Zane spun on his haunches and bolted from the scene. Loping away through the cemetery, he chose a zigzagging path across the terrain. It led him into the darkness of the oldest part of the burying ground and far past any point where he might be seen by the young people he had just tormented.
When Zane could no longer smell the tainted smoke on the breeze he turned and waited. Dropping his haunches to the ground, he wondered how long it would take. But he didn’t have long to wait before the sirens came racing down the street that bordered the cemetery. Red and blue lights flashed. The spinning emergency lights threw crazy patterns up onto the buildings and yards bordering the cemetery’s borders.
Now trotting through the maze of mausoleums and headstones, Zane made his way with care back toward the scene of the crime. Someone had turned on the cemetery’s floodlights. Zane had to duck low and get down on his belly in order to observe unseen from several yards away.
There were police and cemetery personnel. But it was the young people that truly caught his attention. All five of them had been collared and were now telling various versions of how they had come to be in this cemetery.
“You don’t get it!” the young woman in black shouted. “There was a dog. A huge dog.”
A policeman did not look inclined to help her out. “And the dog started the fire?”
Zane almost wanted to laugh. He should not have involved himself. Not really. There was no need to exacerbate the rumors of a huge dog or wolf running around Dallas. Gemini had already created a stir last month with his playful attack on a young woman who had been constantly bothering a close friend of one of the King brothers. Occasionally his brother Jason had been spotted in and around the city too. It would only take one sighting too many for the authorities to get suspicious and start setting traps.
Zane slunk out from his hiding spot and headed back toward Landry’s place. He loped carefully through the inky black shadows and felt a sense of satisfaction. Perhaps this was his thing. The super hero life. Mild-mannered playboy by day, furry avenger at night.
The concept was absolutely laughable. But at the same time Zane could not help but think that he was very, very tired of feeling like the people who were most important in his life got stomped under by a bunch of selfish thieves. Like those young people. Like Landry’s grandmother. And most definitely like his own mother.
Zane rounded the last corner by Landry’s house and entered the dark alley. It was quiet. He smelled the trash, the cats, and the mice. He heard the skitter of little feet and knew that the neighborhood was quiet. Everyone was asleep save for him. The big wolf yawned. It was going to be a good night for rest. He could just tell.
Chapter Fifteen
There was no doubting the extra bounce in Landry’s step this morning. She had left the house just like usual at six o’clock. The bus had met her down on the curb near her mailbox. She’d gotten on. The kids had been bright eyed and bushy tailed, but they’d been good. There were no fights, no arguments, and no screaming matches and that indicated a good day for Washington Middle School.
Now Landry was waving and smiling at everyone she met. She felt more hopeful than she had in forever. And why? Was it honestly all because of Zane King’s presence in her home? How could it be that simple? And yet there was way to deny the fact that Landry just felt better with Zane around.
A smile touched her lips. He had been sleeping like the dead when she peeked into his room at about five-thirty to see if he needed anything. His monster truck was parked down on the curb at the end of her driveway. His clothes were at least neatly folded and stacked on the dresser and chair in his room. It was almost like he really lived there. She had never truly understood how great it would be just to have another warm body around.
“Hey, Ms. Fisher!” Joel waved brightly to Landry as he trotted on by toward his first class.
Landry waved right back. “Good morning, Joel. How did the homework go?”
“Better than ever,” came the reply.
Landry gave the kid a thumbs up and then headed for her classroom. She had a planning hour first thing so she could mosey on in as quickly as she liked. In fact, the first bell had rung by the time she closed her classroom door behind her with a bit of a happy little sigh.
“Excuse me, Ms. Fisher?”
The sound of Mr. Trujillo’s deep baritone voice behind her nearly made Landry jump out of her skin. She put her hand over her mouth to quell the squeak of surprise and whipped around to give the man a piece of her mind. He should have said something before she closed the door!
“Mr. Trujillo, you…” Landry’s words died as she realized that Mr. Trujillo, the principal of Washington Middle School was not alone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were here and I certainly didn’t realize that you had a guest.”
“This parent was in my office before school to ask for a conference.” It was hard as hell to tell what Mr. Trujillo was thinking. The man was about five foot ten and broad shouldered. He’d been a football player back in the day and it showed in his build and the very confident way he carried himself. “Since your planning hour is during first period I didn’t think you would mind if we nipped on down here to clear up some confusion.”
“Of course.” Landry stared at the parent. There was a familiarity she could not put her finger on. Something about the eyes and the chin were exactly like a student, but Landry could not put her finger on who. Then it hit all at once. “You must be Joel Lambert’s father.”
“Yes. I’m Joel Lambert, Senior.” The man gave her a very cool look of totally open disdain. “I told Mr. Trujillo that I was very upset with the way you handled Joel’s request yesterday and I wanted it rectified at once.”
“All right.” Landry could feel her brow knitting in confusion. What exactly was this man talking about? She had met with Joel yesterday and she had helped him with his homework. Landry gestured to several desks. “Please feel free to sit in the desks, on them, or however you’d like. Mr. Trujillo, if you would like my desk chair please feel free.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Trujillo did not take the desk chair. He chose instead to perch on the corner of her desk. Great. He was dressed in his formal suit and looked intimidating as hell. No doubt he was thinking about the conversation between Mrs. Hart and Landry just the day before. Great. It was all going to get mushed together.
“How can I help, Mr. Lambert?” Landry spread her hands in front of her. She hadn’t been teaching for dozens upon dozens of years, but if you were in this profession for even a single year you got used to pissed-off parents. It was just par for the course. “I know that Joel has been struggling a little bit, but he’s trying very hard and has been coming in for extra help. I believe as of yesterday his grade was a very low B, which is up from the C he had a few weeks ago. But we have far more grades in for the semester now and that helps.”
From the corner of her eye, Landry saw that Mr. Trujillo’s bushy dark brows shot up in surprise. “Joel had a B?”
Landry nodded her head. “Yes. I checked yesterday after he came in to see me. I wanted to know where he was at because he seemed so very worried about it and I hadn’t recalled his grade being low enough to be cause for concern. I believe our last unit on integers was a bit difficult for him to wrap his head around. But that’s not actually unusual for kids in this class. They pick it up pretty eventually, just like Joel seems to be doing. It just takes some longer than others.”
Landry did not have to be a mental health professional to see that this was not going over well with Mr. Lambert. The guy looked like he was about to have an apoplectic fit. His face was turning red and he had his hands clenched at his sides as though he were digging his nails into his palms. He was a small guy, maybe five and a half feet tall with a big nose and Joel’s pretty brown eyes. That and the chin were the only things that resembled his soft-spoken, somewhat nerdy son Joel. Otherwise the guy’s big belly hanging over his trousers and the lurid orange polo shirt he’d chosen that morning
were nothing like his very sweet and unassuming son.
Mr. Lambert’s hair was thinning on top. Until that moment Landry had not realized that it was possible for someone to turn red on the top of their bald pate as well as their cheeks. Now she knew. Mr. Lambert appeared to be gathering his words. Landry braced herself for the worst because there was no doubt in her mind that this was going to be a direct attack.
“My son came in here yesterday with this!” Mr. Lambert pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and shook it open. Then he waved it in the air. “Do you know what this is?”
“Of course.” Landry did not take the bait. She stayed calm. It took effort, but she managed. “It looks like the last test in our class.”
“My son got a D!” Spittle flew from Mr. Lambert’s slack lips and Landry pictured her shoes being covered in the stuff. Ew. “A D! How is it that you think he can have a B in the class? You’re lying!”
Mr. Trujillo made a warning noise in the back of his throat. “If you believe that, I wonder why you didn’t print out the online school gradebook and bring it with you to discuss.”
“I-I...What?” Mr. Lambert looked absolutely flabbergasted. “What online school gradebook?”
“Your child is registered with the online gradebook because that is how grades are recorded here at Washington Middle School, but also throughout the district. So you can go online at any time you would like and look at those grades,” Mr. Trujillo said in a firm voice.
Landry bit her tongue. She and about every other teacher she knew hated that thing. They lost track of how many emails they got telling them that the online gradebook wasn’t updated. As if the thing just automatically knew what their kid had gotten on a test that afternoon. No! Someone—the teacher—had to put that information into the computer. It was time consuming, but at least right now Landry was up to date.
“A D!” Lambert repeated. “I don’t believe he has a B in the class. I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. That’s not how grades work.”
Landry exhaled a sigh. This was not exactly what she had expected when she had realized who Mr. Lambert was. What was going on with this guy? But right now was not the time to worry about that. She went to the shelves behind her desk and carefully selected the binder for Joel’s class period. She opened the binder and chose the tab labeled Signed Sylllabi. Then she produced a syllabus with Mr. Lambert’s signature at the bottom.
“Do you remember this document?” Landry asked the man. “The date you signed it was August eighteenth, but that was just a few months ago. Do you recall it?”
Lambert shrugged and scoffed. “It was the beginning of school. Do you know how much crap a parent has to sign?”
“So you’re saying that you didn’t read it?” Landry had caught more than one parent in this position over the years. “So you don’t understand that tests make up less than five percent of the total semester grade?”
“What?” Oh boy. Another apoplectic fit. There was no doubt in her mind that the guy was about to get his cage rattled. “What are you talking about? How can tests be less than five percent of a grade?”
“I think homework is the most important part of a class,” Landry said calmly. “I don’t want students to learn to test. I want them to learn the material. That means they need to get their homework done and correct. And if they get too many questions wrong, they need to correct it so that I know that they know what it is we’re learning. This is a learning place and not a place to win a test grade.”
Lambert was waving the test around. “And that’s why you didn’t let my son correct this for credit? You just said you took corrections for credit!”
“On homework. Yes. But a test is a measure of what they’ve learned. I have my students keep their tests. Then they use them to study. If everything has been corrected, then they don’t really know what they had a tough time with on the test. Do they?”
Mr. Trujillo was nodding. He looked very satisfied by this answer. Mr. Lambert was not. He was still waving that test in the air. “Mrs. Murphy gives credit for corrections!”
“Mrs. Murphy counts tests as fifty percent of a student’s semester grade.” Landry didn’t appreciate where this was going. “If you want your son in Mrs. Murphy’s class, you need to talk to the guidance department. But you can’t have it both ways. We grade differently. We teach differently. But we use the same problem-solving methods and in the end the work is the same. We just grade in a different manner.”
“I want my son to get credit for these corrections!” Mr. Lambert sputtered. He was getting downright belligerent now. “You will give him credit and you will do it right now or I’ll go to the school board. Call it extra credit. I don’t know.”
“I’m not giving your kid extra credit for his test corrections just because you refuse to go home and admit to him that you were wrong.” As soon as the words were out Landry knew that she’d overstepped.
Mr. Trujillo’s voice hissed out from between his lips. “Ms. Fisher. You will apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” Landry bit out. “But it’s true. I’m sorry that you find me rude, but I do not appreciate getting pushed around because someone believes that their kid deserves a better grade than they earned.”
“How dare you!” Mr. Lambert shouted.
Mr. Trujillo put up both hands. “Mr. Lambert, please calm down. We’re not going to ask the teacher to give your son special treatment. It isn’t fair. What if you found out that some other kid was getting credit for something that your son was not?”
“Then they should be up here demanding what their kid deserves like I am!” Mr. Lambert snarled. His fists were still clenched and he actually lunged at Landry.
She jumped back out of range and bumped her hip against the desktop. Mr. Trujillo got between Landry and the disgruntled parent and took Mr. Lambert’s arm. “Sir, I’m going to hold you accountable for your actions. I’m not going to allow you to disrespect and be aggressive toward my staff. That’s not right. I believe you know better.”
The two of them were still sniping and biting at each other as Mr. Trjuillo dragged Mr. Lambert into the hallway. It was over. It was done. And then less than five minutes later Mr. Lambert came bursting back into the classroom.
Landry stared in open-mouthed shock as the man barreled toward her at full speed. His horrible orange polo shirt was like a flag coming right at her. She wanted to move, but it all happened too quickly for her to process. One second she was standing there and the next she was flat on her back on the floor of her classroom. Mr. Lambert straddled her as though he were about to start punching and there was yelling somewhere in the background.
Suddenly the man was pulled off of Landry. He went flying backwards and hit the desks. Mr. Trujillo was standing over Landry with his hands in front of him and his shoulders going up and down as though he had just run a mile or more.
Landry scrambled to her knees. She huddled beside the desks and wished that she could formulate some kind of words. Her knee hurt. Her hip hurt. Her head felt as though it were about to explode. And the only thing she could see in front of her was the orange-shirted man squirming and shouting as both Mr. Trujillo and a burly security guard from the front office did their best to subdue the angry parent.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” Into the fray came Mrs. Hart in her high heels and improbable Bohemian-style skirt and blouse. She looked far more frazzled than even Landry felt. “Let’s get you out of here. You poor thing. Oh my God! He just went crazy!”
Landry did not want to go with Mrs. Hart. She wanted to stay right here in the safety of her classroom. She had a class to teach. Surely they weren’t going to make her take the day off? She couldn’t afford for them to pay a substitute on her behalf. That cost money. It was in a roundabout way, but still.
“I’m fine,” Landry insisted. “I don’t want to leave. I just want to stay here and teach my next class.” She pushed Mrs. Hart’s hands away. “Please. Just leave me alone. Haven’t y
ou done enough? The man is gone. It’s fine now.”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Trujillo growled. He was glaring at Landry as though she were somehow at fault. “We’re just going to have to see about that, aren’t we?”
Chapter Sixteen
“What are you doing here?”
Zane did not let the irritated words deter him from sitting down at Skye’s table and propping his feet up on an extra chair. The Corner Shop was a popular coffee house in downtown Dallas that seemed to cater to a crowd of intellects that loved to sit around and talk about how news was no longer news and gossip was the word of the day. At least that was how Zane viewed the place.
It was an eclectic little venue where the tables all seemed to have been rescued from somewhere else and the chairs were an assortment of padded and unpadded, a few that looked like repurposed church pews, and maybe even a couple park benches that had been strewn with homemade chair cushions.
The clientele was as varied as the décor. It could even be suggested that they were a perfect match. On the dozen or more times that Zane had come into this coffee house he had seen a little old couple with accents that had to be German in origin. It was difficult to tell and they would often switch from English to something else in the blink of an eye. They seemed to spend their coffee house time reading the New York Times together as they both enjoyed their specialty coffee and a pastry. Zane didn’t get it, but he couldn’t really fault it either. When you had earned your retirement you should be able to spend it however you wanted, right?
To the left of Skye’s table was a group of old guys. One had long fading red hair that reached almost to his waist. Today he wore it tied back in a leather thong. His buddy was tall, thin, and nearly completely bald on top. He seemed to favor outdoorsy clothing. Their third friend was a grizzled man with a full beard and glasses. Every time Zane had been here the guy had on the same striped blue polo shirt. In the end, Zane knew it was a place where Skye felt comfortable as she fabricated her blog entries and worked on news stories for her online newspaper. And right now, Zane was here because he needed her help.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 59