Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 (4 page)

“You mean I’ve got to carry this stuff for . . . how long? A week? With its heavy sentence attached. I’m going to flush it,” Jase said. “I swear I will.”

“Close your eyes and think of your car payments,” Ferd told him. “Then tuck it back wherever you’re hiding it, and forget about it.”

So Jase did.

***

Four days later he was walking down the hall with Rochelle, Mick and Tia, on their way to algebra, when the girl smiled at him.

Jase stopped. Mick and the girls walked a few more steps and then looked to see what had happened to him. Mick’s eyes didn’t quite bulge when he saw her, but they opened wide.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, wow.”

“Hey,” said Jase. “I saw her first.”

“Yeah, but—”

Rochelle, who Mick had been trying to flirt with for the last three weeks, hit him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Ow! Why did you . . . ? Oh, um . . . Come on, Rocky, be fair. There’s not a guy in the world who wouldn’t look at
that.
”

Jase had to agree. Gleaming night black hair fell past her waist, drawing attention to the curves of a body that was . . . wow. A single wedge of dark bangs over one eye called attention to a face that was almost as good as the body.

“Give them a break,” Tia said tolerantly. “Guys have been walking into walls all over the school since she showed up.”

“Easy for you to say.” Rochelle glared at Mick.

“I didn’t walk into anything,” Jase said. But he was still staring.

“You would have,” Tia told him, “if there’d been a wall in front of you.”

“She’s new,” said Rochelle. “Just started today, and everyone’s talking about her. She’ll probably turn up in the Culture Club,” she added, turning to Jase, “if you want to meet her.”

It was like having a bucket of cold water dumped over him. Of course this gorgeous girl, gorgeous
Native
girl, would be in Culture Club. Where she’d learn that the boy she’d been smiling at was the infamous three-sixteenths himself.

So go talk to her now,
the part of Jase’s brain that ran on lust suggested.
Before she gets away!

The rest of his brain knew better.

“Come on, guys,” said Rochelle. “We’re going to be late.”

The Native girl didn’t make a big deal out of it, but she watched Jase as he walked down the hall. She smiled again as they passed her, but he didn’t stop.

***

When Jase came out of algebra she was standing by the lockers across the hall, almost as if she was waiting for him—which made no sense at all. Girls sometimes tried to interest him, once they’d seen his car. Jase couldn’t blame them. But if he wasn’t in the Tesla, girls never . . . well, hardly—

“Hey,” said the girl. “I’m new here. Could you show me where the cafeteria is?”

A lanyard in the school’s colors hung around her neck, carrying a data chip that Jase knew held all the school’s orientation stuff, including a map.

But her warm brown eyes were gazing up at him, and Jase decided not to point that out. “Sure. Why not? I mean, I’d be glad to.”

Laughter stole into those big eyes, and Jase felt his face heat. So much for suave. But she was so . . .
cute
didn’t begin to describe it.

“So, um, you’re new here? You’re coming in pretty late in the year.”

He turned down the hall toward the cafeteria, and then realized that if he’d gone the other way, taken a longer route, he could have prolonged this conversation. Not that his conversation was so brilliant.

“It took some time to find your school.” That impish smile flashed again. “But I’m hoping I won’t need to be here long.”

“You move around a lot?” Damn. Jase had been hoping to spend the next two years watching her walk down halls. He tried to think of something less sexist to say. “Is it your mother or your father who’s the traveler?”

“Not exactly.” Jase must have looked as confused as he felt because she added, “I’m trying not to lie to you. I’m trying not to repeat a lot of mistakes, which probably means I’m going to make new ones. I’m Raven, by the way.”

That kicked Jase’s mind back into function mode and his interest cooled. At least, on one level. “Boy, your parents must be serious culture geeks.”

“Culture . . . oh. You think I’m looking for a nice Eagle boy?”

“Aren’t you?” To this day, traditional Tlingit parents wanted their kids to marry someone from the proper, opposite moiety.

Jase’s mother’s moiety was Irish, which he figured meant that he could marry anyone he wanted to.

“Are you a nice Eagle boy?” Raven asked.

“No.”

“Then I’m not looking for one.” The smile was now so dazz- ling that if there’d been a wall in front of him Jase would have hit it. But they’d almost reached the cafeteria, and a different kind of wall loomed in the future. He might as well crash and get it over with.

“I’m Jase Mintok,” he said, and waited for her expression to change.

“Nice to meet you. Can you tell me what’s good for lunch in there?” Jase blinked. She hadn’t got it. Maybe her parents never talked about politics.

“I’m Michael Mintok’s son.”

She looked puzzled.

“Three-sixteenths. I’m that kid.”

Her puzzled expression was turning to concern. “I’m sorry, I can see this is important, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jase stared. “You’re really not from around here, are you?”

How could that be? Natives all over Alaska, Canada, and the lower forty-eight—even parts of Siberia—knew about
Mintok v. the Native Corp.
And she was clearly a Native, whatever else she was.

“No.” Mystery replaced the mischief in her smile. “I’m not from around here.”

She had to be yanking his leash. Someone had put her up to this. Someone particularly cruel.

“Did someone put you up to this?”

“No. It’s entirely my idea,” she said wryly.

Angry comments trembled on his tongue, but Jase managed not to blurt them out. If she wasn’t setting him up, calling her a vicious bitch would be really stupid. But if she was setting him up . . .

“Here’s the cafeteria.” He was turning away as he spoke. “Goodbye.”

“Hey! Wait! I want to talk to you!”

Jase kept walking.

***

It had settled the dilemma, but neither Jase’s anger or his lust was satisfied with the result. Jase swiped his personal ID through the school’s scanner and walked four blocks to a sandwich shop for lunch. When it first opened, Murie Academy had its own IDs, but kids kept losing them, so they converted to a PID system. Not that kids didn’t lose those too, but the fine for replacing them included a DNA scan and was high enough that very few kids lost them twice.

Jase didn’t see the girl all afternoon. He’d been so weird about everything that even if she had been interested she was probably avoiding him now. But even if she wasn’t setting him up, and really was as phenomenally ignorant of Alaska Native history, politics, and law as she seemed, sooner or later she’d make the connection and dump him. Just as well to get it over with.

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get a date. He could pick up a date just by driving down the street. It was only when they discovered that he wasn’t as interesting as his car that girls finally dumped him and moved on.

Because no one could possibly be as ’treme, as
terminal,
as Jase’s car.

His mother said he should try to get to know a girl, and let her know him, before he showed her the Tesla.

Ferd said that two girls didn’t make a pattern, and the last thing any guy needed was dating advice from his mother.

It didn’t help that when he came out of school that afternoon, he found Raven sitting on the hood of his car. Jase hoped there were no studs in her jean pockets to scratch the finish. Then he noticed how well the jeans hugged her curving butt and stopped caring about the finish.

A long moment later, after she’d stood up, held out her hand, and said something he didn’t quite remember, it occurred to Jase to wonder how she’d gotten out of her school uniform and into casual clothes so quickly.

The stretchie wasn’t as tight as the jeans, which was just as well. The note of patience in her voice told him she was repeating herself when she said, “I think I got off on the wrong foot with you too—though this time I don’t think it’s my fault. Can we take a walk somewhere and talk? There’s a park at the foot of that ridge, with a trail up the hill.”

She pointed to the west end of Flattop’s plateau, where Jase knew there was a parking lot and a trailhead leading up into the higher mountains.

The cynical part of Jase’s brain told him this was a blatant setup. The rest of him didn’t care. He hesitated.

“Please? It’s important, and it’s already taken me too long.”

“What’s important?”

Thick lashes veiled her eyes as she glanced aside, then the warm dark eyes met his.

“I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ll come with me.”

She was clearly concealing something. Curiosity stirred.

Jase pulled out his com pod and left a message for Ferd. “Canceling, bro. Tell you later.”

He smiled at Raven. “I’m all yours.”

“I hope so,” she said. “It will make things ever so much simpler.”

But she didn’t sound like she expected it.

For once, the afternoon was clear enough for him to leave the top open. Raven didn’t fall the last six inches into the seat, like his mother still did sometimes, but she didn’t look at the dash with the avidity of someone who cared about cars. On their first ride, both Nia and Ressa spouted questions about the Tesla, mostly about how fast it could go.

“You’re not a car person, are you?” Jase asked, turning on the motor and pulling out of the lot. If she wasn’t a car person, why was she so interested in him?

Setup,
a voice in the back of his mind muttered.

“I’m fine with cars,” she said. “Though why does this one have tires? It doesn’t look like the other off-road vehicles I’ve seen.”

Jase snorted. “What are you? Some kind of space alien? This is as far from an off-road vehicle as you can get!”

She frowned, adorably. “Then why does it have tires?”

Jase talked about braking and drift until her eyes began to glaze, and then tried to think of something else to say. The speed limit on residential streets was low enough that conversation would be possible all the way to the trailhead, but the sight of her hair whipping in long black ribbons wasn’t helping him think.

“Tell me,” she said quietly, “why should I have heard of Michael Mintok’s son?”

So much for romance.

“Why do girls always bring up subjects guys don’t want to talk about?”

“Why won’t guys ever talk about the things that matter? Come on. I can see this is important. I don’t want to be tripping over it every time I say something. So talk!”

The smile that accompanied the command almost made it worthwhile.

“Michael Mintok is the lawyer who brought suit in
Mintok v. the Native Corporations.
You have to know about that. It went to the Supreme Court, and affected Natives all over the U.S.”

And not always for the worse, whatever his grandfather thought.

“How did it affect them?” Raven asked. “Did it have anything to do with the dissolution of the reservations? I thought that happened about twenty years ago. You wouldn’t even be alive then. And wasn’t that about taxing casinos or something?”

Jase was so startled that he took his foot off the accelerator to stare, and the car slowed sharply as power ran back into the battery.

“Where did you come from? You can’t not know this.”

He waited for an answer, although he did speed up again after the car behind him honked.

“I could be ignorant for all kinds of reasons,” Raven pointed out. “I could have been raised in a city, by parents who ignored their heritage. I could be the kind of girl who just doesn’t care about silly lawsuits.”

Jase was watching the traffic then, but she sounded like a total groupie.

“You’re not that stupid,” he said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ll tell you where I come from later today,” she said. “And other things too, but I don’t want to start that conversation now. So pretend I’m stupid, or city bred, and tell me why
Mintok v. the Natives
makes you look so grim.”

It was probably safer than struggling with arousal while driving a high-powered car. But not by much.

“The dissolution didn’t affect Alaska Natives,” said Jase. She had to be from the lower forty-eight, or she’d have known this already. “We never really had reservations up here. What we did have was ANCSA, which settled the ownership of lots of land, including hunting and some of the mineral rights, on Alaska Natives . . . oh, about a century ago. They created village and regional corporations, and everyone who was at least one-quarter Native descent got shares in the corporations. The way it was set up, the corporations had twenty years to get themselves organized and running, to decide on policies and things, before they were able to sell their stock on the open market. But the villages got worried that too many people would just sell their stock, so changes were made to the act that allowed each corporation to make its own rules about whether or not to make its stocks public, and when or to whom people could sell it.”

“So each village became a . . . a corporation? Jeho—I mean, that sounds odd.”

“Worse than odd,” Jase told her. “With every corporation making its own rules, things got totally crazy. Some corporations managed their resources, milked the tourist trade, and became as sound as any other blue chip stock. Several of them are blue chip now.”

“What’s . . . Never mind. Go on.”

A city girl from the lower forty-eight might not know about the Native corporations, but she had to know about blue chip stocks!

“Just like any other business,” Jase went on, “a lot of the corporations failed. And since the hunting and mineral rights they held became more and more valuable, they started getting scammed by corporate raiders. They’d buy one person’s stock and then another’s, for really good prices. The moment they owned fifty-one percent of the shares, they’d turn up at the next village meeting and vote to replace the elders with a board of directors who worked for their company. At which point the Native corporation became a regular corporation, in which a few Natives happened to hold stock. That was pretty ugly,” Jase admitted.