by Cait London
Trying to get closer to his surly son at this stage was a long shot, but Joel was determined. He held few illusions about the trail that Cody appeared to be taking. Joel’s ex-wife, Cody’s mother, had walked away from her son to a new husband. Cody had settled in to fight the world with older, wiser boys.
Joel glanced down at his recently dirtied, torn clothing. He preferred to travel in his comfortable clothing, but the scuffle with the gang had added dirt and grease. As a toddler he had learned how to fight, and now, at thirty-seven, he felt as cold and hard as steel. Except with Cody.
He’d badly failed his son, and Cody was on his way to a path Joed had already traveled.
A temporary relocation in Amen Flats wasn’t the answer, but it was a start. He glanced at the flashy hubcaps in the tiny back seat. He’d interrupted the gang just as they’d begun stripping his car and had already cut open the top with a knife. No one ever took anything from Joel, until he was ready to give it. Along the way he’d made a few enemies but nothing serious, and now the gun on the seat beside him would provide protection if he needed it in his new home.
He wiped his hand across the dark stubble covering his jaw, resenting the lack of sleep and time. The rectangular rearview mirror reflected the image of a hardened, dangerous man. Meticulous, suit-clad attorney Joel Palladin had been left in another state.
Joel inhaled grimly and settled down in the leather seat. He was too tired to be driving, and yet he couldn’t rest.
He hadn’t slept m years, not deeply, fully: the ten-year-old girl’s fierce tear-filled expression had haunted him relentlessly. Because of his robbery of the convenience store, Lloyd Palladin had left five youths without parents, eight including his sons.
Amen Flats. The Tallchiefs. Fiona Tallchief, the girl; wild temper raging as fierce as the mountain winds, ordering him off her mountain.
The Fiona Tallchief of two years ago strolled back into his mind: that lean, taut feminine body—the woman, a rebel hurrying through life. She was incensed that Palladin, Inc. was bulldozing over a pond filled with tiny, helpless frogs and a unique ecosystem. Before he could rise from his desk, she’d hefted a bucket filled with sludge from the frog pond and dumped it over his head.
She’d haunted him, and Joel sensed his destiny lay in facing the rip in the Tallchiefs’ lives that his father had created. Was it wrong to bring his son into the past?
Why did Fiona Tallchief, the girl and the woman, haunt him? Why did she fascinate him enough that he kept clippings of her causes in several states? She’d been too quiet for months, nestling in the safety of the Tallchief family. Quiet wasn’t in Fiona’s vocabulary—her quotes in newspapers were like spears jabbed at slumlords, poorly run government programs and “spoiled desecraters of the environment,” a term she had used for Joel as she had dumped the sludge on his most expensive, custom-tailored, pin-striped suit with matching vest.
A man who had climbed out of the slums, Joel appreciated fine clothing. His Armani shirt and tie had been ruined, his custom-made shoes—
Joel narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the curving road. That same convenience store lay ahead.
“Elephants and eighteen-wheelers and lonely Rocky Mountain roads at one o’clock in the morning...how much more can a girl ask for?” Fiona spoke into the microphone attached to her sweatshirt and geared down the truck. “Coming into a curve, Eunice,” she said into the speaker which led to another in the trailer section of the rig. “Brace yourself.”
The companion loudspeaker on her dashboard made smushy, sniffy noises, which said that Eunice’s snout was investigating the speaker. Fiona smiled grimly at the reassuring noise. “There is no way that zoo is going to sell you to someone who isn’t prepared to take care of you. Trust me, baby. I’ve been in these battles before, and I’m no lightweight. I’ll keep you safe from harm while I raise a stink about Timba Simba Land’s animal neglect. The zoo wouldn’t dare complete the sale to TS Land. I do not care if you are undersized and the zoo wants to display a normal-sized elephant. I’ll strangle their donations to zero and have the reporters at their doorstep. Meanwhile, you’ll be safe.”
Just one last cause, then she would settle quietly to her florist shop, Hummingbirds. She jammed her trucker’s boot against the clutch and shifted easily. At five foot ten, she fit comfortably into the padded seat. She narrowed her eyes on the road in front of her, lit by the truck’s lights. “All I have to do is find a place to keep you. It’s a small matter. Amen Flats—we’re in Wyoming now, baby—is where I grew up. I’ve got family and friends who will all help me, but I’d prefer not to endanger them. We’ll be just fine. I’ll tuck you in some nice barn with plenty of food. We’ll eat peanuts and talk girl talk. I’ll do your toenails and give you a beauty bath.”
She patted the book on the seat beside her. Simple Everyday Elephant Care was a manual every flower shop and greenhouse owner should have, right along with flower bulb care. “Aye,” she said, continuing to talk because the sound settled Eunice. “I thought I was tough, and then just after the funeral, I found I wasn’t It was just twenty years ago and a cold October when we laid my parents on the mountain.”
Fiona shifted down again as the curve wound downward, and then shifted again to make another curve, leading upward through the pines. “Duncan was only eighteen, but ready to take responsibility for everything—us, the ranch, everything. He had a plan to ‘put the glue’ in our sticking together, he said. By that time, I knew that my parents weren’t coming home—Mom to make dinner and to weave and to read us stories from Una’s journals. Dad to work with the sheep and the cattle and to hold me on his lap. Within hours after they were killed, I knew that one wrong move from me could tear our family apart, and I was scared...oh, so scared. Out at Tallchief Lake in the storm with Duncan holding me on his hip and Calum and Birk and Elspeth close by, we each pledged to return a portion of Una’s dowry to the Tallchiefs. We raised our thumbs to the night sky—we’ve all got scars to prove that we’ve taken our vows to stay together. We shouted ‘Aye!’ to that hard, cold wind and pledged to do our best.”
Fiona shivered, scanning the aspens and pines along the road as she came closer to the small taillights ahead of her. “I said I’d be good, Eunice, and I was. I’d always been fascinated by the stories of Una’s sewing chest and by its legend. Tallchief thought that he’d have her easily, and when he first found that the conquest wasn’t that easy, he crafted her a horsehair bracelet and a ring, decorated in small, sky blue beads. She wouldn’t wear them unless he wore a matching set, and after a blazing argument, he wore those she had crafted for him. They were mistakenly left in the small sewing chest with sewing things and Celtic jewelry, and it was lost. The legend that accompanies the chest is lovely, but I was always too busy to really hunt for the chest. Being good takes full-time energy, you know.”
Eunice’s continued muffled, exploring sounds were pleasant and companionable in the night.
“We’re coming into a straight stretch soon, not too far from Amen Flats. Elspeth is married to Alek Petrovna and Calum to Alek’s sister, Talia. Birk and Lacy are fixing up that old bordello, and Duncan and Sybil are living in the old place. Duncan added onto it, of course. Emily, Sybil’s teenage daughter, and their daughter, Megan, and son, Daniel, live there, too. My older brothers were always protecting us, and Elspeth detested it. The Black Knights are keeping busy now, changing diapers. Elspeth has found what she’s needed in Alek and their baby. When things cool down, I’d like you to meet them, Eunice.”
Fiona gripped the huge wheel. Danny Marbles, an activist like herself, had given her a quick course in driving trucks and had loaned her a top-performing burgundy Mack with artistic scrollwork on the hood and sides. A row of cab lights ran across the top between twin highly polished, vertical exhaust pipes. The rig—a fancy steel grill on the cab and the semitrailer—had a luxurious sleeper cab just behind the front seat. Danny had said he wanted Eunice transported in style and had gifted Fiona with a sweatshirt tha
t read “Tallchiefs Pachyderm Express.”
Truckers’ logbooks weren’t a problem. Danny had laid a path straight from Missouri to Amen Flats that bypassed the checkpoints.
Fiona studied the small taillights that she had just come upon. “Eunice, there’s a small sports car ahead of me, and he’s not letting me get a run at the hills. I can’t pass him right now to pick up speed for the next hill, and he’s not making me happy. I’d blow the air horn at him, but Danny is right...we have to keep low-key on this right now, until you’re safe. All we need is some spoiled jerk turning us in to the law. Once Danny knows you’re safe, he’ll start revving up the press. Jerk! Not you, Eunice—him,” Fiona stated as the small car took its share of the road, not allowing her to pass and then kept its speed even, not allowing her to pick up speed on the downhill run.
She shifted repeatedly, gearing for the steep uphill grade. The truck crawled upward, burdened by Eunice’s weight. “Whoever taught that guy road etiquette needed a brain. Probably one of those spoiled sons of the wealthy,” she stated into the microphone pinned to her collar. She had stolen a Missouri elephant; she had driven across Kansas on back roads and reached Wyoming, all within twenty-four hours. She hadn’t slept and she wasn’t in the mood for expensive sports cars or ill-mannered drivers. She began to pass the car on a straight stretch, and it swerved to the center, preventing her move.
“Fine. Have it your way, buddy,” she said, and settled down to control her simmering mood. She couldn’t afford to be in a hurry and make mistakes, not with Eunice in her keeping.
She’d kept her temper and shoved her causes into a back drawer more than once when she was growing up. The weight of the Tallchiefs’ survival as a family sometimes seemed to balance on her shoulders; child welfare agencies were always close, watching. Fiona tried not to look at the small convenience store, neon lights blazing, at the side of the road. Her parents had stopped for pizza that night at the same place—
She inhaled, glancing at the store. A flash of metal caught her attention, and she slowed the truck. Through the windows, she saw the clerk’s hands raised and two men, faces hidden in ski masks, holding sawed-off shotguns.
Mom? Dad?
Fiona closed her eyes as pain and bitterness slashed through her. She knew what she had to do. “Sorry, Eunice. We’ve just come upon a bit of a small delay. That fancy little sports car is going to have to go on without us for a while,” she said as she quickly used the jake brake and slowed the truck.
Joel Palladin glanced in his rearview mirror. The eighteen-wheeler that had been too close to Joel’s expensive back bumper was slowing down. The big rig slowly turned around on the highway, headlamps cutting into the roadside pines. The driver must have needed gas or a rest stop.
Joel had been too busy as an attorney, protecting his grandmother’s powerful corporation in Denver, to see how badly Cody needed him. Joel curled his fingers around the Corvette’s steering wheel and frowned. He’d never been a part of his son’s life; Patrice had seen to that. His times with his son had been uncomfortable, despite Joel’s efforts to communicate. He should have sensed the boy’s need from Cody’s refusal to talk with him or to see him. He remembered how he’d been just like his son once: rebellious, ready to fight, and cocky. Cody had been too proud to tell his father that he’d been staying untended in his mother’s old apartment for months.
Joel knew about being a neglected child. His paternal grandmother, Mamie Palladin, was half his size and weight and twice as tough. After she’d taken on the raising of Joel and his brothers, Rafe and Nick, she had methodically dissected their teenage hard-case attitudes and put them back together with love.
Cody wasn’t the only reason Joel wanted to settle near Amen Flats, Wyoming. He had an old debt to settle and a firewoman to hunt. This time, hot-tempered dynamo Fiona Tallchief wouldn’t have the protection of Joel’s grandmother, and the battle would be one-on-one.
The fancy cab lights of the truck behind him turned, catching Joel’s attention as the rig was poised at an odd angle to the road.
“He’s ramming the store!” Joel muttered and expertly geared down. With the ease of a man who raced cars and knew them well, Joel didn’t stop: he braked and spun the steering wheel causing the car to do a one-eighty and face in the other direction. He shifted down for power and the motor surged to life. The tires squealed, as the high-powered car ate up the highway to the store.
The truck smashed through the front of the brightly lit store just as Joel’s car screeched to a stop. Glistening sheets of glass speared into the night and shards fell like rain down around the truck’s cab.
In a heartbeat, Joel recognized the scene in front of him. The two men, big ones, in ski masks, denim jackets and dirty jeans, held sawed-off shotguns at a male clerk, who looked terrified. The robbers had handguns tucked into their belts. At the side of the building, a fast Chevy waited, motor running. The trucker, no more than a boy wearing a ball cap and sweatshirt and jeans, had slid from the passenger side of the cab and crouched, circling the Mack’s hood.
“A little abrupt and expensive, but serving the purpose,” Joel muttered as he reached to the seat beside him. Without looking, he grabbed the automatic gun and slammed the clip he’d previously removed into the butt, loading it. He ducked as a bullet hissed by his head and a man’s rough curse carried over the Mack’s purring motor. Moving quickly, Joel circled the slender trucker, who dove to the floor at the sound of a second shot. The robbers weren’t going anywhere quickly. The Mack was taking up the whole front of the store and now, at the rear exit, Joel had a special dislike for convenience store holdups.
“Get down!” Joel yelled to the trucker, who glanced at him over his shoulder. A boy, Joel thought, sizing up the slender five-foot-ten build and the pale oval face beneath the ball cap. The youth was too young to die, but smart enough to get himself in real trouble. The robbers had discarded the empty shotguns and were wildly firing their handguns at Joel while he came closer.
In a heartbeat the trucker braced one hand on a low shelf and vaulted over it. He headed toward the men, carrying a broom like a spear.
“Crazy...!” Joel had to distract them, or the trucker was dead. Just as the men leveled their weapons at the trucker, Joel stood, attracting their attention again and fired over their heads, sending canned spinach tumbling down around them. He leaped behind tall, stacked displays of disposable diapers and big cans of fruit juice. The cardboard man advertising the diapers grinned at him. “Shut up,” Joel muttered and stepped out from the display.
While the thieves dodged the torrent of cans, and the trucker rammed them with the broom, Joel had his own problem. The tower of fruit juice cans came down on him and the world went black. Joel crumpled in a sea of fragrant disposable diapers.
He fought to the painful surface and recognized the warm, sticky feel of his blood running down his temple. A woman stood over him, long legs spread, her hands on her waist as she studied him.
Diamonds glittered on her shoulders, and whoever she was, Joel wanted her. While his head throbbed painfully, her blurred face looked down at him as if she were a goddess regarding and disdaining a mere mortal. There was strength in her face, a blurred oval image of black, winged brows and smoky eyes and a full mouth with an odd, tantalizing lift to one side. She was almost boyishly lean, and in that heartbeat, he knew that their lives were intertwined, that she was a part of him. He would treat her like a goddess, take care of her, protect her. She would be his, and the emptiness would end. He’d been hunting for this woman all his life, and now she couldn’t get away. He managed to grip her booted ankle. If she left him now, he might never find her. “Don’t leave me. I can’t stay here,” he managed and added mentally, without you.
She stood over him. And for Joel, time stretched from heartbeats to millenniums as she considered him. Finally she dusted the diamonds from her shoulders and tugged up her leather gloves. “He’s mine,” she said firmly in a voice that claimed him from the
darkness, a voice he would never forget.
He felt himself being lifted and the woman’s low sultry voice repeated in the distance. “Aye,” she said slowly, firmly, as though making a promise to herself. “He’s mine. I’m taking him.”
The woman’s husky voice continued to talk, a steady hum covered by the pain spearing inside Joel’s head. The bed swayed continuously beneath him, and he forced his hand to grab at whatever was brushing his face. Holding it at bay, he forced open his lids to see a lacy bra.
On the other side of the curtains, the woman continued talking, as Joel warily took in his surroundings, inhaling the fresh, delicate scent of a woman—like a mountain wind brushing the tops of bluebells and daisies. He was stretched out in the sleeper cab of a truck, an array of lacy, feminine underwear drying on a line over his head. He remembered being shoved and pushed and cursed at by the woman determined to save him. At one point, trying to fit him into the cab, she’d grabbed his belt and helped hoist him. While he’d felt like a sack of bruised potatoes, she’d been telling the two truckers who had lifted Joel into the cab how she didn’t like being called “Sweet Honey” and “Baby Doll.” In no uncertain terms she’d told them that she was no “babe” and not their “baby.”
“I know, Eunice.” Her crooning tone was sultry, musical, low and vaguely familiar. “But whatever he’s done, I couldn’t leave him to face the law. He did come back to help us. Before we left, I made certain that the clerk had everything under control. The thieves were bound on the floor, the call was in to the sheriffs department, and the clerk said he could handle the wait. But we have to hide this rig fast, and I don’t have a clue where.”