Firewolf

by Jenna Kernan

  “Katrina, Mom had me kidnapped and she tried to have me killed.”

  Katrina gave Meadow a long, steady stare. With that frown, her older sister looked exactly like their mom. Meadow corrected herself. Lupe Wrangler was not her mother and that explained so very much, because no matter how good or bad she was, Meadow had never managed to earn more than Lupe Wrangler’s disdain.

  Her sister lifted one of Meadow’s eyelids. “Are you high?”

  Meadow pulled away. “No.” She captured her sister’s hand. “You have to take me to your apartment. I can’t see Mom.”

  “You have to face her sometime.”

  “But you spoke to her. Really?”

  “You are acting so odd.”

  “What time is it?” asked Meadow, glancing at the dashboard clock.

  “Three. Why?”

  “Saturday?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Katrina’s phone jangled a tune and she glanced down.

  “It’s Phillip.” She lay an elegant, manicured finger over the screen and then lifted the smartphone. “Hi, Phil. What’s up?” Katrina listened. “Yes. I have her. Reporters everywhere.” A pause. “I didn’t know about the press until I got there.” Another pause as her eyebrows lifted. “I’m putting you on speaker. You can ask her.” Katrina switched the call to speaker. “Go ahead.”

  Phillip’s voice emerged. “Meadow? Dad’s missing. Mom said he left with you in the Range Rover last night. Do you know where he is?”

  Meadow blurted out her story, choking on tears.

  “Wait. Wait,” Phillip said. “Start from the beginning. You left with Dad late last night, and you two drove into the neighborhood that had been evacuated. Then what happened?”

  “That’s not what happened. I was kidnapped from my room.”

  “I saw you leave with him, Meadow.”

  “I was taken by Joe Rhodes and Mark Perkinson.”

  “Who?”

  “Joe. Dad’s sound guy.”

  “I don’t know him, Meadow. What was the other name?”

  “Mark Perkinson. He’s Rosalie’s legal assistant.”

  “Her legal assistant is Jessica Navade. I know because I approve all hires. I’ll check with HR, but I don’t know anyone named Perkinson.”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve met them. You’ve met them.”

  “Katrina? Take me off speaker.”

  Her sister instantly complied.

  “Yes. Mmm-hmm. I agree. Okay. Will do.”

  Meadow’s mind spun as she tried to make sense of what was happening.

  “Where was Mom last night?” asked Meadow.

  “At your party.”

  “Today, I mean.”

  “Rosalie said they had breakfast and then Mom left to see Phillip about the gala.”

  “Phillip said she was with him?”

  There was no disguising the impatience as Katrina hissed out a yes. “Why?”

  “Someone is lying. She wasn’t there.”

  Katrina sat back in her seat and gave Meadow a look of displeasure.

  “So Phillip’s lying and Rosalie is lying? Everyone. Right?”

  Meadow stared at her sister. Either Katrina really didn’t know what was happening or she was a part of this. Suddenly Meadow felt as if she was back in that fire shelter struggling to breathe. What was happening?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Meadow inched closer to the door as her older sister huffed out a breath. Katrina sank back in the plush leather seat and folded her arms as she tapped out her impatience with her index finger on her sleeve. She stared at the ceiling as she spoke, her voice laden with reproach.

  “Of all the attention-getting stunts you have pulled, this takes the cake.” She rolled her head on the headrest to stare at Meadow. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Me? Katrina, have you seen Dad? He’s gone.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  Meadow faced the obvious truth. Either her mother had played Phillip and Katrina, or they were fully informed and this was some kind of mass cover-up. Well, they couldn’t hide two bodies or her father’s absence. But they could pin both on her. She sucked in a breath as she realized they might also pin the murders on Dylan.

  “I have to make a phone call,” said Meadow, reaching for Katrina’s phone.

  Her sister held it back. “Not yet.” Katrina lowered the privacy shield between the front and rear seating area and passed her phone to the bodyguard. Then she spoke to her driver.

  “Change of plans, Ralph. Could you take us to this address?”

  The driver glanced down and his eyebrows lifted.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Where? Where are you taking me?” said Meadow, her voice taking on a hysterical edge.

  “Take it easy, Meadow.”

  “I want out of this car. Right now!”

  Katrina rolled her eyes. “So dramatic.” Then she spoke to Ralph. “Hurry, would you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The car sped on and Katrina lifted the privacy shield. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  Meadow tried to explain again, from the beginning. Katrina rolled her eyes up and away and folded her arms.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a hospital.”

  Meadow sat back as dread slithered in her belly, cold and slippery as an eel. “What kind of hospital?”

  “FMHH.”

  She gasped. She’d spent time at Flagstaff Mental Health Hospital before, when she was just seventeen. Her mother had taken her for a drug test that had come back positive for opiates and she’d been admitted. She’d learned that going in was a lot easier than getting out, especially for a teen. She’d spent three months there.

  “You need my permission.”

  Katrina shrugged. “Phillip says you need help. I agree. We think you’re drinking again.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You had wine last night.”

  “So did you,” said Meadow.

  “I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “This is Mother’s idea, isn’t it?”

  Katrina didn’t deny it. “She’s worried about you. And Dad’s missing. Now you’re making up stories and people. You never made up people before.”

  “I’m not making this up. Katrina, you have to believe me.”

  Her sister just shook her head. “You’ll be all over the newspapers again. A media frenzy. Congratulations. You’ll be in the tabloids all week. Front page. Just look at yourself.” She swept a hand toward Meadow. “Who goes to a forest fire in a satin cocktail dress? Oh, my baby sister, that’s who.”

  They left the highway and Meadow considered her options. They couldn’t admit her if she refused treatment. She was an adult, after all. She didn’t think diving out of a moving car would improve her chances of looking sane. She would need to convince the doctors to contact the FBI and tribal police.

  “But what if Mother had gotten to them, too?” she muttered.

  “Gotten to whom? A hospital? Meadow, you sound crazy. You know that, right?”

  At the hospital admissions, she was muscled into an exam room by two goons. Once in an exam room, it was explained to her that they did not need her permission for an evaluation because three of her family members had requested one.

  She was told that she was being admitted because her family believed her likely to suffer mental or physical harm due to impaired judgment and that she had displayed symptoms of substance abuse.

  Meadow refused evaluation and was told that her inability to appreciate the need for such services only strengthened the argument for involuntary placement. Her best option was to cooperate.

  Then the intake physician show
ed her a petition for involuntary emergency admission signed by her mother, Phillip and Katrina. It was in that moment, as she held the page between her two trembling hands, that Meadow recognized that even if she explained the truth she would sound paranoid and, well, crazy.

  Once admitted—she had no doubt that the evaluation would recommend admission—she would be either locked away here or killed in some accidental fashion. A suicide, perhaps. Her family had done an excellent job in discrediting her. What police detective, FBI agent or jury would believe a woman twice institutionalized?

  It was in that moment of betrayal by her family that her mind turned from convincing others of her sanity to plans of escape.

  * * *

  THE SUNLIGHT FROM the window hurt Dylan’s eyes even through his closed lids. Gradually he realized the sounds around him were unfamiliar and there was something wrong with his neck. The dull ache at his elbow caused him to bend the joint, sending off an alarm beeping beside him.

  “You awake?”

  Someone straightened his arm and the beeping stopped.

  He knew the voice. That was Jack Bear Den.

  Dylan cracked open an eye and stared. He tried to speak and the movement caused his neck to throb.

  “What?” asked Jack. “Don’t talk yet. Just listen.”

  Jack sat in the chair beside his bed. Two more people sat behind him on a bench beneath the window. The railing between him and Jack confirmed his suspicion. He was lying in a hospital bed.

  “You were shot in the throat. Lost a lot of blood from that neck wound. The bullet grazed muscle mostly but nicked the artery. You’re lucky, Brother Bobcat. Very lucky.”

  Dylan tapped his wrist and then raised the wrist to his ear.

  “Time? It’s still Sunday. Seven p.m. You came in by ambulance yesterday morning and went right in to surgery. After that they kept you in the ICU overnight because of your blood pressure.”

  “What was wrong with my blood pressure?” he whispered.

  “You didn’t have one.”

  Dylan lifted a hand to touch the bandage at his neck. His voice had sounded strange. The pain told him that something was wrong with his throat.

  * * *

  THE TWO PEOPLE at the window rose and approached him. As soon as they moved past the flood of late-afternoon sunlight through the open blinds, he recognized his mother, Dotty, and his maternal grandfather, Frank Florez.

  His mother took his hand and began to cry. His grandfather rested a gnarled hand on Dylan’s thigh and forced a smile.

  “Welcome back, grandson,” he said in Tonto Apache.

  “Where’s...?” His voice rasped like sandpaper across stone.

  “They stitched up your neck. A gash. The rest is bumps and bruises.”

  Dylan pressed a hand to his throat, feeling the thick bandage, and then moved his fingers to rub over his Adam’s apple and winced.

  “They had to open your airway in the ER to get more oxygen into your blood. They stuck a tube down your throat. Oh, and you had some transfusions.”

  “Meadow?” he whispered.

  Jack bowed his head. “Can’t find her.”

  “What?” He tried to get up, and both his friend and grandfather pushed him back down. The fact that he was so easily subdued scared him almost as much as learning that Meadow was missing.

  “I’ve got Forrest looking. She was with you here. The ER nurse I spoke to said she tried to get to you. But she wasn’t family so...she was treated for minor injuries and released. The FBI questioned her. Dylan, where’s Theron Wrangler?”

  “Shot,” he said.

  Jack winced. “That’s what Forrest said, and that Meadow told one of their investigators, Field Agent Bicher, the same. They’ve been out searching for evidence to confirm her story, but the fire has made it impossible to reach some places. Meadow didn’t know where exactly you two were. Do you know?”

  “Pine View somewhere.” He winced at the pain words caused him but it didn’t stop him. “Her mother?”

  “Here. Here all the time, according to her statement. She’s got witnesses.”

  “No,” he whispered. “Lying. Her man. Shot me.”

  “Could Theron Wrangler have been the one who shot you?”

  “What? No.” Dylan held a hand to his throbbing neck and clamped the other around Jack’s wrist. “Find her.”

  “Working on it. Family asked for privacy.”

  “They have her? They’ll kill her,” rasped Dylan. “Call Forrest.”

  “I did. He’s investigating Meadow’s story. So far he hasn’t found a shred of evidence that any of this happened. He has no bodies and no crime scene.”

  Dylan pointed to the bullet wound. “He has this.”

  “I’ll call him again. Already left four messages.”

  Dylan threw back the white sheet and thin cotton blanket.

  “What are you doing?” asked Jack.

  “I’m going to find Meadow.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Dylan was going. Jack wasn’t stopping him. Dylan did not wait for the discharge papers, but he was delayed while his mother went to buy him some jeans and a shirt because they’d cut off his clothing in the ER. Luckily, his boots and turquoise necklace had both survived. Once she returned, he dressed and slipped the multistrand of turquoise over his head before he tugging on his boots.

  “Your neck is bleeding,” said Jack, raising a finger to point at the bandage.

  Dylan flashed an impatient glance from Jack to his mother, who stood at the foot of his bed with a newspaper clutched to her chest. Dylan paused. Her mother never bought the newspaper, preferring to get her news from Native Peoples Television and NPR. This particular one had the distinctive shape of the tabloid news.

  “Mom?” Dylan rasped.

  “She’s in the paper.” Dotty slowly lowered the paper so that he could see the headline and photo beneath—Meadow Burnin’ Down the Houz!

  Beneath was Meadow still in her tattered soot-smeared party dress, lifting a hand to shield her face from the flashes of the paparazzi’s camera.

  Dylan scanned the article. Meadow had been photographed leaving the FBI office in Flagstaff yesterday afternoon with two “handlers,” who looked like gorillas in suits.

  He read aloud. “No comment from family.” He lifted his head. “She’s disappeared. The reporters were waiting at her parents’ home. She never showed.” He flipped the page, read the continuing article. Then his hands dropped and the paper crumpled in his lap.

  “What?”

  “Unidentified source claims she checked into rehab.”

  Jack snatched the paper. “Where?”

  Dylan shook his head. “We have to get her.”

  “Hold on. Let me get my hat,” said Jack.

  Jack’s phone rang and he drew it from his front pocket. “It’s Forrest.”

  Jack answered the phone and kept his eyes on Dylan.

  “Yeah.”

  Dylan could hear Luke speaking, but the words were unclear.

  “Okay.” Jack disconnected. “We gotta get out of here. Now.”

  Dylan had been ready to leave, but now he hesitated. “Why?”

  “Forrest is on his way. They found two bodies up in Pine View. He has orders to bring you in for questioning.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Why did Forrest call us first?” asked Dylan as they reached the parking lot and Jack’s tribal police unit, a large white SUV with blue lettering on the sides.

  “I’d say to give us a head start,” said Jack, opening the passenger door.

  Dylan was about to object to being driven around, but it hurt to talk, and even climbing up into the seat made him sweat.

  “He told me that agents interview
ed Lupe Wrangler. She was seen retiring last night a little after eleven and her staff confirmed she ate breakfast at six at her home. She provided access to her cook and housekeeper and driver. All corroborated her version of events.”

  “Lying,” said Dylan, and he winced.

  “Well, then so is her family. She met with one of her daughters in the morning and the caterers for a gala that PAN is having in the fall. She’s got a solid alibi.”

  Dylan shook his head. It didn’t happen that way. He had seen her. But when? Early Saturday morning in the hours before she had breakfast? He didn’t know what time he’d woken on that patio beside Meadow. The smoke had been so thick it might have been morning or night.

  “How’d she get from the fire to Flagstaff?” asked Jack. “She never passed the roadblock.”

  “Helicopter? Meadow’s father picked us up outside the rez in one.” Dylan had to hold his throat against the pain and felt the blood soaking through the bandages.

  “Maybe. I’ll ask Forrest to do some checking. She can’t cover flight records.”

  “Want to bet?” asked Dylan. He climbed into the passenger side and buckled up, waiting with impatience for Jack to get them moving. Then he realized he didn’t know where to start.

  “Any ideas?” asked Jack.

  Dylan bowed his head to think. Who would know something and be willing to tell them?

  “She told me Katrina looked out for her when they were kids.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jack started typing on his computer. In a few minutes the database search provided Katrina’s vehicle registration, violations, and property.

  “Katrina likes to drive too fast,” said Jack.

  Dylan leaned in and found her residential address. “Let’s go.”

  The drive to Phoenix seemed endless. Finally they pulled up before the complex. Katrina’s posh apartment was located on the top floor. Jack’s badge got them access, but Katrina knew they were coming.

  She met them at her door and escorted them to her living room, glancing several times over her shoulder toward the kitchen.