by Diana Palmer
* * *
SHE COOKED A light supper, just creamed chicken and rice, with green peas, and made a nice apple pie for dessert.
Her father came in, looking harassed. Then he saw the spread and grinned from ear to ear. “What a nice surprise!”
“I know, something light. But I was hungry,” she added.
He made a face. “Shame. Telling lies.”
She shrugged. “I went to church Sunday. God won’t mind a little lie, in a good cause.”
He smiled. “You know, some people have actually asked me how to talk to God.”
“I just do it while I’m cooking, or working in the yard,” Carlie said. “Just like I’m talking to you.”
He laughed. “Me, too. But there are people who make hard work of it.”
“Why were you in the chief’s office today?” she asked suddenly
He paused in the act of putting a napkin in his lap. His expression went blank for an instant, then it came back to life. “He wanted me to talk to a prisoner for him,” he said finally.
She raised both eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he said, smoothing out the napkin. “Some things are confidential.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s say grace,” he added.
* * *
LATER, HE WATCHED the news while she cleaned up the kitchen. She sat down with him and watched a nature special for a while. Then she excused herself and went upstairs to read. She wasn’t really interested in much television programming, except for history specials and anything about mining. She loved rocks.
She sat down on the side of her bed and thumbed through her bookshelf. Most titles were digital as well as physical these days, but she still loved the feel and smell of an actual book in her hands.
She pulled out a well-worn copy of a book on the Little Bighorn fight, one that was written by members of various tribes who’d actually been present. It irritated her that many of the soldiers had said there were no living witnesses to the battle. That was not true. There were plenty of them: Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow and a host of other men from different tribes who were at the battle and saw exactly what happened.
She smiled as she read about how many of them ended up in Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous traveling Wild West show. They played before the crowned heads of Europe. They learned high society manners and how to drink tea from fancy china cups. They laughed among themselves at the irony of it. Sitting Bull himself worked for Cody for a time, before he was killed.
She loved most to read about Crazy Horse. Like Carson, he was Lakota, which white people referred to as Sioux. Crazy Horse was Oglala, which was one of the subclasses of the tribe. He was light-skinned and a great tactician. There was only one verified photograph of him, which was disputed by some, accepted by others. It showed a rather handsome man with pigtails, wearing a breastplate. There was also a sketch. He had led a war party against General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and won it. He led another party against Custer at the Little Bighorn.
Until his death, by treachery at the hands of a soldier, he was the most famous war leader of the Lakota.
Sitting Bull did not fight; he was not a warrior. He was a holy man who made medicine and had visions of a great battle that was won by the native tribes.
Crazy Horse fascinated Carlie. She bought book after book, looking for all she could find in his history.
She also had books about Alexander the Third, called the Great, who conquered most of the civilized world by the age of thirty. His ability as a strategist was unequaled in the ancient past. Hannibal, who fought the Romans under Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War at Carthage, was another favorite. Scipio fascinated her, as well.
The ability of some leaders to inspire a small group of men to conquer much larger armies was what drew her to military history. It was the generals who led from the front, who ate and slept and suffered with their men, who won the greatest battles and the greatest honor.
She knew about battles because her secret vice was an online video game, “World of Warcraft.” A number of people in Jacobsville and Comanche Wells played. She knew the gamer tags, the names in-game, of only a very few. Probably she’d partnered with some of them in raid groups. But mostly she ran battlegrounds, in player-versus-player matches, but only on weekends, when she had more free time.
Gaming took the place of dates she never got. Even if she’d been less moral, she rarely got asked on dates. She could be attractive when she tried, but she wasn’t really pretty and she was painfully shy around people she didn’t know. She’d only gone out a couple of times in high school, once with a boy who was getting even with his girlfriend by dating her—although she hadn’t known until later—and another with a boy who’d hurt another girl badly and saw Carlie as an easy mark. He got a big surprise.
From time to time she thought about how nice it would be to marry and have children. She loved spending time in the baby section of department stores when she went to San Antonio with her father occasionally. She liked to look at knitted booties and lacy little dresses. Once a saleswoman had asked if she had children. She said no, she wasn’t married. The saleswoman had laughed and asked what that had to do with it. It was a new world, indeed.
She put away her book on the Little Bighorn fight, and settled in with her new copy of a book on Alexander the Great. The phone rang. She got up, but she was hesitant to answer it. She recalled the threat from the unknown man and wondered if that was him.
She went to the staircase and hesitated. Her father had answered and was on the phone.
“Yes, I know,” he said in a tone he’d never used with her. “If you think you can do better, you’re welcome to try.” He paused and a huge sigh left his chest. “Listen, she’s all I’ve got in the world. I know I don’t deserve her, but I will never let anyone harm her. This place may not look secure, but I assure you, it is...”
He leaned against the wall near the phone table, with the phone in his hand. He looked world-weary. “That’s what I thought, too, at first,” he said quietly. “I still have enemies. But it isn’t me he’s after. It’s Carlie! It has to have something to do with the man she saw in Grier’s office. I know that the man who killed Joey and masqueraded as a DEA agent is dead. But if he put out a contract before he died... Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” He shook his head. “I know you don’t have the funds. It’s okay. I have plenty of people who owe me favors. I’ll call in a few. Yes. I do appreciate your help. It’s just...it’s worrying me, that’s all. Sure. I’ll call you. Thanks.” He hung up.
Carlie moved back into the shadows. Her father looked like a stranger, like someone she’d never seen before. She wondered who he’d been speaking to, and if the conversation was about her. It sounded that way; he’d used her name. What was a contract? A contract to kill someone? She bit her lower lip. Something to do with the man she saw in the chief’s office, the man she’d tried to describe for the artist, the DEA agent who wasn’t an agent.
She frowned. But he was dead, her father had said. Then he’d mentioned that contract, that the man might have put it out before he died. Of course, if some unknown person had been paid in advance to kill her...
She swallowed down the fear. She could be killed by mistake, by a dead man. How ironic. Her father had said the house was safe. She wondered why he’d said that, what he knew. For the first time in her life, she wondered who her father really was.
* * *
SHE FIXED HIM a nice breakfast. While they were eating it she said, “Why do you think that man came to kill me?”
His coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“The man with the knife.”
“We agreed that he was after me, didn’t we?” he said, avoiding her face.
She lifted her eyes and stared at him. “I work for the police. It’s impossible not to learn a
little something about law enforcement in the process. That man wasn’t after you at all, was he? The man who was poisoned so he couldn’t tell what he knew?”
He let out a breath and put the coffee cup down. “Well, Carlie, you’re more perceptive than I gave you credit for.” He smiled faintly. “Must be my genes. Your mother, God rest her soul, didn’t have that gift. She saw everything in black and white.”
“Yes, she did.” Talk of her mother made her sad. It had just been Carlie and Mary for a long time, until Mary got sick. Then Mary’s mother, and her hophead boyfriend, had shown up and ransacked the place. Carlie had tried to stop them... She shivered.
It had been several days later, after the hospital visit and the arrests, when her father had come back to town, wearing khaki pants and shirt, and carrying a pistol.
There had been no money for doctors, but her father had taken charge and got Mary into treatment. Mary’s mother and her boyfriend went to jail. Sadly, it had been hopeless from the start. Mary died within weeks. During those weeks, Carlie got to know her absent father. He became protective of her. She liked him very much. He was gone for a day after the funeral. When he came home, he seemed very different.
Carlie’s father spoke to someone on the phone then, too, and when he hung up he’d made a decision. He took Carlie with him to Atlanta, where he enrolled in a seminary and became a Methodist minister. He said it was the hardest and the easiest thing he’d ever done, and that it was a good thing that God forgave people for horrible acts. She asked what they were. Her father said some things were best left buried in the past.
“We’re still not sure he didn’t come after me,” her father said, interrupting her reverie.
“I heard you talking on the phone last night,” she said.
He grimaced. “Bad timing on my part,” he said, sighing.
“Very bad. So now I know. Tell me what’s going on.”
“That phone call you had came from a San Antonio number. We traced it, but it led to a throwaway phone,” he replied. “That’s bad news.”
“Why?”
“Because a few people who use those phones are connected to the underworld in some fashion or other, to escape detection by the authorities. They use the phone once to connect with people who might be wiretapped, then they dispose of the phone. Drug lords buy them by the cartload,” he added.
“Well, I didn’t do anybody in over a drug deal, and the guy I gave the artist the description of died in Wyoming. So why is somebody still after me?” she concluded.
He smiled. “Smart. Very smart. The guy died. That’s the bottom line. If he hired somebody to go after you, to keep you from recognizing him in a future lineup, and paid in advance, it’s too late to call him off. Get the picture?”
“In living color,” she said. She felt very adult, having her father give her the truth instead of a sweet lie to calm her.
“I have a couple of friends watching you,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a big threat, but we’d be insane not to take it seriously, especially after what’s already happened.”
“That was weeks ago,” she began.
“Yes, at the beginning of a long chain of growing evidence.” He sipped coffee. “I still can’t believe how many people’s lives have been impacted by this man and whoever he was working for.”
“You have some idea who his boss is...was?”
He nodded. “I can’t tell you, so don’t ask. I will say that several law enforcement agencies are involved.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re having meetings with my boss and that...that man Carson.”
He studied her flushed face. “I’ve heard about Carson’s attitude toward you. If he keeps it up, I’ll have a talk with him.”
“Don’t,” she asked softly. “With any luck, he won’t be around long. He doesn’t strike me as a man who likes small towns or staying in one place for any length of time.”
“You never know. He likes working for Cy Parks. And he has a few projects going with locals.”
She groaned.
“I can talk to him nicely.”
“Sure, Dad, and then he’ll accuse me of running to Daddy for protection.” She lifted her chin. “I can take whatever he can hand out.”
He smiled at her stubbornness. “Okay.”
She made a face. “He just doesn’t like me, that’s all. Maybe I remind him of someone he doesn’t care for.”
“That’s possible.” He stared into his coffee cup. “Or it could have something to do with asking him for a grenade to start a fire...”
“Aww, now, I wasn’t trying to start anything,” she protested.
He chuckled. “Sure.” He studied her face. “I just want to mention one thing,” he added gently. “He’s not housebroken. And he never will be. Just so you know.”
“I have never wanted to housebreak a wolf, I assure you.”
“There’s also his attitude about women. He makes no secret of it.” His face hardened. “He likens them to party favors. Disposable. You understand?”
“I understand. But honestly, that’s not the sort of man I’d be seriously interested in. You don’t have to worry.”
“I do worry. You’re not street-smart, pumpkin,” he added, with the pet name that he almost never used. “You’re unworldly. A man like that could be dangerous to you...”
She held up a hand. “I have weapons.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“If he starts showing any interest in me, I’ll give him my most simpering smile and start talking about how I’d love to move in with him that very day and start having children at once.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Works like a charm. They actually leave skid marks...”
He threw back his head and laughed. “So that’s what happened to the visiting police chief...?”
“He was very persistent. The chief offered to punt him through the door, but I had a better idea. It worked very nicely. Now, when he comes to see the chief, he doesn’t even look my way.”
“Just as well. He has a wife, God help her.”
“What a nasty man.”
“Exactly.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I have a meeting with the church officials. We’re working on an outreach program for the poor. Something I really want to do.”
She smiled. “You know, you really are the nicest minister I know.”
He bent and kissed her forehead before he left. “Thanks, sweetheart. Be sure to check your truck, okay?”
She laughed. “I always do. Don’t worry.”
He hesitated. He wanted to tell her that he did worry, and the whole reason why. But it was the wrong time.
She was already halfway in love with Carson. He knew things about the man that he’d been told in confidence. He couldn’t repeat them. But if Carlie got too close to that prowling wolf, he’d leave scars that would cripple her for life. He had to prevent that, if he could. The thing was, he didn’t know how. It was like seeing a wire break and being too far away to fix it.
He could talk to Carson, of course. But that would only make matters worse. He had to wait and hope that Carlie could hang on to her beliefs and ignore the man’s practiced charm if he ever used it on her.
Carson seemed to hate her. But it was an act. He knew it, because it was an act he’d put on himself, with Carlie’s late mother. Mary had been a saint. He’d tried to coax her into bed, but she’d refused him at every turn. Finally, in desperation, he’d proposed. She’d refused. She wasn’t marrying a man because he couldn’t have her any other way.
So he’d gone away. And come back. And tried the soft approach. It had backfired. He’d fallen in love for the first time in his life. Mary had tied him to her with strings of icy steel, and leaving her even for a few weeks at a time had been agonizing. He’d only lived to finish the mi
ssion and get home, get back to Mary.
But over the years, the missions had come closer together, taken longer, provoked lengthy absences. He’d tried to make sure Mary had enough money to cover her bills and incidentals, but one job had resulted in no pay and during that time, Mary had gotten sick. By the time he knew and came home, it was too late.
He blamed himself for that, and for a lot more. He’d thought an old enemy had targeted him and got Carlie by mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake. Someone wanted Carlie dead, apparently because of a face she remembered. There might be another reason. Something they didn’t know, something she didn’t remember seeing. Even the death of the man hadn’t stopped the threat.
But he was going to. Somehow.
2
CARLIE LOVED THE WEEKENDS. At work she was just plain old Carlie, dull and boring and not very pretty at all.
But in this video game, on her game server, she was Cadzminea, an Alliance night elf death knight, invincible and deadly with a two-handed great sword. She had top-level gear and a bad attitude, and she was known even in battlegrounds with players from multiple servers. She was a tank, an offensive player who protected less well-geared comrades. She loved it.
Above the sounds of battle, clashing swords and flashing spells thrown by magic-users, she heard her father’s voice.
“Just a minute, Dad! I’m in a battleground!”
“Okay. Never mind.”
There were footsteps coming up. She laughed as she heard them behind her. Odd, they sounded lighter than her father’s....
“Sorry, we’re almost through. We’re taking out the enemy commander....”
She stopped while she fought, planting her guild’s battle flag to increase her strength and pulling up her Army of the Dead spell. “Gosh, the heals in this battleground are great, I’ve hardly even needed to use a potion... Okay!” she laughed, as the panel came up displaying an Alliance win, that of her faction.
“Sorry about that...” She turned and looked up into a pair of liquid black eyes in a surprised face.
“A gamer,” he said in a tone, for once, without sarcasm. “Put up your stats.”