenger door. “You really haul that machine inside with you every time?”

“Absolutely—it’s my baby. Now get going. Take your gear with you. You can keep my gloves.”

He jumped out, grabbed his helmet and gloves and muddy boots from the floor of the passenger’s side, and went to his car. Bernadette watched him while he bent over and dumped his riding gear into the trunk and dug around for his clean clothes. Garcia, dirty and sweaty, was all smiles after an afternoon of playing in the mud. He looked like a little boy.