by Todd Borg
“Got some videos for you to see,” I said.
“Screw you,” he said.
I sat down next to him. I got out my cell phone, wincing at my shoulder pain from the axe laceration. I pushed the buttons, held the phone in front of his face with my left hand, and put my right arm around his shoulders, squeezing him to make sure he paid close attention.
First came the video of Carol explaining how he had beat her up, and then kidnapped her. Next, Stefan in Venice explaining how Preston had hired him to sink me into the deep blue. Finally, JJ telling of his future vice presidency if he stole corporate research from CBT and gave it to Preston.
“What the hell do you think you’re going to do?” Preston said.
“TV and radio news programs, business magazines, major newspapers, supermarket tabloids, youtube.com, all the social networking sites, a hundred bloggers. Maybe Michael Moore would like to do a documentary. You’re finished. The DA will love focusing county resources on you. Your colleagues will shame you out of their world. The girls you try to bring onto your yacht will laugh in your face. Life as you know it is done.”
Preston made a fast grab at the phone. I was quicker and pulled it away. He made a fist and tried to convert his grabbing motion into a sweeping hook at my head.
I took hold of his wrist, shifted my other arm up from his back, and locked it around his neck. As I jerked down on his wrist, I used my headlock to roll him off the barstool. He landed on the floor, back down. I landed on top of him. The air came out of his lungs with a big whump. It was three or four minutes before he could speak.
“How much to hit the erase button?” he wheezed.
I told him the price.
Two days later, my last morning at Ryan’s, we were eating breakfast. I gave him the used CD I’d gotten on eBay. Queen’s We Are The Champions signed by Freddie Mercury. Ryan exclaimed and stared at me hard.
We heard a vehicle on the driveway, and looked out to see the black Escalade pull up. It stopped. Preston Laurence got out of the back, walked up to Ryan’s front door and rang the bell.
I answered it. He was wearing a suit. He handed me a 9 x 12 manila envelope, which I knew contained documents for the sale of his CBT stock to Ryan.
“I’m here to see Miss Lily, please,” he said.
“Miss Lily,” I called out. “You have a gentleman caller.”
Lily came running. “I’m Lily.”
“Good morning. I have a delivery for you.” He turned and walked back to the Escalade, opened the tailgate and pulled out the shiniest, fanciest kid’s bicycle I’d ever seen. He set it on the ground, carefully leaning it onto its kickstand.
He glanced up at me, lifted up on the creases of his trousers, then squatted down in front of her.
“Miss Lily,“ he said, “I’m sorry to have damaged your bicycle. This is a replacement. Please accept my apologies.”
She nodded at him. “The pleasure is all mine,” she said.
“Thank you for your understanding,” Preston said. He got back into the Escalade. Raul drove away slowly, carefully.
The next morning, Street and Spot and I drove south down the East Shore.
“Now that it’s September, the morning is cold,” Street said to me, her arms across her chest, hands rubbing opposite shoulders.
“Thirty-one on the thermometer when we got up,” I said. “One of the reasons why I’m a fan of sleeping in.”
“Maria said it would be best if we got there by 7:00 a.m. She said that Heat would be looking for breakfast.”
The coating of upper-mountain snow and hail from the series of thunderstorms had all melted, and the views across the lake had gone back to looking like summer after several days of looking like fall. The air was crisp in my lungs.
We pulled into the entrance to the trail where I’d chased Travis off the highway four nights before. Ryan’s car was already there. Diamond and Maria and Lana pulled up as we got out.
We said our good mornings.
Maria and Street went up the rutted trail first, apples bulging their jacket pockets. Behind them walked Lana and Carol, their pockets stretched by carrots.
Ryan and Lily went behind them, holding hands. Lily kept turning around to face Diamond and me. Ryan kept her hand in his, so that she ended up walking sideways-backward, her hand stretched up and across in an uncomfortable position.
Stubble had begun to grow where they’d shaved Ryan’s head before laying down multiple tracks of stitches.
Spot ran through the forest, then came back to tag us. He’d clawed the bandage off the top of his head, but the stitches seemed to be holding.
“Coming to find Heat was a good idea, wasn’t it?” Lily said to Diamond and me.
“Absolutely,” I said.
The night on Cave Rock seemed like it had taken place just a few hours before. I knew that Lily would likely have bad dreams for a long time to come, but she was bouncing back the way only kids can. Life can be harsh beyond measure, but a kid can still take pleasure in having good ideas.
“Do you think Heat will let me ride him?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Heat.”
We walked a mile up the slope toward the watering hole where the creek pooled deep and provided a place where wildlife could find all the water they needed.
I’d brought blankets in my pack, and we arranged them within sight of the watering hole. The big cooler that Diamond and I carried went where the blankets came together.
Carol and Street sat on either side of Lily. No visible wounds on their group. Lily didn’t even have bandages. The doctors had just said to keep her clothes loose so that they wouldn’t irritate the burns from where Travis’s rope had bit into her skin. Spot sprawled in front of Lily and put his head on her lap, but after two minutes she found it was too heavy. She pushed his head to the side. He sighed, then snoozed.
Lana wore a kerchief around her neck, but it didn’t fully cover up the bandages.
“It’ll be like a permanent necklace,” she said about her stitches. She laughed. “The scar will just look like I’m wearing some kind of choker. Very chic, really.”
“Oh, Lana, you’re so brave,” Maria said. “Like Ryan.”
“Gonna have some macho scars, kid,” Diamond said to Ryan. “Where I come from, the girls would appreciate what you did to get them. Boys, too, for that matter.”
“I just tried not to be a coward for once in my life,” Ryan said. “Monty-Travis scared me to death. But Owen said I should confront my worst fears. I knew I had to try to help. I couldn’t open the door on my car, so got on Herman’s scooter and used it to get up to the back side of Cave Rock.”
“Saved Lily’s life,” I said. “Mine, too.”
“Took a bad guy out of circulation,” Diamond said. “Always a good thing. Saved the state a lot of money.”
“Diamond!” Maria feigned astonishment. “What if your fellow officers heard you say that?”
“They’d raise a toast,” he said.
We munched picnic food.
“Here’s how we’ll work it,” Maria said. “Before you whistle, Owen, we’ll all be sitting down on the blankets. Remember, the only person he trusts is the woman down in Sparks. We have to overcome his distrust by being completely non-threatening. If he comes, we will notice him, but seem uninterested.”
“When he comes,” Lily said.
“When he comes,” Maria corrected herself.
“Can I feed him an apple?” Lily asked.
“The whistle means sweet grain to him. So you will have some in your hands. After he eats the grain you hold out to him, then you should get more grain for him. In time, he will learn that you have apples and carrots, too. That will build trust.”
When Maria was satisfied that everything was in place, she looked at me. I nodded at Lily. She went to Spot and covered his sensitive ears. I stepped away from the group and did a loud wolf whistle three times. Spot squirmed under Lily’s grip on his head.
�
�Why doesn’t it work?” Lily asked after a minute.
“It will work,” Maria said. “We just need to give him some time. He could be far away.”
We waited a half hour, ate some lunch.
“When Heat comes out of the forest,” Lily said as she munched watermelon, “where will he live?”
“With his owner in Sparks,” Maria said. “She told me that you can visit him any time you like.”
Lily grinned.
The next time, Diamond covered Spot’s ears as I stood up and whistled three more times.
“What if he doesn’t come?” Lily said.
“Let’s give him more time,” Maria said. She stared out at the forest, her eyes intense. She wandered into the trees.
Street got up and followed her.
Lily looked at Ryan. “Can I go with them?”
Ryan nodded. “Just don’t talk too much.”
She ran off after them.
The rest of us lounged in silence, listening to the birds and squirrels. By their movements and energy it seemed it was never too early to get ready for winter.
“How long did you know it was Travis?” Diamond said.
I shook my head. “Not until the last moment. I called you and said that the killer had gotten a flat tire, and I thought he had hijacked a car on the highway. But you said there hadn’t been any calls about it. So I was confused. I took another look at the code from Herman’s tuning. My best guess at the letters had been GEWN REAR DECAO. Something Lily said made me think to look for a few letters that could be changed to give the message some sense. If it worked, then it would just mean that Herman’s piano strings had adjusted a little before the other piano tuner measured them.
“Either way, I realized that by shifting five of the letters just one notch forward or backward in the alphabet, it would say HE WORE A RED CAP. That told me it was Travis.”
“Whose real name was Monty,“ Carol said. “And he was still stealing horses even after getting out of prison.”
“Right. I was so startled to think that it wasn’t one of the cowboys or Tory or William’s mother Holly, that it took me a minute to process. It was one of those times when I had to rethink everything, from chocolate to Paris. Once I knew it was Travis who had gotten a flat tire on his truck, I figured he would go to Lana’s and steal a horse for transportation. So I went too, and everything exploded from that point.”
“That was why my horse trailer was moved when I came back from Chicago,” Lana said. “It was a clever way to steal that woman’s horses. Borrow the trailer and then put it back. If anybody had recognized it, it wouldn’t lead to Travis. I’m so glad it wasn’t Tory. He can be difficult, but I’ve always thought that he was good at some core level. Did they ever find the other horse that was stolen?”
“Not yet,” I said.
Ryan watched us without speaking, still telegraphing unease. It seemed that he didn’t understand how people could just sit around and talk, hanging out, being friends.
His world was about constant productivity. Maybe that staved off his fear of engagement. But I thought I saw a set to his eyes and jaw that I hadn’t seen before. And his frown seemed less about worry, and more about responsibility and determination.
“Any word yet on that last blood test?” I said in a low voice.
Ryan nodded. “It was bad. The indicators suggested a full metastasis was in progress. The doctor said we should start chemo immediately. But that same afternoon, we got the first report back on the clinical trial for our new drug. It looked very promising. So the doctor gave Lily her first biological treatment an hour later.”
Ryan took a deep breath.
“When will you know how she responds?”
“They drew more blood yesterday afternoon. The doctor called me at nine o’clock last night. He was excited and said that the indicators have begun to retreat. At best, it will be a long haul. But if it continues like this, he believes she could eventually be cured.”
Diamond stuck out his fist with his upraised thumb. Carol and Lana broke into huge smiles. I leaned forward and gave Ryan a hug.
“Congratulations,” I said.
Maria, Street and Lily came back in a hurry and sat down on the blankets. Maria waved her hand at us. Street raised her finger to her lips. Spot lifted his head up, and stared into the forest. I reached over and put a firm hand on him.
In front of Street stood Lily, her eyes round and struck with wonder, her mouth so stretched by mirth that she looked about to burst into song. She, too, put her finger to her lips. It was, I thought, an important moment in an important day for her, the beginning of a new life where excitement replaced fear.
Lily slowly raised her arm and pointed.
We followed her gaze into the forest.
I saw nothing. We waited. A big Jeffrey pinecone fell from a hundred feet up, hitting multiple branches on the way down. A treetop squirrel screamed for a few seconds, then settled down to nervous chattering. A group of three crows swooped through the forest, cawing to each other about the state of the world. They disappeared, and the woods went silent.
I kept my hand on Spot while I watched Lily. She scooped grain out of the bag, held it in her upturned hands and took slow steps toward the trees.
We all stared into the forest.
There was no movement.
I focused on the mass of tree trunks and saw a white mark among the brown stripes. An inverted triangle. In time, it moved to the right. It grew ears and a dark brown thatch of mane above and two large dark eyes. Below came the body of a beautiful cherry-brown horse.
Lily walked forward, her arms out. She quivered with excitement.
And Heat walked out of the forest.
About The Author
Todd Borg lives with his wife in Lake Tahoe where they write and paint. To contact Todd or learn more about the Owen McKenna mysteries, please visit toddborg.com.
Dear Reader,
If you enjoyed this novel, please consider posting a short review on the website where you purchased the book. Reviews help authors earn a living, which allows them to continue to write stories.
Thank you very much for your time, interest, and support!
Todd
Titles by Todd Borg:
TAHOE DEATHFALL
TAHOE BLOWUP
TAHOE ICE GRAVE
TAHOE KILLSHOT
TAHOE SILENCE
TAHOE AVALANCHE
TAHOE NIGHT
TAHOE HEAT
TAHOE HIJACK
This book is for Kit
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One of the Tahoe landmarks featured in this story is Cave Rock on the east shore of Lake Tahoe. For thousands of years, Cave Rock has been a sacred place for the Washoe, the Native Americans who lived at Tahoe in the summer and wintered to the east in Carson Valley. It has been relatively few years since people of European ancestry came to Tahoe, occupied it, and claimed it as their own. During that time, the beliefs and traditions of the Washoe Tribe have been almost universally disrespected.
Early in the development of Tahoe, twin tunnels were blasted through Cave Rock for Highway 50, and in later years, Cave Rock became a rock climber’s paradise for its challenging routes.
Gradually, the Forest Service has begun to recognize the special history of Cave Rock, and they recently banned climbing and ordered the removal of countless climbing aids that had been pounded into its many climbing routes.
While the blasting of the tunnels can’t be undone, it is this author’s wish that all people who come to Tahoe be aware of the sacredness of Cave Rock. Let’s all appreciate and care for this special place as we would have others appreciate and care for our places of worship.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Mike and Denise Geissinger for introducing me to their Mustangs and answering many questions about them. Their beautiful horses were the inspiration for part of this story.
Liz Johnston is a great editor. Can’t thank her enough.
> Eric Berglund is a great editor. Can’t thank him enough.
Keith Carlson produced another spectacular cover. Can’t thank him enough.
Kit kept her eye on the subjects, the composition, and the colors of the big picture, while I was lost in the brush strokes. Can’t thank her enough, either.
