When we meet

Smith Brennan was headed to Boston from Denver. He was good looking enough to draw looks on the airplane: trim, six foot two, sandy blond hair. He was a graduate of NYU law school. And yet he felt like a loser.

He was perspiring badly in the cramped and claustrophobic middle aisle airplane seat of an American Airline. He was so obviously pathetic that the pleasant and accommodating flight attendant stopped and asked if he was feeling alright. Was he okay?

Smith told her that he was just fine, but it was another lie,the mother of all lies. His condition was called posttraumatic stress disorder and sometimes featured nasty anxiety attacks that left him feeling he could die right there. He'd been suffering from the disorder for close to three years.

" Oh yeah, I am ill ,Madame flight attendant. Only it's a little worse than that.

See, I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be on a vacation. Actually, I'm supposed to be taking sometime off, getting my head screwed on straight, getting used to not being fired from my job of ten years.

Getting used to not being an FBI agent anymore, not being on the fast track at the Bureau, not being much of anything.

The name computer printed on his plane ticket read Smith Brennan, but it wasn't his real name. His name was Reed West. He had been a secret spy, a shooting star at one time,but now not sure if this vacation will take his job away. He was thirty eight, and lately, he felt like he was feeling his age for the first time in his life. Probably because of his condition.

For this week and moment on, he would forget the old name. forget his job too. just for a week.

I am Smith Brennan, I'm going on a vacation to hunt and fish in the Rockies. I'll keep to that simple story. That simple lie.

Smith, Reed, whoever the hell he was, hadn't been up in an airplane in nearly three years. Not since September 9, 2014.He didn't want to think about that now.

So Smith pretended he was asleep as the sweat continued to trickle down his face and neck, as the fear inside him built way past the danger level. He couldn't get his mind to rest, even for just a few minutes. He had to be on this plane.

It was all connected to September 9, wasn't it? Sure it was . that was when the stress disorder had begun. This was for Rosie and for Joe and for Jay.

Smith remembered the words of his boss in the secret agent work. " Don't fall in love with this job or else they will be stained red blood". He was determined to avenge the death and decided strictly.

And oh yeah, it also happened to be hugely beneficial for just about everybody else on the planet. Very strange— but that last outrageous bit was very true, scarily true. In his opinion, nothing in history was more important than what he'd come here to investigate.

Unless he was crazy.

Which was a distinct possibility.

The Day started to go a little crazy when Tor Karl and his young son brought that poor crushed vixen to the clinic, my small animal hospital about fifty minutes southwest, along the highway.

Justin Bieber was singing very good in his album. I flipped Justin Bieber off when I saw Karl walk inside carrying that poor vixen.

I could see the badly injured vixen was pregnant. She was wild eye and trashing when Karl hefted her unto the table. Half trashing, in truth,because I suspected her spine was broken at midpoint, where she'd been clipped by the car that Karl drives.

The little boy was sobbing and his father looked miserable. I thought he was going to break down too.

"Money's not an issue,it's not a problem", he said.

And money was not an issue because I knew nothing was going to save the vixen. If the mother was close to term. If it hadn't been mashed too badly by the car.

"I can't save the