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Fe.”
    “Someone from out of town?”
    “Not that I’m aware of.”
    “Be careful of your behavior, Tip. The police are still thinking about you, and they may even have you followed.”
    “I thought I was cleared.”
    “Not necessarily. The charges have been dropped, but the D.A. could always bring them again, if new and incriminating evidence should emerge. You have to remember that having the charges dropped was a slap in the face to the investigating detectives, so they’re not exactly on your side.”
    “I don’t see how they can find anything incriminating,” Tip said. “After all, I didn’t do it.”
    “Right. Fax me the credit card bills, and I’ll get back to you as soon as our investigator checks them out.”
    Tip hung up, put the will in an envelope and left it leaning against the front door with Eagle’s name on it, then went back to paying bills. He was going to have to hire a secretary, he thought.

7
    T eddy Fay’s single-engine Cessna 182 RG crossed a range of snowcapped mountains late in the afternoon. It had been a long day against headwinds. He looked to his right at Lauren Cade, who seemed to be dozing. He placed a hand on her knee, and she stirred. “We’ll be on the ground at Santa Fe in fifteen minutes,” he said.
    Lauren looked around. “What are these mountains?”
    “The Sangre de Cristos,” he said. “They run up to Taos, north of here.”
    “What about south?”
    “They peter out.”
    “Pretty. Is it going to be cold in Santa Fe?”
    “Probably, but it’s a dry cold. You won’t feel it so much.”
    “I’m going to have to buy a coat,” she said. “I didn’t own one in Florida.”
    “We’ll both have to do that,” Teddy said.
    Albuquerque Center called. “Descend and maintain one zero thousand,” the controller said. “Report the airport in sight.”
    The weather was startlingly clear, and after consulting the GPS map, he thought he could pick out the field. The automated weather recording said that the wind was 190 at 10 knots. Five minutes later he reported the airport in sight.
    “Cleared for the visual approach to Santa Fe,” the controller said.
    Teddy descended to eight thousand, and once at that altitude, he turned left downwind for runway twenty and called Santa Fe tower.
    “Cleared to land on twenty,” the controller replied.
    He touched down smoothly on the runway and taxied to Santa Fe Jetcenter, where a rental car awaited them. He placed a fuel order and arranged hangar space, then he and Lauren drove into the city.
    “Teddy,” she said, “I know there are some things you haven’t told me about yourself.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because you talk so little about your past. I just want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, your life began the day I met you.”
    Teddy smiled. “I feel exactly the same way,” he said. He had been struggling with how much to tell her, and how to justify his behavior since he had retired from the CIA some years before after a thirty-year career. Teddy had been an assistant deputy director for technical services at the Agency. Tech Services was the innocuous name for the department that supported foreign agents in the field, supplying identities, weapons, disguises, communications and anything else they might need. The work had given him an astonishing range of skills, and he had used them to stay out of prison. He turned to Lauren.
    “I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for thirty years. I know that sounds like a bad pickup line in a bar, but it’s true.”
    “I believe you,” she said. “Is that why you know so much about so many things?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Did you have to do bad things?”
    “I’ve done some bad things, and I don’t want to talk about them, if that’s all right.”
    “It’s fine,” she said. “I’d just as soon not know.” Lauren had been a sergeant with a special investigative unit of the Florida State