The Gift of the Dragon (5 page)

Callan rolled up some bills and dropped a thousand down. The Argentine caught the roll and counted it quickly. Ten Benjamin Franklin faces. “Looks good. Next question.”
 

“What’d he tell you to look for?”
 

“A tablet was one thing.”
 

“Jerk!” Callan said under his breath. He tossed down another thousand.

“What was the other thing?”
 

“Two other things. One, a part-Asian man. A dog-muncher. You, I think.”
 

“Stop messing around. You’re pissing me off.”
“Dog-muncher” sounds like something Thorn would say.
The McAlisters thought everyone equally far beneath them, but they were too snotty to use racial slurs to describe their inferiors.

“Your deal, man.”
 

Callan cursed quietly again. He could go down there, fight the Argentine again, tie him back up, and try the other way. That would take longer and likely not get any better information. He found torture too often led to a point where the victim would just tell you what you wanted to hear. A great way to get a confession for a witch hunt, but not a good way to get to the actual facts of a matter. For that, Callan needed to mix fear with persuasion.
And blend in a dash of hope.

He tossed down another ten Benjamins.
 

“What was the last thing?”
 

“A silver necklace. Looks like a dragon. He didn't seem to think you’d have it, though.”
 

Callan threw down another roll. That sounded like what Sara gave Alice Sangerman at the dam.
 

“How’d Thorn contact you?”
 

“That I don't know, man. I was a soldier. My commander made the deal.”
 

Time to end this.
Callan made as if to get some more money out of his belt. He pulled the stone out of his pocket instead. He noted that the Argentine held the knife differently now.
 

Callan brought his arm up and, in one lightning move, threw the stone at the Argentine. At the same time, the Argentine hurled the knife. But Callan had practiced this sort of thing for a very long time. He knew a right-handed knife thrower usually hits on the right side of the target. Ian stepped to his own right just before the well-thrown knife flashed by his cheek.
 

The Argentine focused on the knife too long, watching it. He should have ducked as soon as he released. Callan’s stone caught him between his eyes, knocking him backward.
 

Callan followed the stone over the edge of the bridge, landing neatly in the bow of the Whaler, which dipped like a teeter-totter under his weight. He leapt upon the stunned Argentine and slammed his head into the deck of the boat. Twice. Callan put a piece of line around the Argentine’s neck and tightened it until the man's breath stopped.

“Thanks for the info, man. Bet you were thinking you should’ve listened to your first instincts just before you died there.”
 

Callan pulled the anchor out of the bow pulpit. An average human body has twenty pounds of buoyancy. The boat’s anchor weighed ten pounds.
Not enough
.
 

He thought a minute and then went to the plastic gas tank of the Whaler. About four gallons were left.
More than enough.
He gathered up his money, cut the motor, and then poured the gas over the Argentine's body. He then stepped back out of the boat and pulled out his lighter. He wadded up five hundred or so dollars and went back up on the bridge. He picked up the knife and put it back in his belt. Then he lit the money on fire. One last time, he leaned over the bridge and dropped a wad of money.
 

He backed away as the boat went up.
 

The authorities would report a body found in a burned boat. With luck, Thorn might believe it to be Callan for a while.
He would need to check it out. That would buy Callan more time.
 

Callan jogged down the road. He noted a line of smoke ahead in the distance outlined in red by the rising sun.
Where there is smoke, there should be something to drive.
He followed the direction of the beacon it formed.

Chapter 4, When an Owl Calls

Alice

“Is that the necklace Sara Moore’s father gave her?”
 

“I don't remember,” said Alice. She took a sip of the tea Jenny gave her. Jenny had made the tea from a kind of dogwood gathered in the surrounding hills.

“You’ve lost the memory of much of your past, Alice,” Jenny said gently.
 

They were sitting on the deck of a yurt perched on the bank of the Darkertree River, leaning side by side against the curve of the outer wall, gazing down at the white water and the naked bathers at play a hundred or so feet down below the steep bank. They were deep in the forests of western Oregon. Alice had woken up in Jenny's spiritual retreat six weeks before, disheveled and with a very sore head. She had arrived without any memory of how she got there, wearing only a torn T-shirt and cut-off jeans. With a new dragon necklace around her neck.

“Sara came here with you when she was almost eleven years old,” Jenny said. “You both looked as though you were running from something.” Jenny had retired from her medical practice in the city a decade ago and had come to the settlement along the Darkertree to learn to relax after nearly dying in a rush-hour multi-car collision on Interstate 90. Along the way, she had become a master of eddu, a martial arts and exercise system formed from a fusion of western anatomy and physiology with karate. A few days ago, Jenny said that Alice had been the one who taught Jenny eddu many years before—according to Jenny, almost a decade before.
When you came here, the retreat was just starting up. We had some trouble with the locals. You helped us…
Alice could not remember any of that, but when they had practiced, her body had known how to do the moves even if she could not name them.
 

“This was a good place for you to come,” Jenny continued. “Sara learned to cook and sew, and she was very good at it. She read everything, and you were always coming back with her from a library or used bookstore with a car full of books. You taught us how to defend ourselves.” Jenny took a sip of the tea.

“You were looking for refuge.” When Jenny smiled, her face lit up in lines like rivers running strong around a look that you knew she saved for something special.
 

They talked on a spare wooden deck, sitting on reed mats spread between the drying racks filled with herbs and fungi Jenny gathered from secret spots in the forest. Mist from the river floated up, catching the afternoon sun, making glowing rays that drew lines down from the gaps in the dense canopy above. The evergreen smell of fir rode the mist into Alice’s nose, and she breathed in deeply, enjoying the moment.

“Do you know what we were running from?”
 

When Jenny frowned, one could hear the great fir trees groaning as they turned to see what the matter was. She frowned now. “Sara's father sent you. Something he did or knew about. Something that scared him.” The yurt where Jenny slept stood in a small clearing on the edge of the river and backed up to a village of cabins that visitors rented when they came to bask in the hot waters of Willamette Springs.

“He sent me with Sara?”
 

Jenny nodded. “You first met her when she was very young. She saw you as an older sister.”
 

“And this?” Alice held up the dragon necklace.

“All I know about that is what you told me. When I brought you back here, you were raving. You said you saw Sara killed, and she gave you a necklace just before being shot. A killer wanted it, and you needed to keep it from him.” Jenny sighed. “You would not let me take you the hospital or to the police.”
 

Alice touched her scar. “I’m surprised you listened to me.”
 

“I checked your wound. You lost a lot of blood. You had a concussion. I couldn’t see then that the bullet had gone into your skull. Later, I found it to be much worse than I’d thought. I really have no idea how you survived.” She stretched her hands up into the air in a calming movement. “Fate. Luck. God. The Tao. The Great Pumpkin.
Something
more than my skill saved you. I should’ve taken you to the hospital.” She sighed. “You were persuasive.”
 

“But Jenny, I can’t remember anything about who I am!”
 

“Retrograde amnesia. Caused by your brain bouncing around in your skull. You remember facts and skills but not people. Brain injuries are complex, variable; the outcomes are often very different even for people with similar wounds. I also feel that at least some of your memory issues are caused by your loss. What the textbooks would call post-traumatic stress.”
 

“I lost Sara.” Alice felt tears start flowing from her eyes and drip on her cheeks.

An owl's call echoed through the trees. Jenny raised her head, listened. “There are unfriendly men at the gate.”
 

Alice looked alarmed. “Should I leave? Are they here to hurt you?”
 

“When you leave, I think they’ll follow you, Alice. They want what you have, not what I have.”
 

“Do you know more about this thing they are after?”
 

Jenny reached out and stroked Alice’s head, pushing her hair back from her scar.
 

“I don’t. And I don’t know that finding the answer is worth your life. You have money. You should go south, Alice.”
 

Alice held the necklace up in the afternoon light. It sparkled. “Why did he want it? It's shiny, but it's just obsidian and silver, not worth killing for.”
Or dying for!
“I have to find out why this happened to Sara! I have to bring justice to her killer.” Alice’s voice broke, and Jenny gathered her into her arms. “She was like my little sister,” Alice whispered. They hugged silently for a moment.

“Alice, you came here many years ago to get away from the outside world.” Jenny pointed at the edge of an old scar on Alice’s chest, peeking out of her V-neck shirt. “I thought you were going to die that time, too. You’ve been happy, hiding here in the mountains. Living a peaceful life, avoiding confrontation. In touch with your spirit. Anyway, you seemed happy until Sara came back. Do you really want to go back to that world now?”

“I can’t remember that life, Jenny. I
can
remember Sara as a person, though I can’t recall anything we did together, other than the night she died… the night that man killed her! I remember that I loved her. I remember seeing her die. I have to find the man who did that… and find out why. Maybe that is all I have left?”

“If you go back up into the hills, meditate, remain peaceful, I think in time your memories will come back.”
 

“I saw her die, Jenny! That’s the
one
thing I can remember of my life before this.” Alice touched her scar.

Jenny finished her tea. “I don’t think you should do this, but I’ll do what I can to help you, Alice. I owe you for all of this.” Jenny swept her hand in a gesture that encompassed the yurt, the trees, and the river.

They sat in silence for a time. Alice watched the shadows dance in the breeze-blown trees in the valley below. She heard another owl call. Three long notes, two short.
The signal for intruders.

“Can I do it? Am I able enough? I have memory problems, I hear voices, and sometimes parts of my body just stop working.”

“Seizures. Petit mal. From your wound. They should heal over time. As I said before, you’ll heal faster if you take it easy.”

“You are saying they’re too strong for me?”

“The problem is not the strength of your enemies. The ability to create force is a lower-level skill. A bear, a horse, even a cow—all can create more force than even a highly-trained person. Redirecting force is the core of eddu. Keep your center, direct their power away from you, and let your hands and feet find their weak points. Your body remembers what your head does not.” Jenny smiled. “I know. When we practice, I end up with sore spots that show you’ve not forgotten. They prove you are not too weak. You shouldn’t go out there after them, but it’s possible you will succeed if you do.”
 

“What if they have guns… bullets kill horses and bears quite well!”
 

“They have to see you to shoot you. Wait a little longer, and the shadows in the woods will be very long. That’s the best time to go. The gloom before nightfall is easier to hide in than pitch dark.”
 

“They seem to expect me to walk out the front door like a good little girl.”
 

“Then, they don't know you as well as you know yourself, even in your present state…”
 

“When I barely recall my name!” Alice laughed.

“I am glad that you can laugh. Your health and strength are returning.” Jenny reached out and grasped Alice's arm above the elbow. “Your mind is damaged, dear, but your body is strong. When the time comes, let your body lead your mind. Feel your way.”