“I know. I tried to explain but did not think you would understand if I told you what I planned to do. I do not care about the asteroid or funny business with rocks. I give my life to pay him back for killing Anna and my innocent mother.”
Ezra stepped forward a few paces. “Grace, don’t get too close. He might have other weapons.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Dad, this is the hitman who chased Asher and me across Yellowstone. He’s not going to harm us.” She turned back to the Russian with a look of distrust. “Are you?”
He kept his hands up. “Misha works for no one but Misha now.”
Grace did the opposite of what he’d requested. She got near to the man and held out her hand. “Thank you for turning out to be a decent human being.”
After checking to make sure he wasn’t going to be shot, he lowered one arm and grabbed her hand to shake. As he did so, he looked around. “I am curious if any of you know Jake Ray? He told me to be here.”
“Jake?” Grace replied. “You mean you don’t know him? You told us to find him. You told us he was your friend.”
Misha nodded. “He is friend, yes, but I do not know him. He is—”
“I’m Jake Ray,” a woman interrupted.
Ezra saw the words come out of the mouth of the black-haired woman—Dorothy.
She continued. “I’ve been helping you both, and a few others out there.”
Asher laughed. “How did you guys not know he was a she?”
Dorothy scowled. “If I’d been myself, Mr. Tikkanen would have figured out I had betrayed him. I needed to disguise my voice over the phone so I could operate freely. It turned out to be unnecessary, though, as he had no idea I was working against him. And…” She faced Misha directly, “I understand why you did this. Why you killed him. He’d been threatening my dad, Secretary of Homeland Security Stricker, for years.”
Misha shook hands with the other woman, then he gave himself up to the park rangers. His daughter seemed intent to speak on behalf of the Russian when life got back to normal, though he would have been happy if she’d avoided ex-hitmen altogether.
He and Grace met near the bullet-mangled body of Petteri. “Well, Dad, now you know what I’ve been doing out here. I’ve been running from hitmen. Running from tycoons. Running from crazy ladies with big machine guns.”
“You didn’t mention machine guns,” he replied.
“I’ll have to tell you all about it.” She pulled Asher closer to her. “But first, there’s a question Mr. Creighton would like to ask you.”
“There is?” Asher asked with embarrassment.
“Yes,” she insisted. “You were going to ask him when you met him. Here he is, my dad.” After a brief pause, she playfully poked her friend in the ribs.
“Oh, right. That.” The young man seemed to bolster himself to ask the question. “Sir—”
Ezra interrupted immediately. “You have my permission.”
Asher froze. Grace’s mouth fell to her chest.
“What?” Ezra went on. “I could see from the instant I met you that you’re in love with my daughter, and she feels the same way about you. A father has an instinct for these things. You have my permission to begin courting my Gracie.”
Grace let out the big breath she’d been holding. “Oh. I thought you were giving him permission to marry me. I mean, you didn’t think?”
Ezra laughed heartily. It was always the same with his little girl. She constantly tried to bite off more than she could chew. He casually clapped once, congratulating her for the good effort.
She and Asher both clapped one time in response. Then the three of them shared looks of surprise back and forth.
“You two are playing the game with each other?” he asked, touched by their actions.
Grace took Asher’s hand, which he readily gave. She flashed her toothy grin at Ezra. “Dad, I’m afraid I have to tell you that you’re going to lose someday. It’s now two against one.”
He tried to hold back tears. Butch stood nearby, Haley’s arm wrapped around his waist. His family was together in a way he never would have imagined back when he was standing on his boat with Susan. Back before the asteroid. Back before…losing her. Still, life had to go on.
“I look forward to playing against you two every day for the rest of my life.”
“Me, too, Dad,” Grace said, bringing him into their mutual embrace.
A heavy weight landed on his back as Butch and Haley joined in.
“Me, three, Dad,” Butch joked.
Chapter 27
Yellowstone National Park, WY (One Year Later)
“Grace, you want to share a glass of wine with me?” Asher stood by the open refrigerator. In singsong, he added, “We don’t have to drive for a few days.”
“No, but I’ll have a Coke,” she replied, using a bit of her Kentucky drawl. “It’ll travel easier on the way to the bus station.”
He sighed. “Sprite is not a Coke, and that’s all you drink. Why do you insist on calling every soda a freaking Coke?”
It was one of the many quirks they had to work through as a couple. Where she grew up, you didn’t ask to drink a soda, you asked to drink a Coke. Then you specified the type of Coke you wanted.
He got busy preparing it.
She and Asher had been given a large donation of the ore by the Crow Nation for their services in helping bring Petteri Tikkanen to justice and helping establish the legal claim to the rocks sitting on their tribal lands. Over the following year, more small pieces of ore were found on Crow property, as well as the land of many other owners across the middle states of America. The rest of the ore, at least the remnants not taken by looters and ambitious mining companies, was confiscated by the US government. That included all the train cars of ore Petteri had tried to sneak out of the country.
They’d used part of their windfall to build a modest log cabin home on the border of Yellowstone National Park. She’d donated most of the rest to the park itself, as a means of helping rebuild the place she loved the most.
“You won’t be surprised when you see who’s picking us up,” Asher said from the kitchen.
She looked out the front window. There was a black SUV with Crow tribal markings on the door. It wasn’t some random person, either. Logan Runs Hard stood outside the driver’s door.
When they got outside, Grace reverted to her old overly protective mode. “You drove here by yourself?”
Logan laughed. “I’m fifteen. That’s plenty old enough to drive.”
“Not legally,” Asher snarked.
“Well, I’m a Crow. I don’t always do things legally.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about being an outlaw. His meaning was much closer to home. “You didn’t tell your father, did you?”
He looked at her with a sheepish grin. “Would it help if I said my uncle knows?”
Grace had been messing with him, so she let him off the hook. “Get us to the Billings bus station in one piece, and no one has to know a thing.”
The drive over Beartooth Pass was nothing like their trip a year ago. It was sunny and bright and there was no fear of sliding off the roadway or being struck from above by flying vehicles.
“I guess it will take a lifetime to get rid of that black snow, huh?” Logan asked, pointing to the glaciers of ice while they drove along the highest segment of highway.
Asher had been studying the effects on local geology and ecology for his new job with the park service. “It’s part of the scenery for good. There’s some evidence these glaciers will melt faster because they’re darker, but the added dust in the atmosphere has made everything quite a bit cooler this summer. It will take some time for everything to balance out again.”
“Just like society,” she said in a speculative tone. The affected states were putting themselves back together, but there was a long way to go. Her trip home before the disaster would have been a quick flight from Billings to Chicago, then on to Paducah. Now, in the rebuilding
of America, flights were rare. They had to take a Greyhound bus, which was one industry doing well in the new economy. She was looking at about six different bus routes, four days of uncomfortable seats, and probably a crazy number of hours hearing babies cry.
“My sister is working on it, you know. Diedre got promoted in the mission control overseeing TKM’s old assets. She’s part of the effort to put his reorganized company to good use.”
“I hope she succeeds,” she said, staring at the alien landscape of white-and-black snowfields.
“I wouldn’t know about the whole world,” Logan said, suddenly interested in the radio.
Grace’s stomach went into tumble mode at seeing him fiddling with the dial while on the narrow roads a thousand feet above the valley. “Let me handle the music, m’kay?”
“I’m a great driver. You should know that by now.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Asher said in a bemused tone.
When they reached the busy bus station, a small group was waiting for them to arrive.
“Uh-oh, it looks like a mob has it in for us,” Asher said with concern.
“It’s not a mob,” Logan declared. “It’s a proper Crow Nation send off.”
The boy and his parents had tricked her. Her old friends claimed to want to give her a ride to the bus station so she wouldn’t have to risk her car sitting in a dangerous parking lot for two weeks. Logan said his mom and dad had no idea he was the one driving them into town, but there they were waving as he arrived.
“You planned all this?” she asked Logan.
“Not me. It was my dad’s idea, mostly. He knows where you’re going, and why you’re going there. He wanted to pay his respects, even though he can’t get on the bus with you.”
She hung her head, not sure what to say.
“Come on,” Logan pressed. “They’ll probably have snacks.”
Left alone, Asher reached to her from the back seat. She turned to face him.
“Are you ready for this trip?” he asked in a serious, quiet tone.
“There’s nothing I want to do more, except spend my life with you.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, happy and sad at the same time.
“Let’s go,” she prompted. “I want to ask Mr. Runs Hard if his kid ever listens to him. Might give me some pointers for down the road.”
She scrambled out of the truck before he could reply, smiling ear-to-ear.
Fairdealing, KY
Butch and Haley had been with him as he walked through his old subdivision. He hobnobbed with a few of his old neighbors, though most of them had moved away after Kentucky Lake had been drained. With all the other disasters in the cities of America, there was little zest for rebuilding a dam out in the middle of Kentucky. With the draw of the lake gone, lots of people had left.
Including him.
However, the reason he was back had nothing to do with his old home, though he did stop by and look at the pile of ash. He almost expected a note from Babs to be pinned to the trash pile, perhaps explaining he was being fined each day for not following some rule or another, as a final poke in his eye. But she and her clipboard were nowhere to be seen.
“E-Z, we’re almost there. You good?” Butch held the leash for the wild puggle, Liam. Haley’s dog was now mostly Butch’s, too.
He gave a thumbs-up sign. “I am. I’m living in Montana, near Grace. That’s all that matters to me now. But I needed to come back and see Susan. Tell her I made it to our daughter and brought her back, as I promised.”
The three of them walked for a short time, checking out the other lost homes, and the weed-filled basin where the lake had been. However, when they reached the hillside where they’d been headed, he was shocked to see it overflowing with people.
“What the hell?” he asked with surprise.
Butch snickered with Haley. The young woman wore a summer dress, which was out of character for the spandex-wearing fitness enthusiast, but she didn’t let a nice outfit stop her from scooping up Liam and giving him a belly rub.
“You guys brought them?”
They nodded excitedly, both scratching their spoiled pup. “We knew you were coming to Susan’s grave for the first time since you moved away. We might have sent out some invites, so you didn’t have to do this alone.”
At a glance, he saw Grace and Asher, which he expected. However, there was a curious mixture of military men, police, park rangers, and a small contingent of Native Americans. Ezra was taken aback. “Who’d you invite? The whole country?”
Butch slapped him on the back. “Everyone who needed to know about the sacrifices you and your daughter endured in order to help bring this nation back together again. We even got the president.”
“No way!” he gushed. “The President of the United States?”
Butch snickered as Haley playfully slapped him.
“That was mean!” Haley turned to Ezra. “Well, actually we didn’t get the president, but we did ask his office. They said no. However, fear not, they sent a fancy-looking letter we’ll give to you later. Hope it serves as a worthy substitute.”
“Seriously?” he snarked, sounding a lot like his daughter.
“Come on, president or no, it won’t be that bad. I promise.” Haley hooked her arm into his elbow and dragged him toward the ceremony. “By the by, you clean up nicely. I haven’t seen you without all the stubble.”
“Thanks,” he replied.
Despite the fuzzball of energy in Haley’s other arm, the compliments, and the overall good spirits of his friends, his mood darkened as he headed for the patch of ground where he’d buried his wife. He wasn’t looking forward…
“What the hell is this?” he said with amazement.
Susan’s resting place was on the woodland hillside above his old neighborhood. He and Butch had dug the hole and laid her there a little over a year ago. At the time, he was in a hurry and could only mark it with a stick. To his surprise, his old neighbors had installed a decorative wrought-iron fence around her plot. They’d also taken the time to plant hundreds of black-eyed Susans along the outside of the barrier, which added a colorful frame of vibrant yellow to the otherwise-ordinary spot.
Butch seemed impressed, too. “I guess your old crew wasn’t so bad, after all.”
He walked up nearly in tears, admiring the beautiful arrangement.
Grace came over and stood beside him.
“I’m so sorry, Dad.”
He shifted to give her a hug. “Me, too, Gracie. I can’t express how grateful I am that I was able to find you out west and we were able to come back here together. It fulfills a promise I made to your mother when she…” He still couldn’t say it, so he went on. “Mom would have been so proud of you. So proud of the friends you’ve made and the career you’ve chosen.”
Grace pulled back a bit. “She’d freak out if you told her all those stories about what you went through to reach me. And you still don’t know everything I did out West, Dad.” She chuckled. “If I told Mom everything, I mean absolutely every detail, wow, it would have blown her mind. I often wonder, though, would she have survived it all? You know, if things had been different.”
“Oh yeah,” he replied, feeling a bit cheerier. “She would definitely have some choice words for me. However, I’ve been wondering about the same thing this past year. I think she would have come to understand why we were taking the risks. I bet she wouldn’t have jumped into action quite as fast as me, but I guarantee you if someone had threatened you, or put you in danger, your mom would have turned into Rambo to protect you.”
“It’s what parents do,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“Yeah, that’s right. Wait, what was that look?”
Grace walked away, avoiding giving an answer.
He was soon swamped by strangers. The military sent an envoy to thank him for helping protect vital national interests. Bass Pro sent a representative to offer him a lifetime discount at all their stores for trying to protect their
shoppers in St. Charles. The people of Kansas City even sent him a brand-new pontoon boat on a trailer, emblazoned with the name Susan’s Grace II. The delivery guy said it was donated by those affected by the atrocity TKM committed in their city. Ezra had helped expose it all.
He finally ran into someone he knew, though he wasn’t sure if it was going to be a good or bad encounter. He’d last seen the skinny Crow Nation man under tense circumstances. “Calvin Tames Horse? Thank you for coming.” Before the man could speak, Ezra thought of the name of the young girl. “How’s Fern?”
Calvin flashed a wide smile. “She’s doing just fine. I’m doing great, too, thanks to you. Logan told me this was going on. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
He brushed his hand over his neck with embarrassment. “So, you don’t think I’m with TKM? It really sucked to have to lie to you. I tried to send you a message over the past year, but you know how it is with unreliable mail.”
“Yep, it’s all tumbleweeds over the plains. My brother told me your story a long time ago. I know why you did what you did. I also know you saved two lives that day by getting those men to ignore Fern and me. I figured coming here was my chance to finally thank you.”
They shook hands, but Ezra was in a fog. Two other members of the Crow tribe passed by, shaking his hand or patting him on the back. A Wyoming state trooper awarded him some medal he couldn’t remember the name of. Even Josephine, the woman who’d watched over Haley’s pets, had showed up.
The ceremony was brief, as Susan would have wanted. Ezra said a few things, then teared up as Grace and others added their beautiful words to his clumsy ones. When it was over, the gathering broke up quickly, leaving him with his close friends and family.
“Thanks for doing this, Dad. I’m glad I finally got to come back and say…goodbye.” Grace’s voice was solemn.
“You can thank these two.” He gestured to Butch and Haley. “They’ve given me an incredible gift I don’t know if I can ever repay.”
Butch put his arm over Haley’s shoulder. “No, Ezra, you gave me the best gift of all when we found this woman.”
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 121