To Love a Highland Dragon

by Ann Gimpel

  “Good morning, Gaby,” she hinted. “How was the ferry ride? Looks like a beautiful day. How are you doing?”

  He glared.

  “When you’re done with breakfast and ready to behave like a normal person, we can talk.” She positioned the sugar, optimistically labeled creamer packets, and a giant pile of napkins on the seat between them, unrolled the window on her side, and proceeded to work her way through bagel and coffee.

  She was, she admitted, tired herself. After getting home so late, she’d looked over her sister and brother’s homework, listened to Carey’s chatter about their day, evaded Connor’s questions about her assignment, and sent the twins off to bed. Then she spent the next two hours thoroughly cleaning their little house. Not until she could verify everything was in its precise place did she finally climb into bed herself, only to stare at the ceiling for hours. She told herself it was her harmonia gift for making sense of hidden patterns that kept her awake. It was struggling to decode the story starting to emerge from Luic’s financial records, her fingers itching for the numbers waiting in the untapped banker’s boxes, that denied sleep. It couldn’t have been the memory of one blue eye and an arrogantly-lifted eyebrow.

  Closing her eyes as she finished her coffee, she leaned against the cushioned seats of Luic’s limo and waited. When she finally looked back, he still scowled, but coffee and bagel had disappeared. “Do you need help peeling your orange?”

  “Good morning, Gaby,” he ground out as his long musician’s fingers stripped peel from the orange. “I’ve never been a normal person. Now can we talk about my money?”

  “Here’s what I know so far.” With a cautious glance at the front seat, Gaby closed the partition behind the driver. Her voice was low and serious. “Somebody took the time to set up your finances professionally. It looks like there are charities you support, plus the usual tax and other accounts. All about what you’d expect. But the part I haven’t been able to track yet is the way stuff moves around. And you’ve got weird investments—do you know how many of your oil wells don’t produce oil? Investment money goes lots of directions, and some of them pay off. But a lot of them just suck in cash. Why do you keep buying the wells?”

  “I’d say it’s what you’re going to find out for me. Harry and I have had the same management team in place since our first gold record, but all of a sudden things are just not adding up. I want you on a plane to New York tomorrow morning.”

  “No, thank you,” she said politely.

  “You work for me, and I need you to go.”

  “Do you think the drinking could be causing these memory lapses? I already told you: I don’t work for you and I have responsibilities.”

  “I checked on those ‘responsibilities.’” Luic leaned back and his blue eyes gleamed at her. “I think your brother and sister will need the kind of money I’m offering you. I’ll give you two percent of whatever you get back for me. And I’ll pay you another twenty thousand if you can tell me who’s got their fingers all over my money.”

  She froze. Gaby didn’t talk about Carey and Connor or her goal of providing them with a normal life. Ever. What gives this total stranger the right to “check” on us? Her eyes narrowed with what she hoped was anger but felt a lot like fear. What if he’s with Haven? What if they decided that killing Gifts like Mom and Dad wasn’t enough, and they’ve come for me? Or the twins? “Why me? For your kind of money, you can hire teams of accountants.”

  “I could say it’s because, even though Harry recommended you, I had you investigated. You are raising your brother and sister on almost no money. Your parents are dead, and you don’t seem to have any other relatives. And you’re just as smart and talented an accountant as you think you are.”

  “But?”

  “But actually it’s because you don’t like me. You’re not going to try to get on my good side, because neither of us thinks I have one. I’ll have my agent set up your reservations.”

  Afraid, Gaby? Hell, yeah. But his investigations and anything else he found out about the Parkers would have to wait at the end of her nightmare line because there were damn big terrors duking it out for first place. Suppose Haven gets to the twins while I’m away? Should I take Connor and Carey and go to Null City? We would be safe there from Haven’s war on Gifts. We could live there as normal humans, but we’d have to give up our own gifts. Absently she reached out and straightened the decanters, placing the largest in the middle with the two shorter ones on either side. Still, his twenty thousand buys a lot of normal right here in Seattle. And he knows it.

  “Make it five percent of recovery and I’ll do it.” When he nodded, scowling, she pulled out a notebook and flipped through several pages. “I have other things I need to find out from you. And before you tell me to ask someone else, the first thing on my list is who has access to your accounts. I won’t be talking to any of them until I know more about what’s going on.”

  Luic glanced at the pages of her neatly-labeled list. “Did I mention I don’t like you, either?”

  The next morning Gaby was waiting in front of Luic’s hotel for the cab to the airport when she heard her name. She turned and watched Harry Daniels approach. Objectively, she thought, Luic’s best friend and fellow band member might be even better looking. But the severely trimmed beard and long, gold-flecked hair tied back at his neck reminded her of austere saints sculpted by medieval masters.

  “Gabrielle Parker,” he said.

  “Harry Daniels.” She eyed him. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have to talk.” He glanced at her suitcase. “Maybe I can give you a ride to the airport?”

  She laughed. “We never even went out, and the first thing you say to me is ‘We have to talk’? What’s next? ‘We can stay friends?’ Or ‘I’ll never forget the good times?’”

  Harry blinked. “Luic warned me about you, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “I’m not as good with people as I am with numbers.”

  He grinned and waved her toward the convertible idling by the curb. “Now I’m starting to think this could actually work.”

  What did Harry want to work? She looked pointedly at the open convertible. “You know this is Seattle. You’re just inviting trouble.”

  “Rock star.” He shrugged. “Image.”

  “Seattle.” She looked up at the usual overcast. “Rain.”

  He shrugged again and put the top up.

  “So, Harry,” she said as the little car purred along the freeway toward the airport. “How well do you know Luic?”

  “I had a feeling you didn’t accept my ride because you admired my profile.” He sighed. “And I’ve known Luic a lot longer than you can imagine.”

  “Do you know why he’s such a…” she paused. Maybe his best friend wouldn’t appreciate her referring to Luic as crabby or suspicious or carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of the Space Needle. Angry, narcissistic asshole was probably out too.

  “Arrogant son of a bitch?” Harry was grinning.

  Then again, maybe not.

  “I’ve known Luic since we were kids.” Harry looked straight ahead as he guided the car around a slow-moving line of trucks. “His mother’s relatives showed up every now and then full of promises about how she would come back and take care of him soon and how good everything would be. After his first hit song, they were lining up with their hands out. To Luic they were all liars, and soon he was ready to take most things people said to us as lies. So now he doesn’t trust anyone, and he doesn’t give second chances.”

  Harry pulled up in front of the terminal. “Don’t ever lie to him, Gaby.”

  Two weeks later, jet-lagged but glad to be back in Seattle, Gaby stepped into the first phone booth she saw at the airport. When she heard the voice of her neighbor and adopted grandmother, she relaxed for the first time since leaving Seattle. “Hi, Mrs. Allen, it’s Gaby. My plane just landed. Before I talk to Carey and Connor, I wanted to thank you again for staying with them.”

&n
bsp; “Gaby!” cried two voices over Mrs. Allen’s reply. Gaby heard Mrs. Allen laugh as she handed over the phone. She knew from experience Carey would have a death grip on the receiver, but it would be pressed between their two dark heads.

  “Hey you guys. I’m finally done with New York. How are things going?”

  Carey did all the talking for both of them, a jumbled account of school and friends and how she beat up another boy she thought was picking on Connor. Gaby wondered if she would regret the Tai Kwon Do classes they had all been taking in hopes of boosting Connor’s confidence.

  “Carey, we’ve talked about this,” Gaby interrupted. “You know what happens when you fight for Connor.”

  “Hot fudge sundaes,” Carey said happily. “And I get to pick the toppings.”

  “Connor?” Gaby prodded.

  “I was fine. Miss Ready-Fire-Aim went off the deep end as usual.” He moved in for the kill.

  “So I think I should get to pick the toppings.” Carey’s wail of protest sounded through the phone.

  “Well, this is still a long-distance call, so I’d better say good-bye. See you both soon, and no, you don’t get to watch TV until I get there.” Gaby heard Connor’s good-bye and hung up amid the flood of assurances from Carey.

  Sitting in the taxi from the airport to the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal, Gaby watched the raindrops chasing each other down the window. People said that the future of the area was going to be over on the East Side where fancy neighborhoods were springing up to handle Boeing’s growth. But her family had always preferred the close-knit island community on Bainbridge. Passing through downtown Seattle, she saw tourists with their umbrellas staring at Seattle natives striding along in oblivious disregard of the drizzle. And what does that make me? Will Seattle ever feel like home?

  She’d asked her mother the same question ten years ago as rain streaked the breath-fogged windows of their little yellow VW. As she drove, Mama had glanced back over her shoulder as Gaby kept the two-year-old twins quiet in the backseat so Daddy could rest. “Now that we’re finally all together, we’re going to have a normal life,” Mama replied firmly. “And if Carey ever goes to sleep, we’re going to love it here.”

  And Mama laughed.

  Her mother smiled at them and loved them, twelve-year-old Gaby realized, but she couldn’t remember hearing her laugh since Daddy had left for the war against Haven two years before. If a normal life means mamas laugh and families are together, she had decided, then we’re going to have the most normal life there ever was. I’ll go to a regular school, and nobody will know we’re from Null City. They won’t know about gifts manifesting, or about fathers getting hurt in a war nobody’s ever heard of, or that Parkers are anything but normal.

  But ten years later as Gaby got out of her taxi and stood in the rain at the ferry, she worried, as always, about the twins. All too soon Connor and Carey would have to decide whether to accept their heritage as harmonia, able to perceive hidden patterns, or return to Null City with its own imposed version of normal life—at the cost of whatever unique gifts and abilities they might be developing.

  Gaby’s thoughts turned from worry about the twins to worry about what Luic was going to say when she told him she suspected Harry Daniels—his best friend from childhood—was systematically bleeding off his assets.

  “No. He’s not.” Luic’s usually pure tones sounded gritty and strained. His mouth, which she thought might have—almost—smiled when he first saw her, now pressed into a grim line. “Not Harry.” To get away from possible ears at his hotel, they were strolling through Pike Place Market. “I’ve known Harry most of my life. If he wanted anything, he would just ask for it. And I’d give it to him. Something else is going on, and you’re supposed to be the one figuring it out.”

  Glacial fury iced his blue eyes as he stalked ahead of Gaby. Even in the market crowds, she had no trouble following his tall figure until he finally stopped at a stall selling handmade kaleidoscopes. He waited until she caught up to him before changing the subject. “Our new album is going to be called Kaleidoscope.” He picked one up. “We’re looking for cover images.” While he discussed the kaleidoscope’s design and construction with the artist, Gaby pretended to examine the instruments, only to replace each one into precise parallel lines containing groups of three or five instruments. When Luic looked back at her, Gaby ran her hands over the smooth polished wood of an exquisitely crafted little instrument trimmed in brass. She raised her eyebrows but murmured her thanks when Luic paid for it and handed it to her.

  “How did you meet Harry?” she asked as they walked on. “Look, I’m not prying into your life or anything, but everything I’ve uncovered in New York this past month points to someone close to you. As far as I can tell, that’s an exclusive club, and Harry is the only member. So explain why it’s impossible for it to be Harry.”

  “Have you seen the bio the record label puts out?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Poor boy from Louisiana gets his first guitar at twelve and writes his first hit song at sixteen. He forms a band with his best friend and starts cranking out the hits…”

  “They left out a few things.” Luic stepped over to the window to stare out at the waterfront.

  “Like the part where we met when we were twelve because we ended up in the same group house. Neither one of us had one person on Earth who gave a damn if we lived or died. Miss Rachel, who ran the place, gave us the guitars on loan and told us we better hang onto them and each other because the world wasn’t going to give us anything. For the past fifteen years, Harry and I have hung on. He bailed me out of jail a few times, and a few other times we ended up there together. He tells me when a song stinks, and when I tell him to go to hell, he says only if I’m going there too.” She heard the words he didn’t say. The one person he trusted completely was Harry. She wondered how he would survive if that trust was broken.

  “Right, then. Not Harry.” She looked down at the little kaleidoscope she was turning over in her hands. “But somebody really clever has gone to a lot of trouble to hide almost all traces of what’s going on. I’m damn good, and I barely figured out this much. Whoever is doing this not only buried it deep, but even deeper, planted clues pointing to Harry.”

  Her lips were pressed against the words she couldn’t say. Luic, I’m not good with people. I don’t say the things a good accountant would say. But my family are harmonia, and for me that gift means the numbers dance into patterns telling me things no accountant could know. And Luic, the dance leads to Harry.

  She looked at him. “I know you don’t want to know the accounting, but we’ll need coffee. We’re going to go over this point by point, and you’re going to have to help me see if I made a mistake. And since I do not make mistakes, you might be the only one who can figure out what’s going on.”

  Checkmate by Chaytor Chandler

  Releasing September, 2013

  Chapter One

  South of Petersburg, Virginia

  Broad daylight was not ideal for an ambush but there was no other choice.

  At least there was little traffic on this lonely stretch of country road. Partially hidden behind overgrown bushes flanking the dirt road she was parked on, Chris stood on the running board of the rusty 1970 GMC pickup and peered through the top of the bushes.

  Dressed in a dark shirt and blue jeans, she watched as the car with two U.S. marshals and her target approached. When they got close enough, she took a deep breath, jumped behind the steering wheel and pulled out in front of them. The driver swerved left to avoid a collision, but Chris didn’t stop, forcing him to hit the driver’s side door of the pickup.

  Chris slammed the gears into park, slid over to the passenger side, and leaped from the truck, an Ithaca 37 shotgun in her hand. She ran around the back of the truck, pointed the shotgun at the vehicle and looked at the sedan’s occupants. U.S. Marshal Jack Striker was at the wheel and his deputy, John Spelling, the passenger. Both were looking at her s and starting to
make a move to react. Chris’s target was in the backseat, separated from the front by a heavy wire barrier. She pointed the gun at the sedan, yanked the slide back and pushed it forward again with the all-too-familiar chung-chick sound of the shell being loaded into the barrel and yelled, “Marshals, keep your hands where I can see them and get out of the car!”

  The front doors opened and she backed up to retain a safe distance from them as they exited the vehicle. Marshal Striker was tall and broad-shouldered with un-marshal-like shaggy light blond hair that brushed his collar. Chris knew he was in his mid-thirties but hadn’t realized how handsome he was, even with sunglasses on. He stood on the other side of the vehicle, hands on the roof staring at her with pursed lips and a slightly red face. He was not happy.

  Deputy Spelling was standing on her side of the vehicle with his hands in the air. He was a young guy, somewhere in his twenties. His hands were steady and his full-on stance told Chris he was confident, but probably a newbie. He was trying too hard to be defiant.

  Keeping her shotgun trained on the marshals, she instructed, “Drop your guns where you are and move away from the vehicle. Marshal Striker, come around to this side.” When the marshal complied, she continued, pointing to her left. “Now, back up and stand on this side of the road.”

  When she felt they were a safe distance away, she approached the open car door, reached in and released the back door locks. “Get out of the car, Ricky,” she instructed the last occupant.