By the time I got to her house in the hills, I was more hyper and anxious than I thought I’d be. One tricky thing: Kit had sworn me to secrecy about the girl. Although I felt he was right to keep Max a secret for now, it was going to be a challenge to see Gillian, and not talk, not tell her about the extraordinary girl. Not telling almost seemed like lying.
Actually, I wanted to see if I could get some information from her. Gillian is “good people,” very down-to-earth, but she has a medical degree from UCLA and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford.
She’s an encyclopedia, not just on science topics, but also economics, astronomy, the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Rockies, you name it, Gillian knows it.
She’s also a terrific mom, and that’s probably what I like best about her.
I could see her now. She was safe and sound. I could also see her little boy, Michael, splashing in the pool as I climbed out of my car. I felt better already.
Breathe. In with the good, out with the bad, I told myself, but it was easier said than done.
“Did you bring a bathing suit?” Gillian asked. She was wearing a blue-and-black-striped Speedo, and she was in terrific shape for fifty-one. She runs five miles a day, and has for the past thirty years. When she was in her forties, she ran in the New York City Marathon.
“As a matter of fact, I did bring a suit,” I said, and stripped off my blouse and shorts to prove it. I had on a red-and-white-striped one-piece that I liked well enough.
Gillian whistled and clapped her hands. She’s a terrific cheerleader. “Look at you! Frannie, you look great.”
I rolled my head around loosely on my shoulders, and did my best Jimmy Stewart—heck, b’gum, b’gosh. “Been hiking and stuff, ya know. Busy at the critter hospital. Guess I lost a few pounds somewhere.” B’golly.
“Listen to you. Something else is different,” Gillian said and laughed. She has a big, toothy smile that I find quite wonderful. “Did you color your hair, Dr. O’Neill? If you did it looks great. There’s definitely something going on.”
There certainly is, Gil. I’m just sorryIcan’t tell you what it is.
A blond boy of four emerged from the pool, looking all slick and silly. He ran to his mom, interrupting our talk, but doing it so innocently it was charming and sweet. Michael was only two when his father had died of a coronary in his office at Boulder Community. He was growing up beautifully, anyway.
“What, Doodlebug?” she said. “Say hello to Aunt Frannie.”
“Hi, Aunt Frannie!” Michael beamed. I bent down and he kissed me. He is a beautiful little doodlebug.
“I’m playing seal,” Michael announced. “My seal name is Black Nose. This,” he said, pointing to an inflatable raft, “is Iceland. Cool, huh?”
“Iceland is very cool,” I said and grinned.
We watched as Michael dived from the low board and slipped perfectly into the water without a splash. “He’s so cute,” I told her.
Gillian looked at me again. She stared into my eyes and something clicked. I could see her mind working. “You’re in love,” she said, accusingly. “Yes you are. I’m sure of it.”
“Nope. No way. Get out of here,” I said and made a face.
“You are too. Now you tell me this instan—what, Michael? Okay, I’ll time you. Don’t you go anywhere,” she said to me. “I’m on to your game.”
Gillian marched to the deep end of the pool. She really was in excellent shape. She held a watch out in front of her. “On your mark, get set, go for it.”
Black Nose the Seal did another dive. He swam nearly half the length of the pool underwater, right under Iceland. He finally surfaced.
I was feeling a little giddy. God, did I have news. I wanted to shout out to my friend—Want to hear about another great kid? An amazing little girl! I’ll tell you aboutagirl who’s sweet and funny—and who can skim the treetops without breathing hard.
“So, Frannie, tell all. You’d better tell me what’s going on with you,” Gillian said, as she returned to the deck chair beside me. “ ’Cause I’m going to find out. You know I will. Talk to me. Confess.”
“Well,” I said, “in that case, I’ll spare myself. I might be a little in love.”
I told her all about Kit, at least what I could tell. I left out the part about our finding Max, of course. And I also didn’t mention that he was with the FBI.
Chapter 67
KIT WAS WORRIED, even more uptight than he’d been, but he was definitely feeling sick to his stomach.
He had what he jokingly called “FBI stomach,” a recognizable queasiness, a tenderness and weakness that belied the hardness of his gut. He’d been hanging out with little Max all day, playing it as cool as he possibly could. He had hoped she’d drop some information about where she had come from. She hadn’t so far.
He had checked in with Peter Stricker’s office and they hadn’t come up with a whole hell of a lot about Dr. Frank McDonough—other than that he had once worked with James Kim in California, which Kit knew already. Actually, he had called in just about every favor he could in Washington and Quantico, but nothing he found out was too helpful.
This wasn’t good. He was in an extremely tough place now. He ought to tell Stricker about Max, but something inside told him not to do it yet. Call it his sixth sense. Call it certifiable insanity. Or a death wish for his career.
Whatever the name, it was an emotional component that the Bureau wasn’t as high on as he was. He understood that a lot of people wouldn’t have agreed with his thinking, but they hadn’t observed how the Bureau had treated this case. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen the disparaging look on Peter Stricker’s face, or the cynicism in his voice.
After Frannie returned from her friend Gillian’s house they ate another pasta dinner with Max. Frannie definitely seemed more relaxed. They took a moonlit walk in the woods later that night. Max knew the names for most of the trees they passed, the flowers, shrubs. She seemed to like to talk once she got started.
“Impressive,” Frannie told her. “You know more about these woods than I do.”
“I read a lot,” Max said and shrugged. “And I retain information.”
“Did you go to classes at your school?” Kit asked as they circled back toward the cabin. The moon was a large white plate looming over the dark treetops.
“What do you think?” Max answered with a question, then she scooted on ahead of them—walking, not flying.
“I’ve got an idea,” Kit offered when they got close to the cabin. “Let’s all go for a car ride, see the sights a little. What do you say, Max?”
“I love that idea!” Max said and seemed terrifically excited. Her green eyes beamed. She jumped into the air—and stayed up. “I’ve never been in a car before! Never in my whole life!”
Chapter 68
THE JEEP held the three of us in front. Since it was already past midnight, Kit figured we would be safe enough. On the way out of Bear Bluff there wasn’t another car on the road. So far, so good. Max was positively radiant as she peered out through the windows.
A little more than an hour later, we entered the city of Denver, which at that time of night was pretty much shut down. I knew the glittering skyline very well. The Daniels and Fisher Tower, modeled after the Venetian campanile, pierced the darkened sky. So did the state capitol, a Federal Revival—style building with a gold-leafed dome. The beautiful Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was framed up ahead. And clearly visible, even at night, was the looming and magnificent Front Range of the Rockies.
I think Kit was trying to get on Max’s good side, and maybe it was working out. We were taking a small risk coming here late at night, we knew, but not too much of one.
I watched Max out of the corner of my eye. She kept shaking her head in utter amazement and awe. “Look at the buildings, the lights, the everything. I never knew there were so many tall buildings in the whole wide world.”
Kit and I pointed out the McNichols Sports Arena, Larimer Square, Mile
High Stadium. Max made Kit stop the Jeep so she could look at a red-brick school building covered with expressive, very colorful murals. A school. A nice, peaceful one.
She’d never been in a city, but she knew a lot about them. She’d learned about them reading books at her school. She was having the adventure of a lifetime. She was taking in a lot of new information, and retaining it.
I pointed out a unique building nicknamed “the Cash Register,” a big silvery rectangle with a rounded top. Suddenly, Max clapped her hands over her ears. Her hearing was acute. The noise was certainly a lot louder than the Jeep’s engine. It was coming over our heads, but it was already moving away.
“It’s a helicopter,” Kit said in a soft, calming voice. “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Max. See the large letters painted on the sides?”
Max nodded. “9 News—KUSA,” she read.
“KUSA is a TV station here in town. There are a couple of people in the helicopter sending television pictures back to the station. They’re good guys. They bring the rest of us news about the world, about the Denver area, anyway. Probably there was an accident tonight. Something happened for them to be out this late.”
“The helicopter looks like a big, really weird bird,” Max said. “No wonder the good guys want to fly in it. I would. I’d like to race it, too. Hey, good guys—want to race? You’d lose!”
Kit finally pulled the Jeep over to the curb so that Max could get a better look as the helicopter banked west and spun away from us. He seemed to like showing her things. I wondered if he was remembering better times with his own children. There was a gentleness, a softness in his eyes, that was touching to see.
“Sometimes they’re called ‘whirlybirds,’ ” he said.
“Whirlybirds,” Max repeated. “I knew that from the School. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Beattie. I loved her. I think they put her to sleep,” she whispered sadly.
Without asking, she threw open the front door.
“Max,” I shouted. “Max! Max!”
Too late, though. She had wriggled free. She ran a few yards down a dark city sidewalk, then took off. I could hear her wings flapping. Kit and I jumped out of the Jeep and watched her ascend higher and higher. I was afraid for a lot of reasons. Denver can have pretty wicked winds, even in the summer. Plus, somebody might see her.
“Max!” I called out again. Damn, damn, damn. She was already too far away.
Kit cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted with me. She must have heard us; her hearing was acute. She acted like she didn’t hear a thing.
We watched her fly almost straight up the side of a tall, sleek, thirty- or forty-story building. It was pretty amazing, I must admit. I wondered if she could see her own reflection in the dark glass, and what it felt like to fly around up there.
The news helicopter was out of view by the time Max began to circle the skyscraper. She was peering into offices. She soared toward another office building whose windows were lit to spell out the words “GO ROCKIES!”
She could probably see the entire city of Denver laid out beneath her. Cherry Creek forked off from the Platte River. The Elitch Gardens amusement park was off in the distance.
I hoped that no one saw her, and if they did, that they couldn’t believe their eyes. That’s what happened to me the first time.
She did a couple of acrobatic loops. Then Max flew back down toward Kit and me. She dived, pulled out of it beautifully, and landed right next to the Jeep.
“This is so great!” she said, and she was smiling, laughing out loud. “Thank you, thank you both. I’ve dreamed about doing that since I was a little girl.”
We climbed back in the Jeep.
Max wrapped her soft, feathery arms around me and she hugged me all the way home.
Chapter 69
IN HER WARM, snuggly bed at the cabin, Max was replaying the glorious night in Denver. She was having good thoughts for a change, especially about Frannie and Kit. They were so nice to her. They were like the mother and father she’d never had.
Suddenly, Max stiffened. She tilted her head to one side. They were coming. She heard them, felt them in every part of her body.
All of her senses told her it was so. They were sneaking up on the cabin right now. She wasn’t paranoid, wasn’t making this up. She wanted to scream a warning for Frannie and Kit, but she held it inside.
Don’t let the attackers know that you know.
She angled herself out of the bed and went to the closest window. She peeked outside. It was a moonlit night. She heard the crackling of the underbrush. One of the men appeared, came sneaking out of the woods.
She knew who he was—one of the meanest guards. The Security people from the School were here. They had found her. And they were here for Frannie and Kit, too.
Suddenly, Max was eighty pounds of flapping wings, fueled with fear and fury. She flew out of the small bedroom! She flew inside the house.
She whipped back toward the rear bedrooms. Frannie and Kit were asleep in two of the rooms. Their senses weren’t nearly as sharp as hers. But then again, neither were the Security creeps’ senses.
Forbidden! Forbidden! She wasn’t supposed to fly! But who givesadamn what the guards say! They don’t run things out here in the real world. She ran her own life now.
Pip came out of nowhere, starting up a high-pitched barking frenzy. Pip knew, too. He sensed the danger, the men close by in the woods. What a good dog!
The barking woke Kit. He blew out of the back room with his gun in hand. He saw Max flying down the hall, coming straight at him. “Jesus, Max!”
“They’re coming, Kit! They’re real close. Lots of them. They’re here for us!”
“Who’s coming, Max?”
“Not now! Please. Let’s go. Let’s go. They’ll kill us. They’ll kill all of us!”
Frannie had come out of the other bedroom. She was in the hallway with a look of pure astonishment on her face.
“Please! Trust me!” Max pleaded with both of them, and it was at that moment she realized how much they already meant to her.
“Get dressed, Frannie,” Kit nodded his head. “Back door. The Jeep. I’ll drive. Don’t look back. Just run like hell.” He was shouting as he put on his clothes.
Kit grabbed Max’s hand. They were running full blast. Frannie went ahead of them and threw open the back door. Man, woman, child, and dog spilled out of the house into the pitch blackness of the night. None of them looked back.
The Jeep started like a lucky charm. As it screeched out of the rear parking area, shots slammed into metal. Glass exploded. The rear window had been shot out. The Jeep bounced high over the deeply rutted dirt road. Kit drove through the gunfire as if he’d done it before.
They fled.
Frannie and Kit had trusted her, Max kept thinking, and that changed everything.
Chapter 70
THERE IS NOTHING more exhilarating than to be shot at without result. I don’t remember who said that first, but whoever it was, they were definitely right.
The insane tornado of the night’s events had whipped us into persons we hardly knew, or even recognized. Coming off near death at my house, we looked like hell and felt worse. The idea of someone trying to kill us was so monstrous that it was difficult for me to make it concrete and real in my mind. What had just happened couldn’t have happened—and yet it did. Someone had shot at Kit’s Jeep, at us. Someone had tried to kill Max, Kit, and myself. I’d never had a terrifying thought like that before.
We were huddled in a cruddy, awful Motel Six somewhere off Interstate 70. I think we were in the town of Idaho Springs, which has its fair share of crummy motels. The door was locked and chained, but how safe were we? Not very. Cheap, lime-green curtains covered the plate-glass window. The room lights were out, but I could see Max and Kit by the flickering light of the television set.
Max was eerily detached from what had happened, or so it seemed. She was up to her chin in bedcovers and Kit had pulled a chair right up to the
bed.
I knew that he liked Max a lot, but they were locked in a struggle now. Kit believed we’d die if Max didn’t talk to us about where she came from, and Max thought she’d die if she did.
His voice was cold. I had never heard him speak in that tone before. I guess he was being an FBI agent now. Professional, intense, very focused on what he felt had to be done.
“I really need some answers, Max. I’m telling you, you have to start trusting somebody soon. I mean, like right now. I’m talking to you, Max.”
“I know who you’re talking to. I just don’t like your tone,” she answered back.
Max’s fragile composure broke suddenly. She leaped off the bed, ran to the bathroom, and locked herself in.
“Leave me alone! You sound just like them. Trust me.” She mimicked Kit. “Why should I trust anybody? I’m not like you, Kit! Haven’t you noticed?”
“Please, she’s just a little girl, Kit,” I said, my own voice pinched thin by stress, fear, and the unhinged craziness of the past hour.
He shook his head—once. “No. She’s not just a little girl. Unfortunately, she’s more than that. People are apparently dying because of her. We almost died back there, Frannie. We have to find the School where she was being kept, at least I do.”
That made me angry. “Don’t be like that, Kit. I have to find the so-called School, too. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m involved up to my eyeballs.”
Every time I looked at Max I wanted to hug her, but Kit was right. She was no more just a little girl than this was just a road trip. The truth is, we had no idea exactly what Max was, or what her being here meant. Only Max knew, and she wasn’t talking.
Kit turned and tripped over a tin trash-can full of junk-food wrappers from McDonald’s. He picked up the can and fired it hard against the wall. He kicked it a few times for good measure.
Reflexively, I threw my arm over my eyes as the noise reverberated. My dad used to lose his temper sometimes, back at our farm in Wisconsin. He’d throw things around, but never anything valuable; and he never hit anyone in our family, not even a spanking. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t really afraid of Kit’s mild, almost humorous tantrum.
When the Wind Blows Page 16
