Blind Rage (4 page)

She held out the first one. “What’s this?”

“Pink quartz. Very powerful healing for the heart.”

She thought about that for a moment. She wasn’t sure there was anything in the world powerful enough to repair the hole in her heart. Not unless the stone she held could bring back her parents.

“And the other one?” she said.

“Blue obsidian. Protect you when you travel, and help you talk.”

She laughed. “Some people don’t think I need any help in that regard, Yoshi.”

“Help you with schoolwork, maybe. And help you learn more Japanese.”

“Oh, so like help learning languages?”

“And expressing what is in your mind. You feel it?”

She nodded. “Thank you. Would you put these in my bag?”

She handed them back to him, and as soon as he took them from her hands, she felt a little different, as though someone had hit a dimmer switch.

Maybe that’s a bad analogy,
considering my situation.
In any event, she definitely felt a change in energy, and suddenly doubts crept back into her consciousness.

“Do I look all right, Yoshi?”

“Very pretty, missy.”

“You wouldn’t just say that to be nice, right?”

“Why say it if it not true?”

He made sense, but Tess suddenly found her nerves getting the better of her.

“Could you walk me downstairs, Yoshi?”

“
Hai
. You do me great honor, missy.”

Yoshi took her hand, placed it on his arm, and guided her out of the room. She counted the steps down the hall, noting when Yoshi turned her gently and warned her that they were at the top of the stairs. She knew how many steps there were on the curved staircase—twenty-five. She put one hand on the banister to steady herself as Yoshi led her down. She used to slide down it when they’d first moved in. When she had still been a kid.

They reached the bottom and turned to walk through the foyer and down a long hallway toward the kitchen. The closer they got, the more nervous she became. She heard voices coming from up ahead. She could pick out Alice’s voice. The other voice was male, vaguely familiar. She’d heard it recently. It suddenly dawned on her where, and panic welled up inside. Thoughts raced through her head, and feelings churned in the pit of her stomach.

So many questions . . .

They reached the kitchen door, judging from the way the sounds reached her ears, and Yoshi stopped. The conversation stopped, too.

“Ah, there you are,” Alice said. “Guess who’s here?”

Tess heard the scuff of chair legs before she could reply, and the male voice said, “Good morning.”

It was all too much, too soon. More than Tess could handle. She whirled out of Yoshi’s grasp, put her hands out in front of her, and fled back the way they’d come.

I’d be the first to admit I’m no ladies man. I’m not a bad-looking guy. I’m a little over six foot three, somewhat lanky in frame, not beefy like a football player, but broad-shouldered like a swimmer. I’ve got all ten fingers and toes, a nose that’s not grotesquely large, eyes the color of a hazy summer sky, brown hair that grows in twenty different directions, giving me an interminably sleepy look as if I’ve just gotten out of bed, and a wide smile that I probably offer too readily. Some might even say I’m handsome, but I wouldn’t go that far.

In any case, I do okay around girls—young women—and even screw up the courage to ask them on dates now and then. I’ve been turned down some, but none of them has ever run away from me . . . until now.

Let me back up a little. My name is Oliver Moncrief. I know, what parent would saddle their kid with a name like Ollie? Parents named Moncrief, that’s who. But before I was old enough to confront them about it, my parents were long gone. My mother, Rachel, died of cancer when I was a toddler, young enough that I don’t have memories of what she looked like, only vague recollections of her presence. My father, Duncan, took off shortly afterward. Maybe he was brokenhearted, or perhaps the thought of raising a kid by himself was overwhelming. Whatever the reason, he left me with my mother’s parents, and I haven’t heard from him since.

Moncrief is a Scottish name, changed over the centuries from Moncreiffe, which means something like “hill-pasture tree” in the original Gaelic—a combination of the words “monadh” and “craoibbe,” both of which are obviously unpronounceable in English. The original Moncreiffes were Scottish royalty of a sort, “lairds,” or lords of extensive holdings of land and usually officers of the local Highlander clan. My father’s side of the family split off from those Moncreiffes some time in the mid-1700s when my great-to-the-nth-power-grandfather, Alasdair, hightailed it to the New World after causing a scandal that everyone mentions in connection with the family history—with great sighs of consternation—but no one has explained to me in detail. Alasdair changed his name to Moncrief to prevent further shame from staining the family crest, and to stay a step or two ahead of the law. Turns out if he’d been caught and convicted in Scotland he would have been banished to America anyway. Apparently, Scottish courts thought being shipped to America was a punishment only slightly more merciful than death.

My first name pays homage to Oliver Cromwell, who was a buddy of Alasdair’s great-great-grandfather Magnus Moncreiffe. The Brits, of course, later dug up Cromwell’s body after he died of septicemia and executed him for treason. For good measure, they beheaded him, too, so you see how well that turned out. Magnus’s cousin Thomas got back on the right side of English politics by taking a job as exchequer to King Charles II, the guy who dug up Cromwell as payback for ordering the execution of his own father, Charles I.

You probably think I’ve stepped back a little too far, and maybe you find all this history boring. I was never too good at history myself, but it’s important to understand this stuff so you know where I’m coming from.

Okay, so by the end of the nineteenth century, while the now-thoroughly-American Moncriefs hadn’t distinguished themselves as scholars, professionals, or the cream of polite society, Alasdair’s great-great-grandson Fergus was smart enough to grab onto the coattails of another Scotsman by the name of Andrew Carnegie. You’ve probably heard of
him
, even if you’re lousy at history. He made a fortune in the steel industry, among other businesses, and would have been worth hundreds of billions in today’s dollars.

Whether by legal or illegal means—no one’s quite sure—Fergus made a small fortune as a result of Carnegie’s business savvy. A penny-pinching Scot to his core, Fergus managed to hang on to most of that money, even made it grow through sound investments. So a lot of his money was passed down through a couple of generations. And for some reason, each succeeding generation of my particular branch of the family consisted of one solitary male. My grandfather Donald and his wife Edith begat Duncan, my father, who begat me. Yep, I’m the last of the line—unless I have kids of my own someday.

I had a perfectly normal and happy childhood growing up with Nana and Pop-Pop, my mom’s parents. Backyard, white picket fence, the whole small-town experience in a place you never heard of. I did well enough in school that I got into college. Actually, I did better than okay, but I don’t like to brag. I finished high school in three years, but not because I’m a Mensa member. I have an eidetic memory, not exactly photographic—who’d want to remember everything in that kind of detail?—but darn close. While my grandparents weren’t all that well-to-do, it so happened that a trust fund had been set up in my name to pay for my education. So when I turned eighteen, my then-elderly surrogate parents waved good-bye and told me I was on my own. I didn’t mind. They’d done a good job; I was ready to leave the nest.

The deal with the trust was that as long as I stayed in school, the trustee, a lawyer by the name of Bigsby—nice guy—would pay the bills. I was supposed to get whatever was left when I turned thirty. The rationale, I suppose, was that I’d have some incentive to put my education to work before coming into vast sums of money. And, of course, I was heir to the Moncrief fortune, once my father dies, that is. If anyone can ever find him.

Unfortunately, my other grandparents, Donald and Edith, were a profligate pair, a couple of spendthrifts who lived on the twelfth hole of a golf course down in Florida living
la dolce vita
. I went to visit only once, during spring vacation when I was in fourth or fifth grade. The big house with the servants and the chauffeured Bentley and the extravagant parties impressed me, but my grandparents didn’t. They were a couple of cold fish who tolerated me because I was a blood relation, and then only because they knew I wasn’t staying and wouldn’t disrupt their lifestyle. Donald smelled like scotch and stale cigars. Edith smelled like lavender and bad breath.

Right, I digress. The point is that I figured my best option was to stay in school as long as possible, since the trust paid all my bills as long as I was enrolled somewhere. The problem was that I kept getting degrees ahead of schedule. I earned a BA in English—my native language, good for easy As—from a major university in Seattle in two and a half years. I liked the climate and decided to stay. A master’s degree was next. My focus was twentieth-century American literature. That took a year. I’d been working on a doctorate for the past six months, trying to write a thesis I’d called “Tweets and Texts: A Comparison of 21st-Century American Literary Styles.”

Not long ago—a few weeks to be accurate—I’d reached a critical juncture where I had to make some progress or reconsider my educational path and start all over as an undergraduate in, say, biochemistry or accounting. I was sitting in my favorite coffeehouse sipping a latte and contemplating my situation when I got a phone call that changed everything. It was from Leonard Bigsby, the lawyer. The gist of it went something like this:

Me: Hello?

Bigsby: Hey, kid. It’s me, Leonard. Thought I’d give you a heads-up. I figure you’ve got two months.

Me: Two months till what?

Bigsby: Two months till the money runs out.

Me: What do you mean?

Bigsby: I mean the money’s all gone. Well, almost gone. No more. Kaput.

Me: I thought as long as I stayed in school, the trust would pay for it.

Bigsby: Well, it would have. Except your grandparents embezzled half the funds before they croaked. So, the well’s dry.

Me: What? You mean, like, there’s nothing left? Not just the trust, the estate, too?

Bigsby: You got it, kid. Have a nice life.

Before I could think of a reply, the phone went dead. After several moments of shell-shocked silence and paralysis, I shook myself like a retriever coming out of water. I got up and scrounged around the coffeeshop for someone’s abandoned newspaper, since I could now ill afford my own. Armed with a very thin section of want ads, I returned to my table and started looking for a job. Extensive knowledge of your own language isn’t a qualification most employers care all that much about. Seems these days you can get a lot of jobs even if you don’t speak English. But I found and circled several potential opportunities—security guard, day laborer, dishwasher, and one I was sure I’d be good at: personal assistant.

Most of the ads asked for a cover letter and résumé and listed a post office box number or an e-mail address. A couple of them listed phone numbers. I called those, getting turned down flat for one, being told another position was no longer available, and setting up an interview for a third. I saved the ad for personal assistant till last. When I dialed the number listed in the ad, a woman answered brusquely.

“Name and age.”

“Oliver Moncrief. Twenty-one. Well, almost.”

“Job experience?”

“None.”

“None?” The woman sounded startled.

“Well, unless you count chores as a kid, like mowing the lawn, painting the fence, stuff like that.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a student.”

“High school? College?”

“Graduate school. I’m working on my doctorate.”

“At twenty? Isn’t that a little young?”

“I took an Evelyn Wood speed-reading course.” The attempt at humor was met with silence. I offered her a one-line explanation. “I’ve been in accelerated programs since elementary school.”

“What are your qualifications?”

“Depends on what sort of personal assistance is required. I’m healthy, strong enough to carry groceries, read and write exceptionally well, type seventy-five words per minute, and know how to read a map. I’m smart enough to ask for directions when I’m lost, look presentable, and have been told I’m reasonably well mannered.”

The line was silent for a moment then the woman said, “Do you have a valid driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Any criminal record, outstanding warrants, or convictions?”

“No.”

“Be here in one hour.” She gave me an address.

One year earlier. . .

Travis barely had time to shave off his beard, change into a regulation combat uniform, and throw his gear into a duffel bag before a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter came whirling through the night sky, homing in on their coordinates. It touched down fifty meters from their small encampment of huts abandoned by a local family that had been driven out by the Taliban. The downdraft from the powerful rotors kicked up dust and nearly blew the straw roofs off the mud huts. Travis quickly said his good-byes and shook hands with the other soldiers in the unit.

Travis and his men had been using the huts to blend in. As he hustled to the chopper, bent over against the rotors’ backwash, he wondered what would happen to his teammates. They were all good men. He knew that they would have disbanded soon anyway, their mission essentially completed with that night’s eradication of the al-Qaeda cell in the cave. All of them would soon be reassigned to other hunt-and-kill missions.

As well as they’d worked together as a team, Strategic Intelligence Collection & Containment didn’t make a practice of keeping large units together for long. Unlike his time in Special Forces when he’d been part of a twelve-man Operational Detachment-A, or ODA, Travis usually worked alone or with just one other unit member, depending on the mission. They operated more effectively as individuals, could comingle with the general populace more easily alone. He preferred it that way, but found he’d enjoyed the camaraderie of the larger team more than he’d thought he would.