“You don’t know?”
“Brian hasn’t told me anything.” I shift my eyes around to see if anyone new has come in.
“If he brought you, I can’t imagine why he’s kept it a secret from you.”
“It’s obvious to me you all are on some kind of save the sabre-toothed cat mission. Is this the group that calls themselves SABRES, the Sabre-toothed Restoration Society? I thought you all disappeared years ago.”
“Humph! We were told you were cynical; the reason, by the way, that you received such a cool reception. I don’t understand your attitude. You’ve personally witnessed them.”
“And I witnessed death as a result of them. They’re dangerous.”
“You think they should be eliminated, then.”
“Not necessarily. I just question everyone’s motives.” I especially question Victor Vandermill’s motives.
“What are your motives, Mister Price?” Jake Morgan has stepped up to my other side. “Why are you here if not to gain additional notoriety so that you can sell more books, and get more material for your columns?”
“Why I’m here is strictly personal,” I attempt to defend, “and has nothing to do with Smilodon. I was visiting Brian and he asked if I’d like to go for a ride. If it was totally up to me, I wouldn’t have come here. I have a feeling he knew that, thus the reason I wasn’t told.”
“Then why, exactly, are you here in Montana?”
“Actually, Mister Morgan, I had thoughts of asking you a similar question. You lost a prize stallion to what looks to me to be the sabre-toothed cat. Why are you part of this organization which, I’m sure, is trying to get Smilodon listed on the endangered species list?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. But I asked you first. Why did you leave Texas and your family again to venture up here into our wilderness?”
Again! My hackles rise. “Well, for me it isn’t so complicated. The only reason I’m here is to find my daughter, who ran away from home.” At this very second I want to get back to that, and call the FBI. I have no interest in the SABRES, and I can’t be here when Vandermill arrives. I’m sure I have the number to the FBI with me, or at least back in my motel room. If Vandermill sees me, I’m as good as dead. He’ll find a way to feed me to the cats, or make another hiking accident.
Jake Morgan senses my detachment from our conversation and walks away.
I turn to Patrick and nod at the painting. “Who does that belong to?”
“The portrait? That’s hers.”
Suddenly, I’m holding my breath. I let it out. “You mean, his, don’t you? Your host, Sam.”
“No.” He points up to the painting. “Our hostess, if you want to put it that way. Her. Samantha Sikorski.”
“Samantha?” Am I understanding him right?
“Yeah. She owns this place. Rich as sin. She says she posed with a tame mountain lion and then the artist painted in the rest. We all know better. It had to be only a year old but look at the length of those sabre teeth. What’s that like in real life, Zach?”
“Scary is what it is,” I mutter. Tanya said she saw one carry Aileen off. How could they have done that without killing her? If I hadn’t shot the photograph myself I would have to consider it a coincidence, someone who looks similar to Aileen Bravelli, because after eight years my memory of her may have become a bit distorted.
“Here she is now.” Patrick says. “You can ask her about the portrait yourself.”
I follow his gaze to the top of the stairs. Two women are on their way down, and one is no doubt, Aileen Bravelli of Sans Sanssabre, now alias Samantha Sikorski. She sees me and stops. Her mouth opens to say something, or maybe in surprise, but she is interrupted by one word from the other woman, the word that nearly stops my heart dead.
“Dad!”
Chapter 15
I do not recognize my daughter. I’m too used to seeing her in a swimsuit and cap with goggles poking out her head. She’s in blue jeans, jean shirt, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and has a pony tail running halfway down her back. On first glance, this western-looking person who said, “Dad,” looks more like a young woman dressed like a man, with my daughter’s voice.
Aileen looks at the side of Becky’s head, down at me, and then, without saying a word, turns back up the stairs and disappears. I’m aware that my mouth is hanging open and that my heart is slamming against my chest. Becky continues down the stairs, oblivious to the stares from everyone, and walks up to me.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
She sounds just like her mother, so much like her that I nearly stutter to come up with an answer. I haven’t done a thing, yet it feels like I’ve been caught doing something. I’m flummoxed. That’s the only word for it. To see my daughter walk in with the woman with whom I nearly destroyed my marriage, and who I was certain, beyond doubt, was killed and consumed by Smilodon, I can only say left me . . .
. . . flummoxed.
“I came to find you and bring you home.” Her aura is flexing with the timing of her jaw muscles. We are eye to eye and I suddenly realize she is as tall as I am. I had her by at least two inches just a few days ago.
“No.” Her voice is quiet but firm.
No? I am her father and what I say goes. “We have to talk.” I take her hand and start to pull her toward a set of sliding glass doors overlooking a National Geographic mountain scene.
She jerks away. “You don’t have to drag me around like a child. You can ask me nicely.”
Count to ten, Zach. Her eyes are locked on me, waiting for my response. Be firm or concede. What would a good father do?
I haven’t the faintest idea, but I have a feeling that trying to force my way would be as productive as it would be with Tanya. This is a teenage Tanya standing in front of me, but with twenty-first century influences, influences which have been out of my control for years.
“Would you mind stepping outside with me so that we may have a private conversation?” I keep my voice as cool and calm as I can.
She pretends to consider my request, a technique I fully understand as her way of staying in control. “Certainly.”
I fumble with the latch and then slide the door open. She steps out. I follow and pull the door closed. Three things come to me immediately. One is the freshness of the warm mountain air. It, in itself, relieves some of my anxiety. The second is that it is the boots that make her taller. The third thing I realize—something I’ve known all along—is that I have no intention of hauling her back to Texas right away. I just don’t want Becky to think she’s winning.
“So,” I say, “how was the trip?”
“The trip was fine, Dad. I stupidly ran out of gas in Wyoming, but other than that, it was long.”
“What . . .”
She interrupts my question. “We didn’t come out here to discuss my trip. You’re not going to talk me into going back home, and you already know it.”
I look out at the mountains. Is she guessing or is she reading my mind?
“How did you find me?” she asks.
“I have my ways.” I’m not about to tell her that I simply got lucky. I need her to think that despite his astronomical age of forty-two, her father still has some brain cells. “What do you hope to accomplish while you’re here?”
“I want to see Smilodon with my own eyes.”
“Why?”
“The same reason NASA is getting ready to go to Mars; because it’s there and they want to touch it and explore it. This is exciting, Dad.” Her face drops the ‘I’m angry at you’ look and lights up. “Eight years ago this cat was brought back from 11,000 years ago. That’s like bringing Mars here and putting it in orbit along with the moon. We have live animals where only bones and fossils used to be.”
“They’re dangerous.”
“When I came here I only wanted to see one, prove to myself that they’re real. Now I know this is what I want to study. This is what I want to do.”
“When you first came h
ere! You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours. You can’t have already found your occupation. You’re just . . .” I bite my tongue, but it’s too late.
“Just what, Dad? Just a kid? Christi’s just a kid.”
“I was going to say just seventeen.”
“I’m not just anything. I’m a young adult.”
“Not according to the law.”
“There are countries who consider their children adults when they go through puberty, or get their first kill on a hunt.”
“Those are tribes, not countries,” I argue back at her. “First world countries have figured out that adulthood doesn’t start when you’re thirteen, or seventeen. Adulthood comes with mental maturity.”
“Who says? A bunch of law makers?”
“They don’t want you to make the same mistakes they made at your age.”
“Why?” She spits the word at me. “The mistakes were good enough for them. Why can’t I make my own?”
“Because some mistakes can kill you!” I spit back.
“It’s my life!”
How does one rationalize with a female teenager? I take a deep breath and return to a conversational tone. “Should we have let you run in front of a car when you were five because it was your life and we shouldn’t interfere?”
She softens her tone as well. “No. Of course not.”
“Then at what age do we stop?”
“Now, because I’m consciously taking on the responsibility for myself.”
“It seems to me you said something similar to that, or more like, ‘I can do it myself,’ when you were five.”
She glares at me. “Now I can do it myself. I’m here now, and I’m staying!” She puts an extra emphasis on the last word and then turns her shoulder to me, her arms crossed over her too woman-like breasts. I cross mine as well and we stand, turned slightly away from each other as though we were lovers having a spat, looking out over the trees and white-peaked mountain tops.
“You said this is what you want to do. What exactly is this?”
“I want to be a paleontologist.”
“Like Aileen?” I say. Her head turns toward me and I can see the word, ‘who!’ already forming in her mind. “Sam . . . Samantha. A paleontologist like Samantha?”
She looks dubious at my switch of names, or, hopefully, only surprised that I know the word paleontologist. “What gives you the idea that Sam’s a paleontologist?”
“Ah . . .” For whatever reason, Aileen changed her identity. She would have had to give up her professional titles and affiliations. “I guess I assumed for some reason.” I have the feeling she is trying to read my thoughts. “You have to go to school to be a paleontologist,” I say as I try to redirect my mind.”
“I know that, Dad. I see this as sort of an early work study; maybe a summer internship.”
“But paleontology is the study of prehistoric life. These guys are very much alive.”
“They’re still prehistoric, created directly from a preserved specimen. This is nearly as good as going back thousands of years.” She’s getting excited again, animating with her hands and then her arms, pointing out into the trees. “It could be an entirely new area of study. Paleon . . . something tology. We could learn so much from looking at how what we find in fossils today compares with the actual live animals. This could advance the study of all prehistoric life; maybe change the way we look at them. Instead of looking only in the past, we can look in both directions. Sam may not be a paleontologist, but she knows a lot and has some great ideas.”
“She does, huh.”
She crosses her arms again. “How do you know Sam?”
“I don’t.” I again attempt to focus my thoughts somewhere else. “The old sheriff who I knew eight years ago brought me here and told me about her.”
“How did he know I was here?”
I say nothing. I’m too busy trying to direct my mind anywhere but on Aileen. That’s sort of like trying not to think of a pink elephant. Then I fill my mind with the image of a pink elephant, and Christi riding on it. Then Tanya is riding on it and I start to smile until suddenly Tanya is sitting on Aileen and she’s slapping her across the face with ice and snow-covered gloved hands, screaming for her to shut up. I shake myself and snap back to the image of Becky staring at me.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
She can’t read thoughts. Only subconscious images, which I cannot control so easily, unless her ability is different than mine. “Yes. I’m fine. I just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Nothing.”
“Hey, you guys.” Brian is poking his head out the door. “I’m glad to see you found each other.” He steps out and extends his hand to Becky. “I’m Brian Shwartzberg, an old friend of your dad’s.”
Becky shakes his hand. “How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t. I brought your dad here to meet Sam, and maybe hoodwink him into attending our meeting as an honored guest.”
She still appears dubious, but I have a feeling Brian’s straight up with her.
“We’re getting ready to start. Would you two care to join us?”
We follow him in. Everyone is focused toward Aileen, who is standing in front of the hearth. The painting of her with the sabre-toothed kitten hangs over her head.
“Everyone is here, Sam,” Brian says.
Aileen appears to be reading something. She looks good in a long jean skirt and man’s denim shirt with a dark blue turtle neck dickey riding high on her neck. Her hair is braided, and strung with beads and leather strands. She’s stunningly beautiful.
She is pretending to read. Her eyes are downcast as she gathers her thoughts and pulls herself together. She is trying to figure out how to deal with me. Images are flowing from her like fast changing vignettes being projected onto a wall. I see many sabre-toothed cats attacking, flashing in and out of a blizzard. Then suddenly there is an image that makes me want to throw my hands over Becky’s eyes, and I pray she is not reading the same thing. It is a moment that is indelibly burned into my own memory. I had opened the door to the bathroom, unknowingly stepping in on Aileen who had just stepped out of the shower. I was not aware that we shared the bathroom. It was at the very second with the two of us in the clothes given to us by our maker, that Tanya walked in. The image I am getting is from Aileen’s point of view—me in my glory, and the look on Tanya’s face.
I glance at Becky. Fortunately her attention is taken by Crystal Broadbow.
Aileen raises her head and looks around the room. “We have a surprise, and I’m the last to know. The famous Zechariah Price is with us.” She looks at me briefly. “Welcome, Mister Price.” I nod my head. She looks at Becky. “I would also like you all to meet his daughter, Reba. I had thought at first that Mister Price was here to join us, but apparently that is not the case. I am told he has come to take Reba back to Texas.”
I sense Becky’s head shaking.
“Apparently Mister Price stumbled onto us so I have to ask him one question.” She brings her eyes back to mine. Another image I’d rather no one ever see, the interlude between us that nearly destroyed my marriage, starts to flow from her. She must see the shock on my face because the image immediately clicks off. She says, “Are you for us or against us?”
Chapter 16
For or against! For the first couple of years, until the two groups, SABRES and SABERS— SABertooth REstoration Society and the SABertooth ERadication Society—faded below visibility, I turned down all offers of membership. For or against was never the issue. It’d be sad to see the sabre-toothed cats go extinct again before the world has recognized their new presence; however, I’ve seen the death these particular long-toothed animals can bestow upon man. They have less fear of us then do any of the other huge predators, and probably find our meat rather tasty. They are smart, and cunning. After eight years they have yet to be caught, shot or photographed, and the few sightings have been brief and unconvincing to anyone other than the person who
had the sighting. They still remain in the realm of Big Foot.
And now my daughter wants to study them. To study them she has to pursue them, find and watch them. The conditions are not the same as they were back in 2000 when I observed them through one-way glass in a controlled environment. All of Montana’s Northwest Territory is now their environment, and what’s to keep them from expanding? They hunt in pairs, or groups, not alone like mountain lions, and not with the pack mentality of wolves. Their hunts are orchestrated. Once they identify their prey, escape is highly doubtful; death is quick.
I look at my little girl, standing next to me, waiting for my answer. For or against! It is only with her boots that we are equal in stature. I have more experience with both the sabre-toothed cat, and life. I am her elder. She should listen to me.
I look at Aileen. “I’ll be outside.” I turn from the eyes, step outside and pull the sliding door closed behind me.
It is while I stand in the warm sun and admire the Montana landscape that I feel the first twist in my gut and the tightness in my chest. Prior to the events of 2000, I averaged a couple of times a year being able to forecast an approaching disaster. During my short stay at Sans Sanssabre I had four. Three of them were deaths. The fourth was Aileen. My forecasting ability does not always mean death, although it has been the norm. After that time my forecasts seemed to drop off, occurring only twice in the following five years, none in the last three. I no longer fear it everywhere I go.
Now here I am on the periphery of sabre-tooth country and it has returned.
Indigestion maybe? That’s always my first thought; my second being a heart attack.
I’ve never had indigestion or a heart attack.
I look back through the glass. Because of the bright outdoors, I can only see dark shapes. Which dark shape is the victim? Certainly not Becky, because none of my feelings have ever involved my children. Does that mean I cannot forecast anything about them, or that nothing bad has ever happened to them, accept for Christi’s broken arm? I’ve never been able to forecast something as simple as that. My feelings have always involved death, or near death.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 47