John Day, Oregon

John Day, Oregon declined the invitation.  It was not a town to excessively mourn.

In a tight canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, the coyotes were now quiet.

Cecile lost sight of the two assassins.  Their track bent them away from her.  She heard them scuff through thick sage and dislodge dry soil pockmarked with withering clumps of golden yarrow.

She didn’t have night vision goggles.  Just the rifle’s night vision scope.

There hadn’t been time to prepare.  She’d been able to change into hiking boots and get her rifle out of the Porsche.  That was it.

Then the two men climbing through the soft darkness to kill her slid back in sight.  She knew that in a moment, they would separate to cover more ground and close the circle.

Cecile slumped down into the tight hiding space between the three boulders.

Hundreds of miles north, up in John Day, Oregon, a safer darkness revealed the first strands of light.