Page 30 of The Night We Lost Him

Sam pulls out his license, hands it over. “Sam Noone,” he says. “Cece is expecting me.”

The guard looks at his license, hands it back. “You should have been notified. Ms. Salinger was pulled into a dinner in town.”

“Oh, is that so? Not a lot of service up here.”

“Apologies for that.”

“Thing is, to be honest with you, we just drove quite a long way, and it’s a bit of a family emergency. Maybe someone could buzz her and ask if there’s a place where we could just park the car and crank up the radio until she gets back from her dinner? We really just need a minute of her time.”

“That wouldn’t be possible.”

Sam smiles at him. “Well, it would be possible.”

“Sam . . .” I say.

He turns and looks at me. “What? It’s entirely possible.”

I put my hand on Sam’s arm, leaning across him, making eye contact with the guard, forcing a smile.

“Can we just ask you one thing and we’ll get out of your way?” I say. “When you say Cece is having dinner in town, do you mean the town of Los Alamos?”

“That is the town here, yes.”

The guard tilts his head and looks at me, like I’ve asked the dumbest question he’s heard in recent memory. Then he points down the driveway, to a turnabout, that will take us back in the direction we came.

“You’re going to need to reverse and turn the car around right over there, thanks.”

“Sure, sorry to bother you.”

He heads back into the guardhouse, Sam turning toward me. “What the hell was that? I was getting somewhere.”

“You were getting nowhere, to be clear,” I say. “And that was me confirming Los Alamos, because I’ve been there. It’s not a big town, one main strip. There can’t be more than four or five restaurants on those few blocks.”

“And?”

“And I’m guessing, if we want to find someone eating dinner there, it won’t be impossible.”

Sam starts backing up, his arm on my seat’s back, his eyes on the rear window.

“That’s your plan?”

“Well, my preferred plan is for you to drive us straight back to LAX because apparently Cece Salinger has no intention of speaking to us, but I figured you’d think this is better than nothing.”

“She could be eating at someone’s house. She could be in her house and the guard’s lying entirely.”

“True,” I say. “You want to head back to LAX, then?”

I don’t need to toggle through my calendar, or study my notes file, to know what I’ll find there. I have hours of weekend work to get done tomorrow in preparation for a busy week. I have a pitch to ready for a large commission—a drug rehabilitation clinic in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I have Jack. Jack whose love and worry I can feel, even from this far away.

Sam heads back down the mountain pass, stealing a glance in my direction. “Okay but I want you to admit it…”

“Admit what?”

He turns back onto the main road, heads in the direction of the downtown. “We were never going home tonight.”

* * *

Downtown Los Alamos is similar to how I remember it.

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