by Mia Sheridan
“Yes. Jak, do you know anything about your mother?”
“I . . .” He looked at Harper and her mouth was open. His mother was dead. No one could hurt her now. “She came here. I never met her before that.”
Agent Gallagher pressed his lips together, his eyebrows moving closer to each other. “When did she contact you and how?”
“She came to see me five . . . years ago. She told me she was trying to find a place for us to live. She brought me kids’ books. She promised to come back and bring me more books. She told me not to tell anyone about her.”
Agent Gallagher frowned again. “I see. And did she indicate why?”
“No. I thought . . .” He looked at Harper. “I thought it was something about the war. The war Driscoll told me was being fought.” He looked back at the agent. “I said something about it, the war, and she agreed, or . . .” He frowned, looking away, trying to remember what he’d said and what she’d said back. “She said, yes, the world is on fire.”
They were all quiet for a minute before Agent Gallagher asked, “Do you think your mother was working with Isaac Driscoll somehow?”
Working? Did she have a job with Driscoll? Is that what the agent meant? Jak thought about it. “I don’t know. She didn’t seem to like him. She said she’d followed him from town. But . . . there was another woman too . . .” He kept his gaze on the agent instead of looking at Harper, feeling heat rising in his face. He didn’t want to tell them about the redheaded woman, but he knew he had to. He told the agent and Harper about thinking the woman was hurt, about bringing her back to his cabin, and then about her offering her body to him. He didn’t look at Harper while he told the story, not wanting to know if she was angry, or worse, if she didn’t care that he’d touched someone else. He was not like the gray fox, he wanted to tell her. He only wanted to touch her.
And he knew now why the other woman had felt wrong. Smelled wrong. She hadn’t been meant for him. She wasn’t Harper.
“Did you get the feeling the redheaded woman was involved with Driscoll somehow? And if so, why would she tell you about the cameras?”
Jak shook his head. He had no idea. Most of him hoped the agent could put it together, find answers. But another part just wanted it all to go away. Driscoll was dead—his life was better without him—and he wanted to figure out where to go now.
“Okay, Jak, thank you. I appreciate all your honesty. I’m going to try to figure out what was going on. I’m going to do my damnedest, okay?”
Jak nodded, running a hand over his prickly jaw, the question he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to falling from his lips. “Who was she? My mother?” It still caused hurt to echo through him when he thought of those words—my mother. She’d never been a mother to him though. She’d never come back.
“She was a troubled young woman, Jak. She made a lot of very bad choices, but I think she was trying to make them right. I think she cared about you and carried a lot of regret.”
Jak didn’t know how to feel about that. He wasn’t sure he could miss someone he’d never known. He wasn’t even sure he could be angry at someone he’d never known.
When Jak looked up, Agent Gallagher was watching him, a worried frown on his face. But when he met Jak’s eyes, he gave him a small smile. “There are some other things I’ve found out about your past and where you might go from here.”
Jak felt a jolt of fear. “Do I have to leave the cabin I live in now?”
Agent Gallagher sighed. “I’m afraid so. I spoke to Isaac Driscoll’s sister, who’s his next of kin, and she was unwilling to let you remain on the land.” Why did he look mad? What did he care if Jak couldn’t live in his cabin anymore? It wasn’t really his anyway. Maybe he should have left it the second he found out Isaac Driscoll was watching him, had lied to him. But he hadn’t wanted to let the man know he’d found out what he was doing, had thought he could hide it, so he’d acted normal . . . tried to understand what to do. And then . . . Driscoll was dead.
And now, he couldn’t be sorry he’d had somewhere to be with Harper. If he hadn’t had this cabin, he wouldn’t have been able to protect her from the cold.
Take me inside.
At the memory of the words, Jak’s skin flushed.
But now . . . now the cabin wouldn’t be his anymore.
He’d go back to the forest. He’d survived it before. Survived it with less knowing than he had now. The only thing that made his heart speed up and his throat go dry was the woman sitting next to him, the woman who he wanted to call his own. The woman who he would never let visit him in a cave in the woods. When he thought of it he felt ashamed. He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“How long has she given Jak to vacate the land?” Harper asked, and he heard anger in her voice too. They both thought that woman should let him stay. But . . . now that he was really thinking about it, maybe he didn’t want to stay. Not in a place where he had been lied to, watched. He didn’t want to live in a cave in the woods, because it would mean leaving Harper, but . . . he didn’t want to live on Driscoll’s land either.
“A week,” Mark said.
Harper gasped as she brought her hands to her mouth. “A week? What kind of horrible witch is she?”
Mark Gallagher laughed, but it didn’t sound like a regular laugh. There was no happiness in it. “Class-A.”
“I guess so. Does she know what her brother did?”
“I didn’t get the notion that she cared. They weren’t close. She’s interested in her payout and that’s about it.”
Harper was quiet but he could see her teeth grinding. She was mad for him. It made a warm feeling in his chest. “Okay,” he finally said. What else could he say?
“I have some other news for you,” Agent Gallagher said. “And it’s good. Or, at least, I hope you’ll see it that way.” He paused, his brow wrinkling. “You have a grandfather, and he wants you to come live with him.”
“A grandfather?”
“Yes. Your father’s father. Unfortunately, your father passed away many years ago.”
Jak felt a tightening in his chest. But he hadn’t known that man. “My father’s father,” he repeated, trying to picture unknown people who were somehow part of him.
“Yes. He knows how you’ve been living, knows about Isaac Driscoll. He’d like to offer you a home with him for as long as you want to stay.”
Jak didn’t know if he should trust this. He kept trying to tell himself that there was no war, no enemy, and then, he had to tell himself that not everyone was lying to him. If he couldn’t, how would he ever make it through the world?
“Who is he?” Jak asked. “My . . . grandfather?”
“Turns out your family is very successful. They live outside Missoula and own the Fairbanks Lumber Company.”
“The Fairbanks Lumber Company?” Harper repeated, surprise in her voice. “That’s . . . that’s huge. Wait, Jak’s father was a . . . Fairbanks?” She looked at Jak. “So that means you are too?”
“A Fairbanks?” Jak asked. “Lumber Company?” He frowned, his head spinning. “I don’t want to live with strangers. I don’t know them.”
“You’ll get to know them. And . . . if you don’t enjoy their company, you can move out.” The agent paused. “Jak, I think this is a really good opportunity. I think . . . well, having family on your side—especially a family like the Fairbanks—is going to open a lot of doors for you.”
Enjoy their company.
And open doors? What doors?
Harper was chewing at her lip, a small wrinkle between her eyes. “You don’t think I should move in with them, Harper?”
Her eyes met his. “What? No. I mean . . . I think Agent Gallagher is right. I . . . I know what it’s like to move into a house with strangers, that’s all. But Jak, you’re an adult, and Agent Gallagher is right. If you don’t like it there, you can leave.”
He felt sad for her. When she was a little girl, Harper had to move i
nto a house of people she didn’t know. She had been scared. But she was a little girl. Like I was a little boy when I lost my baka. That reminded him of how scared he’d been. He wanted to go back in time and protect her. He wanted to rip the throat out of the man who had done bad things to her. If you don’t like it there, you can leave. Harper hadn’t been able to leave.
There were so many words he hadn’t understood from Agent Gallagher, and his heart felt like it was beating too fast. He needed air. To see the sky. He wanted to watch as the sun went behind the mountains and the stars came out, one by two, by ten, by a hundred, then a thousand, and an endless number he could never count to even if he learned them all. He wanted to empty his mind and figure out what might be waiting for him out in the world. A family, his heart whispered. Your own pack. No, people to call my own. Could he learn how to trust them? Could he learn how to be one of them? Would they want him to?
“Jak, listen, you take tonight to think about it. I’ve laid a lot at your feet, and you’ve given me some more leads I need to follow up on. However, I recommend that you take your grandfather up on his offer.” He glanced at Harper. “Were you planning on staying or—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I need to get back. I can give you a ride. I think the ice has melted enough that it’s safe to drive. She looked at Jak, her cheeks going pink. “How about I come back first thing in the morning and we can drive to Helena Springs? I can show you around. Maybe you’ll have made a decision and we can call Agent Gallagher.”
Jak nodded. He didn’t want her to go but he needed time alone. He needed to think. He needed to decide. About his life. A life he had never known was possible for him.
“There’s one more thing,” Harper said, and then she told him about the helicopters, about Jak seeing them the morning after he’d been dropped off on the cliff.
Agent Gallagher frowned, looking confused. “That can’t be a coincidence,” he murmured. “Two mysteries beginning on the same night? In the same wilderness?”
“Well,” Harper said, standing up and getting the map she’d marked up with Jak, “they occurred quite a ways from each other, but, yes.” She set the map in front of him and he looked at it for a few minutes. “Can I take this with me?”
Harper nodded. “Of course. I drew it up hoping it’d be helpful.”
“It is,” he said, “if for no other reason that it helps me picture where everything occurred. Thank you.”
Agent Gallagher looked between them for a minute, and then put his hands on the table in front of him, his eyes on Jak. “Is there anything else you need to tell me? Anything that might help with the investigation?”
Jak’s heart quickened. He looked away, shaking his head. There were things he couldn’t . . . wouldn’t tell. If he did, who would ever want him as part of their family? Part of society? They’d lock him up. They’d call him an animal. A beast. And maybe he was. Or at least, he could be. And that had to be his secret. That was all.
The agent nodded. “All right. All of this, it’s a lot,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Okay? Right then he was. “Yes. I’m okay.”
Agent Gallagher smiled. “Good. Think about all of this and then we’ll talk.” He looked between Jak and Harper again. “By the way, what are you two doing for Christmas?”
Harper glanced at Jak. “Christmas?” he whispered.
“Do you remember Christmas, Jak?” Harper asked softly.
He shook his head. “I don’t know Christmas.”
Something sad came into Harper’s gaze. Christmas must be very good. Lots of things must be very good that he’d never known about before. “It’s the holiday of Jesus’s birth.”
“Jesus?”
Both Harper and Agent Gallagher laughed, but their laughter was the nice kind, Harper’s eyes dancing. Jak smiled too. “Never mind that for now.” She looked at Agent Gallagher again. “I usually go to my friend Rylee’s house. But it’s her first Christmas with her new husband’s family . . . so I don’t have any plans.”
“Well then, it’s settled,” Agent Gallagher said, standing. “You’ll spend it with me and my wife. I insist.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The old woman peeked through the crack in the door, peering at Mark, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Hello, ma’am. Almina Kavazović?”
“Yes.”
“Agent Mark Gallagher. I’d like to ask you some questions if I may.”
“About what?” she demanded in a heavily accented voice, not widening the door an inch.
“A man who used to live in the apartment next door to you. Isaac Driscoll?”
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Almost. Mark caught it and knew his hunch had been right when he’d gotten the list of tenants at the apartment building Driscoll’s sister had mentioned, and found the name Kavazović on it.
“Driscoll? What about him?”
“Ma’am, this conversation would be a lot easier if you’d let me come in for a few minutes. I have—”
The chain lock disengaged with a soft clatter and the door opened before Mark could finish his sentence. The woman stood back to allow him entrance, an old lady in a flowered house dress, her hair tucked into a dark handkerchief wrapped around her head. “I knew this day would come,” she said, her voice suddenly holding none of the suspicion, only resignation. She turned and he shut her door, following her to the living room where she’d already sunk down into an easy chair that faced a flowered loveseat. The furniture was well worn, but the room was neat and tidy, lace doilies atop almost every flat surface. Mark sat and waited for her to speak.
“What did he do?” she asked.
“He’s dead, ma’am.”
She met his eyes then, though she didn’t appear shocked. “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, “it is for the better then.”
“Will you tell me about Dr. Driscoll? How you came to know him?”
She sighed, a weary sound that rattled in her throat. “He was my neighbor, like you say. I didn’t know him much, just that he work for government. I come from Bosnia in nineties during the war. My family try to come, but they . . .” She trailed off for a moment and Mark waited until she continued. “They cannot.”
Mark didn’t ask her to elaborate on that, and he could imagine the reasons her family had run into trouble attempting to immigrate. Red tape . . . holdups . . . inadequate finances . . . He wondered how she’d made it out, but that was somewhat immaterial.
“I go to Dr. Driscoll, ask him if he can help since he have government job. At first he say no. He cannot help. Then, he come back later and say yes. He can help me if I take a job for him, follow his rules, and tell no one.
“What job was that, ma’am?” he asked, his heart sinking, figuring he already knew what she was going to say.
“To take care of baby. To raise him until Dr. Driscoll is ready to train him.”
Train him? Mark had expected her to tell him about raising the baby, but not about . . . training. He remembered back to his own roaming questions about Driscoll’s interest in the Spartans. He furrowed his brow. “What kind of training?”
“He do not say. He just tell me I must not coddle the boy or I would be doing him disservice. He tell me to feed boy and care for him, but no more. Do not coddle,” she repeated. “That is very important he say. It is the good way.”
“And in exchange for that, he would help get your family here?”
She bobbed her head. “Yes, and get me visa so I can work. I sew the lace and sell to small shops. Now Internet too but not so much since hands don’t work so well.”
Mark glanced at her gnarled hands, clutched together in her lap, knuckles white.
“I . . . see. And did he pay you to care for the boy?”
“Expenses only.”
“And did he arrange for your family to come here?”
She shook her head, looking away from him. “He was not able to after all. I find out later they were killed in war.”
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t acknowledge him, her shoulders held rigid. “But I get my paperwork. I am U.S. citizen now.”
Mark waited a moment and then asked, “So you raised this boy until he was how old?”
“Seven, almost eight.”
“And then Driscoll took him to begin this training?”
“Yes,” she said, a catch in her voice, and where she had not shed tears when speaking of her family killed in her home country, her eyes glittered when she spoke of the boy.
“Do you know if Driscoll was working with someone else?”
She shook her head. “No. No one else. Just him.”
“Did you have any idea what this so-called training entailed?”
“No. I do not know. Dr. Driscoll come here at night when boy sleeping. I try to stop him. I . . . do not want to let him go. I will raise him, I say. But Driscoll push me. He say he will revoke my work visa. I will starve with no work. No family.” She hung her head. “He give the boy medicine so he will not make fuss and then he take him.” The look on her face was so bereft that despite what she’d done, Mark couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the old woman in front of him. No country. No family. Left to live with the terrible choices she’d made out of desperation. Left with not knowing what had become of the boy she’d obviously loved, though she’d been instructed not to.
“Do you know what happened to boy?” she asked, not meeting Mark’s eyes, her body tense and unmoving as though she was holding her breath as she waited for his answer.
“He’s alive. He had a very harsh upbringing as you have probably imagined. But he’s a survivor. He’s very strong.”
She nodded, a tear escaping her eye and coursing down her wrinkled cheek. “Yes. Strong. That’s why I call him Jak. Means strong in my language.” She paused for a moment, obviously gathering herself. “He very smart boy. Good boy.” The expression on her face was one of pride as she said it. “Driscoll move from here, he say he building nice house to raise Jak soon. He say no school, it interfere with training. But I teach the boy to read, and I teach him numbers in the English. I tell him not to talk like me but like the TV. He very smart and learn fast. I say the words are very important. I try to teach him what I can with books about tying knots and building things. What I think will help him. And I make him stay outside many hours every day so he climb trees and build forts, and grow even stronger. I try . . . I try to give him what I can.”
