Always Look Twice

Olivia moved farther into the studio, still clutching her tea. In the early Lakota days, the Ghost Road was a path taken by spirits. To the south the road branched, where an old woman inspected the tattoo of each spirit. Those without tattoos would be pushed over the side of a cloud or a cliff, condemned to roam the earth as ghosts.

“Spirits don’t get a second chance on the Ghost Road, Allie.”

The younger woman continued sketching. “Dad might.”

Olivia wished her sister’s artwork had the power to free their father. He’d taught them about the old ways, but he’d lived a modern life. A tattoo for the Ghost Road wasn’t something he’d considered. “Do you really think it’s him?”

Allie glanced up. “Who else could it be?”

“I don’t know.” Olivia laughed a little. “I’ve been calling it Casper.”

Her sister laughed, too. “At least Casper was on TV and in the movies.” Her mood turned solemn. “Do you think Mom knows that he’s dead? That he killed himself?”

“I have no idea.” Joseph Whirlwind wasn’t a well-known actor. His suicide hadn’t made the papers. He’d disappeared into the bowels of Hollywood, like so many others before him.

Allie smoothed the hide. “I wonder where she is.”

Olivia didn’t want to think about their mother, about the betrayal that still left her empty inside. What kind of woman walked away from her family? Discarded them like trash?

She changed the subject, focusing on Allie’s project instead. “Are you going to paint some weapons for him? A lance? A shield?”

Her sister nodded. “I’m going dress him in the traditional way, too. Eagle feathers in his hair and beaded moccasins with fully quilled soles.”

“That’s a good idea.” There were only two times when moccasins with quilled or beaded soles were made. When a baby was born and when a loved one died.

“So did you find out who was staying at the motel?” Allie asked.

Olivia sighed. She couldn’t seem to shake West from her mind. “It was the special agent assigned to the Slasher case.”

“An FBI guy?” Her sister stopped drawing. Her hair was loose, falling in a thick black curtain, glimmering under the studio lights. “Wow. That’s wild.”

Yeah, wild. “He confuses me.”

“Why? Because Dad drew him to that room?”

Olivia frowned. West had implied the same thing. “We don’t even know if the wanagi is Dad.”

“It is. It has to be. And after the Slasher case is solved, he’s going to travel the Ghost Road.”

After it’s solved? Olivia glanced at the buffalo hide, at the rough image that had begun to appear. She sipped her tea, needing warmth, needing reassurance.

Then without the slightest warning, Samantha opened her eyes, arched her sleek black body and hissed at a shadow on the wall.

Leaving Olivia chilled once again.

At daybreak Olivia drove to an area in the high desert where the Manson gang once dwelled, an area where methamphetamine labs brewed illicit drugs, and relocated sex offenders pretended to be part of society.

She parked beside a house encompassed by a chain-link fence. The front yard was littered with old car parts, broken-down swing sets, wagon wheels, goofy-looking lawn jockeys and bearded gnomes. Several outbuildings stored even more salable junk, things exposure to the elements could damage. A metal aircraft hangar sat behind everything else, taking up a noticeable portion of the seven-acre property.

Olivia approached the perimeter of the front yard and waited for the rottweiler on duty to snarl and bark his fool head off.

He did just that, baring his teeth until he realized who she was. Then he wagged his docked tail and whined for attention.

“Clyde, you big baby.” She unlocked the gate with her key, entered the property and knelt to pet him. “Where’s Bonnie?”

Just then, a miniature dachshund came around the corner, her long, low-slung body wiggling. She looked like what she was—a wiener dog Clyde could consume for breakfast. But he wouldn’t dream of it. Bonnie and Clyde adored each other.

Olivia tapped the dachshund’s pointed nose and received a sappy grin in return. “Okay, you guys, I’m going to wake up your master.”

She walked passed the junk, where a sixty-year-old house with a sagging porch made a run-down statement.

Once again, she used her key, hoping Kyle wasn’t in bed with his latest lover, whoever the unfortunate girl might be.

His house was a mess, almost as cluttered as his yard. She passed the kitchen and winced. Food-encrusted dishes were piled in the sink and stacked on the counter, leaving little space for much else.

Kyle Prescott was a decorated Desert Storm soldier, a half-blood Apache who looked like an indigenous god, but he was also the biggest slob on the planet.

She tore open his bedroom door, and he awakened with a start. He was alone, as big and broad and surly as a brown bear.

“Olivia.” He cursed her name. “Do you know what time it is?”

“I need to blow off some steam.”

“Oh.” His demeanor changed. He smiled and patted the empty space next to him. “In that case, I’m all yours.”

“Not that kind of steam.”

“Figures.” He climbed out of bed, unabashed and completely naked.

Olivia had seen his bare butt before. She had been his on-and-off lover for nearly three years, a mistake she didn’t intend to repeat. He was a bit too bizarre to make a woman feel secure.

“Go make some coffee and I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” he said. “Then we can get started.”

He stumbled down the hall to take a shower, and she battled the dishes in his sink, searching for cups that were worthy of washing. He had three coffeepots, and all of them were thick with caffeine-laced drudge. Finally she found a fourth unit. A reconditioned model, it was clean and shiny and stored in a generic box. But what did she expect? Kyle was a junk dealer.

By the time he finished his morning routine, Olivia handed him a cup of his favorite brew. His blunt-cut, shoulder-length hair was held in place with a cloth headband, styled after the Mexican Period in Apache history.

Bare-chested with jeans and knee-high moccasins, he was an Indian groupie’s dream, a gorgeous sight to behold. But in spite of his mixed-blood roots, Kyle didn’t sleep with white women.

Olivia had met him through AIM, but somewhere along the line, he’d outgrown the American Indian Movement. These days he belonged to an underground warrior society, a militant group the government wouldn’t approve of.

Not that the feds approved of AIM, she thought.

Kyle called the FBI the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude, and men like Special Agent West, fibbies.

“I shouldn’t let you use me like this,” he said, taking his coffee to a Formica-topped dinette set near the window. “I should make you return my keys.”

She plopped down in the chair across from him. “We can’t be friends if we’re not sleeping together?”