“Oh, yes. Yes, I am. It’s been my mission for years.” She glanced around the ranch and hotel and then towards the foot of the mountains. “It seems odd that a wolf would venture so close to the buildings – the Rockies are right there, offering shelter and prey. Strange. Can you show me exactly where you saw it?”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, that was me. I’ll take you to where we found the footprints this morning, down by the stables and then again up at the Big House.”
“Thank you.”
“I think I’ll stay up here, if that’s OK,” Julie said. “Rob and I have a meeting this morning with the builders about the new cabins. Do you mind?”
“No, it’s fine,” Phil said. “We’ll call if anything comes up.”
Julie nodded and she and Tammy watched as Jake, Phil, Mattie and Kimana walked away, down the hill to the open prairie.
Tammy turned to Julie. “You know, it sounds crazy and horrible to say this, but I’ve never met a Native American before.”
“Really?”
Tammy shook her head. “Never. In New York, I was surrounded by a million nationalities and languages and cultures, all the time and everywhere, but I never – not once – met a Native American. Isn’t that sad?”
“I know what you mean.”
Tammy stared down the hill at the small group walking away, then cocked her head. “OK, well. You get to work. I’m going to take a truck and head in to Clarity to pick up a few things.”
“You what?” Julie asked. “You sure? I can get someone to drive you in, if you want…”
“No, it’s OK. I want to go myself.”
Julie hesitated, feeling protective. But then she looked at Tammy, and she relaxed a bit. Her friend was happy and optimistic and almost completely back to herself. It was time for Julie to start treating her the way she had done until five weeks ago.
“Alright,” Julie said. “You’ve got the keys?”
Tammy produced them from the back pocket of her jeans. “Mattie gave them to me this morning.”
“So, you’re all set. See you later. Drive safe, OK?’
“Yes, ma’am.” Tammy winked and headed around to the back of the building, to the staff parking lot. Mattie had shown her the pickup truck they used for hotel and ranch stuff: runs in to town for feed and supplies for the horses; trips by Manny and his kitchen staff to buy some food from local farmers.
She unlocked the door and clambered in. Even with her long legs, it was still a bit of a stretch and she giggled to herself, imagining Julie or Kimana trying to climb up to the driver’s seat. She started the engine, waited a few minutes as it warmed up. Tammy sat and gazed up at the mountains, looking at the snow-tipped trees and the clear blue sky overhead.
Her thoughts turned to Rob, to the blue of his eyes. She hadn’t really seen or spoken to him since the day before, when she sat in his office and told him that she was going back to New York in a month. At the meeting this morning, he sat quite a distance from her, and although he gave her a warm smile from across the room, she had wanted a hug. She wanted to be pressed up against his large, strong body, his heartbeat against her own.
She shook her head. Nope. No way for this to work out. And really, what did she and Rob have in common, anyway? She had learned quite a lot about Rob the night that she had stayed at Julie’s. They had sat up all night drinking wine and then tea and then coffee – they had watched the sun rise and then finally fallen in to bed around nine o’clock in the morning. Tammy had asked all about Rob; she hadn’t been able to help herself.
She learned that Rob was a college graduate; he had his MBA from Daniels College at the University of Denver. Apparently, he had won a place in the highly-competitive one-year program, and graduated top of his class. He was smart, way smarter than she was, obviously. Tammy had scraped by in a general Fashion Design degree in community college. At the time – so many years ago, now – she really thought that she could make it as a designer. She had been young and excited and enthusiastic, and she had loved working with color and material and fluid lines.
But school had been hard for her, it had always been hard. Julie had found the energy and drive to fight her way through, despite everything, but Tammy just didn’t have that in her. So she got a mediocre degree from a mediocre school and ended up having to temp wherever she could find work, trying to support herself until she found a job in design or fashion.
A cleaning job turned in to a waitressing job; that turned in to a secretarial job and that turned in to more secretarial jobs. The hours were long, the commutes were brutal, the money was a straight-up joke, and she had no energy or creativity left when she got home. She stopped sketching after work and started vegging out on the sofa watching brainless TV. Eventually, her ambition faded and then it died.
Now, she was now pretty much stuck in temporary office work, though the job she’d had when she was attacked in the alley had been pretty OK. Well, sort of. It was a pain to have a boss like Reg who micro-managed every damned thing, but she had kind of liked the predictability of it all. She didn’t have the job any more, of course: she was fired within three days of being beaten and left in the snow and cold. She couldn’t even be too upset about it; she didn’t have any kind of contract, and that was reality.
Rob, though. He had education and job experience – real experience. Working in large companies, running marketing departments, heading up sales teams. Julie said that he was one of the main reasons Open Skies was such a raging success, and Tammy believed it.
So. He was intelligent. He had a good job. He ate healthy and he worked out. He wore suits. He drove an expensive car. He even had a great apartment, Julie said, and he’d done most of the work himself. He had bought it for next-to-nothing, and then spent every weekend and evening for a year doing it up: sanding the floors, knocking down walls, painting. Julie said he had even done the whole kitchen himself, as some kind of creative project – he built the cabinets from scratch. He’d had a house-warming party when it was done and he had moved in and even though Julie hadn’t been there – it was about three years ago, long before she had even heard of David Reid or Open Skies – she had seen the pictures. She said the place was fantastic.
His girlfriend had been there in the pictures, too, Julie said. What was her name? Carol? Karen? Well, whatever. She was long gone now, off to Hong Kong or someplace. She had accepted a glamorous banking job and had left Rob behind. So even his girlfriends were super smart and successful and – according to Julie – stunning. Carol/Karen was gorgeous, with long brown hair and huge brown eyes and a perfect curvy figure with long, slim legs. She sounded like what would happen if someone mashed Julie and Tammy together in to one body: tall and slim, with curves and breasts. Tammy hated her, even though she’d never met her.
She sighed and revved the engine a bit, then backed out. She headed to Clarity, determined to enjoy her time alone, away from Open Skies. She decided to pop in to a café for a Cappuccino and a piece of pie, and then she’d go and buy some clothes, maybe something bright and flirty and fun. It was totally wasted on everyone here, of course, but what the hell. Tammy was OK with that; it was completely fine that Rob wasn’t even the tiniest little bit interested in her.
Well. Maybe she wasn’t totally OK or fine with that.
**
Kimana Beck stared down at the tracks in the snow. Unbelievable. A miracle.
She glanced up at the faces all watching her intently. She smiled.
“You’re quite right, Jake,” she said to the tall man with the dark hair and the massive shoulders. “You did see a wolf.”
“Yeah, I thought so. I saw it pretty clearly.”
“OK, so. What does this mean?” Phil asked.
Kimana shrugged. “For all of you? Nothing much, I imagine. I mean, it is a bit surprising for the wolf to come right up to the stables and the Big House like this, but it’s not totally un
heard of or crazy behavior. Probably new to the area and checking it out and got curious about the horses and the lights and cabins. But I can’t see any danger to anyone around here.” She looked at the tracks in the snow, leading away and up the path to the Rockies. “Long gone, I expect.”
“And for you?” Mattie asked.
“Me?”
“Yes, hon. What does it mean for you? For your work. Your mission.”
Kimana was surprised at both the question and the interest. This woman was so gentle, and those amazing silver eyes just glowed with inner light. She studied the woman’s open, kind face and decided that she liked Mattie very much.
“Well, I’m not sure yet. I’ve spent years trying to get a growing wolf population here in Colorado. Maybe it’s finally happening.”
They all nodded; Phil looked pleased. He knew just how much this meant to her.
“So, I’ll just follow these tracks for a bit, see if maybe I can get a sense of where the wolf went.”
“Do you want us to come with you?” Jake asked.
“No, thank you. I do better on my own.”
“You mean, we’re too damn noisy to take tracking.”
Kimana laughed. “Well. Are you?”
Jake and Phil grinned, a bit sheepish.
“Oh, yeah. For sure.” Jake looked down at his massive work boots, knew that any animal would hear him coming a mile away. “I wouldn’t be very helpful.”
“OK, then,” Mattie said. “You go do what you need to do, then you come on back here for something hot to eat and drink.”
“Oh, Mattie, there’s no need –”
“There is every need, honey. You go in to the main building when you’re done, and ask the reception staff to show you to the restaurant. I’ll make sure they know you’re coming.”
Kimana thought about the contents of her wallet. She didn’t think she had more than thirty dollars in there, and it had to last until the end of the week. How much would a meal cost in a place like this?
As if hearing her thoughts, Phil said, “Julie made it clear to me after the meeting this morning that your meal is her treat, as a thank you for coming all the way out here. She also inquired about your fee. Have you got a number in mind?”
Kimana was startled. It had never occurred to her to charge for her time or help. Protecting and helping wolves was her passion, her life blood, her spirit. To just be close to one here in Clarity was a joy and an honor and a privilege. You don’t charge money for joy and honor and privilege.
“I won’t ask a fee, and decline with thanks,” she said. “But I will be happy to accept a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup.”
“Maybe some pasta?” Jake said.
“Maybe.” She smiled at him, admiring his cheekbones and curved mouth. What a gorgeous man.
“Well, that’s fine then,” Mattie said. “So, you go and find your wolf. We’ll see you later.”
Kimana unwrapped her bright scarf and handed it to Mattie. “You mind taking that for me?” She pulled a brown one from her small backpack and tied it around her neck, concealing her lower face against the chill and the wind. “OK, I’m ready.”
The others watched her walk away through the knee-high snow, towards the foot of the mountains.
Jake turned to Phil. “She’s great, man. How do you know her?”
“Oh, I’ve known her a while, through friends in my support group,” Phil said. “She’s got wolves on the brain, they told me, but she’s really just passionate about them.”
The wind picked up again and Mattie shivered. Jake looked at her with concern. At almost sixty-three years of age, Mathilda Velasquez was one of the most vibrant and wisest people he had ever known – but she was starting to slow down. Jake knew her hands hurt sometimes, and her knees didn’t support her as well as they had when he first met her seven years earlier. Her eyes, though. Those calm, silver eyes still gazed out of her lined face with humor and love and warmth.
He threaded her arm through his and she smiled. “Are you going to escort me back to the stables, young sir?”
He tipped an imaginary hat. “Indeed, ma’am.”
Phil grinned and the three of them went off through the snow. The horses were waiting for a bit of exercise before lunchtime, and it was time to give them some attention.
**
Julie and Jake were in the restaurant eating lunch and waiting for Kimana to return. Julie turned to him.
“So Tammy went in to town alone today.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know, I really think she may be getting there. She may be OK in the end.”
Jake smiled at her. “Time, baby. More often than not, it’s all about time.”
She fiddled with her salad. “I guess.”
Jake studied her; he knew her every expression now, and she wasn’t totally relaxed and sure about what she was saying. Do I push?
She raised her eyes and met his, and she knew that he saw her disquiet. “The thing is, Jake… she hasn’t remembered yet. She doesn’t remember what happened in the alley.” She looked out the window. “That worries me. A lot.”
Jake leaned back and thought about that. Yeah, maybe Julie had a point there. Tammy didn’t have the full memory of the brutal attack, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t lurking around in there somewhere, biding its time, waiting to burst out, unexpectedly. And when that happened, what then? Did Tammy go back to zero, in terms of the progress she had made? What if she saw the man’s face? She would be haunted by it, he imagined.
“When it all comes back to her,” Julie said. “It’ll be awful. But it needs to all come back to her, I think. She wants it to come back, even.”
“She does?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. The night she stayed at my place, we were talking, and she said that she wants to remember the guy. She wants to help the police catch him, Jake, and right now, she can’t offer anything. She’s angry and upset that he’s still out there, maybe hurting other people, and that maybe his face is locked away in her memory.” Julie shrugged. “She was talking about hypnosis. To help her get the memory back.”
“Really?” Jake was surprised. He thought of hypnosis as a scam of some kind, on the same level as fortune tellers and palm readers and those women who had late-night TV ads offering to tell your future by telephone for five bucks a minute.
“Yeah. But I think it’s about more than helping the police catch the guy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you don’t know Tammy that well,” Julie said. “But the thing about her is that she likes to be able to choose for herself. OK, most of her choices have been…. ummm… not great. I mean, her decisions about school and work and most especially about guys. But she knows that, see. She knows that it was her call in the end, and so she takes all the consequences and fallout and responsibility. She never pins what happens to her on anyone else.”
“OK.”
“That’s why she’s struggling so hard with this, I think. She believes – way deep down – that something she did or said got her beaten up.”
“But that’s ridiculous. No way she did anything to deserve what happened!”
“I know. And she knows that she didn’t deserve it – but she does think that something she did caused it. See the difference?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
Julie sighed. “That’s Tammy. That’s Tammy, all over. She wants to be the one who chooses and has some control. And so if she goes for hypnosis and a doctor manages to retrieve the memory? It would be like – like Tammy was the one who controlled when it all came back to her. She didn’t just sit around and wait for it to happen. It didn’t just – just spring out on her while she was at work or driving or sleeping. You know? No ambush.”
Jake thought about that. “Well. Actually, it’s not a terrible idea. I mean, she’d be
somewhere safe with a trained professional who could be there after, when she remembered. You’d be there for her.”
“The fact is that it will come back to her at some point. Maybe in an hour, maybe in ten years. Nobody knows and nobody can predict. But if she actively calls it all back? She still feels in control, to an extent. Though I have no idea what might happen after.”
“So you really think she’s going to do it? Get hypnotized?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She’s starting to think about it more and more. It’s because she’s doing better. She’s getting stronger. And I think she feels she can handle knowing the whole story.”
Jake took her small hand in his large one. “And do you think she’s strong enough? She’s ready?”
“I have no idea,” Julie said. “But in the end, it’s not up to me. Tammy will either remember on her own, or she may ask for help remembering. My job is to be there, either way. When the time comes.”
**
Tammy hummed as she parked the pickup in the Open Skies parking lot. Her shopping trip to Clarity had been a success, in her humble opinion. She had found a few cute t-shirts on sale, and scooped them up. They were snug on her small breasts and clung to her slim curves; she wondered if Rob would notice her in the purple one – it was the exact color of her eyes.
She gathered up the bags, stepped out of the truck, locked the door. She turned, her mind on what Manny had made for lunch, and stopped dead in her tracks.
A wolf – it had to be the same one, right? – was sitting just beside the main building, and it was watching her. It was huge, gray, long and muscled. A powerful body, strong limbs. The animal was staring at her intently.
She screamed, dropped the bags, fumbled for the keys, dropped those too. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the wolf, but she had no choice: she bent down for two seconds, found the keys, stood up again, struggled to get them in to the truck door. She felt panic rising in her chest and her hands shook.
Finally, finally. The key slid in to the lock and she turned it frantically. She swung the door open and climbed in, banging her elbow on the steering wheel. She slammed the door. Looked out at the wolf.
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