Sarah looked past the policeman’s shoulder in despair, at the apartment front door beyond yellow tape. “But I know him. We’ve met before ”

“I’ve already heard that one several times this morning, ma’am. Please back away.”

Faced with an upraised hand, Sarah did indeed back away, taking a step back to survey the scene before her. There was a mob of journalists and general hangers-on gathered before the yellow tape, which blocked off the parking recess fronting a flight of stairs to Morris’s door in a corner. A yellow moving van was parked between the door and the tape, engine running and back open.

Scarcely a minute after Sarah’s arrival, the door to Morris’s apartment opened, and a pair of men in jeans, t-shirts, and back supports emerged onto the landing beyond with a trunk between them. Down the flight of stairs the two men trudged, ignoring the shouts of the media from beyond the tape, and slid the trunk into the back of the truck before pulling down the truck’s rear door, locking it, and marching to the truck’s cab along respective sides of the vehicle.

The officer who had stayed Sarah’s progress pulled back the tape to allow the truck to depart, then replaced the tape, but the yellow line was no longer necessary. Everyone except Sarah piled into their vans and rented cars to pursue the moving van, but she remained rooted in place. Then she looked up at the edge of the Colorado sky, and saw just where to find her man.

####

“Knew I’d find you here.”

Ingram Morris looked away from the red roofs of the university campus to take a look at a Sarah Breaux trudging up his trail. “Glad you could make it.” Again, he sounded unsurprised.