by C C Daniels
“Okay, then.” She sighed defeat.
I felt her sorrow but knew I couldn’t take it away. We were both thinking about my parents—her son and daughter-in-law. “I’m going to do homework before bed,” I said and went upstairs.
The next morning, careful not to repeat the mistake I made the last time Kanaan stayed over, I knocked lightly on the bathroom door. Only when there was no response did I open it a crack to see if anyone was in there. The coast was clear for me to take a quick shower and dress.
Done getting ready for the day, I went to the kitchen.
The coffeepot was ready to go. I just pushed the start button. In the mood for a hearty breakfast, I pulled out one of MawMaw’s prized cast-iron skillets. While it heated on the stove, I cut nice thick slices of buffalo sausage to fry.
Physically, I felt better. The headache was gone and soon the bones would be too. One more day and they would be in the hands of the elders. The men in black, though, were a complication without a plan.
How could I get them to back off? How could I bring tattooed man and his thugs to justice for murdering my parents? Could I even prove he was in New York?
“Good morning.” Kanaan came in the back door with his hair loose and wearing just his pajama pants. He had a change of clothes slung over a bare shoulder and carried his toothbrush in his hand.
No fair, I thought—to myself.
“Something smells good.” He peeked over my shoulder to see what was in the pan.
I elbowed him to step back. “Do you think you deserve any?”
“Are we talking about the sausage? Or you?” He winked.
Flirting is not going to work this morning, I sent the thought to Kanaan.
I was amazed how easy it was to compartmentalize each of my thoughts that morning. As strange as it was, I physically felt which thought left my head, and which one stayed. The deep breathing, which I only occasionally had to remind myself of, helped, but the practice last night on Kanaan and woo-woo MawMaw helped even more.
He pouted. “I’m sorry. How did it go with MawMaw?”
“Fine.”
He waited for me to say more. “That’s it?”
I heard MawMaw’s bedroom door squeak open and her footsteps pad down the stairs. “Of course not, we’ll have fresh eggs too.”
I didn’t tell MawMaw about the skull, I thought to Kanaan.
He nodded his understanding just as MawMaw rounded the corner in her robe.
“Morning, MawMaw.” Kanaan kissed her good cheek on his way to the bathroom.
Her body language made it apparent that she was in PhD mode. Although her small smile toward me meant she wasn’t mad at me, she still seemed upset from our conversation the previous night.
Honaw seemed to sense the tension as soon as he came in with an overnight bag. He poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Thank you, Honaw, for staying last night.” MawMaw opened the fridge. “I’ll scramble some eggs.”
Honaw raised his eyebrows at me in question. I shrugged and started to flip the sausage over.
“No problem.” He sipped the coffee. “Can I help?”
“You can make toast.” She handed him a loaf of bread and the butter dish.
The three of us cooked breakfast in impenetrable silence.
Once dressed, Kanaan came back to the kitchen and took over toast duty while Honaw went with his bag to the bathroom. When he came back, we sat for a quiet breakfast.
I sipped from my coffee mug and eyed each one of the people I had known my entire life. Sadness filled my heart. I wanted to trust them and them me. I hated all those secrets. Not hungry anymore, I rose to scrape my plate.
“Oh, my darling, you must eat.” I missed just when woo-woo MawMaw arrived that morning. My sadness deepened into a gloomy anguish. No matter if the bones were returned to the elders and the MIBs went away, my grandmother was slipping away. Pure emotions really were overrated.
“I’m full, but Ella probably isn’t.”
The plate went into the dishwasher, and I went to the back door to pull on my boots.
Scooping eggs, Kanaan stood, and carrying his plate, followed me to the barn. While I tended to my horse, he polished off a heaping breakfast.
Uncle Jun pulled in just as we headed back to the house.
“You’re staying with her today.” It sounded more like an order than the question I had intended it to be. “Please,” I added in a softer voice. “She’s in a trance already this morning.”
“Already, huh?” He shook his head. “Yep, I can stay. I was plannin’ on workin’ on the travois anyway.”
Once inside, I gathered my pack.
Kanaan and I said bye to the adults and left for school.
As far as I could sense, my thoughts stayed in my head all day. That was a big improvement. What became an issue that day was turning off the thoughts of others. I heard way more information than I wanted from my classmates and teachers. But when I consciously tried to read others’ thoughts, I got nothing.
Mr. Smith followed the principal’s instructions. I didn’t see him at all. The anticipation that I would soon be rid of those bones lifted my spirits even more. Six days with those sparkly things were six days too many.
Manitou Springs High let out at lunch on the Friday before Founders Day weekend. I met up with Kanaan and Amaya at my locker. Then, we walked down the hill to have breakfast-for-lunch at the Pancake House. When Gertie set the plate in front of me, I dug into my steak and eggs. I was starving, having dumped most of my breakfast that morning.
“Here’s the plan,” Kanaan said quietly. “You and I”—he looked at me—“have to stick together tonight.”
“Well isn’t that just convenient,” Amaya teased as she took a bite of her big stack of pancakes.
“It is, isn’t it?” Kanaan smiled teasing right back. “Honaw will text me when the elders get to town. Then, Wray and I will go to your house, Amaya. We’ll grab the apple and head over to the Cliff House.”
I nodded in between bites.
The bell on Gertie’s door signaled the arrival of a customer. The guy sat down on a stool at the old-fashioned counter with his back to us.
“Hello,” Gertie greeted him. “Welcome to the Pancake House. What can I get you to drink?”
“Coffee, black,” said the customer.
I knew that voice, had heard it before.
“Coming right up.” With a smile, she handed him a menu. It was when the man reached for the menu that I saw the tattoo on his arm.
The heat was immediate. My eyes burned with a potent mix of anger and vengeance. Kanaan moved his body blocking my view of one of my parents’ murderers. I refocused on Kanaan. “Your eyes,” he whispered.
I didn't care that he saw. I didn't care when Amaya’s eyes grew big as saucers. All I cared about was justice. I covertly pointed in the tattooed man’s direction. The man at the counter is one of the gunmen.
Kanaan glared at the man.
“Are you sure?” Amaya whispered.
Positive.
Her eyes narrowed. A fierce look crept onto her face. Before Kanaan or I could stop her, she stood, heaved a heavy ironstone pancake platter over her head, and whacked tattooed man over the back of his head.
“And that’s what you get for hitting MawMaw!” she screeched at him as he crumbled to the floor.
Gertie ran from the kitchen to the dining room, coffeepot sloshing in her hand. “What is—” She gasped when she saw her newest customer on the floor, syrup drizzling from his hair.
“Call nine-one-one,” Kanaan told Gertie. “He’s one of the gunmen.”
Gertie set the pot down on the nearest counter and ran for the corded phone at the register.
“We should tie him up just in case he comes to,” I suggested.
Amaya stood over him, two halves of the thick platter in her hands.
“He’s not going to come to any time soon.”
Kanaan’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller I
D. “Honaw,” he said as much for us as in greeting to his brother. “What?” Kanaan whined into the phone.
Looking at me, he repeated the phone conversation for my benefit. “The elders’ car broke down near the Spanish Peaks. They’ll be here tomorrow morning instead of tonight.”
My shoulders sank. Police sirens wailed into the parking lot.
“That sound”—Kanaan explained into the phone—“is the police coming to arrest one of the gunmen that chose to have lunch at the Pancake House.” He was silent, listening to Honaw’s reaction. “We’ll be here.”
Two police officers stormed in with guns drawn.
“Whoa, whoa,” said Amaya.
All four of us raised our hands over our heads. One of the cops ordered Amaya to drop the platter shards, which she did. Slowly, we went outside as instructed while they checked on unconscious tattooed man. More police cars screamed into the parking lot, followed by an ambulance and Honaw’s SUV.
Kanaan filled his brother in on what happened. Amaya and Gertie hugged each other.
Meanwhile, I was focused on the thug inside. Through the window, I watched the cops search him, pulling a handgun he had tucked into his waistband. As the EMTs worked on tattooed man, he regained a groggy consciousness.
I picked up a vibe from him. He wasn’t mad. Or cocky. His arrogance apparently required a gun in his hand. What he was, was scared—petrified—of what would happen to him for failing, and I heard the words they’ll kill me clear as a bell.
Our eyes locked when he became aware of me staring at him through the window. Would mind speak work through glass? I decided to try. Why did you and your gang kill my parents?
His eyes bugged out super huge. Not sure if he was surprised at the mind speak or that I knew he was one of the murderers.
I know you were there in New York, I thought again, and I want to know why you took my parents from me. Deep breaths kept my rage, my new companion, to a low simmer. Tattooed man became agitated. He struggled against the EMTs and the officers trying to hold him still. But I didn’t let up. I delved into his mind. I won't rest until you're brought to justice.
She made me, came through. She wants it.
Who? What's her name? What does she want? I mind spoke back.
He attempted to block me out of his head and thought about other things. That was when a few of his neurons opened up to me. He reminisced about a childhood head injury—no doubt triggered by Amaya’s platter shot.
I saw the bike, the spokes spinning, felt the wind whiz by. Pedaling fast, he looked back, laughing at another kid riding behind him until the image went sideways. He had lost his balance and, when he fell, I winced like it was my own head hitting the pavement.
You know, helmets are your friends.
His stunned gasp opened up the very section of his mind that I wanted to see. It’s powerful, so powerful that she can control people, including your kind.
I was almost to the core of his thought, had a blurry image of who she was and what the thing that he had a picture of in his head was, when Amaya walked up to me and touched my arm.
“Wray?”
“What?” I kept my eyes on tattooed man, but her interruption broke my concentration. I lost the path to the essence of what I wanted to know.
She’ll kill me, she’ll kill me, she’ll kill me. Tattooed man lurched upright, punching one EMT in the stomach and shoving another into a stool. In the next nanosecond, the thug was on his feet. He barreled shoulder-first through an officer and the front door. Save me.
Arms outstretched, tattooed man dodged another cop and made a beeline for me.
I ran, pulling Amaya with me into the parking lot.
“Stop!” one of the police officers ordered. When he didn’t, the officer tased him.
And that Taser energy came straight through to me. It knocked the breath right out of me, dropped me to my knees, wheezing for air. When I looked up to see if Amaya was okay, she stepped back. I knew it was my eyes, felt the inferno in them.
People—cops, EMTs, Gertie, Kanaan—shouted out loud. It was their high-decibel thoughts, though, that nearly made me pass out. Feet shuffled right next to me. Hands grabbed my shoulders. Through the din blasting in my mind, I registered that someone was asking me if I was okay. I just kept my head down, my eyes closed, and inhaled so deep I was certain my lungs had developed another chamber.
“Yeah,” I murmured to the incessant are-you-okay question.
The hands on my shoulders abruptly left and changed to a touch I recognized—Kanaan’s. The heat lessened behind my eyelids enough so that I could push the rest of the energy away. When I did, the clamor of thoughts in my mind faded to a more tolerable level. I opened my eyes to Kanaan, right in front of me.
Chief Danny behind him, glowered, but kept the other cops—one with a scuffed-up uniform—away.
“Eyes?” I whispered for Kanaan’s ears only.
“Normal,” he murmured just as low.
“Check her out,” the chief ordered an EMT, the same woman who had helped MawMaw.
“I'm okay.” I pushed myself off the blacktop and sat up. “Just startled.” Knowing they'd be anything but normal, I refused to let the paramedic take my vitals. Who knew what my temp or blood pressure might have shown?
Chief Danny scowled at me.
“Really. I'm fine,” I said, reassuring him and the perplexed EMT. I stood, holding on to Kanaan, and darted a glance at Amaya. “Are you okay?”
Slowly, she bobbed her head yes, but kept her distance.
“You.” The police chief pointed at Kanaan. “Come with me.”
A squeeze of my hand, Kanaan left to comply. The two went several yards away before Chief Danny laid into him about resisting an officer.
Hands on his hips, Kanaan drew himself to his full height. “Was I, or am I now, under arrest?”
“Hell! You should be!”
Honaw defended his brother and turned the discussion to the ineptitude of the MSPD that allowed a suspect to attack a victim right in front of them.
The chief, of course, blustered right back.
I lost the rest of their conversation among the rising clatter of thoughts bombarding me. Like a strange ebb and flow of a sea, the ocean of thoughts got loud for a moment and then softened again.
Amaya stared at the tattooed man on the ground, writhing against cops, EMTs, and, like me, the residual effects of the Taser.
“Were you communicating with him?”
I nodded.
Gertie’s yelling at Chief Danny cut through the ongoing buzz in my mind. He wouldn't dare arrest Kanaan. Would he?
Chapter 21
Their body language, especially Chief Danny’s, wasn't good.
“You would’ve done the same thing,” Gertie scolded, one hand on her hip and shaking a finger at him. Only she, the widow of the previous chief of police, could get away with that. “If it were Ursula—”
Ursula was Danny’s wife.
“That is beside the point!”
“That is absolutely the point.” Honaw argued.
Fighting both the Taser energy and racket ricocheting in my skull, I took my place beside Kanaan and put my hand in his. “You arrest him, you arrest me,” I murmured.
Both hands on her hips now, Gertie nodded once. “And me.”
In Honaw’s thoughts was a replay of what Kanaan had done: wrestling with a cop who tried, and failed, to hold him back. A quick scan of the scene, I found that cop, healthy and fine, stringing yellow tape between a streetlamp and the trees next to the creek.
“Maybe you should hire beefier cops.” The female EMT, carrying an armload of straps, hurried from her ambulance back to the three officers plus two paramedics struggling to restrain tattooed man onto a gurney.
His mental begging for my help was unrelenting.
“Chief!” One of the officers pointed to a local TV news vehicle parallel parking across the street.
Chief Danny cursed under his breath. “Get behind th
e tape.”
Gertie glared. Honaw tapped on his phone. But we all moved to the sidewalk attached to the restaurant.
A tilt of his head, Kanaan led me away from the adults to the back corner of the building. Kanaan put his arm around my shoulder. “Are you sure you're okay?”
Not really, but I nodded. “Some of the Taser hit me.”
“Really?” His brows crinkled together. “The suspect was a good five yards away from you.”
“It’s because she was communicating with him.” Amaya came no closer than an arm’s length and pivoted her attention from tattooed man to me. “You were so angry.” She studied my eyes.
The news photographer panned his camera from the battle happening at the gurney toward us. I moved a step to my right, putting myself behind the building and out of sight of his lens. The last thing I wanted was my face on the news.
“What did you say to him?” As usual Amaya wouldn’t let it go.
“Not much. I just wanted to find out what he knew.” I shrugged.
“And how would you find that out? He can hear your thoughts, but you”— her jaw worked side-to-side for a moment—“you can read minds now?”
The bandwidth got louder in my brain as if to remind me that quirk was still beyond my control. “I wouldn't call it read.” I rubbed my temples.
“Since when?” She crossed her arms.
“A recent development,” I whispered.
In the stream of consciousnesses, I heard hers. I’ve got a crush on Honaw. Can you hear that? “Yeah, that’s gross,” I joked. “He’s too old for you.”
Amaya’s eyes widen and her jaw went slack for a few seconds.
So much for humor and embracing my quirks.
“Who’s too old?” Kanaan asked.
As if on cue, Honaw walked up behind Amaya. “Who’s too old?” he repeated, passing her to stand next to his brother.
“It doesn't matter,” I said. But it did matter. That fact was written all over my best friend’s face. Your secret is safe with me. I reassured her.
Her crossed arms slid to her waist and wrapped around herself as she glanced between my eyes and tattooed man.