Mountain Echoes (The Walker Papers) (13 page)

Chapter Twelve

I didn’t know what my expression was, but Morrison came closer and put his hand at the small of my back. My heart’s tempo had picked up to an improbable degree, drowning out Sara’s voice. My face felt flushed and my fingers were freezing, but then those reversed while my stomach churned. Sara, distantly, was saying, “She says his bed hasn’t been slept in and the back door th anre was open. Their property backs up onto the mountains, Joanne.”

“He’s twelve,” I protested faintly. “How far could he have gotten in eight hours?” It was a stupid question. Even assuming he’d gone into the mountains at the very slow pace of a mile an hour, that made for a lot of square mileage to cover. Realistically he would know at least a few miles of the land well enough to move much, much faster than that, even at night. I stopped being able to extrapolate how much distance he could have covered. It was busywork anyway, my brain trying desperately to distract itself with numbers while adrenaline pumped through, urging me to move.

“The town is putting a search party together already, and he’s been reported missing in the NCIC and CUE, but—”

“But I’m already up here. CUE?” I knew the National Crime Information Center, but CUE was new to me and would give Sara something to talk about while I folded my hand around the phone and triggered the Sight. Petite herself flared reassuring, solid green, and Morrison had faint red tinges of concern dancing through his purple and blue aura. The mountains were brilliant with color, new leaves on trees burning electric blue, the sap running strong and bright. Bugs and larger animals made different-colored shadows against the blue pulsing life in the trees, but I was looking beyond that. Way beyond.

The Sight wasn’t exactly X-ray vision, but for my purposes it was close enough. I couldn’t track magic, but I could
See
it, and Aidan’s aura was brilliant and distinctive. Phone still folded in my hand, I turned my attention up into the hills, searching for the blaze of near-white blend that was Aidan Monroe’s presence.

Nothing. I gritted, “We’ll find him,” over Sara’s explanation about the Community United Effort, and hung up. “Horrible energy-sucking monsters have been moved into second place on the priority list. Aidan’s missing.”

“Your son.”

“Yeah. Ada’s son,” I said after a moment, because it was bizarre hearing someone else say those words aloud. I thought of Aidan as my son in the privacy of my head, but to the world outside my head, he was Ada’s. “Not that I’m trying to write him off. It’s just that she’s put all the time and effort in. All I did was give birth. A long time ago.” I wet my lips, then swallowed. I meant it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. Terrified, even. “I don’t want anything to happen to him, Morrison. He’s just a kid, and my screwed-up life is coming in to haunt him.”

“Your life...” Morrison paused long enough to make me give a hard little laugh.

“Isn’t screwed up, is that what you were going to say? Thanks, but it is. More than most.”

“Differently from most.” He thought about that, then exhaled and admitted, “More than most. Speaking of which, Walker, it’s a bad time, but how are you doing with the Patricia Raleigh incident?”

“Did she die?”

“No.”

“Then I’m fine.” I wasn’t certain it was true. Two weeks ago I’d shot a woman to keep her from killing my detective partner. I hadn’t shot to kill, and she’d survived, but shooting someone was a big deal all by itself. For me, though, it had also been the spark setting off two weeks of explosive, nonstop action. That kind of thing looked cool in movies, but was exhausting when it really happened. I was going to have a hell of a lot to work through when things slowed down.

At the rate I was goirat alsong, that would happen when I was about eighty. “I’ll be fine, anyway,” I amended. “Don’t worry about it right now. We have other problems. Aidan apparently knows these hills like the back of his hand, and he really wanted to go with me yesterday when it looked like I was going monster-hunting. If he’s gone hunting by himself....”

“He’ll be fine,” Morrison promised, and since, like George Washington, Morrison never told a lie, I accepted the reassurance gratefully. He edged me aside to pick up where I’d left off: packing the shotgun and other bits of the arsenal I’d put in Petite’s trunk over the past several months. “I’m glad no one stopped me for speeding. I had no idea what you had in the trunk. Is anything in here illegal?”

“I have permits for all of it. Were you really speeding? Of course you were.” I took a back holster for the sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk and slung it on, but I was trying to stare at Morrison over my shoulder while he slid the shotgun home. It had a comfortable weight to it, though I bet after a day’s hike it wouldn’t be so comfy. “You really just drove across the country in two days, Morrison? Did you
sleep?
”

“Not much. I made good time through the Midwest and stopped at a motel for about six hours.”

I turned around to stare at him with my heart and my libido both speeding up. I’d driven that route when I was seventeen, all the way through South Dakota and into the speed-limit-free zone of Montana. I had a fair sense of what
good time
meant, in those regards, and I knew for damned sure what Petite’s upper speed range was.
I
had made it across the country, North Carolina to Seattle, and avoiding Ohio, which was lousy with cops, in about forty hours, including sleep, stopping for food, and climbing a mountain to look at the wild horse monument built there. My average speed had been around 75 miles an hour, and that took traffic jams into account. My
top
speed had been close to Petite’s nominal upper limit of 130, but I’d never quite pegged it. One of my goals in life was to bring her to Utah and let her rip on the salt flats.

The idea of Morrison tearing across the country at an average speed in excess of sixty miles an hour was one of the sexier images I’d been presented with lately. My cheeks flushed. Morrison looked amused. “You all right, Walker?”

I’d said it before, but it was worth repeating, except this time I said it in a lower, more throaty voice. “I didn’t know you drove that well.”

“Driving fast isn’t the same as driving well.” He gave Petite a sideways glance, then admitted, “She can move.”

My grin was big enough to split my head. I patted Petite proprietorially and beamed some more as Morrison put on his best official-cop face and went back to ransacking Petite’s trunk. He didn’t ask about the flask of holy water or the wooden stakes. Then he went around to the driver’s side, flipped the seat forward, and took out two more completely unexpected items from behind the seat.

The first was a black leather coat, which he shrugged on and magically transformed from Michael Morrison, Seattle police captain, to Mike Morrison, In Need of a Motorcycle and Possibly Not The Boy You Bring Home To Mother, After All. There was suddenly not enough air in the whole world. I got dizzy. Morrison glanced at me and smirked. I blushed. He laughed, and I said,
“Well!”

“Glad you approve.” Then he took the other item out and offered it to me.

My blush turned intosh

My drum. The skin drum given to me by the elders, Carrie Little Turtle included, when I turned fifteen. Aside from Petite, it was easily my most prized possession. Almost two feet across, its thin leather was stretched across a wooden frame. Crossbars were set into the frame’s insides, providing a handhold. Feathers and beads trailed from leather strings around the frame’s edge, and the images painted onto the drum skin were as bright and vibrant as they’d been nearly thirteen years ago when it had been given to me.

But the peculiar thing was, they had changed. Or one of them had, at least. A raven still arched over two other animals, their orientation giving the drum’s circle a top and bottom. On the left was a rattlesnake, poised to strike. But on the right, for more than a decade, a wolf or a coyote—I’d never been sure which—had faced the rattlesnake. Six months ago the painting had begun to fade and warp like it had been soaked, but the drum itself never lost any of its tension. I hadn’t been able to tell what was coming up in the coyote’s place, though even I had understood the change indicated a waning of my mentor’s influence on me.

Now, though, the image was there, fresh and clear as if it had always been the one painted onto the drum. A praying mantis, long legs folded and heart-shaped face examining the rattlesnake across from it. I touched it cautiously, a little afraid it would smear, though I knew perfectly well it was magic, not paint, staining the leather. I said
Subtle,
inside the confines of my head, and all three of my spirit animals radiated amusement. Most people didn’t go around announcing to the world what form their spirit guides took. I guessed I couldn’t do anything like most people did, and lifted my smile to Morrison. “Thank you.”

He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “I thought you might want it.”

“You...” I shook my head, still smiling. I was alternating between having the best and worst moments of my life the past couple weeks, crashing from one to the other with no real warning. Despite the low moments, Morrison’s presence and thoughtfulness were pulling everything heavily toward it being the best of times. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting this. Thank you. You’re going to roast in that coat, up in the mountains.”

“I’d rather have it in case we’re out there all night. Unless you can keep us warm.”

My eyebrows did a lascivious waggle, all of their own accord. Morrison laughed, but he had a good point. I went to get my own coat and a backpack while he tucked his gun—Les had left it on Petite’s roof—back into its holster.

Ankle-length white leather was even less practical for mountain climbing than Morrison’s black bomber jacket. I stared at my new coat, still in love with it but having a moment of vicious practicality regarding the upcoming cost of maintenance on the thing. On the other hand, the only other coat I had with me was the winter-weight parka I’d been wearing when I went to SeaTac two weeks ago, and there was no way I was wearing
that
hiking. Feeling a little silly, I pulled the shotgun holster off and the coat on, wondering if the former would fit over the latter.

To my surprise, it did. I belted the holster and turned around to find Morrison looking at me with much the same stunned gaze I’d delivered unto him a few minutes ago. I ducked my head, self-conscious as he had not been, and studied the toes of my stompy boots as I listened to him cross toward me. Hs tliverede tipped my chin up until I met his eyes, and then with great solemnity, said, “Nice coat.”

My discomfort vanished and I laughed aloud. “Did Gary put you up to that?”

“No, why?”

“That’s what he said, too, that’s all. Thanks. I kind of liked it.”

“You look like one of the good guys.” Morrison kissed me and went back to Petite, leaving me all but dancing in his wake. The whole point of the coat was to look like a good guy. I felt like I could take on anything if I was projecting the right image.

We were packed up in less than five minutes. My backpack didn’t fit all that comfortably over the coat and shotgun holster, but it was better than stuffing my pockets with ammo. I locked Petite, informed the gods that if anything happened to her they would have me to reckon with, and Morrison and I walked into the Appalachian Mountains like a modern-day Lewis and Clark.

We were barely forty feet in before Morrison made a sound of satisfaction and called me over with a crooked finger. Bent grass, broken branches and hints of heel prints were visible, the wights’ high-speed escape left its mark. Either that or this
was
the path most people had been taking up to the Nothing Holler, which I suggested to Morrison in apologetic tones. He said, “I think you’d better fill me in,” and I did as we hiked up the mountainside.

He didn’t interrupt often, once with a “They’d really make it that difficult for Sara because she’s a Fed?” that wasn’t so much disbelieving as a sigh at the human condition, and later with a quiet “It wasn’t your fault, Walker.”

“People keep saying that. Doesn’t make it any easier to believe.” We crested the mountain as I finished catching Morrison up, and there we paused, taking in the view. I loved Seattle and the sharp, ragged Rockies in its distance, but North Carolina’s soft old mountains and hazy landscape were welcoming in a way the Pacific Northwest would never seem, to me. I inhaled deeply, and Morrison cast me a cautious look.

“Miss it?”

“More than I realized.” After a beat, I recognized the real intent behind the question, and shook my head. “Not enough to come back, except maybe to visit. Too much water under this bridge. I’m pretty dedicated to Seattle at this point.”

A flash of regret sang through me as I remembered the expression on my friend and mentor Coyote’s face when he’d realized that I really wasn’t ever going to give up my cool Seattle street stomping grounds for the heat and wilderness of Arizona. It wasn’t a lot of regret, especially with the reasons for my decision standing right here beside me on a low-rolling mountaintop, but the echo of Coyote’s fear in Morrison’s question brought it to mind. His eyebrows quirked, suggesting he was reading something of my emotions in my face, but I didn’t think this was a great time to explain I was thinking about another man. “Trust me, Morrison. I’m coming home with you when this is over.”