Perfect Assassin

by Wendy Rosnau

  “Pierce has agreed to step in, but if you come up with any ideas, I would appreciate it if you’d contact him or me. You still have a file on this one, right?”

  “It’s in my computer.”

  “And you’ve got both of our numbers?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Good. Well, that’s it, then.”

  “That’s it.”

  There was a moment of silence as if Merrick wanted to say more, then the line went dead. When Jacy shoved the phone back in his pocket, Tate had finished his eighth beer and was starting on number nine.

  Jacy asked, “Is the old woman really missing, or was the call just a ploy to get me here so I can take you home again after you pass out?”

  Tate set down his bottle after chugging half. “It’s true. Koko’s gone.”

  “How can she be gone? Grandmother was up at my place raising hell all afternoon. She didn’t mention she was going anywhere.”

  “When she got back from your place she made supper, then went and sat down in her rockin’ chair. I never thought much about where she sat until she started to make those noises. You know the ones I’m talkin’ about. She was seein’ somethin’ again.”

  Jacy swore, knowing where this was leading. “You’re telling me she had another vision?”

  “And this one put a burr under her real quick.”

  When Tate reached for his beer, Jacy knocked his hand away. “So where did she take off to?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t think she really knew. Those pictures she sees never make too much sense in the beginnin’. You know that.”

  “So where is Koko now?”

  “She said a bird was callin’ to her in the mountains.”

  “Which mountain?”

  “She never said. I don’t think she knew.”

  “But you let her go anyway?”

  “She took off before I had a chance to pull on my boots. When I got outside she was gone.”

  “No tracks to follow?”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “You’re an Indian. Tracks are supposed to be your specialty.” Jacy’s sarcasm was offered without a smile.

  Tate leaned forward. “Not all of us are as gifted as you, little brother.”

  “Apparently not.”

  Tate swore. “I have a gift.”

  “High tolerance. And I’m not talking in reference to pain.”

  “I can straddle a Harley twin-V drunk on my ass going a hundred and keep it on the road.”

  “A useful talent when you got the police taking chase.”

  “You’re damn right. A huckleberry picker, I’m not. Or a trapline savage. You’ve turned into a rude sonofabitch, Moon. You never used to be such an asshole.”

  “I’ve always been an asshole.” Jacy shoved the beer bottle in Tate’s direction. “Here, have a little more. You’re obviously not drunk enough.”

  “Insultin’ bastard.”

  “I call a turd a turd.”

  “You name-callin’ me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re just still pissed off about that limp you got as a souvenir for services rendered. You should have done the time like me, and told that agency to go to hell. You’d have been out in a year.”

  Jacy ignored the jibe and went back to the reason Tate had called him. “You should have stopped Koko before she left the cabin.”

  “Stop the old woman? Like I could have done that. When she has her mind set, no one stops Koko. She would have cut me where I stood if I had gotten between her and the front door.”

  Tate was six foot and weighed two-eighty. Koko was all of ninety pounds, and that was with her pockets loaded down with rocks.

  “And you know me and the woods don’t like each other much.”

  Jacy rubbed his clean-shaven face, more than a little frustrated with his brother. But it was true. Tate could get turned around in his own backyard. Put him on his Harley cruising a freeway, though, and his brother could tell you which direction he was going by the smell of the wind he was bucking.

  Still, he should have stopped the old woman. Koko was seventy-six and had no business taking off in the middle of the night to answer a damn vision on a mountain.

  “She packed her rucksack. Took some food.”

  “Anything else?”

  Tate scratched his chin. “Her medicine bag and a couple of blankets. That knife you gave her was on her hip.”

  “Dammit, Tate, we’ve been getting snow in the high country for a long week. What the hell were you thinking, letting her go?”

  His brother pointed to a two-inch cut on his muscular arm. “Koko did that three months ago, remember? Took after me with that knife when I told her I wasn’t goin’ to haul her to Brownin’on the back of my Harley. I ended up bleedin’ like a stuck pig all the way to town with her ridin’ behind. That was the day she had that vision of Delsin Yellow Wolf. And it was the real deal, you know. He’d damn near cut his arm off in that meat saw. Koko saved him, like she did Pekono and Lucky years back. And Maggie and Earl’s brother, Pinky.”

  Jacy glanced at the flesh wound on Tate’s arm. “What I remember over that deal is you getting gut-sick over a damn scratch.”

  “I never got gut-sick.”

  “If you bled, you got gut sick. You never could stand the color red in liquid form unless alcohol was in the mix.”

  “You’re an asshole, Moon, bringin’ up a man’s weakness in public.”

  “And you’re an asshole for letting Koko take off in the dead of night.”

  The brothers stared a hole through each other for a long minute. Then Jacy stood. “Which way did she go?”

  “Like I said, I couldn’t tell.”

  “Did you even look for tracks?”

  Tate stood, tipping his chair over. He hoisted his jeans over his beer belly, then tossed his head, sending his long Native-American hair rippling over his shoulders and down his back. “Insultin’ me a second time is a mistake, little brother.”

  “You plan on taking me on drunk?”

  “Like you said, I ain’t that drunk yet.”

  “Meaning you’re really going to get gut-sick when I pop you in the nose and blood starts flowing?”

  “That’s it, you got a fight comin’ your way.”

  “Earl just got this place put back together from the last time we went head to head,” Jacy reminded. “You got a problem with me, we’ll settle it outside.”

  The all-night crowd headed outside the minute they saw the brothers on their feet. Tomorrow’s news would keep the Sun Dance busy, and if you had seen the scrap firsthand chances are you would get offered a free drink or cup of coffee to tell your side of the story.

  Tate knocked his shoulder into Jacy as he staggered past him, then out onto the front porch.

  Jacy limped after him, his thoughts on his grandmother instead of the fight. He recalled that the morning news had reported fresh snow on Sinopah Mountain. He was trying to recall how much when he stepped out into the predawn crisp air and straight into Tate’s fist.

  Prisca liked to fly. The idea of traveling to places unknown had been exciting at first. But today she didn’t like flying at all. The aircraft was too small, and the pilot almost as young as she was—that meant his experience was in question. He had also insisted that they leave the airport after dark.

  The idea of flying into the unknown—the Montana mountains in the black of night—had made her nervous before she boarded the toy airplane. Still, she had few choices open to her, and so she’d climbed aboard wishing she had fortified her courage with a stiff drink. Too bad she wasn’t a drinker.

  She should be thankful that this particular independent pilot wasn’t asking questions.

  She had flown into Missoula after two unsuccessful weeks of hunting for Bjorn Odell. It was as if the Onyxx agent had disappeared off the face of the earth. Upset, but not giving up, she had decided to bypass number twelve on the list and concentrate on number twenty-one—the controller who had
aided Bjorn Odell’s mission from afar.

  From what she knew of controllers, after having watched Otto in action, she understood that without one at the helm of a mission nothing was possible. Odell might be the person directly responsible for her mother’s death, but Jacy Madox had put Odell on target.

  She hoped the information in his profile was accurate and that he was still living in northern Montana somewhere near East Glacier. That is, unless he’d moved, as it appeared Odell had done.

  The pilot, Marty, seemed to know the area she’d inquired about. She had taken that as a good sign. His plane, though small, looked seasoned, and he’d taken off with the experience of a pro.

  But what was that noise she kept hearing?

  Otto had been calling her cell phone since she’d left their flat in Vienna in the middle of the night. Of course she hadn’t answered him—not even the dozens of text messages he’d left. He sounded more than a little upset, and that’s why she hadn’t told him her plan, and she didn’t intend to speak to him until she’d done what she’d come to do. Not until her personal business was finished.

  He wouldn’t be able to follow. She had taken precautions—changed her name twice—careful not to leave a paper trail of any kind.

  She nodded as the pilot pointed to the black shadowy peak ahead. She had told Marty that she was a wildlife photographer on an assignment. He seemed eager to buy into her story, had gladly accepted the cash she’d offered. She’d even brought a camera along. After all, a photographer without her equipment would look suspicious, and the equipment had made it easier to conceal her father’s gun.

  The aircraft gained altitude as it passed over a mountain range. Marty called it the Flathead Range. She had noticed a constant change in temperature since leaving Missoula. She shivered in her seat and instinctively pulled the black stocking cap further over her ears.

  The airplane caught an air current, and she felt it in her stomach. More noise. A constant rattling now.

  She snuggled into the seat, determined not to worry. Nothing was going to go wrong. It couldn’t. She had a date with death, and she was the executioner.

  Chapter 3

  Koko followed the mountain trail from memory. It was narrow and overgrown, a steady climb upward. It was pitch-black out and cold enough to see her breath. The scent of snow was in the air, but she paid no attention to the time of day or the weather conditions.

  The vision was strong and she felt the urgency of it. That’s why she hadn’t questioned it, not even with the knowledge that she was racing toward something that hadn’t happened yet. That was the case sometimes, and she knew there was a reason for it. Soon she would know what it was.

  Her visions often came in bits and pieces, and she had to trust the process—believe. There was always a purpose to everything—what had passed and what was yet to be.

  The higher she climbed the colder the air became. She stopped and buttoned up her faded blue coat, then pulled her pink wool scarf out of her pocket and covered her head. She tied the ragged ends under her wrinkly chin, then dug deeper in her pocket for a pair of finger-worn gloves.

  She kept her aging eyes alert as she moved along the trail, concentrating on the vision and the heat that surrounded it. When she reached the southern slope of the mountain, she was halfway there. Breathing heavily, she kept the same dogged pace as she skirted rocks and the gangly lodgepole pines that were common to the Rockies. In some spots the animal trail went straight up, but Koko didn’t turn back.

  After two more hours, she reached a snow-covered ridge and looked across the ravine. That’s when she saw it—the vision come to life. It was so clear this time that it knocked her to her knees.

  She staggered back up, realizing it wasn’t the vision that had put her to the ground. The picture was no longer inside her head. It had finally materialized into a living thing. She was witnessing some kind of catastrophe.

  The explosion shook the ground and rose into the heavens in an orange and red fireball.

  Jacy was standing at the bar nursing his swollen jaw and cursing Tate when he got the third call of the night. It was around one-thirty, and this one was from the Bureau of Land Management chief in charge of search and rescue in and around Glacier Park.

  He was out of breath and talking fast into the phone, two things that set Jacy immediately on edge. Billy Mason Crow Feather wasn’t easily upset.

  “A small plane went down, Moon. Contact was lost around eleven-thirty.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “Marty Stollen. He reported engine trouble around eleven-twenty, and then nothing. His location is vague on account of you know Marty and his equipment. That plane should have been junked two years ago.”

  “Passengers.”

  “No confirmation on that.”

  Jacy knew the plane in question and the owner. Marty’s single-engine Cessna had been grounded for repairs dozens of times. A hunting guide, Marty lived on a shoe-string budget and baler twine.

  “We think he went down on Sinopah, but he could have gone past and lost it near Rising Wolf. Can you lend a hand, Moon? Hell, you know both areas better than my men. If that’s where he’s at, he’s damn near sitting in your backyard.”

  “I’m at the Sun Dance,” Jacy said. “If I leave now I can meet you back at Two Medicine in an hour. Has anyone gone out yet?”

  “No, and they won’t if you agree to pinpoint the site before I call in a crew. I’ve got a bunch of trainees here that can’t find their asses with both hands.”

  “I’ll meet you at the cabin. Tell Vic to help you put together supplies for three days. Remember he’s a city boy so his brain works on a different level than yours and mine. In other words, he’s not going to saddle Pete. But he likes to eat, so he knows where things are in the kitchen.”

  “I’m leaving now, Moon. Need anything else I can get you?”

  “A weather report for the next few days.”

  Jacy left immediately, after telling Tate what had happened. He drove hard over the curvy mountain roads, his thoughts on the evening’s events. His gut was in a knot and long ago he’d learned that was a warning sign not to be ignored.

  Had Koko seen Marty’s lightweight airplane in her vision? Had she seen the crash in her mind?

  Jacy didn’t believe in coincidences. Hadn’t when he was a Hell’s Angel, nor later when he’d been recruited as a rebel agent for Onyxx.

  He liked to believe that’s why he was still alive. He had a suspicious mind, and tonight it was working overtime.

  The voice was high-pitched. The incessant chanting—something between eerie and musical—entered Prisca’s subconscious as she came awake. Awake but not fully lucid.

  She was lying on her back, and the air around her was bitter cold. Her entire body was in pain.

  She didn’t want to open her eyes. She had closed them tight just before…before the airplane had crashed into the side of the mountain.

  Oh, God, the plane had crashed, and she was…where?

  Pris moaned, reliving the horror of knowing she was going to die.

  Was she dead?

  Was she in some limbo between heaven and hell?

  “Open your eyes, sisttsi nan. You fell from the sky, but you’re alive. Open your eyes so you can see I speak the truth.”

  Prisca heard the words and responded, opened her eyes to see an old woman bent over her. There was a fire crackling close by, and it lit up the woman’s wrinkled brown face framed in pink wool.

  “There you are, sisttsi nan. Such beautiful eyes.”

  “Where am I?”

  “On Sinopah.”

  That explained nothing. Pris took a deep breath and moaned regretfully as a fiery pain shot throughout her body.

  “I’m hurt.”

  “Yes. But I have stopped the bleeding. You will survive.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Koko Blackkettle. And you, sisttsi nan, what is your name?”

  “I’m…” Prisca hesitat
ed. She didn’t dare tell anyone who she was. “I…don’t know,” she lied. “I can’t remember.”

  The old woman nodded, then reached out and touched Prisca’s forehead. “Maybe a concussion. Don’t worry, or think too hard. You will know what to remember when it is important enough to make a difference. The journey has begun.”

  “What journey?”

  “Yours, of course. The vision tells me you’re on a quest.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re alive, and you must trust that, and only that for a time. Your purpose must be strong to survive a disaster that could have so easily killed you.”

  “My purpose?”

  “It’s promised in the vision.”

  “What vision?”

  “The vision that brought me to you.”

  Pris looked around, and that’s when she saw the airplane. Or what was left of it—twisted metal scattered in all directions.

  “The pilot—”

  “His journey has taken him further. Do not think of him now.” The old woman laid her hand on Prisca’s chest. “Rest now.”

  Marty was dead. Pris closed her eyes and tried not to think about him. The old woman began to chant again, and in an odd way it was comforting. When she blinked her eyes open again, Koko was back at the fire, stirring something in a small kettle.

  Pris tried to sit up and that’s when she realized that her injuries were far more serious than she thought. She moved her hands over her body, and realized that she was wearing only her panties and nothing more beneath a layer of blankets.

  “Where are my clothes? My phone?”

  “I found no phone. Your clothes… I cut them off you with my knife.” The old woman produced a knife from beneath her coat. “A gift from my grandson. There was much blood and I needed to know where it was coming from. Don’t move or the bleeding will start again. Many cuts.” Koko motioned to her legs. “Some of them are deep. You must stay quiet. Your ankle is swollen, too. No broken bones.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I saw you in the sky.”

  “How?”

  “All that matters is that I came to you in time.”