Protecting the Flame Read online

  He wondered now if he would mention that odd crack in the distance to her. It was…off, an almost familiar sound at a strange time. He was no expert, but he knew snow and these mountains, and if that was the avalanche control people setting off a charge, well, you didn’t do that as a storm got going. That was plain futile.

  What had that crack been then? Not a rifle, though the sound had been almost sharp enough, and not a shotgun either. Neither weapon was big enough to carry twenty, thirty miles. He felt in his bones that the sound was far away, which meant whatever had caused it was big.

  You are not going to solve this, you old fool. That sounded suspiciously like Jess, and, for once, he decided she was right.

  So, for the time being, Judd gave himself over to caring for his eight girls and because that odd cracking sound did not come again—because he was a busy man with worries and calves coming out of season—Judd put it out of his mind and forgot about it.

  For a time.

  GRAVITY

  Chapter 1

  “But, Mah-awm.” The kid was gawky with a bob of cinnamon-brown hair and owlish specs. Clutching a book to her chest, she said, “I don’t have to.”

  “Now, honey.” The mom’s belly was so bloated, give her a little white chef’s cap and she could be the Pillsbury Doughboy’s stunt double. “The plane’s small, and we’ll be in the air for quite a while. Let’s try, okay?”

  The kid sighed with the beleaguered air of a teacher trying very hard to help a slow student through a thorny math problem. “Mom, first off, I’m twelve, not two. I think I know when I need to go. Second, are you sure you’re not projecting? You need to go every ten minutes these days.”

  Impressive, Young Skywalker. Emma bet when this girl was two, she already ran circles around the adults. She was what Emma always imagined Meg Wallace to be in A Wrinkle in Time (the book, not the movie; she couldn’t get past Oprah’s glittery eyebrows): a little disheveled, all elbows and knees. Even the braces fit. Then, too, Emma glimpsed a shadow of herself in this girl, one who was probably smart, a loner, a misfit. A girl everyone tolerated but no one truly liked because she knew the answers or how to find them if she didn’t. (Goldsmith got that totally right, too. Kids were completely Lord of the Flies when it came to a whiff of difference.) Fiddling with the small charm dangling from a thin gold chain around her neck, Emma squinted to make out the title of the kid’s book. In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality.

  Okay, most impressive.

  “Jesus.” A pasty-faced guy who was all twitches and tics, stood a few steps ahead of the mom and the kid. His restless fingers drummed his thighs. “You gonna make that kid mind, Rachel, or you need me to do it?”

  Interesting. The guy’s anxiety almost had an odor to it, something she associated with new sweat and old cigarettes. Emma had a pretty good idea what this guy was about. Minot was, after all, a big booming oil town with all its big booming, largely imported vices. Snow wasn’t the only white substance in abundance.

  The girl favored the guy with a cool look. “Thank you, but no one asked your opinion. Besides, you’re not my father. You’re just the drug-addicted partner in rehab who married my mom because he had nowhere else to go.”

  “Say what?” the guy snapped.

  Kim’s voice seeped through an earbud. “Emma, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” she said, not taking her eyes from this little drama.

  “What’s going on?” asked Kim.

  “Masterpiece Theater,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You think you don’t have to listen?” The guy looked as if backhanding the kid wasn’t something he’d have to think about really hard or feel the least bit sorry for later. “I don’t see you not eating. I don’t see you not wearing the clothes I buy with the money I earn…”

  “Scott, please,” the mom said, putting a hand on the guy’s chest and darting an embarrassed look around. Her dark eyes touched on Emma for a moment before jumping away. “Both of you,” she said, lowering her voice. “Stop. Scott, back off, all right?”

  Scott flared. “Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

  “Well, given the fact we have to move because she’s pregnant and you can’t stay clean,” the girl said, “yeah.”

  “Stop,” Rachel begged the girl. “Please.”

  Kim’s voice came through her earpiece. “Is there a problem?”

  “I’m not sure.” If the kid weren’t a kid, Emma could almost see her way to liking her, perish the thought. The only thing she knew for sure about kids was she wanted nothing to do with them. Until recently, this had seemed a really good strategy. Man, maybe it was time to see a shrink. She could do it on the down-low, pay out of pocket so there wouldn’t be a paper trail, figure out her next moves. What she really didn’t need was for anyone to find out she was getting her head examined. That happened, they’d slap her on a ward again, maybe at Andrews, maybe Lackland—see, see, she’s crazy, says so right here—and then it was a toss-up whether they put her someplace quiet or medically boarded her ass out. (She was actually surprised they hadn’t done that already; it wasn’t as if the past eighteen months were a dream. But, then again, everyone thought her little month-long mental health vacation was understandable. People were willing to cut her some slack because, you know, it wasn’t every day a woman’s husband blew his brains out all over the bathroom with his own service weapon.)

  Her going after Ben’s CO three months ago, shouting murder and cover-up? Supremely stupid.

  Scott, it appeared, was not as impressed with the kid as Emma was. Fists bunched, he took a step forward. “You little—”

  Okay, in another second, this was going to be a real story. Darting a quick look over a shoulder, Emma saw no one who looked remotely like airport security. Hell.

  “Hang on, Kim.” Whipping her phone around, Emma called, “Hey, Scott? You mind speaking up for the camera?”

  Scott’s head jerked around and then his jaw went slack, his eyes buggy. The look was almost comical. “The fuck?”

  “Hold it.” Emma’s touched off a burst; her camera went snickety-snick-snick. “So, what’s your last name, Scott?”

  “What?”

  “Paisley,” the girl said. “Thank God, I’m still a Moore.”

  “Paisley? Seriously?” Emma laughed. “Panty-ass name.”

  “Hey!” Scott purpled. “Who the fuck you calling panty-ass?”

  “Who threatens to beat up a kid?” Emma shot back. “I’m documenting all this for the record.”

  “That’s an invasion of privacy!” Scott’s ferret-like nose twitched. “You ain’t got the right!”

  “We’re in a public space,” the girl reminded him.

  Ooo, that kid needed to learn when to cool it. “Last time I checked,” Emma said, “it’s still a free country, child abuse is illegal, you are in a public space, and reporters gather all the news that’s fit to print.”

  “Really?” The girl looked at Emma with new respect. “You work for The New York Times?”

  In my dreams. If her commanding officer had anything to say about it, her next assignment might be a permanent posting to Outer Mongolia where she’d be a regular contributor to the Tibetan Tribune. Did the Air Force have listening posts out there? If not, they might build one just for her.

  “The Times might be interested,” she said to the kid. “Or The Washington Post, that’s a good one. So, Scott…” She touched off another burst and wondered when airport security was going to get its act together and storm to the rescue. “Is that Paisley like the design or with a Y?”

  “Please.” The girl’s mother slid in front of Scott, though whether she was shielding or restraining him was unclear “Thank you, but we’re okay now.” She put a hand on Scott’s arm. “We’re good, aren’t we?”

  For a second, Emma thought it could go either way. But then it seemed as if the guy’s common sense kicked in. “Yeah, we’re good. We’re fine.” Stuffing his fists in
his pockets, Scott gave them all a parting glower. “I’m going to get a coffee and something to eat, have a smoke. I’ll meet you there.”

  As Scott stalked off, the girl looked up at her mother. “That went well.”

  “Do you ever stop?” Rachel backhanded a wisp of hair from her forehead. “You’re making this so much harder than it already is. He’s trying.”

  “I agree, he’s very trying.” Then, the girl sighed and leaned into her mother’s side. “Sorry.” She looked, suddenly, as if working so hard to be the only adult in the room was simply too much. “I’m just mad.”

  “I know.” Looking toward Emma, Rachel gave a wan smile. “Thank you for your concern, but we’re good now. Are you really a reporter?” When Emma nodded, Rachel said, timidly, “You wouldn’t use—”

  Emma shook her head. “Of course not. No harm, no foul.” Besides, threats were only words. Threats were like the bullets in a loaded gun: lethal only if you pulled the trigger.

  “Thanks,” the girl said as she and her mother walked off. “I’m Mattie.”

  “Emma,” she said. “Later, gator.”

  She never dreamt for a second that this might come true.

  Chapter 2

  “Well, that sounded exciting from my end.” Kim’s voice was tinny and thin; snow always messed with Emma’s cell. “Where are you?”

  “Airport,” Emma said, trying to ignore the tinkle of bad Muzak dribbling from the airport’s overhead speakers. If Emma had to listen to Burl Ives go on about a holly, jolly Christmas one more time, her brain was going to melt. Well, if she didn’t vomit again first. Actually, she thought both were excellent possibilities. Man, instead of acid rock, they ought to blast old Burl at terrorists. After a couple of hours, those guys would be gibbering idiots.

  “I got that,” Kim said dryly. “But which one? Are you in Montana already?”

  “Nope. Catching a connection in why-not-Minot,” Emma quipped, trying for perky and chipper though she was anything but. Even after brushing her teeth a third time and swishing with mouthwash so strong her eyes watered, her mouth still tasted like something vile had taken a crap, crawled under tongue, and promptly died.

  Kim laughed. “I take it Minot’s still a garden spot?”

  “Oh, yeah, you betcha,” she said in her best Upper Midwest accent, which was really the same as North Dakota when you got right down to it because almost everyone who first settled there came from or through the Midwest. Back when she’d last been here…six years ago felt right…Minot was Fargo on steroids. (She thought the TV series was good, but the movie was way better, mostly because Frances McDormand not only had the accent down—really, all the natives sounded exactly like that—but even seven months pregnant, Sheriff Gunderson kicked some serious butt. Many women in North Dakota and most of the Upper Midwest were like that. Emma’s grandmother, a wickedly good shot who’d schooled Emma on the ins and outs of a rifle, had learned from her mother, whose own family had done a Laura Ingalls Wilder but abandoned the Dakotas in favor of heading back to the Wisconsin Northwoods because, as her Bubbe Sarah often said, Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, oy, mein Gott, you never saw so many potatoes! The only other thing to eat was prairie dog except we couldn’t—and why, you may ask? Because, girlchik, prairie dogs aren’t kosher.)

  “When do you fly out?”

  “Within the hour, I hope. If we don’t, we’ll never beat this storm.” She was camped out at the Trestle Tap House on the airport’s second floor…oh, no, sorry, that was the Terrazzo Story for the cultured among us. Whatever. Morose, bleary-eyed guys who clearly lived by the maxim that it was always five o’clock somewhere lined the bar like sardines in a can. Above the bar, three ESPN announcers splashed on a big-screen TV nattered on about college bowl picks with all the enthusiasm of manic chipmunks on speed. The air smelled of old beer, bacon, fried eggs, and warm milk.

  She’d considered eggs. Protein was supposed to be good, give her staying power, but then she thought about how slimy eggs were before they were cooked and, you know, they really did look a little bit like snotty eyes, which was mixing metaphors but whatever. In the end, she’d ordered a cup of herbal tea—something vaguely Asian she imagined only really flexible women in formfitting yoga getups choked down—and a muffin whose raisins resembled rat turds. Sawdust would’ve tasted better. She managed two nibbles before her stomach heaved and tried crawling into her throat, and she gave up.

  Cupping her tea, she turned her back on the tap house in favor of a view of the tarmac through the terminal’s enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The snow was more blowing than truly falling, great balloons of the stuff swirling back and forth in curtains through which she glimpsed snowplows with winking lights. The way the plows worked a grid reminded her of Pacmen gobbling energizers. Looking at all that made her shiver and want to crawl into her steaming cup instead of drink it. “I’m waiting for the pilot to text when he’s ready to go.”

  “Really?” Kim’s voice crackled through an earbud. “Text? What kind of airline is this?”

  “It’s not. An airline, I mean. My Delta connection got canceled. I guess it got hung up farther west, I don’t know.” On the tarmac, a worker in an enclosed yellow cab at the end of a long, extended boom mounted on a large white truck sprayed clouds of deicing liquid over a jetliner. Did they de-ice little itty-bitty bush planes? She hoped so. “I think they’re also worried about how long they can keep the runways clear with the storm headed this way,” she said, sipping at her tea, which truly sucked and no amount of sugar could possibly save. Gwyneth Paltrow always made herbal tea sound like heaven in a cup, which only went to show what a great actress the woman was. Then again, it was probably a blessing in disguise because whatever Emma couldn’t get down could not come back for a visit. “Anyway, I found this private pilot who wants to get out, too. The charter was already contracted, and he had space because somebody else didn’t show, so…” Actually, the guy was probably double-dipping, charging both the client who canceled and her, but being between that proverbial rock and a hard place, it wasn’t as if she had tons of choices.

  Well, she did have one. She could punt. She just wasn’t sure she could live with herself after. But, man, she really did want to give up, cry uncle, sign her separation papers, and go find a nice cave. Roll a rock over the entrance. Order in the occasional pizza.

  “A charter? How big is the plane?”

  “Small. Two prop job, so it’s not going to go high-high, which I guess is good?” She truthfully had no idea. Wasn’t it better to be above a storm than in it? Yeah, but what went up always had to come back down, so it probably evened out in the end. Although having flown a couple of transports in turbulence so bad even the pilot blew his cookies—always exciting, watching a guy try to steer and barf at the same time—she knew it was the in-between that could suck. One person barfed, pretty soon everybody did. A doctor once said it was a sympathetic response. But that was crap. It was the smell. These past couple of weeks of hugging porcelain, she’d become a world authority on the persuasive powers of puke.

  Jeez, quit it, will you? The image of her hanging over a bowl or blowing her cookies into an air sickness bag made her stomach lurch. She forced another sip of tea. “The plane’s got room enough for eight people and luggage,” she said. “The pilot does a lot of backcountry flying, I guess.”

  “Are you okay?” Kim sounded suspicious. “You sound weird. In fact, last night before we went out, you were acting weird. You actually looked kind of green there.”

  “No, no.” Kim had insisted on treating her to dinner and drinks. She’d only wet her lips on the hot sake and, while she liked sushi, the briny smell and glistening slabs of fish and curdled lumps of raw sea urchin made her stomach flip. All she really managed was rice. “I’m okay. Just tired. We stayed out too late on a school night, I guess.”

  “Honey, we got back to your place at nine.”

  “Okay, then I’m nervous, all right?” And sick as a dog, she could’ve ad
ded but didn’t.

  “And snappish, too.”

  “I’m fine.” She loved Kim, she really did, but she was this close to throwing her cell across the concourse. “Anyway, about the pilot?”

  “Are we changing the subject?”

  “Yes. So, he flies hunters, mainly, and fishermen all around the Mountain West and into Canada, Alaska.”

  “Oh. Well, sounds like he knows what he’s doing then, although you wouldn’t catch me dead in one of those puddle jumpers.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve considered how truly unfortunate a turn of phrase that was.”

  “You didn’t have an alternative?”

  Other than running back home and pulling the covers over my head? “For today, no. It was sort of Hobson’s choice. This horse or nothing, you know? Anyway, it’s the Air Force’s dime, so I couldn’t not go.” Though she’d certainly considered it. There were worse things than holing up in a hotel room with a remote and a bathroom within easy reach. As she recalled, Minot had some very good pizza places that delivered. Not many, but a few. On the other hand—she heard herself give a small urk-urk and pressed a hand to her mouth—maybe a loaded meat-lovers of pepperoni, sausage, ham, and bacon with extra cheese was a really bad idea. (It would almost certainly cause her bubbe to turn over in her grave. Bubbe Sarah had kept a strictly kosher house, and although Emma did not, even she couldn’t quite mix milk and meat or chow down on a Polish sausage—and oh, that sea urchin would’ve given Sarah a heart attack—without hearing her bubbe: Nu, these American Jews eating their ham and sausages and shrimp like the goyim, you’d think they never heard their grandmothers. Tu on a khazer a shtrayml, vet er vern rov. She agreed, of course. Putting a streimel on a pig would not make it a rabbi, but she’d pay good money to see that.)