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account.
    He didn’t want her to get ahead of him. If the Terre Haute yard held any information about the two riders who had caused that bloodbath, he wanted it, and without any filtering on her part. Whatever relationship had quickly formed between them, it felt more like competition than cooperation.She had been sent to determine if there was a fire, and if so, to quickly put it out. His role here was to discover the source of that fire, and their two goals seemed in direct opposition—too bad, since he liked her spark.
    He had always denigrated the world of rent-a-cops and tin badges, but now that he saw the perks of private security, he wondered if Priest might put a good word in for him with Northern Union. With his house on the auction block, private security work suddenly seemed okay.
    Tyler’s concern over the possible loss of his house grew daily. At first, suspended without pay, and then, months later, removed from the department, he had missed five mortgage payments and his home was now in foreclosure. Having already lost Katrina, his girlfriend of two years, to the calamity of the assault, having lost contact with his colleagues, and having been stained by the racist accusations of a headline-driven press, he now struggled to hold on to the one last vestige of his former life: his home. His touchstone. It wasn’t so much that he needed the house; he’d sold most of his possessions—a stereo, a dining room set—so that a bachelor apartment would do just fine. But he had fixed the place up from a weed-encrusted, paint-peeling dilapidated wreck in a borderline neighborhood to a gentrified Cape, thanks to an incentive program from the mayor’s office that encouraged police to settle in neighborhoods where their presence and guidance were most needed. Never mind that his was one of only five mowed lawns on the block; he hadn’t moved there to be a hero but to get a good deal on a piece of real estate. Never mind that his neighbors had turned their backs on him thanks to the racial accusations that accompanied the assault. After all the sweat and hard work, it was still his home, and it seemed inconceivable he might lose it. With little else left in his life, he had made holding on to his home more important than it should have been. He knew this yet could dolittle to lessen its importance. He thought perhaps that focusing on this job might free him up some.
    He placed a late-night call to an attorney friend, Henry Happle, who was leading the charge against the bank. The idea was to establish a plan of repayment for the missed mortgages and use the carrot of Tyler having gotten a job to convince the lender that he could make current and future mortgage payments—all of which was a stretch. His current job came with no contract, no agreement beyond a few days of freelance work, even though his boss, Loren Rucker, had generously offered to speak to the bank on Tyler’s behalf.
    In the course of the phone call, Happle attempted to sound encouraging, but it was just that, a halfhearted ruse to buoy a friend’s sagging spirits, and one that left Tyler more depressed than ever.
    He eased the rental car a bit faster on the glare ice, worried that Priest might conduct the worthwhile interviews ahead of him. He didn’t appreciate racing her for the next lead, like a hungry journalist. It wasn’t the way law enforcement was supposed to work. Besides, it had been his question to Madders, not hers, that had led them to jump into their cars:
Where would the bloody boxcar’s last stop have been?
An obvious enough question—establish the point of origin. Priest certainly would have asked it if he hadn’t. And now, as a result of that, here he was fishtailing along the interstate. Despite Priest’s explanation for her presence, Tyler wasn’t buying it. He sensed something else going on. Flying an investigator out on a private plane over the discovery of a bloody boxcar? Railroad Killer or not, it seemed unnecessary.