were older because you’re so tall. You’re a whole lot taller than I am. You could pass for high school, easy.”
He straightened his spine as far as it would go until he realized that stretching himself made his too-short jeans rise up even higher above his ankles.
“I bet you’re glad you came to meet her now, aren’t you?” Ashley snickered, “Some dog, huh, Jack?”
Still smiling, but looking puzzled, Lucky asked, “Dog? What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that my dumb brother Jack said that with a name like Lucky, you must be a—”
Jack leaped to his feet so fast he felt his own teeth rattle. He grabbed his sister’s arm and growled, “Come with me, Ashley. Now!”
“Why? Where?”
“We’re going to get Lucky a drink.”
“That would be great,” Lucky murmured. “A Coke, if you’ve got one. Or, water’s fine.”
Ashley writhed under Jack’s grip as she argued, “Both of us don’t need to go….”
“Yes, we do!” Eyes blazing, Jack dragged his sister into the hall.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “What did I do?”
He lit into her with a hissing tirade of furiously whispered words, telling her how she’d humiliated him and that she’d just better figure out when to keep her mouth shut if she knew what was good for her. Stung, Ashley looked at him, wide-eyed. “I was only teasing, Jack. Geesh, when did you get so sensitive?”
Clamping her arm even tighter, Jack ordered, “I don’t want you embarrassing me in front of Lucky. Now, you go back into that living room and talk nice to her while I get the drink. But don’t you say one word about me to her. Don’t even think about it. Got it?”
“Who wants to?” For the third time in an hour, Ashley flounced off. Glowering, he watched her go. Then he turned toward the kitchen. Almost at the door, he stopped abruptly because he heard the social worker mentioning Lucky’s name.
“…such a beautiful girl,” Ms. Lopez was saying. “That hair—all those auburn curls!”
“Yes, she’s very pretty,” Olivia agreed.
Ms. Lopez continued, “And as striking as Lucky is, you’d think someone somewhere would have noticed her and remembered her. But the police can’t track her, and she won’t tell us anything about herself except for that ridiculous name. Lucky Deal—what kind of a name is that?”
“Obviously fake,” Steven answered.
“Making it impossible to trace,” Ms. Lopez added.
Jack knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t stop himself. He stayed hidden behind the wall, listening intently as Ms. Lopez talked to his parents.
“She’s a charmer, but at times she can act quite odd. We’d interrogated her—unsuccessfully, I might add—and we’d begun filling out the papers to bring her here. All of a sudden she jumped up and demanded to make a phone call. It had to be right then, she insisted, that very minute. She created a huge fuss, yelling that even if she was a juvenile, she was entitled to one phone call.”
“Was she?” Olivia asked.
“No, but we let her use the phone anyway. Since she refused to tell us who she was calling, we wanted to trace it.”
“Who was it to?” Steven wondered.
“We didn’t find out. But we do know she dialed the number of a phone booth in Park City, Utah.”
Hesitating, Jack decided this was not the time to walk into the kitchen and rummage through the refrigerator for a soft drink. The last words he heard as he turned away were a warning from Ms. Lopez.
“It sounds as if your assignment at Mesa Verde is an important one, Olivia, and I can’t tell you how grateful we are that you’re willing to include Lucky in your plans at the last minute like this. Our agency is hoping that a trip to a beautiful park might be just the distraction she needs to let down her defenses and tell you about herself. But….”
“But what?” Olivia asked.
“You’ll need to be careful. There’s something not quite right about Lucky.”
“Meaning?” Steven asked.
“Meaning—watch your back. Lucky’s a handful. Cougars aren’t the only creatures that can turn on you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jack tossed restlessly. Lying flat on the edge of the cliff, he clutched brittle rock with his fingernails as he stared down a vast chasm to the canyon floor. Then the rock crumbled into sand, shattering his safe handhold, plunging him into peril. He was falling. He heard the wind, heard Lucky’s voice whisper, “Mesa Verde.” Or maybe it was the wind that sighed the words as they streamed around him: “Flying. Flying. To Colorado.”
With a start, he rose out of the terrifying plunge of his dream to find his fingers curled stiffly around the edge of his quilt. Still, the soft voice whispered inside his head, even after he convinced himself he was awake and was no longer dreaming. Jack rolled out of his bed onto his feet and padded to the bedroom door, opening it just a crack.
A small, arched alcove in the hall held one of the Landons’ telephones. Lucky stood there, hunched over, cradling the receiver, speaking in low tones with her back turned toward Jack’s door. Barefoot, she’d wrapped herself in a terry cloth robe Olivia had lent her. As she pressed the phone against her ear, the robe’s full sleeve slid back to reveal her wristwatch. Jack had noticed the watch earlier in the evening. He remembered thinking then that it was a large, chunky-looking one for a girl to wear. More like a man’s. Now he could easily read the glowing digital numbers: 2:10 a.m. The middle of the night.
“It’ll be OK,” she was saying softly. “Don’t worry so much. I can handle them.”
She hung up then. When she turned around and noticed Jack, she jumped in surprise. No smile this time: Her startled eyes turned as cold as green ice. “What did you hear?” she demanded.
He stammered, “Nothing. Just, like, something about you can handle—I don’t know what.” His eyebrows drew together as his mind focused on her and on the telephone that now lay back in its cradle. She shouldn’t be here, calling someone in secret. The last of his sleepiness evaporated as his mind finally comprehended what was happening. “Wait, what are you doing? Who were you calling?”
It seemed to Jack that a lot of different looks flitted across Lucky’s face, as if she were searching for the right one. Suddenly, her face turned soft, pleading.
“Shhhh!” She pointed toward Steven and Olivia’s bedroom door. “Quiet! Please?” Then, gesturing toward the living room, she tiptoed down the hall, away from where the rest of the Landons were sleeping. Jack followed, not sure what he should do, but knowing he could call out for his folks in an instant if he needed them. For now, he wanted to understand what Lucky was up to.
She motioned
