Nine

5

Fort Collins, Colorado

Monday, May 19, 1:08 A.M.

Kit pulled his jacket closed against the chill of the night air as he stepped out of the Suburban’s heated interior. A big thermometer near the gas station door said it was forty. He looked up at the sky just as thick clouds obscured the moon.

Not an omen, he told himself. A sign of rain on its way, nothing more.

He paid for the gas and bought two Cokes at the station’s convenience market. When he tried to hand the can of soda to Spooky, she refused to take it. He placed it in the cup holder, opened his own can, and took a long sip, wondering if he should have bought Jolt or Mountain Dew or something with more caffeine in it. Only about an hour or so to Denver, but he was tired.

He started the truck.

“I don’t want to go to California,” Spooky said. “I want to stay here.”

It was a refrain he had heard over the past few hours. “In Fort Collins?” he asked, as if hearing it for the first time.

“No, not Fort Collins. You know what I mean.”

He pulled out of the station and headed toward Highway 87. He had stayed away from the biggest highways until now, taking Highway 14 after Rabbit Ears Pass outside of Steamboat Springs, although U.S. 40 would have been the faster way into Denver. But he was sure that the attacker would have taken the faster road, and this was not the time to engage his enemies.

Besides, traveling with Spooky in his Suburban, they were two, and two into fourteen was seven, which was lucky. So Highway 14 was the better choice all the way around.

He hadn’t been able to do much with a number like eighty-seven. He tried not to let that bother him, but it did.

“I can’t take you back to the cabin,” he said now. “It’s not safe there.”

“Molly was old. Old dogs die. We should stay in Colorado.”

He pulled to the side of the road, stopped, and turned to face her.

“We’ve been over this. Molly did not die of old age.”

“You don’t know for sure!”

“Yes, I do!” He saw the alarm come into her face. He rarely raised his voice-he felt instant remorse when he saw that he had startled her. “I know for sure,” he said quietly.

Spooky stared back at him in defiance, but he knew she was scared. After three years with her, he was adept at gauging her moods. When he had first met her, she was ten years old. He had made the mistake most people made when first observing her-he thought she was a boy. She was small for her age and thin; her dark hair was cropped short, her brows thick over large brown eyes, her face grubby, her clothing male. And she happened to be near the sink in a men’s room.

That winter day, three years ago, he was on one of his frequent trips between his homes in L.A. and Denver. Just over the Colorado state line, he had stopped at a gas station that had a good-sized convenience market attached to it.

Kit walked into the washroom and saw a man drying his hands. The man was unaware that a skinny urchin was relieving him of his wallet. Kit prevented the theft by the simple expedient of leaning against the door so that the child, whom he now realized was female, couldn’t make her escape. Her eyes widened. He snatched the wallet from her grasp, then held it out to the other man.

The man, who had a beefy build and was a couple of inches taller than Kit, wanted both his wallet and retribution. Kit saw her look of abject terror, remembered all the times in his own childhood when he had longed for an adult who would protect him, and intervened. “I saw her take it, and now you’ve got it back. No real harm done, is there?”

“Stay out of this,” the man said.

Spooky, looking quickly between them, stood closer to Kit. “He’s my brother!” she told the other man.

He looked between them in disbelief.

“Think of me as her guardian,” Kit said. “Check your wallet. Is anything missing?”

The man looked, admitted nothing was missing, but his rage didn’t lessen. He started to reach for the girl.

“Leave her alone,” Kit said, stepping forward to block the move.

The man saw something in Kit’s eyes, perhaps, because he faltered and moved back. “I ought to call the police,” he said.

“You can, of course, but I’ll have to report that you had taken a female minor into a men’s room for God knows what purpose.”

Behind him, he heard the bathroom door open and close.

“She’s no more your sister than I am,” the man complained.

“I said I’ll protect her. Do you doubt that?”

Kit saw the man think this through, saw the moment he decided not to fight, then stepped outside and looked around, but the girl dressed as a boy was gone. When he went in to pay for the gas, he realized his wallet was gone, too.

Almost all of his cash was in an inner pocket of his jacket, so he was able to pay what he owed. He found his wallet-minus cash and credit cards-in a trash can just outside the store. He got into the Suburban, spent a few moments vividly remembering what it was like to want to run away, and thought like a ten-year-old. He drove slowly past a small park and a convenience store, watching for a shorthaired urchin wearing torn jeans, a white T-shirt, and a loose-fitting jacket that wouldn’t have provided much protection against the elements on a cold Colorado day. She wasn’t in either place, but he found her fairly soon. As he passed a fast food restaurant, he saw her standing in line to place an order, and he doubled back.

Before he had managed to get out of the Suburban, she was in trouble again. The man who had been standing in front of her in line had discovered that his own wallet was missing, and was chasing her. She ran toward Kit, and he saw her eyes widen the moment she recognized him. He thought she might hare off in another direction, but instead she ran to him. “Give me his wallet and get in the green Suburban,” he told her. “I won’t harm you.”

Later, it scared him that she believed him. He wouldn’t have harmed her, but she had no way of knowing that. He managed to convince yet another irate victim of her thievery not to call the police.

Kit got back into the Suburban. She reached into one of her jacket pockets and handed him his credit cards and cash without saying anything. Her fingers, as they briefly touched his hand, were ice cold.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked, turning the heater up a little.

She shook her head. He pulled the SUV into the line for drive-through ordering.

“Are you going to take me to the cops?” she asked.

“No. I’m going to take you home.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Look-”

“It’s true. My mom died last summer. Bonnie and me, we live in a car. We did, anyway.”

“Bonnie-is that who takes care of you?”

“Do I look like someone is taking care of me?” she asked angrily. “I take care of myself.”

When he simply looked at her, as if waiting for more information, she finally added, “Bonnie’s my older sister-she was supposed to take care of me. But she took the car and left me. Is that guy back at the gas station going to call the cops?”

“No. What about your dad? Where’s he?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know who he is. Never have.”

“Do you have some other family I can take you to?”

“No.”

“No? What about your grandparents?”

“Dead.”

“Aunts or uncles?”

“No.”

They reached the display board for the fast food, and he asked her what she wanted. She told him. As he finished giving an order large enough for three kids her size, she crossed her arms and glared defiantly at him, then said-in a voice loud enough to carry over the ordering microphone-“I won’t give you a blow job for it.”

Over the speaker, there was the sound of laughter coming from within the restaurant, then a voice said, “That’s okay. We can only accept cash.”

Mortified, for a few seconds Kit wished he was not boxed in between two other cars, or he would have driven away without the food. Then he stopped thinking about his own embarrassment and considered what it might mean that she felt it necessary to say such a thing at her age.

“Well,” she said, seeing his embarrassment, “that’s what Bonnie’s boyfriends made her do before they’d give us money.” She shuddered. “Bonnie said I’d have to do it sooner or later, but I don’t want to.”

Kit thought of the years of terror spent under his stepfather’s control and said, “If I have anything to say about it, no one is ever going to make you do anything that’s-anything sexual without your permission, and they’re not going to even ask for your permission before you’re an adult.”

She studied him for a moment, then said, “Where are you going?”

“To Denver, and then to my home in the mountains.”

They moved up a car length.

“Will I like it?”

“Will you-? Wait a minute. I don’t think you should be living with me. I’ll help you all I can, but I’m no parent.”

“You could do better than Bonnie.”

He didn’t doubt it, but said, “Let’s think about other options. Tell me the truth-you don’t have any other family you can go to?”

She shook her head. “Just Bonnie.”

“We’ll look for Bonnie, then. You sure there are no aunts or uncles?”

“I don’t think so, or Bonnie would have made them take me a long time ago.”

He paid for the food. He ignored the cashier’s grin.

He turned on the radio as they drove away. It was tuned to an oldies station. She didn’t object to this.

“I’m Kit. What’s your name?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

“Not going to tell me?”

“No. If I change my mind about you, I don’t want you to know who I am.”

“Okay. Make one up, then. I’ve got to call you something.”

She smiled, obviously enjoying the power this gave her. The song on the radio was a Classics IV tune from the sixties-“Spooky.” As it reached the refrain, she said, “That’s my name. Spooky!”

He smiled and said, “All right, Spooky.” He thought that would last about five minutes. He would learn how stubborn she could be. It had helped her survive.

Eventually, she told him enough about her recent life to allow him to be thankful for her hardheadedness. She had started dressing and acting like a boy to make herself unattractive to one of Bonnie’s “boyfriends.”

Kit put Moriarty, a longtime friend of his family-who on most days would tell people that he was a private security specialist-on the job of learning Bonnie’s whereabouts. Moriarty had been both devoted friend and employee to Kit’s grandmother, and he had continued to work for Kit after her death. Kit trusted no one more than Moriarty.

Moriarty learned that Spooky’s real name was Emily, but Kit didn’t let on that he had been given this information for almost two years. He never called her Emily except when they had to pass muster with the court system. Away from judges, lawyers, and social workers, they pretended he had never heard her real name.

Bonnie was a Jane Doe in a Tucson morgue when Moriarty located her. She hadn’t survived a month after she had abandoned Spooky. She had sold the car, and had been living with a group of runaways in a tunnel near Fifteenth and Kino there, sneaking in through a break in the chain link fence that sealed it off. A sudden downpour had rapidly filled the tunnel, and Bonnie, who probably would not have survived even had she known how to swim, drowned.

When Kit told Spooky her sister was dead, Spooky didn’t cry. But she demanded that Kit teach her how to swim. She was now a strong and avid swimmer.

She had also learned how to defend herself.

She was intelligent, and when Kit realized that she wasn’t ready to cope with school, or schools to cope with her, he hired a private tutor to home school her-a retired teacher who knew just how to handle Spooky’s rebelliousness. Through the tutor Spooky also met some of the kids who lived nearby, but Spooky preferred the company of Kit or Moriarty. He noticed that she seemed better able to form friendships with those who were her own age than she had been three years ago, but she was at her best when she felt safe, with Kit.

Although the legal aspects of becoming Spooky’s guardian were complex, the court proceedings were not as difficult as he had feared they would be. Moriarty did locate an aunt, but the aunt did not want a pickpocket runaway who started the occasional fire living under her roof.

Over the next three years, Spooky gradually set aside most of her thievery and arson. Only in times of high stress would Kit feel the need to hide matches from her.

He looked over at her now and figured that soon no one would mistake her for a male. Her brown hair was still cut short, in a boy’s style, but her face was losing its childishness-those brows now only accented her brown eyes, her cheekbones were becoming more prominent-although the pout she wore at the moment was pure kid. She crossed her arms over her denim jacket. He looked away then. She was small for thirteen and didn’t really have breasts yet, but they were on their way.

He hated himself for even considering this fact. He felt no attraction to her, but he did not trust himself where women-and she soon would be one-were concerned. These days, he saw less and less of the tomboy child he had taken under his protection. She was acting more and more like a teenaged girl. He pulled back onto the highway, thinking that thirteen was an unlucky number. He decided that the first person who said thirteen was an unlucky number was raising a female child.

Rain began to fall, and he turned on the wipers.

She stayed silent for five minutes-so far, a record on this trip.

When she finally spoke, she asked in a low voice, “Did she-you know-suffer?”

He swallowed hard but was glad to be able to tell the truth. “No.”

“She was a good dog.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to get another dog?”

“Not right away.”

“Good.” She opened the can of Coke. “Will we see movie stars in California?”

The child again. He would have smiled, but he knew she would have resented it. “Maybe. Some live near the house.”

“Where is it again? I keep forgetting the name.”

“Malibu,” he said.

“How far is it?”

“Far.”

“Can I drive some of the way?”

“No.”

“You never let me drive.”

“So why do you keep asking?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Nothing wrong with trying, is there?”

“No. But save yourself some trouble and wait a couple of years to ask again.”

She rolled her eyes.

“How far to Denver?”

“Not much farther.”

“How long can we stay there?”

“Not long. Just tonight.”

She put the Coke back in the holder. Within a few minutes, she was asleep.

He watched the rain and wondered if he should leave her with someone, someone who might keep her safer than she would be with him or his staff in Malibu. He knew of one or two people he could trust to be good to her, to be patient with her, who could even cope with her tendency to start fires and her practice of picking pockets. But they could not keep her as safe as he could, because he knew his enemies.

He passed Denver International Airport and found his grip tightening on the steering wheel. He forced himself to relax his hands, and kept driving.

The one who had killed Molly was long gone by now, he was sure.

He felt grief for the dog swell within him and fought it off.

Drive, he told himself. Just drive.

So he drove and turned his thoughts to the problem of how his enemies had found the cabin.