Jessica was awakened by the smell of strong coffee brewing, tempered by the sweet aroma of distant skunk. She’d always loved the smell of skunks, not the freshly killed ones lying alongside the highway, but the lingering spicy odor left after they were long gone. The trace of skunk made her feel at home. She identified with that defensive smell of fear, long dissipated, and subsequent relief when the fearsome threat retreated into the forest.
Lying in the king-sized bed under a down comforter, the freezing early morning air drifting in through the screen door, she didn’t want to get up. She stretched and yawned. When she rolled over to go back to sleep, it hit her. She was with Lolita in some posh log mansion on the outskirts of friggin’ Sidney, Montana, about to host a poker game for a b
