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certificate and a Washington driver’s license, which he’d surrender for a New Mexico one after getting to Santa Fe.
    The door opened and Deven walked in.
    “Who are you giving birth to?”
    “Someone named Johnnie Preston.”
    “Teach me.”
    Yardley tilted her head.
    Then she said something she didn’t expect.
    “Okay, go lock the front door and stick the closed sign up.”
    Deven’s face lit up.
    “Are you serious?”
    “Why not? It’s going to happen sooner or later. It may as well be today.”
    Deven reached under Yardley’s dress, moved her hand up and rubbed her between the legs.
    “Thanks.”

     
    13
    Day One
    July 18
    Monday Afternoon
     
    Denver General closed Pantage’s head wound with six stitches and conducted a number of tests to determine the cause of her memory loss, ruling out a brain tumor, oxygen deprivation, infection, drugs, or a psychiatric disorder. Although the impact didn’t result in a concussion, it was nevertheless severe and located directly over the memory area of the brain. “Our best guess is that your amnesia is the product of physical trauma to the brain.”
    “How long will it last?”
    The doctor shrugged.
    “You never know with these things. The brain is a complicated organ. Cases like this can arise from being in the vicinity of an exploding bomb or from being in a car crash. Some people in those situations find their memory coming back fairly quickly, within months or even weeks. Other people never regain what they lost, or regain it only partially.”
    “Are you saying it could be permanent?”
    “It’s possible both ways. All we can do is wait and see. I treated a patient two summers ago. He was on a motorcycle trip to Sturgis, the last rider in a pack of eleven. He went down and ended up in a Flight for Life. Afterwards, he couldn’t remember anything about what happened. He remembered cruising down the road and then he woke up in a hospital. To this day he still has no recollection of crashing or being in the helicopter or anything else about the day in question.”
    Pantage swallowed.
    The hospital also conducted tests to determine the extent of the memory loss. It was a total loss from sometime early Sunday evening until this morning when Pantage woke up. From that point on, it seemed to be working fine. There was, however, a larger problem. Her long-term memory had been affected. Events more that six months old were sketchy at best. She could remember almost nothing that happened more than nine months or a year ago.
    “The best thing you can do at this point is get plenty of rest and eat healthy. Avoid alcohol, smoke, drugs and stress. You might be able to help the return of your long-term memory by reviewing things that happened in your past—photos, diaries, emails, things like that. Even talking to someone who can tell you about your past might help. There are no guarantees but it certainly won’t hurt.”
     
    The law firm was a mile away. Rather than calling a cab she set out on foot, needing time to process things. The sun beat down and tried to strangle the life out of every human and dog and weed and bug in the city.
    She kept her pace up.
    Almost all of her cases were big, meaning they were more than a half-year old, also meaning that she’d forgotten a good deal of what happened in them. The only way to handle it would be to refresh her recollection when she needed to by reviewing the file. It wouldn’t be fair to the client to bill for that time, so she’d need to do it on the side. Getting 40 billables in a week would take 60 in the chair.
    She’d do it and keep her mouth shut.
    The important thing was not to let anyone know she was having brain problems. If the firm put her on leave of absence it would take her off partnership track. She’d worked too hard for too long to let that happen.
    She needed to get drunk.
     
    Two blocks away from the law firm an image flashed in her brain, a terrible image, an image of Jackie Lake lying flat on