Perfect Assassin

“No. I want to stay awake.”

“There will be time for that later.” She produced the brown bottle again. “Here. Another day of sleep will prepare you for the journey. Drink.”

“No, I don’t want to pass out again.”

“It is good to sleep. Our journey down the mountain will be long.”

Pris accepted the bottle and drank. “What is this stuff anyway?”

“A special tonic.”

“How will we get down the mountain without help?”

“Help is coming. Moon will be here soon.”

“Moon?”

“My grandson.”

“But how does he know where to look?”

“He is very smart. Like me, he also has a gift.”

“He has visions, too?”

“No. He is smart and an expert tracker, and I have left a trail for him to follow.”

“I don’t think I can walk.”

“You will ride.” The old woman pointed to a pair of sticks with a blanket tied between them.

Pris handed the bottle of tonic back to Koko. “You’re going to drag me?”

“Don’t worry, sisttsi nan. I am old, but I am strong. I climbed the mountain for you, remember?”

“Yes, you came for me.”

Prisca’s eyes grew heavy again. She drifted off to sleep to the sound of the old woman making more strange sounds as she tended the fire.

When she woke next Pris found Koko talking to herself. The traveling bed had been moved closer.

The old woman must have eyes in the back of her head, Pris thought, because she turned around very suddenly.

“You’re awake. Good. We must go, sisttsi nan. I wanted to wait here for my grandson, but a storm is coming and we need to leave. I was about to wake you. We need to get off the mountain before the snow comes.”

“I need clothes.”

“The blankets will be enough. Better for wounds, not to move too much.” Koko picked up a second blanket and brought it to Prisca. “Keeping you warm is most important.”

She spread one blanket on the travois, and then slowly helped Pris slide her body over and onto the portable bed. Once she was settled, Koko covered her with another blanket and tucked it around her, then tied a rope harness around her waist and hooked the long wooden sticks into two loops.

Then they were moving away from the crash site as gray clouds swelled overhead and the wind began to blow.

The horse’s name was Pete, a black gelding who was used to shifting rocks and narrow trails. Jacy gave Pete his head, and let the long-legged animal negotiate the path at his own pace.

He’d wasted two days searching Rising Wolf Mountain for the downed plane with no luck, and his mood was about as sour as the weather. Clouds were moving into the area, and Sinopah Mountain was a dangerous place to be in a snowstorm.

The threatening weather turned his thoughts to his grandmother. He’d kept in contact with Tate, and Koko hadn’t come home yet. Jacy was worried, but not angry with her. Koko’s visions were real. They didn’t always come at the most opportune time, but that wasn’t something she could control.

He couldn’t ignore the parallel between the crash and Koko’s sudden late-night vision.

Billy had been convinced that the plane had tracked northeast, but after searching Rising Wolf, Jacy knew he should have followed his gut and headed straight to Sinopah. From the moment he’d arrived at the base of the mountain his gut had been churning—his seventy-six-year-old grandmother was here, and so was Marty and his airplane.

Billy was still waiting to hear from him, hoping it would be soon. The Bureau of Land Management dealt in facts, and so he hadn’t mentioned Koko and her vision. The BLM was a lot like Merrick and the Onyxx Agency in that respect.

But he didn’t need to worry about Merrick and the agency. He had retired, and they didn’t own him any longer. And his association with the BLM was strictly on a volunteer basis, so he could do things any damn way he pleased.

Jacy shifted in the saddle and leaned into the mountain as Pete, as sure-footed as a goat, maneuvered the rocky trail.

The temperature was twenty degrees, with a three-inch base of snow on the ground. He pulled the collar up on his sheepskin jacket and tugged his brown Stetson lower. Another hour passed, then another.

It was late afternoon when he spied the familiar pink scarf—a dot of color against the mountain. The sight made him smile in relief, and he reined Pete to a stop.

Koko was moving slowly along the trail, negotiating the rugged terrain and a travois she was pulling behind her.

He had stopped questioning Koko’s visions a long time ago. He’d learned about them one night seated around a campfire on the rez as his uncle had relayed to him the story of his birth: His mother Nola had been trying to get down the mountain. She was eight months pregnant and in labor.

Once again Koko was in her rocker when a vision came to her and she realized her daughter was in trouble. All of her visions came to her in the rocker. Tate had aptly named the rocker the “happening place,” and it was true, it was the place where his grandmother’s visions revealed themselves.

That stormy night she had seen Nola in labor. And, on a desolate trail bathed in moonlight, she had arrived in time to deliver Jacy into the world, then transport Nola and her child, via travois, to a road where she had flagged down a car for help.

Jacy dismounted Pete, and when he dropped onto the ground, his bad leg buckled. He swore, held on to the saddle horn, and rescued his pride and his balance before he dropped to his knees.

“Hello up there,” he called out. “Koko, it’s me.”

She stopped and searched the rocks below. He waited until her eyes locked on him two hundred feet below her. When she saw him, she gave a hearty wave, and he knew behind the wave she was smiling.

He watched as she unhooked the wooden poles from a harness she had tied around her waist. Free of her burden, she called out to him.

“You’re two days late, but I am happy to see you, my issohko.”

“I’m happy to see you, too, Grandmother. What have you found?”

“A bird fell from the sky. A matsowa’p bird, and she is hurt.”

A beautiful bird. A woman, not Marty.

Jacy wondered about that. Had Marty been transporting a passenger? It was true he flew hunters up into the mountains.