The Gift of the Dragon Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1, A Death in the Rain

  Chapter 2, A Girl with a Dragon

  Chapter 3, A Fire in the Night

  Chapter 4, When an Owl Calls

  Chapter 5, A Dangerous Woman

  Chapter 6, White Sails in the Moonlight

  Chapter 7, The Hardest Part

  Chapter 8, A Hand in the Dark

  Chapter 9, A Dream Remembered

  Chapter 10, Adequate Performance

  Chapter 11, Endurance

  Chapter 12, It Must Have Been the Roses

  Chapter 13, Time to Go

  Chapter 14, A Story at the Golden Shores

  Thank you

  Acknowledgements

  THE GIFT OF THE DRAGON

  Michael Murray

  Burnt River Press

  Nokomis

  Chapter 1, A Death in the Rain

  Renae

  The man lying in the alley opened his eyes wide. “Mr. Northwin, please, you don't understand. I had to go. My son—”

  “Victor, you know the rules. Leaving is not an option. Even to save your son.”

  Renae’s father, Laird, passed the HA gun to her. The big weapon looked something like a power drill. At thirteen years old and weighing less than a hundred pounds, Renae could barely lift it.

  “When you signed on with us, you made a deal. You knew that wasn’t a deal you could break.” Laird turned and gestured to Renae.

  The rain felt like a waterfall on her shoulders at two in the morning in this alley off Tenth Street in Miami Beach.

  She hefted the weapon and pointed it at Victor. As the daughter of the head of Guardian Security, Renae had to be able to do some distasteful things. She had to prove herself ready for the life she would inherit. The rain poured on, dripping from her blue poncho, while leaves and garbage flowed around her boots.

  The man stared into Renae’s eyes. “Please…”

  Laird held up his hand. “You dishonor yourself, Victor. You know what we have to do, and you know why.” He took a step back. “Renae!”

  Renae closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Victor’s body stiffened, his eyes went wide, and then he went limp.

  The weapon was designed to kill cleanly. Much of its heft came from a miniature battery-powered refrigerator. When fired, the gun shot a small frozen dart that delivered a lethal dose of succinylcholine, a chemical that caused muscle paralysis. The resulting injury mimicked a heart attack and when the dart melted, it left no trace. Her father had made her memorize the name of the chemical as part of her lessons that day.

  She lowered the weapon. “What do we do now?”

  Her brother Mark asked, “We leave?”

  Laird looked at her. “You understand why we had to do that?” His eyes were usually smiling when he addressed her, but at the moment, they were serious.

  She nodded. “We have responsibilities.”

  “Because of our privileges,” Mark added. They both knew the saying.

  “Yes. He was a member of our family. Not by blood relation, but by the next best thing. We take care of our own, and we keep our own in line. This is the way things are.”

  Renae looked down at Victor’s body. “What about the police? When they find him?”

  Laird looked at the ragged man thoughtfully. “That weapon’s designed to make his death look like a heart attack. He’s also not looking his best. The street didn’t agree with him. When they find him, they’ll think he’s just another homeless guy, dead of an overdose.”

  “But they’ve crime scene investigators with special equipment. I saw them on TV,” Mark cried.

  “You watch that stuff too much. It’s all fake,” Renae said.

  “Their best investigators are good, almost as good as our own people. They won’t bring out the big guns on this case, though. He looks like a drug addict, and there are no signs of violence. Last year, there were six thousand unsolved homicides in this country, and many more deaths deemed accidental. The police are very busy.” Laird smiled at Mark. “Even Horatio would write this one off as natural causes.”

  Mark looked at the HA gun. “Can I carry it?” Relieved to be rid of its weight, Renae put the weapon back in its bag and gave it to him.

  The three Northwins slogged west on Tenth Street back to their SUV, which they had left parked on Euclid Street. The raindrops pounded down like watery missiles, a heavy mist rising from the pavement as the drops exploded, sucking up what little illumination the few operating streetlights provided. As they passed a three-story yellow apartment building, four shapes sprang out from the ragged hedges in front of it, blocking their path.

  “What you got your little family out in this weather for, old man?” a male voice asked.

  The one who spoke had his head covered by the hood of a rain jacket. Renae moved closer to her father.

  A second shape reached for the duffel bag Mark carried. “That looks like a heavy bag, boy. What ya got in there?”

  Twelve-year-old Mark put the bag behind him. “Nothing for you.”

  Laird stepped in front of him. “Move along, now. We’re just visiting an old friend. We don’t have anything worth stealing.”

  Renae recognized her father’s tone—gentle, but with an edge. She knew the four guys would get one more warning from her father before he acted, and he really hated muggers. She had seen enough death this night. “Leave us alone, you idiots!” Her voice cracked on the word “idiots.” That probably wasn’t very frightening to them.

  The shortest attacker, still a head taller than Renae, stepped into enough light that she could see he held a gun. “You’re in the wrong place, little girl! This my street!”

  He held the gun next to his face, which Renae thought a dumb thing to do. If he fired it like that, the recoil would take out his eye. He has blue eyes.

  Renae didn’t wait for her father’s second warning. She put up her hands, and in case they couldn’t see her any better than she could see them, said, “I’ve got my hands up. Don’t shoot. You can have our stuff.”

  The gunman’s body relaxed a little. He walked toward her. “Smart move, kid.”

  With her hands up, Renae jumped slightly and pushed the gun away with her right hand in a move she practiced with Mark many times while their father coached them. She fired a hard strike with the heel of her left hand into the dark shape where her attacker’s face should be. She felt his chin crunch and saw the flash of white teeth.

  She brought her left hand down to meet her right, holding the attacker’s gun. With both hands, she twisted and heard the sound of a finger bone breaking. Renae stepped back, pointing the gun at the center of the moaning dark shape. A car came down Tenth Street, moving slowly in the rain, shining its lights on the scene. A second attacker wearing a brown jacket held a gun to her father’s head, while the other two bobbed around Mark, who kept them at bay with a series of kicks.

  “Drop that gun, girl, or I shoot your daddy! I’ll shoot him! Don’t test me!”

  Laird brought his hand up and inside Brown Jacket’s gun arm, pushing it away and down. His other hand grabbed the small automatic by the top of the barrel. The gun fired with a sudden crack. The bullet hit the street and whined off the pavement. Brakes screeched, and the oncoming car swerved.

  Renae knew that her father held the gun’s slide, preventing a second round from being loaded by the automatic’s action. They practiced that too. She could hear her father’s elbow strike Brown Jacket’s chest, and then his other hand came up and quickly reversed the attacker’s small pistol and spun it around. Now both Renae and Laird held guns. The car had stopped, and the attackers were lit up brightly in its headlights. They're not much older than I am! The other two
boys stopped fighting with Mark and backed away, raising their hands.

  “Get your moronic rear-ends out of here.” Renae’s father bellowed, using his full command voice now, though without cursing. Renae could hear her mother’s voice in her head. Don’t curse in front of the children, Laird!

  Brown Jacket made a step toward Laird. “Gimme that back!”

  “Don’t make me shoot you with this piece of junk.” Her father leveled the gun at Brown Jacket in a full Weaver stance, his legs spread apart, glaring down the barrel of the gun with an eye on each side.

  Its motor suddenly roaring, the car swerved around the fight scene and raced away from them up Tenth Street, tires spinning and squealing on the oily, wet pavement, skidding right around the corner and up Euclid. Renae imagined them rushing all the way up to the Venetian Causeway and back to the safety of Miami. Another car coming down the street brought light to the scene again.

  The four attackers looked at the two guns facing them, their eyes now big and round.

  Renae spat.

  As if that were the signal, the gang broke and ran back up the street and down the alley they had come from, their footsteps fading quickly in the rain.

  Renae collapsed into her father’s side. “Dang, that was awesome!” Mark shouted. “We scared the pants off those jerks!”

  “All right, enough time wasted in children’s games. Give me that gun, Renae.”

  “But, Dad, can’t I keep it? It’s the first time I’ve taken one for real.”

  Northwin reached out his hand, palm up. He wiggled his fingers. Reluctantly, Renae handed the gun to him. He looked up and down the streets.

  “Lorben twenty-five caliber automatic.” He removed the magazine and dumped the rounds in his palm. “One of the worst guns ever made. As like as not to explode in your hand when you fire it.” He ejected the round in the chamber, and then handed the empty gun back to Renae. “Promise me you will not load it?”

  Renae smiled and nodded, pocketing the small gun.

  “Can we go back home now?” Mark said.

  Laird Northwin looked at him, silently raised his arm palm-out in the direction of their parked car, and nodded.

  Chapter 2, A Girl with a Dragon

  Sara

  Sara knew the man who was following her. She was carrying something he wanted. She had just flown into Portland, picked up her rental car, and rushed out of the airport, heading east along the Columbia River. She hoped the message she had left on Alice’s voice-mail made sense. “Meet me at the pitcher pouring a thousand streams.”

  Given whom she ran from, she thought her phone was probably tapped. She hoped the message confused anyone who heard it. Anyone other than Alice.

  The drive along the south bank of the Columbia River is beautiful during the day, with waterfalls dropping down sheer stone cliffs along wide expanses of windswept river dotted with the colorful sails of windsurfers, all beneath bright-green forested slopes rising up to the clouds.

  Tonight, it seemed just another dark, anonymous highway—with her father’s murderer on the road somewhere behind her.

  She had almost died when she had seen Callan Grant at the airport getting his bags as she had walked by the baggage claim to the rental car counters. Hiding behind her hair, she had sworn at herself for taking a direct flight from Tampa to Portland, leaving an easy path for him to follow. Sara had gotten her car and rushed out of the airport, hoping to be far enough ahead of him that he could not pick up her trail, at least not tonight. She knew well his expertise in finding people. She knew herself to be not all that good at deception.

  Sara repeated her plan, steeling herself for what she must do. She would give Alice her precious gift, the thing her father said to keep from his killer at all costs. Then, she would run as long as she could run and lead the bastard far away. Far away from Alice.

  Alice would not let her follow that plan if she found out about it. Lying to Alice will not be easy. She rehearsed her words as the green mile markers passed by in the night. Twenty minutes later, she saw the sign she sought and turned in to the park that sits where the half-mile-wide Bonneville dam divides the Columbia.

  Sara drove to a parking area next to a spillway with water roaring through it. Alice had brought her here many years ago when trying to get Sara excited about engineering and math. Alice had told her then that over eighty-five million gallons of the Columbia’s water ran through this spillway each minute. Ten-year-old Sara had said then that it seemed like a pitcher pouring a thousand streams.

  Tonight, Sara’s heart filled with joy as she saw a dark-haired woman of medium height emerging from a battered yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

  “Alice, you made it!”

  “Hi, Sara, I remember your pitcher. Now why am I here instead of in my pleasant bed in Warm Springs?”

  Sara wanted to throw herself into Alice’s arms and tell her everything. Her father’s death, the killer chasing her, that she had eaten nothing but airplane snacks all day. She got a hold of herself. Stick to the story, give Alice the necklace, then run and lead Callan far away!

  “Alice, I need you to trust me. This won’t make sense…” Sara had to shout to hear herself above the sound of the river. The spray made the August night feel cool and the air smell like fresh rain.

  Alice shrugged. “It would be nice if something made sense for a change.”

  “I know. You must think I’ve gone crazy, calling you from Tampa and begging you to meet me here. I have to give you something.” Sara took her father’s necklace and pressed it into Alice’s hand. “My dad’s been killed, Alice. He gave me this. I need you to take it.”

  Guilt filled Sara. Many years ago, Alice had made it clear that she wanted no more of the backstabbing, violence, and lies their families had lived with for so long. Alice had taken Sara away with her then to the green wilds of central Oregon to get them both away.

  If she takes the necklace, it’s going to drag her right back into all that.

  Alice looked at the gift, her eyebrows rising. The streetlight made the scene look like an old movie. Everything appeared black or white or a shade of gray. “This is beautiful, Sara. Is it a dragon?”

  Out of the darkness, another voice spoke, deep and harsh. “It is beautiful. And you need to give it to me!”

  A man with black hair emerged from the foggy spray on the other side of Alice’s Volkswagen. He held a huge gun at arm’s length, weaving it back and forth between them like a dancing cobra. Alice shoved the silvery dragon necklace into the pocket of her cutoff jeans and spun to face the man.

  Alice is going to take him on! She probably thinks this is just some drink-addled backcountry mugger. Sara needed to do something, or he would kill Alice, take her father’s gift, and do what he wanted to with Sara. He is going to do that, anyway.

  Yelling, “Callan, stop!” Sara reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out her cell phone, and pointed it at him as if it were a gun. Callan turned to her, and then the black oval hole at the tip of his pistol turned round as it pointed between her eyes. She saw a bright red flame, she heard a loud crack, and then she saw nothing at all.

  Callan

  As Sara reached for a gun, his training took over, and without allowing for thought, his finger pulled the trigger of the big Smith & Wesson 500. He rolled his shoulders with the recoil, rapid-firing three hollow-point bullets into her head at close range. Blood and gore exploded from Sara, making a silver fog in the harsh glare of the lights. At the same time, her friend leaped up onto the rail along the spillway to get around the Beetle and reach him. In the light, Callan recognized her. I killed her already! Yet she came flying out of the mist with the whites of her eyes shining and her hands clenched into claws.

  He tracked her and fired. Then his brain caught up with his reflexes and he yelled, “Stop!”

  Realizing what just happened, Callan raced toward the falling woman, grabbing for her as she slid backward off the railing and into the foamy torrent below.

 
; Where it rushed from the concrete arms of Bonneville Dam, the Columbia ran swiftly and carried the woman’s body with it. The thing Sara gave away went with her. He glared at Sara’s body, her head a ruin, her lovely face gone. He almost loved her once before she betrayed him. He kicked at Sara’s outstretched hand in the darkness, looking for her weapon. Her dead fingers held no gun—just a black, flip-style cell phone. He stared at it as the mist swirled around him.

  Alice

  The Columbia rolled on. Though down some from the spring peak, when the snowmelt of the Rockies and the Cascades rushes to the Pacific, its flow in August was still formidable. The narrows below the Bonneville Dam’s rock walls force the river through a thousand-foot-wide channel, and the foaming water rages through there. In the late summer, when it escapes the Cascade narrows, the river’s current runs at an average speed of four miles per hour. In five hours, a body that fell from Bonneville dam would arrive near where the Lewis and Clark Highway touched the river on the Washington side.

  Alice spun around and around in the dark deluge. She guessed the temperature of it to be near seventy-five degrees. Just warm enough for a person to survive. Her head seemed to be one solid red ball of pain, and the events of the past few hours were a whirl of fading images. She remembered someone important to her had been killed, the killer wanted her dead too, and that killer might be somewhere on the banks of this river. Looking for me.

  She strove not to forget a number, the phone number of someone… Jenny… who would come get her, save her. She chewed and tore holes in her T-shirt, trying to remember it. Shivers racked her as her body tried to stave off hypothermia. She took off her socks, tied them into sort of a bandage, and wrapped the result around her head. It seemed to slow the bleeding some.

  Alice wanted to stay in the river as long as she could stand it to get as far away from the killer as possible. The details of the shooting were slipping from her as if carried away by her blood into the cool water, but she felt that it must be more than a random attack. Something her friend… back at the dam… Sara, had said. Like she knew the man with the gun.