Ghostcountry's Wrath Read Free Page B

embarrassment. He’d seen no sign of Sandy, and then suddenly there she was: five feet away and grinning like a ’possum. She’d apparently been lying in wait behind the nearest pine.
    “Hey!” David laughed, stepping forward to enfold Calvin’s lady in the properly hearty hug he hadn’t had time for at the wedding because of preoccupation; or at the reception, where he’d had his hands full overseeing the degradation of Gary’s getaway car. Now, though, he’d finally got a good look at her, and he liked what he saw.
    Though a high school physics teacher in her middle-twenties, Sandy Fairfax looked little older than his own girlfriend, Liz Hughes, who had just turned eighteen. She was tallish and slim, with serious features, a gently arching nose, and a waist-length sweep of straight, sun-bleached hair that was presently confined in a ponytail, though she’d let it down for the wedding. She’d worn a flouncy spring green cotton dress, then, with a belt of linked silver dogwood blossoms. Now she was attired more typically: jeans, white Reeboks, and a scarlet T-shirt hyping a locally produced educational film called Voices in the Wind. She wore no makeup, but a pair of tiny dream catchers depended from her ears. Yeah, David thought, Calvin was a damned lucky S.O.B.
    “Liz saw a bird she wanted to get a shot of,” Sandy explained, in response to a concern David had not yet realized himself. “You’re lookin’ good,” she added with an exaggerated twang, as she released him. “Not as good as a couple hours ago, though. Ain’t nothin’ like handsome lads in tuxes.”
    Calvin slid an arm around her waist and grinned. “Actually,” he confided, “what she really means is there’s nothin’ like a handsome man in his birthday suit!”
    “The operative word being man ,” Sandy countered smartly.
    David grinned obligingly, then checked his watch and craned his neck, his gaze combing the woods.
    Sandy saw him. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to fill in your part of this little conundrum while we wait for your gal, would you?” she ventured brightly.
    “Liz didn’t tell you?” David replied, surprised. “She hasn’t seen… it either, but she does know about it, ’cause I told her.”
    “Called her in the middle of the bachelor party!” Alec confided to Calvin, sounding disgusted. “I—”
    They were spared further digression by the emergence of a slender red-haired girl from behind the Bronco. Like Sandy, Liz Hughes was wearing jeans and a T-shirt (hers was dull burgundy), which to David looked exactly as smashing as the complex lime-sherbet bridesmaid dress she’d sported in the wedding.
    “Sorry,” she panted as she jogged up to join them, pausing to give David a perfunctory peck on the cheek. “I thought it was a red-tail, but then I realized it was a peregrine, which are really rare, and—” She broke off, looked at David with frank openness. “You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?”
    “’Fraid so,” he admitted, and turned to give Aikin a silent farewell salute before steering Alec toward the Mustang. Aikin nodded sketchily, stuffed a shoulder under Darrell’s armpit, and dragged him inside. “Catch you later,” he grunted from the door.
    “Yeah, thanks,” David yelled back. “As for hurrying,” he added to Liz, “well, it’s a pretty big deal, at least to me, even if it’s not a matter of life or death.”
    “Which it’s not,” Calvin agreed. “At least I hope not. But a couple days ago, it was a very big deal indeed.” He did not add, David noted, that affairs still might not be settled—if Liz had really seen what she’d claimed. The peregrine was Cal’s totem. And to see one anytime, especially so far inland, was cause for concern.
    “You lead,” Sandy told David, fishing in her pocket for her keys. “Me and Liz’ll follow, in case we can’t keep up.”
    “Yeah,” Alec muttered, “and maybe old Cal’ll finally set us straight about his