Daughter of Destiny (16 page)

Jake gave Kai a meaningful look. “This could be the same guy that sent men to steal the totems from our nation.”

“That's what I was thinking,” Kai said. “I'll give Mike the info and have him do some serious snooping on this Marston guy.”

“These men are dark,” Ooranye murmured. “They are looking for you. That means you must get to the canyon and into the cave to find that stone mask quickly. I have a feeling they will return or keep looking for you no matter what I told them. There is much danger around you.”

Kai reached out and squeezed the elder's wrinkled, callused hand. “Thanks for all your help. We're going to make a phone call and then we'll return to you.”

“Of course. I need to draw you a map of how to reach the canyon. You must go by camel. It is too far away for you to walk there.”

“Okay…” Kai turned and fell into step at Jake's side. “I hope Mike is up.”

As they emerged from beneath the silver-green leaves of the shady gum and into the sunlight spilling across the land from the eastern horizon, Jake smiled. “We're half a world away and too many time zones to count. We have his personal number and I think you should use that one to call him.” As they hurried back to their hut, the sun was already heating up the red desert. It was beginning to feel like another blast-furnace day.

Kai crawled back into their hut. All their gear was packed in a large green canvas bag. She unzipped it and pulled out the satellite phone. Getting up, she slipped out of the hut, walked to a nearby gum tree for shade and
dialed the number that would connect them with Mike Houston.

Jake stood nearby as Kai talked to Houston on the phone. He took from his shirt pocket the notebook where he'd scribbled down the fuselage numbers earlier, and he handed it to her. Kai gave him a slight smile, her eyes warm as she held his gaze.

“Hold on, Mike, Jake has the tail numbers on that Huey for you….” She passed the phone to him. “You talk with him.”

Jake was pleased to see that Kai would entrust him to do some things on this mission. Until now, she'd been a control freak about handling everything herself, but he understood why. This was her mission and she was in charge of it. He gave her a nod of thanks and took the phone. The fact that he'd held Kai earlier was changing their relationship remarkably. Miraculously. He only hoped they would survive the dangers that lay ahead to see what the future held.

K
ai looked around as Jake continued to speak with Mike on the satellite phone. Rocket and Booster were foraging nearby on the thick clumps of ever-present spinifex. How the camels could eat that grass was beyond her. Their muzzles were so soft and velvety, and she wondered how they could handle the sharp blades of grass, which reminded her of tiny razor blades. Still, their camel friends seemed very happy here at Kalduke and enjoyed going over to the rock hole whenever they wanted a drink of water. It must be heaven for them, Kai thought, resting her hands on her hips.

She heard Jake's low voice in the background. A gray bird with a black face flew overhead. Kai had seen one yesterday, and Ooranye had called it
dulloora,
or “small gray bird.” She had looked it up in the bird guide she had brought along and knew it was a black-faced cuckoo-shrike. The bird headed directly for the towering, graceful River Red Gums. Kai was sure it had a nest somewhere in the arms of one of those magnificent trees ringing the rock hole.

“Kai?”

Turning, she saw Jake handing her the phone.

“Oh…thanks.” She took the device back. Again their fingers touched, and again that pleasant tingle raced up Kai's arm. She pulled away and focused on speaking with Mike.

“Can you call us after you run those helo numbers?”

“I'll have my assistant, Jenny, research it tomorrow morning, Kai. She'll call you just as soon as we stumble on to something. It would be one thing if this aircraft was registered in the USA. The FAA mainframe computer could spit this info out in a heartbeat. As it is, we're going to have to go through the CIA and then to Australia's spy system to get it. And that will take some time.”

“Okay, no problem,” Kai murmured. “And what about this Marston guy? Marston Enterprises?”

“I'll put one of my other assistants on that immediately. I'll wake him up and get him over to the office to start running an Interpol check on this dude. As soon as we have something on him and his activities, I'll be back in touch with you.”

“Thanks for everything. We'll wait for that call. Out.”

Jake pointed to an orange-and-yellow lizard that was taking its time crossing the red sand.

Kai hitched the phone into the belt of her Rail Riders and walked over to him. The giant lizard was about four and a half feet long. “They grow lizards Texas-size here in Australia, don't they?” she said, amazed.

“Yeah. Did you read about them in our manual? They grow five feet long. They look like miniature dragons, if you ask me. I sure wouldn't want to bump into one in the night.”

“Yeah, I think it's called a giant perentie, and you're right, I wouldn't want to run into one, either.”

Jake smiled wryly. “Ooranye said they're all over the area.”

“I hope that cave where the crystal mask is doesn't have any. Who knew a lizard could be as tall as a person?” She grimaced. “Let's get back to work. Ooranye is going to show us where that canyon is.”

 

Kai lay awake on her bedding that night. It was too hot to have any kind of blanket, so she had unrolled her thin sleeping pad and was using the saddle as her pillow. They'd spent most of the day repacking and getting ready to go to the canyon, after Ooranye showed them where it was located. In Jake's estimation, it was a full day's ride away and they'd hurriedly left in the late afternoon, when the brutal heat of the day was beginning to ease off. They'd traveled one-third of the distance to the cave before night had fallen around them. After they'd set up camp, Kai had cooked succulent kangaroo meat over a small campfire. Now, as she looked at the luminous dials on her watch, she saw it was nearly midnight. They'd gone to bed at 9:00 p.m. The stars in the black sky above were so close and bright. Kai couldn't sleep. Her mind was going in a hundred different directions. Mike Houston had not called them back. He'd said it would take time, but she was impatient by nature. Her gaze shifted to Jake, who lay a couple of feet away on his sleeping pad.

“Are you asleep?” she asked.

“No.”

“I didn't hear you snoring, so I figured you were still awake.”

Kai heard him chuckle. “I don't snore.”

“Dude, you do.”

“Well, okay…you do, too.”

Her brows lifted and she laughed. “I do
not!
”

“Trust me, I can tape record it some day if you want.”

Laughter gurgled up through her chest and Kai grinned lopsidedly. “I know—snoring is a gender-neutral thing all two-leggeds do.”

“Oh, so you'll admit it?”

She heard the smile in Jake's low voice. When he spoke like that, her flesh riffled with pleasure. As a little girl she had loved his voice; even then he'd had a soothing quality to his tone that automatically alleviated the coiled tension she felt all the time. He was doing that now, whether he knew it or not. Kai was grateful, but she didn't voice it.

Sighing, she turned on her side to face Jake, who was barely visible in the starlight. “I can't sleep. My mind won't shut off….”

Jake studied Kai. The moon was in the sky, shedding just enough light for him to see her serious features. “Let's talk then. We have a lot to catch up on between us.”

Nodding, Kai said, “I know so little about you since…well, since I got sent to that foster home in Asheville, after my folks died. You said your dad was stationed in Germany when you were a kid?”

Pleased that she was asking, Jake said, “Yes. After you left the res, like I told you before, my father, who was in the Air Force, got orders to go overseas to Germany. We followed.”

“That must have been really exciting, a chance to live in Europe. But leaving the res would have been tough in some ways….” Kai tried to put herself in Jake's shoes.

“It was. I had no way to contact you. I sent a letter to your Gram, but it never reached her, I guess. Did you try to contact me after you got situated with your foster family?” Jake knew he was on fragile ground with her now. He remembered only too well the day when Kai had been taken by the state. It had torn his heart in half. He'd cried right along with Grams on that rickety old wooden porch of her cabin. She'd held him and he'd clung to her, both of them feeling bereft over losing Kai.

“I—well, I was in shock for a long time, looking back on it, Jake. I was thrown into a new family, given a ‘new' mother and father, along with three stepbrothers, and I didn't even think about contacting you….”

“Understandable,” Jake murmured. He heard the pain in her voice.

“I wanted to….”

His heart thumped hard in his chest. “You did?”

“I was lonely. I missed you….” There, the truth was out. Kai felt her heart throb with pain from the past, but admitting it seemed to soothe some of it away.

“I missed you, too. I was lonely without you in my life, Kai.” Jake grappled inwardly with memories from that time. Looking back on it, he realized he'd had a childhood crush on Kai, a case of puppy love. Only, he realized, he'd never outgrown his love for her.

Had she ever loved him? Jake wasn't sure. There was a huge difference between her needing him as a safe haven
and loving him. Kai had never told him she loved him. Not then and not now.

“The state took me away because they felt Grams was too old to care for me, as I told you before. I was thirteen when she finally convinced the court she could, raising a hell of a fuss in the process. She was smart—she went to the newspapers and television stations and told her story of how they'd taken her granddaughter away from her because she was considered too old.” Chuckling, Kai said, “I stayed in contact with Grams by letter. You know, she's never had a phone. Still doesn't. About once every three months, my foster family would take me out to visit her on the res for the day, and that was great. Sometimes Grams's friends, who had a car, would bring her for a visit in Asheville. I always loved those days when she came….”

Jake closed his eyes and felt Kai's pain at the separation from her grandmother. Grams's address read “Rabbit Holler, North Carolina” and that was all. People knew where the cabins were by names of the meadows, hills, mountains and hollows where they were situated. “I'm glad you kept contact with her, Kai. That was important for both of you.”

“It was my lifeline, Jake. By the time I was sent back to the res to live with Grams, you were long gone. I asked her about you and she said you'd left shortly after I did.”

“Yes. I didn't want to go, though….”

Kai stared at his darkened form. She heard sadness in his husky voice. Afraid to ask why, she muttered, “As exciting as it would be to live in Europe, I don't know how you adjusted to a foreign country as a kid, Jake. I found it
hard enough going from my warring family into the foster home, which was so different from what I knew before. Culture shock, I suppose.”

Feeling a warmth in his chest over Kai's decision to share on a personal level with him, Jake said, “It wasn't easy for either of us. My mother took moving to a foreign country as an adventure and an opportunity. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and it made me feel a little better about leaving the res. She had me learn German and French. There were a lot of Moroccan people outside the base where we lived who spoke only French. So I picked up two extra languages. She made the transition a lot easier for me with her attitude.” Jake was starving for information on Kai—her life since he'd left the res, how she'd coped, what experiences she'd had along the way, what she had learned from life thus far because of them. Everything about her interested him. Still, Jake knew he had to quell his curiosity. If he was too forward, too aggressive in asking questions, she'd retreat from him.

In some ways, Kai was like a wounded animal who trusted no one outside herself. Why should she? She'd grown up in a war zone, a dysfunctional family, and was the only survivor. Jake knew Kai didn't have a lot of social skills when it came to interacting with people. All she could do was fight to survive daily in that toxic household. Still, the fact that she was reaching out, considering his welfare, showed that she was trying to be sensitive toward other people rather than just focused on herself.

“Do you know what my foster family taught me?”

“No. What?”

“My foster father, Al Goodings, was a pilot for a major airline. He used to often go to the Asheville airport to fly his Cessna, a small plane he owned, and would ask if I wanted to go along. The three boys that they'd adopted had no interest in flying, but I did. I jumped at the chance.” Kai's voice softened. “He was a straightlaced, retired military dude, but he let me sit in the copilot's seat when he flew that plane. When we got up to altitude, he told me to put my hands on the wheel and hold it. I remember taking command of the plane with his direction and thinking that I'd died and gone to heaven.” Kai chuckled. “So talk about making changes. You went to a foreign country and learned new languages, and I went to a foster home where I was taught how to fly a plane. By the time I was eleven years old, I had my private pilot's license. I was one of the few kids of my age in the U.S. that held one. My foster dad was my first positive male role model. I love him for what he did. And he never fought to keep me when Grams got the right to bring me back to the res. I continued to learn how to fly. He paid for my lessons. Every week he'd drive out to the res and take me to the airport for another hour or two of flying. By the time I graduated from high school, I had six hundred hours in single-engine planes. I still keep in touch with my foster parents to this day. They are good people.”

“Even adversity hands us gifts,” Jake murmured, closing his eyes. He was happy that Kai had had something good happen to her after losing her parents in that terrible crash.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Al instilled a hunger for flying in me that I carried back to the res. When I lived with Grams
I worked to get a 4.0 average in school, and then went on to college to get a degree in aerodynamics. I joined the ROTC at Ohio State University, and after I graduated, I was taken into the U.S. Navy for flight training at Pensacola. The rest is history.” She smiled and rolled over on her back. “Isn't it funny how life twists and turns like a snake?”

Jake smiled sleepily at her. “Yes. And I'm glad this latest twist brought us together again.”