We have one stop in Denver. I’ve always enjoyed flying over the Rockies in daylight, but it’s downright disconcerting to see the near absence of snow. While it’s never flush in the fall, there have always been peaks that remain covered year round. Now they are few and far between and Denver, like most western cities, suffers from drought.
We land in the Mile High City exactly on time. There’s no deplaning for those of us flying all the way to DC. The new passengers board hastily. A size fourteen sits next to me on the aisle. She has the most comely face I’ve seen in ages, attractive in the ripest way possible. Large women don’t get a fair shake. She smiles at me in that certain way that sails across the seat divide as easily as it can reach across a room, but I know nothing will come of it. I have no real interest in her.
The pilot warns that we’ll be facing turbulence as we pass over the Midwest. It turns out to be an understatement. The wind shear shakes the plane like it’s a maraca, and we passengers rattle in our seats like dried beans. I can see the woman beside me white-knuckle the armrest.
“We’ll be okay,” I tell her. “This is nothing.”
What do I really know about such things? Not much, but I simply can’t believe the plane is going to get ripped apart, not with my life’s work so clearly before me.
We stop shaking well before we begin descending. Even so, I’ve never been so glad to get off a plane. I request a driver from Uber, canceling twice before a woman with a Honda Accord responds.
She pulls promptly up to Arrivals. Her name is Sam — red-haired, round-faced, and as freckled as Little Orphan Annie. She’s friendly, effusive, and I’m reminded of why I’ll never again stand in an endless cab line waiting for some sleepy-eyed taxi driver to roll up and stare insolently at me as I shoehorn my body and bags into a filthy back seat.
Sam ferries me to the Hope Center in the downtown area. There’s angle parking in front set off by a black, slatted fence. Lots of empty spaces. Sam slides right into one and I pay her, bidding her adieu.
I watch her drive away, pleased that she’s gone, unlike a taxi driver, who might have wanted to pick me up in an hour — for an added fee, of course — so that he could take a dinner break at my expense. With the sky darkening, I notice that it’s that time of day.
I don’t want anyone looking out for me. I have plans. Left to their own devices, our leaders from the President on down would have us all spying on friends, neighbors, and strangers. How despicable is that? Like the reprehensible Operation TIPS program after 9/11, which would have given the U.S. more citizens spying on one another than the Stasi had in the former East Germany. Popular opinion drove the proposed TIPS operation into the ground, but the weight of public opinion these days is driven more by paranoia than it was even back then.
I enter the facility, which looks less like a healing center than an office building for boiler-room brokers. So much for the architecture of awe in the design of a sanctuary.
Carrying my briefcase, which hides the main reason I’ve made this trip — it surely wasn’t just to observe Lana grovel with guilt over gambling — I walk up to the meeting room on the second floor and see that she’s not there. I look at my watch. There’s still time. Come on, Lana.
With only five minutes to go, my impatience makes me squirm in my seat. And then she walks in.
I observe her only at an angle. While this will be the third meeting we’ve shared, we’ve hardly talked at all, although a few words did pass between us at the coffeemaker a month ago. That encounter definitely gave me a thrill, making me wonder when we’d meet for the last time. Now I know the answer: never. This will be it, if I’m successful with the device I’m carrying. I had wondered how surprised she’d be if there had been a revealing, climactic moment, an unveiling of me, if you will. I think she would have been shocked to find out who I am. But maybe I’m giving myself too much credit. She might have her suspicions already, for all I know, but there have never been fewer than fifteen of us at the meetings. Tonight it’s especially busy with Lana the twenty-first person to show up. I wonder if she’s counting, too. And if she’ll find that propitious, a winning hand at a game I know she plays. I suspect she’s savvy enough to be a card counter.
And here comes number twenty-two. He slips past the door less than ninety seconds after his charge. I’d give odds — and it’s fun to put it that way in a room full of repentant gamblers — that the African-American man is her FBI-issued security. He might as well be wearing a blue jacket with the Bureau’s acronym blazing across his back in iridescent letters. He has chiseled features and looks alert and intelligent. Too much so for the circumstances. Most of these people look beaten down by debt, doubt, and their affliction. He looks like a winner all around, a warrior. No, I’m not buying him for a man with a gambling problem. I’m buying him as a man with a security problem: Lana Elkins.
It’ll be interesting to see if he tries to join in at some point.
He never does. There’s not a lot of talk during the meeting; it seems to reflect the lack of interaction beforehand. A dourness pervades the room, as if something has sucked out all of the oxygen. I finally nod in what I think is an encouraging manner when an older man with a bright white beard speaks up in support of Lana. Yes, she was strong. Yes, she blocked my efforts to flood her phone with casino ads… for awhile. But my goal wasn’t simply to have her gamble. My goal has always been to keep her distracted so Steel Fist can kill her, or have her killed, which would only encourage his subscribers to commit more mayhem. And gambling is sidetracking her. She just said, “I can’t get it out of my head.” That’s the idea, Lana. I want you thinking about gambling when you could be thinking about your survival.
After the meeting ends, she hangs around long enough not to attract attention for leaving in a rush. Predictably, the man I picked out as her FBI agent follows suit.
Between him, Lana, and me, there are two gamblers. No one’s behind me, but that’s just luck. If someone appears, I’ll have to find a reason to delay, a sudden return to the center as though I’ve forgotten something. Thankfully, I don’t need to. What is even better is I immediately see that Lana has angle-parked her Prius by the dark, slatted fence. I dressed in black slacks and a dark top, knowing what I planned to do. I’d imagined executing my next maneuver by stepping away from the meeting for a bathroom break. But as soon as I saw the likely agent, I knew he might decide to follow me if I left that room, and I could ill afford to have been caught sneaking around Lana’s car then. Or now.
What I plan should take less than ten seconds, but if I’m caught it’ll get ugly fast. I can’t be caught.
I’m planning to drop low behind the fence when she climbs into her vehicle. Then I’ll reach through the slats and try to carry out my plan. And that might still work, but right now she’s stopping again to talk to the handsome guy who’s been trailing her all evening. To anybody else it might look natural enough: an attractive woman with a striking man chatting after a meeting they’ve both attended. But Lana’s not flirting, not with her arms folded tightly across her chest. I sense tension, possibly for reasons all my own.