LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      Her death was her own damn fault.

      He’d done everything right—research, surveillance, charge level, timing. His planning and execution had been perfect, his actions beyond reproach, which was why not a single question would come his way.

      He was sure of it.

      The notion had come to him when the vibrations first coursed through his body two months ago. He’d been out for a late-summer hike on Behind the Rocks Trail, following its serpentine path through the maze of red sandstone fins jutting skyward south of town, where the tall slabs of rock sliced the landscape into linear strips of windswept dunes separated by shadowed slot canyons.

      He knew Utah’s politicians had long fed voters the same tired line—that the citizens of the state could sell their souls to the petrochemical industry while still attracting millions of tourists to southern Utah’s incomparable canyon country. In recent years, however, young environmentalists from the Wasatch Front had disputed the politicians’ claim. Hoisting the torch of Edward Abbey above their heads, the conservation warriors declared that if the oil and gas giants were allowed to continue mauling the land with their bulldozers and excavators, soon nothing would be left of Utah’s stunning red rock country but savaged earth.

      The tremors from the thumper truck surged along the ground every few seconds during his hike, pulsing upward through his legs and reverberating in his torso. With each mini earthquake came the same question, over and over again. Could he really send a seismic wake-up call to every citizen of Utah? Thump. Could he? Thump.

      In the ensuing weeks, the truck’s pulses became a living thing inside him, a thrumming reminder of what he was prepared to do, and why.

      He purchased a used laptop from the classifieds, wiped its hard drive clean, and conducted research only through his secret online portal. He made his purchases in cash at gun shops and farm and ranch stores in nearby towns, collecting everything his research told him he needed.

      By early November, the cottonwoods along the Colorado River through Moab glowed with late autumn gold, the trees resplendent in the slanted fall sunlight. On the crisp, clear morning the massive thumper truck trundled

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