The Marigold Trail

Prologue

B ehind the city, tucked in the front pocket of the Rocky Mountains, lie the playful secrets dreamt up in my childhood. Back then, living in Golden, Colorado, at the foot of the mountain, I thought the mountains held all kinds of secrets. How could they not with such enchanting scenic loops laid with folksy mountain towns deep in the rolls of the hills? But as I grew, I came to understand the hills behind me held no such thing, just otherworldly mountain views at my backdoor. The magic of it all became less fantastical and just something I began to appreciate.

My appreciation has grown since moving to a Denver apartment where the sun rises minutes earlier than it does in Golden, blasting the eastern high rolling plains with dramatic sunbeams that illuminate every inch of earth's surface. It's mesmerizing. And if you ask me, I even prefer watching the sun set from Denver, witnessing the light fade behind my hometown, like a little gift reminding me of the log buildings, rutted railways, switchback roads and glittering ghosts of old mines that lay tucked beyond the trees.

I long to spend more time there and taste the sweet drug of dopamine just like the rest of outdoorsy Denver, who flock there on weekends like it’s the peak of the Gold Rush, making traffic crawl rather than flow. But my current Bureau assignment only draws me farther away, investigating a chemical plant explosion on the other side of town, so far East I question if I was fully sane when I volunteered to take it on.

I do get at least a short week of closer proximity now that the investigation’s on pause. Complications arose last Friday when Agent Ben Brown, the best man anyone could ever work with—methodical and even-tempered to the max—crashed the site of my ongoing investigation during a high-speed chase on his motorcycle. His chase led to a successful arrest while simultaneously blasting through my location's crime scene and altering the chemical evidence of my examination.

And though the damage to the scene looks to be minimal, the discovery just outside the scene made for complicating matters. Ben had uncovered a freshly mutilated body thanks to the rocket-like force of his tires and my investigation now called for wider crime scene parameters.