Jenna Kernan - Eagle Warrior

Not as big a puzzle as why his shaman had chosen him for this job. Real dark horse he was and he knew it.

Morgan finished her shift and Ray trailed her out to the parking lot. Morgan stopped to pick up milk and processed cheese. Ray took the opportunity to buy beer and pork rinds. She didn’t notice him. She never did because she kept her shoulders rounded and head down all the time. He didn’t like it, wanted to shout at her to stand up straight.

Ray gazed across the space that separated them. She didn’t seem the type for secrets. But she had at least one. No one seemed to know who fathered her child, Lisa. Everyone had secrets. That made it hard to tell about a person from what you saw on the outside. And no one ever got a look at the inside.

Next Morgan drove home to the small house that she had shared with her father and still shared with her ten-year-old girl. No sign of a man in her life though. A shame. She seemed fragile and Ray wondered why no man had responded to the compulsion to look after her. Not that he was that sort. Not at all.

She stopped again at the neighbor’s to pick up Lisa. Her daughter was as skinny as a split rail with hair that flew out behind her when she ran, which she did often. In her features was the promise of beauty and none of the slinking posture her mother adopted. Lisa was bright-eyed and curious. She’d made eye contact with Ray a time or two and even thrown him a generous smile. He liked her. She was outgoing and a little crazy like him, judging from the way she climbed and swung and jumped on the playground at school during recess. But today was Saturday so no school.

When Morgan reached her dark and empty house, Ray waited on the road as Lisa charged toward the door.

April in the Arizona mountains meant that Lisa still wore a heavy coat, though it flapped open as she ran. Ray lifted his field glasses. He had the house behind hers. But this spot on the road gave him a better view of the kitchen. She never shut the curtains over the sink, so he could peer right in as she made dinner.

From his place on the shoulder, he could see both the kitchen on the front corner and one side of the house, including the back window where Morgan’s father’s bedroom was located. He caught the flash of movement in the bedroom. She left the shades up during the day; he suspected she did this for her cat, who liked sitting in that sunny window on the back of a worn upholstered chair.

Seeing a man pass the window, Ray shifted the direction of his gaze. Redirecting his field glasses, he saw that the contents of the room had been tossed about and there was someone searching the bookcase.

An instant later, Ray was out of his truck and running for the house.

Chapter Two

Morgan Hooke unlocked the front door and her daughter, Lisa, charged inside. One step took Morgan to the small rug just beyond the threshold. She exhaled, glad to finally be home. The day shifts were long and the guests were older, drank only the complimentary beverages and tipped almost nothing. Night shifts paid better, but without her father here at home, she needed to look after Lisa. That meant fewer hours and less pay. She’d picked up the Saturday hours only because a friend agreed to watch Lisa. Money had always been tight, but it had become stretched like the head of a war drum since her father’s arrest.

Morgan flicked on the light, chasing off the late-day gloom and looked to the recliner where the cat usually slept. Finding the cushion empty, she scanned the tiny room for Cookie, the cat Lisa had dragged out of a Dumpster behind the school when it was only a kitten.

Lisa had tossed her backpack by the door and now called a greeting to her pet as she entered the eat-in kitchen and switched on the light. Cookie was usually there to greet them, meowing loudly for dinner. Morgan kicked off her shoes, retrieved Lisa’s empty lunch bag from her backpack and carried both pack and bag into the kitchen. Lisa had already dropped the sack of groceries on the dinette before making her way down the hall that led to their three small bedrooms on her hunt for the gray cat with the startlingly green eyes.

Morgan frowned at the first prickling of unease. She hoped Cookie was all right because a vet visit was not in the budget.

“Cookie! Coook-key!”

Lisa sang the name and then made a familiar sound proven to lure the cat. The only noise Cookie responded to with greater frequency was that of the electric can opener.

“Mom!”

The alarm in Lisa’s voice brought Morgan around. She glanced down the hall where Lisa stood motionless with her hands lifted slightly from her sides as she stared into her grandfather’s room.

“Lisa? What’s wrong?” Morgan was already moving and had cleared half the distance separating them as she prayed that nothing had happened to Cookie. Then she saw it. Her father was in Phoenix awaiting trial. No one should be in his room. But his overturned dresser now blocked the door.

A small gray cat could not do that.

“Lisa, honey,” she whispered as the dread flooded over her suddenly clammy skin. “Come here to me right now.”

“But what happened to...” Lisa took one step forward and threw her hand over her mouth. Then she turned and ran.

Morgan did not ask what she had seen. She asked nothing as she grabbed her daughter’s wrist and ran for the closest door on bare feet. She heard the footsteps pounding down the hall and pushed Lisa ahead.

“Hurry!”

They cleared the hall and Lisa nearly reached the kitchen door when someone grabbed Morgan by her hair and tugged so hard she saw stars.

Lisa turned back. “Mom!”

A low male voice growled in Morgan’s ear. “Where’s the money?”

“Run!” she shouted to Lisa.

But her daughter hesitated.

“Get help,” she said.

That sent her daughter off. Lisa rounded the table as the kitchen door flew open. Another man stood on the back step. Lisa screamed as the man lifted her off the ground, spun her in a circle and set her behind him on the back step.

“Run,” ordered Morgan. The last thing she saw was her daughter’s wide dark eyes before her captor tugged her backward into the hall.

“Where is it?” he asked, punctuating his question with a little shake.

Morgan grabbed hold of his wrists and twisted to face her attacker. Then she punched him in the bicep as she’d been taught by her dad. The man released her. Morgan staggered back, right into the second man.

The next instant she was behind him as he continued toward her attacker.

She saw the wide shoulders and clenched fists. Short black hair, a dark hoodie and long legs clad in new blue jeans. The man beyond him was now on his feet.

There was nothing said between them but she could tell by the way that the second man stalked the first that these two were not comrades.

“Listen, buddy,” said her attacker, holding his hands up.

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Morgan winced at the cracking sound of a fist striking the man’s face. Blood sprayed on the white paint and the school photos tacked up in the hall. Morgan balled a fist before her mouth to stifle a scream. From outside Lisa shouted her mother’s name.

Her rescuer thumped her captor’s head on the hall runner as Morgan turned and fled.

* * *

RAY THOUGHT HE should have dropped the guy when he stopped fighting but gave him just one more shot for making him blow his cover. He’d been happy watching Morgan and Lisa from a distance. Experience had told him that things looked better that way. Now they’d seen him and he’d have to come up with something.

Damn.

He released the limp intruder and noticed that the housebreaker was bleeding all over himself but more important he was bleeding on Morgan’s hall runner. Ray knew women despised mud or blood on carpets.