Unflappable

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Unflappable Page 19

by Suzie Gilbert


  [email protected] WTF is going on in this country how dare that douchebag handcuff her like that!!!

  [email protected] C an’t believe he cuffed her!

  [email protected] Jesus H Christ Sean WTF? Assholes are drilling on protected habitat and F&W is after a rehabber?

  [email protected] She’s heading for New Mexico just like she planned, only reason she went to Sean’s was because Matheson’s goon tried to grab her

  [email protected] What’s that bastard doing being a goon when he won the Heisman Trophy

  [email protected] She just pulled in to Illinois

  [email protected] Expecting her here in Missouri tomorrow

  [email protected] We’re ready and waiting in NM

  Elias pocketed his phone. Sean hadn’t specified how she escaped, but Elias assumed Warren was involved. Wizzie rushed into the room, damp and breathless, and sat beside him. “Where’s your raincoat?” he asked.

  “I lost it. Who are you texting?”

  “No one. Just someone at the feed store.”

  “Is it Luna?”

  “No,” he sighed. “I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Banshee’s still not eating. How long before she starves herself?”

  “She won’t starve herself.”

  “It’s not right, Pop. It’s not right that someone can take Mars and make Banshee starve herself because she misses him so much. It’s just not right!”

  “I know.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  Elias made no reply. Through the window he could see Banshee on her perch, huddled alone in the rain. Her loud descending cry was silent. They had tried putting two different eagles in with her, and she had attacked them both. Risking everything for her and her missing mate was Luna, on the run. He frowned, and Wizzie broke into a grin.

  “You’re thinking, Pop! I can see you thinking! We’re going to do something about it, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe.”

  Wizzie encircled his arm with hers. “You keep thinking, Pop. And if you need any help, you know where to find me.”

  Chapter 16

  Luna opened her eyes and scanned the empty room. The bed was rumpled. She remembered her dream and its aftermath, and sat up.

  Move on, she thought.

  She followed the flagstones skirting the house. Mist sparkled on the needles of the Tamarack trees. The morning sky was a pale pink, and the air was filled with bird calls. She heard the high-pitched plitseek of an Acadian Flycatcher, and a Western Meadowlark burst into a series of whistles, warbles, and trills. They’re in trouble, thought Luna. All the grassland birds. Farming. Pesticides. Development. Soon there will be nothing left to protect.

  With an effort she pulled her eyes from the sky and continued toward the Bunker. She entered the concrete block building, pulled a large wrapped package from the refrigerator, and opened the stall where Mars had spent the night.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked. A moment later he stood on her arm and beat his wings gently, blowing her hair back from her face. Lightly she touched the feathers on his chest, then let him hop onto the floor. He lowered his head into the rubber tub, raised it, and let the water run down his throat.

  “What a good bird,” she said, once again grateful she was on the run with Mars, not Banshee. Nervous and suspicious, Banshee would never have survived this kind of trip. Luna pictured her in her flight cage, her eyes fixed on the horizon, waiting for the return of her mate. Mars turned, lifted off the ground, and landed on the Astro-turf covered perch. He peered out the window.

  “It’s okay,” she said in a husky half-whisper. “It’ll be all right. I’ll get you both to Hélène’s, and I’ll never leave you until you’re safe.”

  • • •

  “Did you know half the time the power grid goes down, it’s because of squirrels?” asked Trish, finishing her scrambled eggs. “People shouldn’t be afraid of hackers, they should be afraid of squirrels. They shut down the NASDAQ in ’87 and ’94.”

  “It’s not their fault,” added Angelica. “You’d start chewing up the power grid too, if your teeth grew six inches a year.”

  After Warren disappeared, Trish and Angelica had made breakfast. Trish carried a plate heaped with food to Warren, who was on the phone in the den, then she leaned out the door and shouted for Luna. The meal passed uneventfully, with Trish and Angelica determinedly filling the silence with squirrel trivia.

  “They’re practically made of rubber,” said Trish. “You see them fall out of a tree and you swear they’ve broken their necks, but they just get up like nothing happened.”

  “You want to see a cute squirrel?” said Angelica. “Flying squirrels. There’s nothing cuter than a flying squirrel. We have three in the clinic. They’re all asleep now, though, because it’s daytime.”

  “Squirrels are scary,” said Luna matter-of-factly. “Seriously, they’ll take your hand off.”

  “Look!” said Trish, pointing out the window to the back yard. “Up there!”

  An elongated contraption hovered between two mature trees, suspended by a 25-foot wire. At its finish line stood a platform filled with peanuts. A dozen feet away a gray squirrel sat on a tree branch, twitching, his eyes on the beginning section of wire. His luxuriant tail lashed like a whip.

  “Crazy rodent!” said Angelica. “Sometimes I just want to give him a bunch of Valium and say, ‘C’mon, baby, relax.”

  The squirrel launched himself from the tree, hurtled through the air, and caught the wire with his two front feet. He spun in a circle, like a gymnast doing a Giant Swing, then braked with his tail and scrambled into a Plexiglas cube. Climbing out the top of the cube, he navigated through a spinning windmill, rolling PVC pipes, and a corrugated tube. He held the wire with all four feet and raced upside down toward a curtain of leather strips, seized one, and used it as a rope swing. At the critical moment he let go, sailed onto the final platform, and reached for a peanut.

  “You guys clean up and we’ll get dressed,” said Angelica. “Then we’ll show you the bears.”

  Luna stood beside Ned as they loaded the dishwasher. She gave him a detailed report on Mars and then fell silent, clearly not intending to discuss the previous night. After he placed the last spoon in the dishwasher basket, Ned planted his hands on the counter. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she said, giving him a warm smile. “Let’s go see the bears.”

  They followed Trish and Angelica into an office filled with filing cabinets, shelves, camera equipment, and monitors. Angelica flipped a switch and one of the monitors revealed three young black bears. It looked like a wild, wooded area, except for the 15-foot double fence visible on one side of the screen. On the ground, two young bears wrestled in the sun.

  “Where’s the third one?” asked Ned.

  “Looking for trouble, no doubt,” said Angelica. “She’s the brat.”

  “We bottle fed them until they were five months old,” said Trish. “Only the two of us, nobody else was even allowed in the room. The last thing you want is for a wild bear getting used to humans! We didn’t even talk when we were feeding them. Mostly, we left them alone with each other. As soon as they learned to eat from a dish, they went outside.”

  “That enclosure is filled with stuff they’d eat in the wild,” said Angelica. “Lots of berry bushes. Nuts, apples, vegetation, rotten logs with bugs. There’s a shallow cement pool on the other side, eventually we’ll start throwing fish in it. You know what we never feed them? Corn or honey. They start raiding cornfields or knocking over beehives, that’ll get them shot.”

  She flicked another switch, and a sleeping bear appeared on the monitor. “Speaking of shot,” said Angelica, scowling. “Here’s a question for you. On one hand, you have an extremely stupid slob of a human being who leaves uncovered garbage outside his garage, even after being told by yours truly that he’s laying out a wildlife cafeteria.
On the other hand, you have an intelligent young black bear who sees this windfall and decides to help herself. The stupid slob shoots the bear. Which one, in your opinion, needs rehabilitation and relocation?”

  “So, we have this cool hospital set up at the end of the building,” said Trish, pointing at the monitor. “Everything’s concrete, of course. The rooms are long and in the middle there’s a guillotine door. That way we can shift the bear from one end to the other when we need to clean it, and they don’t see us providing the food. Cool, huh? Sometimes I have to put Angelica in there when she gets too homicidal.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Angelica. “You should have seen her cursing when that shot bear came in.”

  Angelica flipped on the last monitor. Another wooded area surrounded a small cinderblock building, partially submerged by earth. “Here’s one of the dens. Big female in there, hit by car. She’s way better now. Probably taking a nap.”

  The four of them left the barn and skirted the driveway. “There’s the food truck,” said Trish, pointing to a small camouflaged, motorized vehicle with tinted windows.

  “It has a trap door, right?” said Ned. “So you can drive it into the pen and leave the food, and they don’t associate it with people? Warren has one.”

  “We stole the idea from him!” said Trish.

  “And there’s the bear trap,” said Angelica, pointing to a big aluminum tube mounted on a trailer frame. “If we need to relocate one, we bait it with a bunch of food, the bear goes in and steps on the pressure plate, and the door slams behind him. Nice, right? We can thank Saint Luna for both of those little items.”

  Luna waved her hand dismissively. “Come and see the pond,” said Trish, leading them into the woods. “Bears are smart, and sometimes they won’t go into those traps. We have this awesome heavy-duty net that has ropes at all four corners. You suspend the ropes from a tree limb, then you lay the net on the ground and cover it with leaves. It’s spring-loaded, so you bait it, the bear steps on it, and suddenly he’s hanging five feet off the ground. Really freaks them out, though, so you only do it as a last resort. Look out, Ned, we almost caught you!”

  “Look how well it’s camouflaged!” said Luna, admiring the dangling ropes that looked like vines.

  “We put it up so we could make a video, we just haven’t taken it down yet.”

  “Come on, we’re not done with the tour yet,” said Trish. “On the way back, we’ll show you the flying squirrels.”

  • • •

  Gunderman parked his car beside a brown SUV bearing a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services logo. He walked into the Rock Ridge police station, and stopped at the front desk. Just visible through an open door, two Fish and Wildlife officers conversed with four uniformed policemen. One of the cops, thin and grey-haired, beckoned him Into the room and closed the door.

  “Officer Gunderman,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Sergeant Nielsen.” He introduced the three other cops, and the two Fish and Wildlife officers introduced themselves. “So, what’s the big mystery?”

  Gunderman described the situation, and watched the men’s looks of surprise. “All right,” said Sergeant Nielsen. “We can handle it.”

  “What’s the address?” asked one of the men in blue.

  “184 Route 72,” said Gunderman. “Ruiz and Delavan.”

  “Aww, no!” groaned a second police officer. “You mean those bitches with the bears?”

  The sergeant shot him a frown, and the officer cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Let’s set it up,” said Nielsen.

  • • •

  The afternoon sun slanted through the living room windows. Ned and Luna slouched on one couch, Angelica and Trish on the other, all eyes on the television. The front door opened. “Where’ve you been?” asked Trish.

  “Around,” said Warren.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Luna.

  “Can’t find Gunderman,” said Warren. “He’s probably not far behind us, so we’ll head out after dark. No more rehabbers, he’s figured that one out. And he knows we’re heading north, so we should angle off. I got some buddies about three hours west, they’ll put you up while I get Glenn’s truck back to him. As for your fine husband, at the moment he’s in San Francisco.”

  “Ned’s going back to Florida,” said Luna. “Trish will take him to the airport tomorrow morning.”

  Warren nodded at Ned. “You had a good run, man. You were a big help.”

  “Yeah,” Ned replied, knowing it was the only sensible plan. He had tried to calculate the odds of making it to Canada with Luna and living happily ever, and come up with two hundred billion to one. You only get one life, Neddo, his father liked to say. Don’t screw it up.

  Warren sat on the couch beside Angelica. “When does the kitchen open around here?” he asked.

  “Whenever you feel like opening it,” she replied, then continued in an encouraging twang. “Get on in there, darlin’, and whip us up a casserole! I betcha you’d look mighty cute in an apron!”

  Trish’s phone rang. She rose, pulled it from her pocket, and disappeared into the kitchen. “What time…” Ned began.

  “Are you screwing with me, Charlie?” came Trish’s agitated voice. She appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, as a male voice emanated from her phone. “Where are they? When? Thanks.” She disconnected, her face ashen. “Gunderman.”

  “Where?” said Warren.

  Trish gestured out the window. “Out there. Right now. He’s here, and so are the police.”

  Chapter 17

  Adam descended the stairs of his Gulfstream, greeted Roland, and they climbed into a waiting limousine. The hills of Pennsylvania slipped by as Adam stared moodily out the window.

  The merger was sealed, the takeover completed. He had been distracted during a key meeting and nearly lost one, but he rallied and clinched them both. Even more satisfying than the deals themselves were the looks in the eyes of the men who asked about his bewitching young wife, as hungry for information as teenaged girls. All these captains of industry, Adam thought, with their safe, domesticated women, all living vicariously through me.

  “I don’t get this, Roland,” he said.

  Roland looked up. He had been reading his messages, the news, the sports columns, doing everything he could to distract himself from the fact that he was once again on his way to the same fucking animal place, on the same fucking mission: to find Adam’s runaway wife. The wife who had become the thorn in his side, Lyllis’s line in the sand. “What,” said Roland.

  “It doesn’t make sense. I treated her like gold. I treat women like shit and they don’t go anywhere.”

  “Then maybe you had it coming.”

  Adam frowned. “Before we were married I had people investigate her parents. You know, the ones in Pennsylvania who adopted her. The ones who were killed in the car crash. I didn’t go any further, but I have people digging up her foster care records now.”

  “Juvenile records are sealed,” said Roland.

  “Oh, please,” said Adam. “The cops have stepped up their game. I had the tech guys send Darcy the list of animal people from that phone you grabbed, and she’s offering them incentives. She said they’re pretty goddamned hostile. But all it takes is one.” He paused. “You almost had her. You’ll get her the next time.”

  Roland exhaled. According to the phone in his pocket, the guy in the Smokey the Bear hat had intercepted her in Indiana and taken her away in cuffs. How she escaped was a mystery, but it certainly wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with Adam. ”The last time I got her, she was kicking and screaming,” he said. “Why do you think she’s going to like it any better this time?”

  “What she’ll like better is to be alone with me without all this pressure. I just need to talk to her face to face. You know how good we are together!”

  “Honestly? I don’t. I’m telling you, she doesn’t belong in your world.”

  “Then I’ll adjust my world. You’ll see. Have y
ou ever seen Swan Lake?”

  Roland gave him a weary look. “No, Adam, I never seen Swan Lake. But I know a couple of dancers, and you know what they told me about Swan Lake?”

  “What?”

  “The crazy-ass prince and the magic swan bitch both die in the end.”

  The car coasted to a stop. The driver opened the door. “That’s because he was just a prince,” said Adam, and slid out.

  • • •

  Celia and Elias stood by the office window, watching the limousine roll down their dirt driveway. “I still don’t see why he had to come in person,” said Celia.

  “Because he wants to intimidate us,” said Elias. “So don’t let him.”

  “Where’s Wizzie?”

  “In her room. I told her if I even see her shadow, no animal care for a week.”

  After a knock on the screen door Adam appeared, Roland behind him. Adam extended his hand, and Elias shook it without returning his smile. Celia stood to the side, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Briefly she met Roland’s unblinking stare, then quickly looked away.

  “Beautiful land around here,” said Adam.

  “Yup,” said Elias.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” said Adam. “Luna’s in trouble. Whatever difficulties we may have had were temporary. All I want to do is help her, but I don’t know where she is.”

  “We don’t, either,” said Elias.

  “I want both of you to know something,” said Adam. “I love her very much. I laid the world at her feet.”

  Celia murmured something, her eyes on the floor. “Excuse me?” said Adam.

  Celia felt her stomach churn. “I said, she doesn’t want the world,” said Celia, forcing her voice into something above a whisper. “And she doesn’t want you, either.”

  Adam gazed at her. “You used to rent this land, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “We did,” said Elias, trying to draw Adam’s attention away from his daughter. “But thanks to your wife, now we own it. And nobody can take it away from us.”

 

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