One Mile Under. Andrew Gross

Dawn stuck her head out. “Oh, Dani, sorry, she must’ve snuck out. We’ve been calling her.”

      “No worries,” Dani said, handing the cat over. “I never mind a visit from my friend.”

      “We’ve got a zin open.” Dawn was a massage therapist who worked at the St. Regis, and her boyfriend, Jerry, was a chef at the hotel, too. “You and Blu want to come over? Watch Jon Stewart?”

      “Thanks,” Dani said, “but I’ve had enough. Rough day.”

      “I know. We heard. So horrible. Did you know him?”

      Dani shrugged, opening the door for Blu to go inside. “A little. More a while back than now.”

      “You’re sure you don’t want that glass of wine? It’s a good one.”

      “Thanks, Dawn. I think I’ll just crash. We’ll do it another time.”

      “I understand.” Dawn smiled. “Let me know if we can do anything for you, okay?”

      “Thanks, doll. I will,” Dani said back.

      Inside, she peeled off the shell she’d had on since this morning and stepped out of her jeans. She threw herself down on the couch and took out the scrunchie from her ponytail and shook out her hair. She massaged her neck a little and blew out a weary blast of air.

      Yes. Rough day.

      She got up to make herself a cup of tea. Her cell phone vibrated on the counter. Part of her felt like she didn’t even want to look who it was. She already knew who it was anyway. Geoff, making sure she’d made it home. He was a gentleman like that. Part of her just wanted to take a long shower and go to bed and wake up and better things would happen tomorrow. She listened to the buzzing a third time.

      She looked at the screen and saw a name she couldn’t place at first. Ronald Kessler.

      Who the hell was that? Probably some marketing call. She was about to just let it go to voice mail when curiosity got the better of her and she just answered. “Hello?”

      “Dani?”

      By the time she put it together who it was he’d already told her. “It’s Ron.”

      “Ron?”

      “Rooster.”

      “Jesus, Rooster … Ron, how’d you get my number?”

      “I had it once. Remember, you recommended some customers to us a year or two back.”

      “Oh, yeah, right.” It struck her as a little creepy that Rooster had kept her in his phone all this time. “Listen, Ron, it’s a little late and I’m just getting ready—” There was a lot of noise in the background.

      “I know it’s late, Dani. I don’t mean to bother you,” he said. “There was just something I had to say. About what happened back there at the bar.”

      “Look, we all had a little too much to drink …” In a weird way Dani always had a soft spot for Rooster. In the same way you might feel sorry for a stray cat. The guy was an outcast. But he didn’t mean anybody harm. John Booth was probably right, he’d just taken one too many hits of something back in the day. “But Rudy was right, Ron. Trey had a wife and kid, and you can’t just go around riling people up making accusations that you can’t support.”

      “I wasn’t making anything up. And I wasn’t lying. About what I said I saw out there this morning.”

      He hesitated just like he had at the bar. She put on the kettle for her tea.

      “Ron, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. Or else take it to Chief Dunn.” She knew Rooster knew Wade. Wade was once his sponsor in AA, and that didn’t go so well. Rooster had slipped several times and had a reputation of not being honest in the program. “And just so we’re real here, you can’t even see that part of the river from where the balloons go up. You know that better than anyone.”

      “I can’t take it to Chief Dunn. There are some things between us. I know he thinks I’m a few of bricks short of a wall. Everyone does. And maybe I am. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to be where I was out over the river earlier. I was the only one up today and this nice couple, they handed me a hundred-dollar bill to stay up there a while longer and let it drift. That’s why I’m calling you.”

      Dani started to grow impatient. “Me?”

      “You can take it to Chief Dunn, Dani. He’d want to know this.”

      “Ron, please …” Dani put in the tea bag and poured water into the mug. “It’s been a rough day for everyone. And I’m getting ready for bed. So what is it you saw?”

      “All I can say is, your friend wasn’t alone out there on that river.”

      “I know, that’s what you’ve been saying. Look—”

      “He was wearing a red windbreaker, right?”

      That took her by surprise. He was.

      “And his kayak was blue …?”

      Dani didn’t answer, but her hesitation seemed to give Rooster the sense that he’d struck something with that.

      “So I’m not so crazy after all, am I? I didn’t know it at the time, but it had to be him, right?”

      “So who was out there with him, Ron?” Dani’s attention was suddenly aroused. “Ron, it’s crazy in there. You still at the Nugget?”

      “How about you meet me at the balloon field in the morning.” Near the Aspen Industrial Park where the balloons went up from. “I got a ride at seven and we’ll be all tethered back by eight thirty.”

      Dani didn’t have a tour in the morning. And, yes, she could take it to Wade. Whatever Ron claimed he saw. He did have the color of Trey’s kayak right, and what he was wearing.

      “Will you be there?”

      “All right, I’ll be there,” Dani said. She suddenly felt the hairs on her arms stand on edge. She didn’t even like the idea of being alone with him.

      “I know he was a friend of yours, Dani. But you were always a fair person to me. Not like some.”

      “Yes. I know that, Ron.”

      “So I’ll see you at eight thirty, then. After my ride.”

      “Okay.”

      “And Dani …”

      “Yes.”

      “I don’t care what anyone thinks, I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t drunk tonight and I surely wasn’t this morning, either. You believe me, right?”

      “Yes, I believe you.” Before she’d left the bar, she checked with Skip, the bartender. To be sure. Rooster had been drinking ginger ale.

       CHAPTER SIX

      The sun came up slowly over the mountains the next morning, covering the Aspen Valley in streaks of yellow and rose, as the four balloons rose majestically into the sky.

      It was a picture-perfect dawn, light dappling the moss, peaks bathed in glinting sunlight. Ron revved the burner with heat, the blue flame shooting into the envelope with a loud hiss, sending the balloon higher.

      On board, the four passengers oohed.

      “Take a look over there,” Ron directed them. “That’s Aspen Mountain there shrouded in shadow, and as we get up, you can see those two peaks to the west, those are the Maroon Bells, two of over fifty-three mountains in Colorado that are over fourteen thousand feet.”

      In his basket was some big-shot financial dude from Connecticut, who was trying to work it out that he and his bundled-up trophy wife could get a private,