Perfect Assassin

“When she got back from your place she made supper, then went and sat down in her rockin’ chair. I never thought much about where she sat until she started to make those noises. You know the ones I’m talkin’ about. She was seein’ somethin’ again.”

Jacy swore, knowing where this was leading. “You’re telling me she had another vision?”

“And this one put a burr under her real quick.”

When Tate reached for his beer, Jacy knocked his hand away. “So where did she take off to?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think she really knew. Those pictures she sees never make too much sense in the beginnin’. You know that.”

“So where is Koko now?”

“She said a bird was callin’ to her in the mountains.”

“Which mountain?”

“She never said. I don’t think she knew.”

“But you let her go anyway?”

“She took off before I had a chance to pull on my boots. When I got outside she was gone.”

“No tracks to follow?”

“I didn’t see any.”

“You’re an Indian. Tracks are supposed to be your specialty.” Jacy’s sarcasm was offered without a smile.

Tate leaned forward. “Not all of us are as gifted as you, little brother.”

“Apparently not.”

Tate swore. “I have a gift.”

“High tolerance. And I’m not talking in reference to pain.”

“I can straddle a Harley twin-V drunk on my ass going a hundred and keep it on the road.”

“A useful talent when you got the police taking chase.”

“You’re damn right. A huckleberry picker, I’m not. Or a trapline savage. You’ve turned into a rude sonofabitch, Moon. You never used to be such an asshole.”

“I’ve always been an asshole.” Jacy shoved the beer bottle in Tate’s direction. “Here, have a little more. You’re obviously not drunk enough.”

“Insultin’ bastard.”

“I call a turd a turd.”

“You name-callin’ me?”

“No.”

“You’re just still pissed off about that limp you got as a souvenir for services rendered. You should have done the time like me, and told that agency to go to hell. You’d have been out in a year.”

Jacy ignored the jibe and went back to the reason Tate had called him. “You should have stopped Koko before she left the cabin.”

“Stop the old woman? Like I could have done that. When she has her mind set, no one stops Koko. She would have cut me where I stood if I had gotten between her and the front door.”

Tate was six foot and weighed two-eighty. Koko was all of ninety pounds, and that was with her pockets loaded down with rocks.

“And you know me and the woods don’t like each other much.”

Jacy rubbed his clean-shaven face, more than a little frustrated with his brother. But it was true. Tate could get turned around in his own backyard. Put him on his Harley cruising a freeway, though, and his brother could tell you which direction he was going by the smell of the wind he was bucking.

Still, he should have stopped the old woman. Koko was seventy-six and had no business taking off in the middle of the night to answer a damn vision on a mountain.

“She packed her rucksack. Took some food.”

“Anything else?”

Tate scratched his chin. “Her medicine bag and a couple of blankets. That knife you gave her was on her hip.”

“Dammit, Tate, we’ve been getting snow in the high country for a long week. What the hell were you thinking, letting her go?”

His brother pointed to a two-inch cut on his muscular arm. “Koko did that three months ago, remember? Took after me with that knife when I told her I wasn’t goin’ to haul her to Brownin’on the back of my Harley. I ended up bleedin’ like a stuck pig all the way to town with her ridin’ behind. That was the day she had that vision of Delsin Yellow Wolf. And it was the real deal, you know. He’d damn near cut his arm off in that meat saw. Koko saved him, like she did Pekono and Lucky years back. And Maggie and Earl’s brother, Pinky.”

Jacy glanced at the flesh wound on Tate’s arm. “What I remember over that deal is you getting gut-sick over a damn scratch.”

“I never got gut-sick.”

“If you bled, you got gut sick. You never could stand the color red in liquid form unless alcohol was in the mix.”

“You’re an asshole, Moon, bringin’ up a man’s weakness in public.”

“And you’re an asshole for letting Koko take off in the dead of night.”

The brothers stared a hole through each other for a long minute. Then Jacy stood. “Which way did she go?”

“Like I said, I couldn’t tell.”

“Did you even look for tracks?”

Tate stood, tipping his chair over. He hoisted his jeans over his beer belly, then tossed his head, sending his long Native-American hair rippling over his shoulders and down his back. “Insultin’ me a second time is a mistake, little brother.”

“You plan on taking me on drunk?”

“Like you said, I ain’t that drunk yet.”

“Meaning you’re really going to get gut-sick when I pop you in the nose and blood starts flowing?”