slid into the seat opposite his brother, and just as he was about to speak, his phone rang for the second time that night. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the caller’s ID. Grunting when he saw it was Merrick, he answered his phone with an edge to his voice.
“This better be important, it’s the middle of the damn night out here, and remember I don’t work for you anymore.”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“If it’s about what we chatted about weeks ago—”
“Another agent fell today. One of ours.”
“And he was on the list?”
“Yes. Tom Walrich.”
Jacy didn’t recognize the name, but that didn’t mean much. There were hundreds of agents floating in and out of Onyxx headquarters.
“I just called to update you. Thought you should know.”
Make me feel guilty for retiring and try to pull me back in, Jacy thought. But he wasn’t going to take the bait. He would never be a hundred percent again, and that’s what Onyxx agents were all about. He wasn’t one of them anymore, and Merrick needed to accept that and forget about him.
“If you’re not coming back in, watch your back out there. You’re on the list. Retired or not, if and when your number’s up, it’s up. And right now we can’t do a damn thing but watch and wait.”
“Who’s working on the case?”
“Pierce has agreed to step in, but if you come up with any ideas, I would appreciate it if you’d contact him or me. You still have a file on this one, right?”
“It’s in my computer.”
“And you’ve got both of our numbers?”
“You know I do.”
“Good. Well, that’s it, then.”
“That’s it.”
There was a moment of silence as if Merrick wanted to say more, then the line went dead. When Jacy shoved the phone back in his pocket, Tate had finished his eighth beer and was starting on number nine.
Jacy asked, “Is the old woman really missing, or was the call just a ploy to get me here so I can take you home again after you pass out?”
Tate set down his bottle after chugging half. “It’s true. Koko’s gone.”
“How can she be gone? Grandmother was up at my place raising hell all afternoon. She didn’t mention she was going anywhere.”
“When she got back from your place she made supper, then went and sat down in her rockin’ chair. I never thought much about where she sat until she started to make those noises. You know the ones I’m talkin’ about. She was seein’ somethin’ again.”
Jacy swore, knowing where this was leading. “You’re telling me she had another vision?”
“And this one put a burr under her real quick.”
When Tate reached for his beer, Jacy knocked his hand away. “So where did she take off to?”
“I don’t know. Don’t think she really knew. Those pictures she sees never make too much sense in the beginnin’. You know that.”
“So where is Koko now?”
“She said a bird was callin’ to her in the mountains.”
“Which mountain?”
“She never said. I don’t think she knew.”
“But you let her go anyway?”
“She took off before I had a chance to pull on my boots. When I got outside she was gone.”
“No tracks to follow?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“You’re an Indian. Tracks are supposed to be your specialty.” Jacy’s sarcasm was offered without a smile.
Tate leaned forward. “Not all of us are as gifted as you, little brother.”
“Apparently not.”
Tate swore. “I have a gift.”
“High tolerance. And I’m not talking in reference to pain.”
“I can straddle a Harley twin-V drunk on my ass going a hundred and keep it on the road.”
“A useful talent when you got the police taking chase.”
“You’re damn right. A huckleberry picker, I’m not. Or a trapline savage. You’ve turned into a rude sonofabitch, Moon. You never used to be such an asshole.”
“I’ve always been an asshole.” Jacy shoved the beer bottle in Tate’s direction. “Here, have a little more. You’re obviously not drunk enough.”
“Insultin’ bastard.”
“I call a turd a turd.”
“You name-callin’ me?”
“No.”
“You’re just still pissed off about that limp you got as a souvenir for services rendered. You should have done the time like me, and told that agency to go to hell. You’d have been out in a year.”
Jacy ignored the jibe and went back to the reason Tate had called him. “You should have stopped Koko before she left the cabin.”
“Stop the old woman? Like I could have done that. When she has her mind set, no one stops Koko. She would have cut me where I stood if I had gotten between her and the front door.”
Tate was six foot and weighed two-eighty. Koko was all of ninety pounds, and that was with her pockets loaded down with rocks.
“And you know me and the woods don’t like each other much.”
Jacy rubbed his clean-shaven face, more than a little frustrated with his brother. But it was true. Tate could get turned around in his own backyard. Put him on his Harley cruising a freeway, though, and his brother could tell you which direction he was going by the smell of the wind he was bucking.
Still, he should have stopped the old woman. Koko was seventy-six and had no business taking off in the middle of the night to answer a damn vision on a mountain.
“She packed her rucksack. Took some food.”
“Anything else?”
Tate scratched his chin. “Her medicine bag and a couple of blankets. That knife you gave her was on her hip.”
“Dammit, Tate, we’ve been getting snow in the high country for a long week. What the hell were you thinking, letting her
