Fort Morgan (17 page)

When he came into class, he was all
business. But the knot in Sissy’s stomach remained.

~~~~~~~~

Friday morning — 9:54 a.m.

Aurora, Colorado

Tanesha rounded the corner in the hallway
and turned into the large lecture hall. Between dropping Jabari off
at school, checking in on Heather, and a quickie with Jeraine, she
was late getting to class. It was the class before their midterm
exams, so the room was packed. Everyone who’d regularly skipped
class managed to make it to this review. She was scanning the crowd
for a free seat when she noticed a familiar head. Fin turned to
wave her over to the seat he’d saved for her. Still hurrying, she
slipped in front of fifty students to get to the seat he’d saved in
the middle of the row. She was just settling in when the teacher
appeared at the front of the class.

“
Good morning,” the
teacher said. “I see we have a full house. We also have a full
agenda. Keep your questions to a minimum so we can get through it
all. There will be time after class to ask questions. My teaching
assistants have scheduled three review sessions in case we don’t
get your questions answered.”

“
Hi,” Tanesha whispered to
Fin.

He reached over and squeezed her hand. She
smiled. She started writing copious notes. A half hour into the
lecture, the professor stopped to answer a question from a
particularly obnoxious student.

“
How did you get back
here?” Tanesha asked out of the side of her mouth.

“
Was I gone?” Fin asked
with a grin.

“
Yes.” Tanesha leaned over
her notebook to say quietly. “Remember when Abi was shot and you
had to go home?”

“
If you check the school’s
record, you’ll see I was here the entire time,” Fin said while
leaning into her.

“
And if I check with the
serpents?” Tanesha asked.

Fin just smiled. The professor gave an
annoyed answer to the questioner and continued on with the lecture.
He started by speeding through the material he’d just covered.
Tanesha was checking that she’d gotten everything when Fin pushed
his notepad onto her desk.

“
Saw you in the cave,” Fin
wrote. “After you went home first time.”

Tanesha nodded. He pointed to the paper.

She wrote: “Saw you leave when the volcano
erupted.”

“
How did
that
happen?” Fin said
out of the side of his mouth.

“
Zeus,” Tanesha
wrote.

“
Smelled like Olympia, as
do you,” Fin wrote. “You have that glow.”

“
H. had baby,” Tanesha
wrote. “Hera came.”

“
Hera?” Fin was so
surprised that he failed to lower his voice. They were shushed by
everyone around them.

“
H. saved Z. from Sea of
Amber,” Tanesha wrote.

Fin raised his eyebrows, and Tanesha
nodded.

“
I love the glow of
Olympia,” he said under his breath.

“
Now. . .” The
professor took a deep breath and blazed on with new topics. Tanesha
pen moved furiously across her page. She glanced at Fin to see if
he was doing the same thing. He smiled at her and raised his left
hand. There was a gorgeous band around it. The ring had a base of
yellow gold with white gold leaves and flowers overlaid on top.
There were tiny rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires to accent
the design. Tanesha touched the band.

“
Pretty,” she
whispered.

“
Family crest,” he said.
“Yours too.”

Tanesha nodded. An hour of furious writing
and listening went by before they were able to come up for air. The
obnoxious student had another know-it-all question, and the
professor started lecturing him on the protocol of asking
questions.

“
Married?” Tanesha
asked.

Fin beamed a smile at her.

“
How?” Tanesha
asked.

“
Manannàn,” Fin said. “He
was furious when we returned home from the Sea of Amber. He pushed
Mother to remove Celeste from the court. Mother agreed to put her
in a home for infirm fairies. Manannàn told the court that if they
didn’t accept my choice of partner, they should leave. It was very
tense. A few of the elders said they didn’t realize Abi was a
serious partner because we weren’t married.”

Fin rolled his eyes.

“
After a child, a few
centuries, moving to Denver together, our relationship is a big
mystery?” Fin asked.

Tanesha nodded.

“
Manannàn talked to Abi
himself. Changed her mind,” he said with a nod. “We had a lovely
private ceremony and came back.”

Fin smiled.

“
Are you disappointed you
weren’t there?” Fin asked.

Tanesha shook her head and pointed to the
professor. The professor talked for the next fifty minutes without
a break. When the class ended, he announced that he would be there
for another hour to answer questions.

“
You want to?” Tanesha
pointed to the front of the lecture hall. “You probably have
questions.”

Fin shook his head.

“
But you’ve missed so much
class,” Tanesha said.

“
Only according to you.”
Fin grinned at her. “Plus, I’ve studied all of your
notes.”

Tanesha smiled. She stuffed her notepad,
pen, and pencil into her bag and stood up. She followed Fin out of
the class.

“
Lunch?” he
asked.

“
You buying?” she asked
with a smile.

“
Of course,” Fin
said.

They walked down the hallway and out of the
building toward the nearby restaurants.

“
You know your mother’s in
danger,” Fin said.

“
Dad said he got the guy,”
Tanesha said. “He said that O’Malley was tracking down the killers
for hire.”

“
All true,” Fin
said.

“
If O’Malley’s on the job,
he’ll find them,” Tanesha said. She looked at his face.
“What?”

“
This man, the one Yvonne
found?” Fin asked.

“
The financier?” Tanesha
asked.

“
Him.” Fin nodded. “He’s a
cancer that must be eradicated from the world.”

“
Eradicated like the
serpents were?” Tanesha asked.

“
Deeper and more
thorough,” Fin said. “Abi and the fairy corps have been tasked with
finding a way to stop him.”

“
He’s in prison.” Tanesha
shrugged.

“
You sure about that?” Fin
asked.

He picked up an old newspaper and passed it
to Tanesha. The headline read, “FINANCIER MAKES BAIL.”

“
Bail?” Tanesha asked.
“Why would anyone offer him bail? I thought the judge said no bail
because he was a flight risk.”

Fin pointed to the newspaper.

“
So he’s out of prison?”
Tanesha’s voice rose with anxiety.

“
He is,” Fin
said.

“
And?”

“
He has plans,” Fin
said.

“
What’s Abi going to
do?”

“
Oh, she has plans too,”
Fin said with a smile.

No
one to save you

Friday night — 5: 25 p.m.

New York City, New York

Sissy had been waiting for Ivan for ten
minutes when he finally emerged from the Administration Office. She
gave him a sour look.

“
Change of pace,” he said.
“You wait for me.”

He gave her a charming smile, and she shook
her head at him. They were walking toward the door when the
ballerina from this morning joined them. She leaned into Ivan, and
he put his arm around her. Sissy scowled.

“
Uspokoit’sya,
” Ivan said to
Sissy.

She knew it meant “settle down” — or
something like that — in Russian. Ivan used it to tell her to mind
her own business or, basically, to shut up. She sneered and he did
something odd. Like she was in on some joke, he winked at her.

They waited inside the glass doors for the
limousine to pick them up.

“
I spoke with MJ,” Ivan
said. “We decide to take our hardworking girls out to
dinner.”

He made a slight gesture toward the
ballerina. Sissy took that to mean that the ballerina was coming
with them.

“
Where are we going?”
Sissy asked.

“
We are going for sushi,”
Ivan said. “Then Sabrina and I will dance. You watch us until time
for bed, if you’d like.”

“
Sandy’s calling tonight,”
Sissy said. “I talked to her at lunch.”

“
As did I.” Ivan gave
Sissy a warm smile. “Ah, they are here.”

Ivan and the ballerina moved as one unit out
onto the sidewalk. Sissy groaned at herself. She hated the fact
that she cared that the ballerina was there. In all of their years
together, Ivan had had many girlfriends. Girls, and even some
women, liked Ivan, and he liked them. She hated the fact that she
was now hanging on his every gesture. She hated the fact that she
cared.

“
Sissy,” Ivan said in an
even tone.

She ran out to the car and hopped in. She
scooted in next to Noelle. Ivan and the ballerina sat across from
them.

“
Who are you?” Noelle
asked.

“
Sabrina,” the woman
purred with just a touch of superiority, to put Noelle in her
place.

“
Okay,” Noelle said. Never
one to miss the subtleties of conversation, Noelle gave the woman a
disgusted look and turned to Sissy.

Sabrina looked at Ivan. He was whispering
back and forth with the ballerina. MJ watched them for a moment,
scowled, and shook his head. Sissy smiled. Never subtle, MJ clearly
didn’t like bubble-headed women any more than Sissy or Noelle
did.

“
Where are we going?”
Noelle asked Sissy.

“
Ivan said sushi,” Sissy
said.

“
Yum,” Noelle said. “Any
idea why this happened?”

“
I guess because of. . .”
Sissy flicked her eyes toward the ballerina.

Noelle giggled.

“
How was today?” Sissy
asked something to get Noelle talking.

“
Great!” Noelle launched
into a detailed replay of her day that Charlie had always called
the “Noelle report.” Sissy loved the Noelle report. Noelle had
almost gotten to lunch when they pulled up in front of a fancy
Manhattan sushi restaurant.

MJ got out first to check the area. Ivan
followed and helped the ballerina out next. Sissy got out after the
ballerina.

“
You will eat only one
sushi. No rolls. No more rice,” Ivan said under his breath. “Then
only sashimi. Salad. In fact, I will order for you. You eat what I
order.”

Used to Ivan, Sissy nodded. Noelle linked
arms with her, and they went into the sushi restaurant together. MJ
followed up.

“
Ivan!” the maître d’
said.

The men hugged like old friends. He gave the
ballerina an assessing look and grinned at Ivan. He looked at
Noelle and took Sissy’s hand.

“
You must be Sissy,” the
maître d’ said. “It’s a real pleasure.”

“
You have to watch this
guy,” Ivan said.

He shifted his body to create a space
between Sissy and the maître d’. The man laughed.

“
Right this way!” the
maître d’ said.

Ivan waited for the others to go and walked
right behind Sissy.

“
I want you to know that I
heard you this morning. All school and too much Ivan is hard for a
young girl,’” Ivan said under his breath. “This restaurant is owned
by the man you call ‘Otis.’ Very popular. Very expensive. You get
to go out on the town and still stay safe.”

She turned her head to smile her thanks at
him. He gave her a nod and a nudge forward. When they got to the
table, the ballerina looked up. She gave Ivan a charming smile.
When he sat down, she scowled at Sissy.

“
Come sit by me,” Noelle
said, pointing to a seat next to her. When Sissy sat down, Noelle
whispered, “You know, her face is going to get stuck like
that.”

Sissy laughed, and Noelle giggled.

“
What can I bring the
ladies?” the waiter asked, and dinner began.

~~~~~~~~

Friday night — 7:20 p.m.

Phoenix, Arizona

Yvonne opened her eyes the moment he stepped
foot inside their room. It took her a moment to remember where she
was. By some miracle, she remembered that she and Rodney had gone
to bed early because they were leaving at three in the morning.
They’d made love and fallen asleep in each other’s arms. She heard
a rush of movement and the bedside table turned on.

The financier was standing in the doorway to
the room. There were two bigger men standing next to him. Another
man was holding a shotgun to Rodney’s bare chest.

“
Yvie, no matter
what. . .” Rodney started.

The man smacked Rodney with the butt of the
gun, and placed the barrel of the gun over his heart again.

“
I offer you the same
agreement you had with Aaron Alvin,” the financier said. “You come
with me without a fight. I will make sure your family isn’t killed.
Your daughter will continue at medical school. Rodney Smith can
live out his life in Denver. I will ensure not a hair on their
heads is harmed.”