The seedy little club was noisy and crowded. Roland sat alone at the bar, wearing a track suit and sneakers. A shot glass of tequila rested in front of him, two empties beside it. The air was thick with sweat and cheap fragrance. Roland downed his last shot, pulled a twenty from his pocket, and slid it beneath the glass. The front door led to the street, a stretch of road populated by chain-link fences, crumbling buildings, and the occasional cruising SUV. The back door led to a maze of alleyways lit dimly, if at all. Roland rose and made his way to the back.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the humid Key West air. He raised his arms, stretched, and started forward at a casual saunter. His car was parked a mile away.
A few minutes later he heard angry voices. He turned a corner, and found a tall, muscular man towering over a petite woman who wore a miniskirt and stacked heels. When she shouted at him, the man raised his arm and slapped her. The woman staggered backward, regained her balance, and wiped her nose.
Roland approached, and the man scowled at him. “Not your business, bro!” he rasped. Roland stopped and cocked his head. The man reached into his pocket, raised his hand, and with a heavy snap a six-inch blade glinted in the dingy light.
Roland’s first kick caught him in the solar plexus. The man grunted and doubled over, and the knife sailed through the air. By the time it clattered to the pavement, Roland’s uppercut had shattered his cheekbone, flipped him backward, and left him crumpled on the road.
Roland picked the knife up, folded it, and slipped it into his own pocket. He stuck a foot beneath the moaning figure, and rolled the man onto his back. Leaning over and grasping the hand that had held the knife, he stepped down, yanked up, and broke its adjoining wrist bone.
“Stop it!” shrieked a voice by his ear, as a small pocketbook crashed into the side of his head. “Leave him alone, you sonofabitch!”
The woman stood before Roland, a bloody smear trailing from nose to ear. “You pussy!” she screamed. “I’m going to call the cops! You goddamned mother…”
The slap sent her spinning to the ground. She sat up slowly and Roland reached down, grasped her by the throat, and pulled her to her feet. “I’m not hearing a lot of gratitude,” he said.
The woman gasped for air, her eyes wide. Her body began to tremble.
Roland’s phone chimed insistently, and he relaxed his grip. He pulled it from his pocket and regarded the screen. Absently he let her go, and she hit the ground with a soft thud.
“What,” he said into the phone. “All right. On it.”
He pocketed his phone and started walking east. After a few steps, he began to jog.
A crowd had gathered outside Adam Matheson’s ornate front gate. Roland drove past a TV truck and lowered his window at the gatekeeper’s station. “Evening, Mr. Edwards,” said the guard, buzzing him through. Parked in front of the house were four squad cars, lights flashing. Two officers talked on their radios.
“Mr. Edwards,” said one. “Need a statement.”
“Give me a minute.”
“One more thing — we’re going to need a list of people who might want to take a shot at Mr. Matheson.”
“We’ll be here ‘til next October,” Roland snorted, and walked into the house.
The office curtains were drawn. Carlos stood mournfully beside two uniformed policemen as Adam paced back and forth, clad in a sweat suit. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hard, but the hand holding the tumbler of Scotch was steady.
“Evening, Mr. Edwards,” said one of the cops, as they filed out and closed the door behind them. Roland looked at Adam with concern. “You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Adam gestured to Carlos with a short, violent wave of his hand.
“I came back from checking the zoo,” said Carlos. “I was in the monitor room watching Mr. Matheson swim, then he came out and stood with the weights, and then all the art blew up. So I pushed the police station alarm and ran to the pool.”
“I’ve got windburn from a bullet on the side of my head!” Adam snapped. “And $12 million worth of Ming vases all over my goddamned patio.”
“You can go,” Roland told Carlos, then turned to Adam. “Any ideas?”
“No. Anything on the Cadillacs?”
Roland frowned. “The Cadillacs! Didn’t you just get shot at in your own back yard?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Adam impatiently. “I have enemies. So - anything?”
“They tracked down two of them and there’s no connection. Still haven’t found the convertible.”
“What about Enrico?”
“Nothing.”
“What the fuck, Roland? How hard can this be?”
“Jesus, Adam! You think finding the shooter might be a little more important right now?”
“Let the cops handle it,” Adam replied dismissively. “I want you to take the plane to Pennsylvania tomorrow. I think those damned wildlife people know where she is. Shake them down.”
Roland scowled. “You got somebody aiming at you through a night scope and you want me to go hassle the bird freaks? Why? Send the lawyers!”
“You’ll do a better job. They’ve probably never seen a black guy before, I’m sure you’ll scare the shit out of them just by standing there.”
Roland’s frown deepened. “I’m telling you,” he said. “You gotta ease up on this.”
“You know what she wants more than anything? She told me.”
Roland was silent.
“She wants to find a safe place. And I am her safe place.”
Here comes the iceberg, thought Roland.
• • •
Celia stood in her office, looking through the window at the eagle flight cage. She thought of the day the Department of Natural Resources brought Mars, starved and vicious, eventually gentled by the quiet girl with the bright blue gaze; the girl who would never have left Pennsylvania and married a billionaire had the eagle not accepted the one-eyed Banshee as his mate. She could see Banshee’s silhouette, alone and motionless on her perch. Celia thought of Luna, on the run.
Her phone buzzed. She tilted it toward her, and found a text from Carlene in Florida.
bluestreak@juno.com If that dickweed took Mars there’s no reason he won’t come back for Banshee so you better be awful careful! Don’t you let him take her!
Celia swallowed, her throat burning. The door rattled and a tall, gray-haired man entered, his round, wire-framed glasses glinting in the morning light. Celia dissolved into tears.
“There, now, poor girl,” he said, sitting her down on the couch and putting his arm around her. “We’ll get him back, and Luna will be fine.”
“But Dad…”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Celia sniffled. “Mom?” came a voice, along with the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. The door flew open. A young girl burst into the room, her red hair in a haphazard braid, her sneakers, jeans and T-shirt layered with grime, a long scabbed scratch running down one arm.
“Not again!” she cried. “Mom, you gotta pull yourself together!”
“Pipe down, Wizzie!” said Elias. “Your mother’s got a lot on her mind!”
“But two people are here, they hit a coyote and knocked her cold but they knew she wasn’t dead, so they picked her up and put her in the back of their car and they were halfway up the driveway when suddenly she woke up!”
“Are they still in the car with her?” gasped Elias.
“No, they jumped out and slammed the doors and ran up to the clinic! But the coyote’s in the car and I’m telling you, she’s hopping mad. She keeps falling over, but that doesn’t make her any less mad.”
Celia wiped the tears from her eyes and rose. “How big is she?”
“I think maybe thirty-five pounds.”
“Dad,” said Celia. “Could you talk to the people for me, please? I’ll get the 4-foot catch pole, two pairs of gloves and a crate, and I’ll meet you at the car. I think Don’s in the barn, I’ll grab him too. Wizzie, will you go to the clinic and tell Lauren we need Telazol, then ask Ryan to get the x-ray machine ready?”
“I don’t see why I can’t get the Telazol,” said Wizzie irritably. “Jeez Louise, I’m eight years old!”
“It’s a controlled substance, and you know it,” said Elias.
A small SUV was parked three-quarters of the way up the driveway. The car’s petrified owners stood to the side, hands over their mouths, as a shadow moved erratically back and forth within their car. Celia and Elias conferred as three volunteers hovered behind them, and Wizzie waited by the crate.
“One, two, three,” said Elias quietly, and opened one of the back doors enough to insert a hollow metal pole ending in a rope snare. The amber-eyed, luxuriantly-furred coyote snarled, jumped over the back seat into the storage area, and crashed to the floor when her balance failed. Elias dropped the snare over her neck and pulled; Celia yanked open the hatch, placed a heavily gloved hand on the coyote’s shoulder, and plunged a hypodermic into her haunch. Within a few moments, the coyote had gone limp.
“Wow!” cried Wizzie, as several hands transferred the coyote from the car to the crate. “Look how pretty she is!”
The latest patient had been x-rayed, given medication, and transferred to a recovery area in the clinic. The last volunteer had gone home. Celia sat in a chair in her living room, going over intake records. Elias watched the baseball game from the couch as Wizzie leaned against him, transfixed by an old hardback copy of “The Call of the Wild.” The phone rang, and Celia picked it up.
“Celia Jenkins?” said the male voice. “This is Officer Erik Gunderman, Department of Law Enforcement for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I’m wondering if I might come by your center tomorrow and talk to you about the missing Bald Eagle. I can work around your schedule, if you could give me a time.”
“Oh,” said Celia.
“Is there a time that works best for you?”
“Yes.”
“What would that be?”
“Um.”
“Morning? Afternoon?”
“There.”
“Afternoon?”
“Right.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Ah.”
“Okay, thank you. I look forward to seeing you.”
Celia hung up the phone, breathless. As Elias and Wizzie looked toward her, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“Oh, Pop!” sighed Wizzie. “There she goes again.”
• • •
Ned opened his eyes, then shut them quickly. But not quickly enough.
Needles of pain shot through his skull. His mouth was parched. He rolled over and groaned.
The bedside clock said 7:48 AM. He struggled out of bed, staggered to the bathroom, and stood before the toilet, cursing the inventor of bourbon. Closing the shades against the sunlight, he climbed into the shower.
Clad in a pair of shorts and his last clean T-shirt, he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a large cup of coffee. Esther’s voice emanated from another room, speaking some kind of gibberish. She must be in even worse shape than me, thought Ned. He sipped his coffee and stared out the window, trying to plan his trip home, prevented from doing so by his grievously wounded brain cells.
Esther strode into the kitchen in a skirt, blouse, low heels, and a lab coat, immaculately coiffed, holding a phone. “Würden Sie mir Ihre neuesten Testergebnisse senden?” she asked, catching Ned’s eye and pointing to a bottle of aspirin on the window ledge. “Ja, ich würde es wirklich schätzen. Können Sie sich eine Minute halten? Danke.”
She pressed the phone against her shoulder. “New statistics out of Frankfurt,” she said, nodding encouragingly. “Is Luna up?”
“I uh, don’t know,” said Ned. “She wasn’t in her room.”
“She’s probably in the barn. I’ll be done in 15 minutes. Dank für das Halten,” she said into the phone, and disappeared.
Ned entered the office and looked through the picture window. The barn was bathed in morning sun. Curled on a pair of cushions beneath Mars’s perch was Luna, eyes closed, halfway covered by a blanket. On the floor beside her stood the great dark eagle, delicately preening her hair.
Ned watched her sleep. She stirred, and a shadow crossed her face. A dream, thought Ned, and wondered if he should be there when she woke up. The problem, of course, was the creature standing guard over her. He’s not that big a bird, Luna had said. Ned wondered if the eagle was like a suburban yard dog, aggressive only when there was a barrier between it and the prospective intruder. Perhaps by now it felt a bit of goodwill toward him, since he’d chauffeured the damned thing at no charge for 850 miles.
He was returning to Florida this morning. He had to say goodbye.
He opened the solid wooden door and stepped into the barn, willing his body to convey confident nonchalance. Mars looked up. Ned took two more steps and Luna stirred, then opened her eyes. “Harry?” she said, her voice filled with hope. She sat up and saw the barn, the perch, and the carefully watching bird; she touched its chest feathers, and her face crumpled with grief. The eagle raised every feather on its snowy head, let out a war cry, and launched itself at Ned.
Ned turned and ran for his life. He hurtled through the office door, slammed it behind him, and a split second later he heard a heavy thud and the ripping sound of claws sliding down wood. They’re not claws, Luna had said. They’re talons.
He leaned backward on the door, head and heart both pounding. A minute later, or maybe it was an hour, there was a soft knock on the door. “Ned?” came her voice.
“What?”
“Can you open the door? He’s back on his perch.”
Unwillingly, he opened the door a crack. Luna slipped in and closed it behind her. ”Are you okay?” she asked. “Why would you do that?”
Ned sat down on the edge of the desk. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’m still drunk.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Who’s Harry?” he asked, and all trace of emotion vanished from her face.
“No one,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get you on the road.”
Esther put down her phone as they walked into the kitchen. “All hell has broken loose,” she said. “Harper says someone took a shot at your husband last night.”
Ned’s jaw dropped. “With a gun?” he asked.
“Warren,” whispered Luna, and locked eyes with Esther. Ned looked incredulously from one to the other.
“You think Warren tried to shoot him?” he demanded. “You do, don’t you? Remember when we were at his house, and he said he was going to take Adam out? I didn’t think he meant on a date, but I didn’t think he was going to try to kill him!”
“If it was Warren, he wasn’t trying to kill him,” said Esther matter-of-factly. “If Warren wanted to kill him, he’d have done it.”
“But…”
“You both need to get out of here,” said Esther. “The hotline’s burning. Carlene said the cops in Florida are looking for you and a long-haired guy with a ’68 Cadillac. It won’t take long before the cops in Georgia start looking for you and a long-haired guy with a ’57 Chevy.”
Ned hesitated, torn between elation and dismay. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They left the stately plantation house behind, cruising between the line of sweetgums dripping Spanish moss. As they reached the end of the driveway, a police car pulled in. It passed them unhurriedly, the two police officers glancing at them and continuing toward the house. Luna turned her face away, and Ned drove on.
The Saturday morning traffic was sparse. The cover had slipped and Ned could see the eagle in his rearview mirror, perched regally in the crate. BOWLING GREEN, KY, read the sign. 392 MILES.
“Ugh, do I have a headache,” said Luna, and regarded her phone. “Look, it’s from Warren!”
PRIVATE CALLER What do you mean, was it me? That’s the way rumors get started.
“He’ll never admit it,” she said, and texted him back.
777-222-3800 Seriously, don’t do that again.
“I’m going to line up my next ride,” she told Ned.
777-222-3800 Had to leave Esther’s early. On the road to Paul & Anna Lee’s. Can anyone help me from there?
“I’m not using your name because I’m trying to protect you,” she said.
“That would be nice,” said Ned, picturing her giant carnivore hurtling toward him. A moment later the phone pinged, and she read it aloud.
bluestreak@juno.com That Ned is one fine man! Just sayin’.
Luna’s eyes widened. “My first name on your burner is the least of my problems,” said Ned. Luna continued to read the texts aloud.
bluestreak@juno.com BTW, cops are going nutty in FL because hunting season just opened on rich bipeds.
greenplanet@hotmail.com Damn I wish somebody would take a shot at my ex.
crocodilians@gmail.com Me too, I could pay them good money. NOT!
toby@eastshorerescue.org Honey come to my place next. I’m three hours north of Paul & Anna Lee’s.
pacificawild@outlook.com FYI, we’re here outside Portland OR and they just showed up looking for a missing bald eagle.
rockymtbighorns@gmail.com Here too. We’re near Aurora, CO.
amphibious632@att.net Ditto, we’re in Alabama.
“Jesus,” said Ned.
“They won’t catch us, Ned,” she said. “I know how to do this.”
Her voice was low, but Ned could actually feel a swirl of adrenaline emanating from her skin. He frowned, puzzled. Mars shifted on his perch and shook his feathers.
annalee@bluemoonwildlife.org Nothing yet here in KY, so y’all keep heading this way.
“Here’s something from Harper,” said Luna.
689-333-2150 Security upswing in the Sunshine State. Haven’t seen Adam yet but Carlos says he’s loading for bear.
“Can’t you get any of your friends to talk to him?” asked Ned. “Not your rehabber friends, your rich friends.”
“I don’t have any rich friends. The more money you have, the squishier the definition of ‘friend’ becomes.” She paused, then continued as if the answer were obvious. “If you had to choose between having me as a friend or Adam, who would you choose?”
“You,” he said, as if he didn’t understand the question.
A flash of distrust crossed her face, then she gazed at him ruefully. “I must have a hundred years on you,” she said. “If anyone catches up with us, you’re not my friend. You’re my hostage.”
“I kind of am your hostage.”
Luna’s expression softened. “You’re my friend,” she said, and went back to her phone.