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Chapter 47

Mike’s legs felt like stilts as he stepped out of the shrine onto the landing, the crisp air-conditioning welcome on the heat of his face. He leaned against the wall to catch his breath. When he mopped at his brow, his sleeve came away damp.

His mind remained fastened on that image of Sue Windbird. A brass plaque beneath her portrait had given her name, a question mark for a birthday, and the date of her death – August 10, 1982.

Yet Sue Windbird, clearly, wasn’t the last of her people.

Though she was decades gone, those mismatched eyes might as well have been an arrow pointing from her through him to Kat. What had William called them? Cat eyes.

Mike couldn’t remember if his mother, too, had heterochromia, but he could picture distinctly the view up at her when she bathed him as a child, her black-brown hair draped along one tan arm. The pronounced cheekbones. That golden brown skin, dark even in winter. A buried lineage to a culture he knew no more about than he did the Mayans or the Pennsylvania Dutch. But there it was, a birthright running through his veins. And Kat’s.

The ramifications swirled around him, leaving him dizzy. As long as there were no Deer Creek tribal members living, casino management ran the show and kept all profit.

These people were willing to kill generations of a family to ensure that the tribe stayed extinct.

A few college kids bustled by, wisecracking and slinging cocktails, jarring Mike from his thoughts. He fought to reacclimate himself to his surroundings. Gripping the handrail, he descended into the confusion of the casino floor. Blinking lights and sweaty faces seemed to assail him, but he kept to the edge of the room, putting one foot in front of the other, his gaze trained on the exit.

Which is why he didn’t see the shoulder until his face collided with it. Smooth calfskin leather jacket, black with a racing-red Ducati appliqué logo.

A hand pressed him away. ‘Watch where you’re going.’

From a distance the man would have looked much younger, but Mike was right up on top of him, so he could see the smoothness of the face lift and the too-black dyed hair – he had to be in his mid-sixties. He had perfect white teeth and the relaxed posture of a man secure of his place in the world. He’d given Mike no more than a cursory glance; he was focused on the high-stakes blackjack table across the way.

As were William and Dodge, standing just behind him.

Mike’s legs tensed, locking up, the muscle cramping. He tilted his head, hiding his face beneath the cap’s brim, and managed to turn away. The three men were clustered by the door leading back to the offices – the same door the cocktail waitress had emerged from earlier.

As Mike walked away, he heard the man in the leather jacket say, ‘Results, boys. Soon.’

And William’s raspy voice, like a fingernail down Mike’s spine, ‘We’ll have ’em, Boss Man.’

Still riled, Mike hurried through the employee parking lot, Shep following him at a pace.

‘As in customer-service Indian or many-moons Indian?’ Shep asked.

Mike spit, the sunflower-seed chaw hitting the asphalt with a wap. ‘Many moons.’

‘Like peace-pipe, Manhattan-for-a-handful-of-beads Indian?’

‘Yes, Shep. Like that.’

‘You?’

There, in the cherry front spot, was a Ducati to match the man’s riding jacket. Sleek and muscular, the motorcycle looked part fighter jet, part armored action figure. Mike crouched and read the lettering stenciled onto the bumper block. BRIAN MCAVOY, CEO.

Brian McAvoy.

Boss Man.

‘Where to next, Big Chief Squatting Cow?’ Shep said.

‘Rick Graham.’ Mike thought of the newspaper article inside describing the local hero from Granite Bay. ‘Let’s see if our boy’s listed.’