Double Blind. Hannah Alexander

hit a dog,” he said, hoping to reassure her.

      She grew still, her glance stabbing at him quickly before sliding away again. “The Sheila I know wouldn’t, either,” she snapped.

      It disappointed him that she had taken his statement wrong.

      “I’m sorry, Sheila, I’m just having trouble understanding everything that’s happened this—”

      “Join the club,” she snapped. Immediately, she looked chagrined, staring down at her hands, strands of her dark, windblown hair falling across her face. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, sighed.

      “I don’t know about you folks out here,” she said, “but a suspect is innocent until—”

      “We folks out here care about our animals as much as you hillbillies back in Missouri,” Canaan said. He’d intended for that to sound like his old, teasing sarcasm, but for some reason it came out a little more sharply than he’d expected. Her irritation with him, when he was only trying to get to the truth, was not helpful.

      Sheila’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes narrowed at him.

      Oops. He knew that look. It’d been a while, but it still wasn’t a look he’d wanted to invoke from her.

      “And you’re in charge here?” she muttered.

      He grimaced. “For lack of a better leader.” Granddad had warned him that there would be days his mouth would get him into trouble. This was one of them. Backpedal, fast. “Sorry, Sheila, that was uncalled for.”

      “You bet it was. You got something against Missourians?”

      “Nope.”

      “Fine. I’ve got nothing against the Navajo, and most of the time I don’t even hold it against men for being men, but I’m not about to let one manhandle me. The Canaan York I knew would never have tried.”

      Okay, this wasn’t the Sheila he’d known as a child. Where had this hard streak of bitterness come from? “People change, then, don’t they?” he said softly.

      “Yeah, they do. You didn’t used to have this chip on your shoulder.”

      He wondered if his eyes might bug out of his head. He had a chip? “You’re adept at changing the subject.”

      “Did you come here to talk to me about my new job, or just harass me about a dog?”

      “Neither.” He hesitated. His recent suspicions were affecting his manners. “I’m the welcoming committee.”

      She grimaced. For a moment, they stared at each other, then Canaan realized the ugly irony of those words. He grimaced. “I tried to give it a personal touch.”

      Sheila raised a dark brow. “I’ll consider myself welcomed.” Her voice dripped sarcasm in every word. “This isn’t exactly what I expected.” Though her tone suggested that it might have been what she’d feared.

      “I’ll try to do better.”

      She nodded, then her shoulders dropped slightly. “Canaan, I’m very, very sorry about the kids’ dog. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know what I can do about it now.” She clasped her hands and looked down at them pensively. “The trip must have taken more out of me than I expected it to. I thought I was up to this, but maybe not.”

      Canaan waited.

      She continued to stare at her hands. She said no more.

      From the Navajo side of his ancestry, Canaan had learned to be comfortable with long stretches of silence during conversation. Busy, useless chatter bothered him. Sheila, obviously, would not inflict that annoyance on him. She used to be quite a talker. Until her mother’s death.

      When she finally raised her head, he saw tears in her eyes.

      He suppressed a groan. What now? Two crying females in one day. He was not ready for more tears.

      “Sheila, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”

      “Oh, stop it.” She dashed the tears away with an impatient swipe of her fingers. “Please get a different welcoming committee next time.”

      He stood up. Time for a quick and merciful departure. “Why don’t you take a rest, and I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready in the cafeteria.”

      “That’s an improvement. Why couldn’t you have said that when you first got here?” She stood and walked him to the door. She even managed a tentative smile, a well-remembered smile. With the quick jolt of recognition also came the memory of the sense of loss he’d felt for so many long weeks after she’d left.

      He returned her smile. “See you in an hour or so.”

      “Right. Thanks for the warning.”

      The scent of death…it has haunted me for weeks. Even as I stand in the bright sunlight and watch the life that teems in the children at this great school, I catch that scent. The spirit of the wolf is rumored to enjoy death, and when that spirit comes over me, I catch that passion.

      But when that spirit does come over me, I am no longer myself. I am the wolf. My voice changes, my back bows. I walk less upright. The skins I use to cover myself fit me as if they are my own fur. These fools who say there is no other spirit but the precious Lord they serve at this school…they understand so little of the true realm of power.

      Let them keep believing there is no such power. The children know. The adults never believe them. And when an adult happens on the truth, I see to it—the spirit of the wolf sees to it—that this adult is silenced forever, no matter the loss to me.

      I miss my hogan today, where the smoke of the cedar fire engulfs me like a magical caress. The winds of change drive the heat of the sun through this school and bring a growing threat to me. I must be ever more vigilant, not only to the task before me, but to detection. That would ruin all I have worked for in my life—and the deaths of others would be in vain. As always, though I work with others who also crave the wealth and power we have labored for all these years, I am alone. No one else truly understands the soul-searing power of the spirit of the wolf.

       Chapter Six

       P reston Black sat on the deck of Graham and Willow Vaughn’s log lodge on the shore of Table Rock Lake, listening to his giggling nieces, Lucy and Brittany, at play by the water. He’d never have dreamed he would love babysitting so much, but those two little charmers captured his heart the first time he met them last year.

      A movement caught his attention from across the lake. Blaze Farmer was paddling a canoe from the boys’ ranch on the other shore, about a quarter mile away. Preston knew it was Blaze because it was time to exercise the horses, and also because Blaze was the only Hideaway citizen with skin the color of espresso.

      When Preston’s sister and brother-in-law had left him in charge of the place for two days, he had not agreed to do all the chores, keep the horses watered and exercised, the chickens fed and eggs collected. Blaze was in charge of that, for which Preston was deeply grateful. Keeping up with a nine-and six-year-old was enough to keep him occupied.

      He appreciated that occupation right now. It couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d been able to do little besides worry about Sheila and brood about their situation. He’d searched the Web countless times for the diseases endemic to the Southwest. That had been a mistake. Squirrels in the Grand Canyon carried fleas that carried the plague. Although anthrax had not been mentioned as a concern at the school at this point, he’d discovered that this nasty little killer could be found in the wool of sheep, which were raised on Navajoland.

      He’d harassed nearly every medical person in Hideaway, including Graham and Willow, with questions about hantavirus. This, of course, was fruitless, because hantavirus was not endemic to Missouri, and those who worked in the Ozarks focused on Ozark illnesses.

      Hantavirus was