Dead Heat, Page 2

  She walked over to the window and looked at the falling snow that had frosted the deep green trees and coated the not-so-distant mountains, making the world seem clean and new. Also cold.

  “Have you decided what you’re getting me for my birthday yet?” she asked.

  He liked giving presents. Sometimes it was a flower he’d picked for her—other times expensive jewelry. He’d gradually learned that really expensive gifts, which he liked best, freaked her out. He now left those for important occasions.

  He put his arm around her, his body relaxed against her. “Not yet. But I expect I’ll figure something out.”

  Charles couldn’t keep his mind on the numbers, so he closed down his computer. Money was power, and in the long run it could keep his people safer than his fangs and claws. After a hiatus, pack finances were his to protect again.

  His gaze fell on the yellow sticky he’d put on the top of his monitor—Anna’s birthday, her twenty-sixth. He needed to find her a present. His preference was for jewelry—which, as his da pointed out, was sort of marking his territory for the other males in the vicinity.

  My mate, the ring on her finger told them. And when she ventured to wear any of the necklaces and earrings he’d gotten her, they said, And I can provide for her better than you. After his da made him aware of the reason for his need to bedeck Anna in jewels, he’d begun to work on presents that she did want.

  Anna wanted children.

  He stared at the bright-colored Post-it note.

  It was perfectly reasonable that she’d want children. He understood the urgency of her drive even if she didn’t. She’d been a college student when Justin, the Chicago Alpha’s hit man, had taken away nearly all of her choices; she’d spent the better part of the time since then taking them back. Reclaiming her life from those who would have taken it from her entirely.

  His phone rang and he picked it up absently—until he heard the voice on the other end.

  “Hey, Charles,” said Joseph Sani, once the best friend he had in the world. “I was thinking of you today. You and your new bride.”

  “Not so new,” Charles said, not fighting the happiness rising up. Joseph affected everyone that way. “It’s been three years—a few months more than that. How are you?”

  “Three years and I haven’t met her yet,” Joseph said, his tone asking, Why not?

  Years slipping away without notice, Charles thought. And the last time I saw you, you were an old man. I don’t want you to be old. It makes my heart hurt.

  “I couldn’t come to your wedding,” Joseph was saying, “but you didn’t make mine, either. We’re even.”

  “I didn’t know about yours,” Charles told him dryly.

  “You didn’t have an address or a telephone that I knew about,” Joseph said. “You were a hard man to find. I admit you sent me an invitation to yours, but it was through Maggie—and I didn’t get it until the day before.”

  Yes, he’d rather thought that Maggie wouldn’t pass it on. “I’m surprised you got it before the wedding at all,” he said, acknowledging his own culpability. “But we didn’t send out invitations through the mail. Just called. I tried three times and got Maggie twice. The second time I just left the message.”

  Joseph laughed, and then coughed.

  “That’s quite a cough,” Charles said, concerned.

  “I’m fine,” Joseph said lightly. “I want to meet your wife, so I can see if she’s good enough for you. Why don’t you bring her down?”

  Charles worked the numbers in his head. He’d met Joseph when he’d been twelve or thereabouts, back shortly after World War II. Joseph was in his eighties. The last time he’d seen him face-to-face he’d been in his sixties. Twenty years, he thought in dawning horror. Had he been so much a coward?

  “Charles?”

  “Okay,” he said decisively. “We’ll come.” His eyes caught on the Post-it note again, and that gave him an idea. “Are you and Hosteen still breeding horses?”

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Chelsea Sani parked her car, pulled off her sunglasses, and got out. She patted the oversized sign that declared that Sunshine Fun Day Care was a place where children were happy as she passed it. The fenced-off play areas on either side of the sidewalk were empty of children, but as soon as she pulled the heavy door of the day care open, the cheerful blast of kid noise brought a smile to her face.

  There were day cares closer to her house, but this one was clean and organized and they kept the kids busy. With her kids, it was always best to keep them busy.

  Michael saw her as she peeked into his class of fellow four-year-olds and hooted as he dropped the toy he was playing with and double-timed it to her. She scooped him up in her arms, knowing that the time was soon coming when he wouldn’t let her do it anymore. She blew against his neck, and he giggled and wriggled down to run to the wall of coat hooks where his backpack was.

  The teacher in charge waved at her but didn’t come over to chat as she did sometimes. Her assistant helped Michael with his backpack, grinned at him, and then was distracted by a little girl in a pink dress.

  Michael held Chelsea’s hand and danced to music he heard in his head. “First we go to pick up Mackie and then we go home,” he told her.

  “That’s right,” she agreed as they walked down the hall. She opened the door to Mackie’s classroom and found her sitting on the time-out chair with her arms folded and a familiar stubborn expression—a look that Chelsea had seen on her husband’s face more than a time or two.

  “Hey, pumpkin,” she said, holding out her free hand to give her daughter permission to get up. “Bad day?”

  Mackie considered her words without leaving the chair and then nodded solemnly. The new teacher, who was maybe twenty, hurried over, leaving the rest of the kids with her assistant.

  “Sharing time didn’t go well,” she said, a little grimly. “We had to have a talk with Mackie about being kind to others. I’m not sure it took.”

  “I told you. She isn’t hozho,” said Mackie stubbornly. “It’s not safe to be near someone who isn’t hozho.”

  “And she is old enough to speak clearly,” continued the teacher, whose name Chelsea couldn’t remember.

  “She is speaking clearly,” piped up Michael, always ready to defend his sister.

  “Hozho is a Navajo word,” Chelsea explained as Mackie slid off the chair, finally, and took her mom’s hand in a fierce grip. Ally amidst enemies, that grip said, which meant that Mackie didn’t think she had done something wrong. She never looked for help from her mom when she’d misbehaved. “Their dad or grandfather teaches them a little now and then. Hozho is”—complicated and simple, but hard to explain—“what life should be.”

  “Happy,” said Michael, trying to be helpful. “Hozho is like picnics and swing sets. Happy little trees.” He twirled around in her hand without losing his hold and half danced as he chanted. “Happy little breeze.”

  “Navajo?” asked the teacher, sounding surprised.

  “Yes.” Chelsea gave the teacher a sharp smile. No one could look at Chelsea, whose ancestors had sailed on dragon-headed ships, and think that she was responsible for her children’s warm-tinted skin and eyes dark as a stormy night. If you make my children, make any child, feel bad for who they are, I will teach you why people fear mama grizzlies more than papa grizzlies. I will teach you that if a child parented by Martians comes into this room, they should still be safe.

  “That’s so cool,” said the teacher, unaware of her danger. “We’re planning on studying Native Americans in a couple of weeks. Do you think their father or someone you know who is Navajo might be willing to come in and speak to the kids?”

  The wind pulled out of her defend-her-children-to-the-death sails by the new teacher’s enthusiasm, Chelsea silenced her inner Viking and said, “If you wait to ask him until the end of the month. His family raises horses and there’s the big show coming up. The whole family will be at sixes and sevens until it’s over.”


  A little girl caught her eye. The child was standing in the middle of the room, oddly alone in the chaos of excitement caused by the beginning of the arrival of the parents.

  After picking her kids up every day, Chelsea knew the faces of most of the children in their classes. She’d seen this one before, too. This girl and Mackie had built clay flowers together and given them to Chelsea and the other girl’s mother for Christmas a couple of months ago. Both girls had been giggling like triumphant hyenas as they’d tried to explain how they made the flowers. She was named for a gemstone. Not Ruby or Diamond … Amethyst. That was it.

  Today, though, Amethyst was watching Mackie intently, and there was no sign of the giggling child she’d been. As the teacher talked about her own childhood pony with enthusiasm, the little girl shifted her gaze from Mackie to Chelsea. Green-gray eyes met Chelsea’s eyes briefly and then the girl turned away.

  “I ride a little,” said Chelsea, half-distracted. “But I don’t usually show the horses. My husband does, and he has a couple of assistants, too.”

  “Cool,” said the teacher. “I’ll remember to ask about getting your husband to come in after the show is over.” She looked at Mackie. “Bye, sweetie. We’re going to build pinwheels tomorrow. I think you’ll like it.”

  Mackie considered her solemnly, then nodded like a queen. “All right, Miss Baird. I will see you tomorrow.” The teacher, it seemed, was provisionally forgiven.

  Mackie was strong in her likes and dislikes. She liked Ms. Newman, who’d been her teacher last year and was Michael’s this year. She did not like the principal, the janitor, or Eric, one of her much older brother Max’s friends. Eric had quit coming over because Mackie had made him so uncomfortable. Eric seemed like a perfectly nice boy to Chelsea, and she had deep reservations about Ms. Newman.

  Mackie tugged on her mother’s hand and led the way out of the day care. While Chelsea seat-belted Michael, Mackie belted herself in. Mackie had been belting herself in ever since her hands could work the buckles.

  “Independent” was an understatement, Chelsea thought ruefully. Mackie got that from her mother, as well as the managing nature. Both served Chelsea quite well in the business sector but would probably ensure that this wouldn’t be the only time the new teacher was going to have trouble with Mackie.

  Speaking of which … “What happened?” Chelsea asked her daughter. She rubbed her temples because she was starting to get a headache. “Why did the teacher put you in time-out?”

  Mackie looked at her with a contemplative expression.

  To her dad, Mackie would tell the complete, honest truth if he asked. But he seldom did, being more interested in her handling of the situation rather than the particulars of the incident. Had she done the right thing? Could she have chosen a different path that would have led to a better result? Those were the things that were important to Kage.

  Chelsea, on the other hand, would be given what Mackie thought her mom needed to hear. Not because Mackie was trying to avoid getting into trouble, but because, Chelsea firmly believed, Mackie made a huge effort to spare her mom any burden of pain or sorrow.

  Mackie worried her mother. Both of her boys, Max and Michael, were joyous, healthy spirits. Mackie was born solemn and watchful, a hundred-year-old soul in a barely five-year-old body. She had moments of lightheartedness, but her usual state was wary. Kage said his daughter had the soul of a warrior.

  “The girl I was supposed to share crayons with was chindi,” said Mackie, finally, which didn’t make sense. Chelsea was pretty sure, even with her mere bits and pieces of Navajo language, that chindi were evil spirits of the dead. “But not chindi,” added Mackie, even more obscurely.

  “You aren’t supposed to say chindi,” said Michael direly. “Ánáli Hastiin says bad things will happen to you.”

  “Okay,” Chelsea said, abruptly cranky with trying to interpret what had happened at day care. Kage could talk to Mackie about it when he got home.

  It was February and usually there was some rain this time of year, but today the skies were blue and the sun beat down and made her eyes ache along with her head. Chelsea didn’t have any pain reliever in the car, so she had to get home to find any relief. Any relief from anything.

  “I think I’m going to have to talk to your grandfather about what he is teaching you,” she said.

  “Not Granddad,” said Mackie. “Ánáli Hastiin.”

  Ánáli Hastiin meant grandfather. But they only used the Navajo term for Mackie’s great-grandfather, Hosteen.

  “Fine,” Chelsea said. “I will have a talk with Ánáli Hastiin about what is appropriate to discuss with five-year-olds and what is not.” She shut the back door of the car with a little more force than necessary and started the drive home.

  “So far this trip,” said Anna with wry amusement that would carry just fine through Charles’s headphones, “we’ve talked over current stock market trends and why they are good for us and bad for lots of other people. We’ve discussed the problems with using military tactics for police-type problems. We’ve talked about the literary license used when filming classic fantasy novels and whether the results were enjoyable or heinous. We’ve agreed to disagree, even though I’m right.”

  We have not discussed the topic that we really need to talk about, my love. My mother used to say that no one does stubborn like a Latham, and I will prove that to you. We have time.

  So she brought up the other topic he hadn’t been willing to cover. “Are you ready to tell me about where we’re going?”

  Charles smiled, just a little.

  She gave a huff of amusement. “I’m just trying to decide if it’s a birthday present or a job.” It would be a birthday present, she was sure. Her birthday was two weeks away, but Charles was never playful about work assignments from his father.

  “Okay,” Charles told her agreeably, and she gave him a mock punch on his shoulder.

  “Careful, now,” he told her, waggling the wings of the airplane just a little. “We might crash if you keep hitting the pilot.”

  “Hmm,” she said, not worried. When Charles did something, he did it well. “Where are we going? Besides Arizona.” He’d already told her Arizona, sometime between the discussion about police work and the one about movies. “Arizona is a very big state.”

  “Scottsdale,” he told her.

  She frowned at him. She knew only one thing about Scottsdale. “Are we going golfing?” Her father enjoyed golfing on his infrequent vacations.

  “No, we’re doing the other thing Scottsdale is famous for.”

  “Going to a resort and hanging out with celebrities?” she said doubtfully.

  “We are going to find you a horse.”

  “Jinx is my horse,” she said immediately.

  Jinx was a mutt that was, Charles had told her, probably mostly quarter horse. He’d acquired the aging gelding at an open auction, outbidding the meat buyer.

  Anna had learned to ride on him.

  “No,” Charles said gently. “Jinx is a great babysitter, but you don’t need him anymore. He’s a good horse to learn on, but he is lazy. He doesn’t like the long rides or being asked to speed up. You need a different horse. I have a good home in mind for him. He’ll be carrying kids around very slowly: he’ll be ecstatic.”

  “There aren’t any horses that would suit me in Montana?”

  He smiled. “I have an old friend who breeds Arabians. I talked to him on the phone the other day and it got me thinking about your birthday and about how it is time for you to get a different horse to ride.”

  Anna sat back. An Arabian. Visions of The Black Stallion danced across her mind’s eye. She couldn’t stop her happy little sigh.

  “I like Jinx,” she said.

  “I know you do,” Charles said, “and he likes you.”

  “He’s beautiful,” she said.

  “He is,” agreed Charles. “He’ll also see you saddle up another horse with a sigh of relief and go back to sleep.”
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br />   “Arabians look like carousel horses,” Anna said, still feeling as though she were betraying the amiable gelding who’d taught her so much.

  Charles laughed. “That’s true enough. The Arabians might not suit you; they don’t suit everyone. They are like cats: vain, beautiful, and intelligent. But you deal well enough with Asil, who is also vain, beautiful, and intelligent. Still, if they don’t have a good match for you here, we can find a horse nearer to home that suits you.”

  “Okay,” Anna said, but in her heart of hearts she was riding a black stallion without bridle or saddle along a beach on a deserted island, and they were galloping full speed.

  Charles must have heard it in her voice because he smiled.

  Then a nagging thing—that she hadn’t immediately pounced on because she’d been dazzled by the horse part of what he’d said—suddenly caught her attention. “An old friend,” he’d said. Charles didn’t have many friends. Acquaintances, yes, but not friends—and he was very careful in what words he chose. The people he was close to were numbered on the fingers of one hand—Anna; his brother, Samuel; and his da. Probably Mercy, the coyote shapeshifter who’d been raised in his pack, would qualify. But that was it. Charles was nearly two hundred years old and he’d collected very few people to love.

  “Tell me,” she said, “about your old friend.”

  For a moment his face grew still and her stomach clenched.

  “Joseph Sani is the best horseman I’ve ever seen or heard of,” Charles said slowly. “He’s a daredevil with no sense of self-preservation.” Most people would not have heard the half-despairing, affectionate admiration in Charles’s voice. “The more dangerous something is, the more likely he is to throw himself in the middle of it. He sees people—all the way through them—and he likes them anyway.” Cares about me went unspoken, but Anna heard it just the same. This Joseph was a man who knew her husband and loved him.

  You love him, too, Anna thought. And I’ve never in three years heard you mention his name.