Clark County, Nevada never slept much and lately, neither did she.
She was just outside Vegas, at a table by the dusty front window at the Love’s Truck Stop.
Outside, warm wind rustled the fluorescent darkness.
Inside, the big room rattled with brittle noise. She drank passable coffee and read some Kurt Vonnegut to take her mind off things.
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
That was all it took to send her racing into the warm night.
Phone calls with her attorney in Houston had grown increasingly unnerving, particularly the advice to remain out of sight. But the case was progressing.
They were about to nail down corroborating evidence of fraudulent reporting of natural gas reserves on the quarterly report. Three damaging depositions were about to be recorded in federal court.
Off to the east, the sky began to glow with fractured light.
US Route 93 northbound was empty. Occasional oncoming headlights flickered in the dry purple dawn.
Fortunately, her attorney didn’t need her back in Houston. Unfortunately, she was unable to return to Reserve, New Mexico.
The risks remained hard for her to grasp. Clearly, the stakes grown so high, beyond what she was able to imagine, that her former employer had sent an unknown assailant to kill her.
She realized that technically, she was a whistleblower, that her knowledge could bankrupt the company and send its executives to prison.
But she preferred to think of herself as a geologist. That proved difficult.
Pushing north out of Clark County, Nevada she shivered.
The first light hit the Great Basin and made the two-lane highway glisten like a ragged gold ribbon.
