Invincible. Diana Palmer

it worse. He laughed at her, just the way her classmates had laughed at her in school. She was the odd one out, the misfit. She had a reason for her ironclad morals. Many local people knew them, too. Episodes in her childhood had hardened her.

      Well, people tended to be products of their upbringing. That was life. Unless she wanted to throw away her ideals and give up religion, she was pretty much settled in her beliefs. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a misfit. Her late grandfather had said that civilizations rested on the bedrock of faith and law and the arts. Some people had to be conventional to keep the mechanism going.

      “What was that?” Sheriff Hayes’s receptionist asked.

      “Sorry.” Carlie cleared her throat. She’d been on hold. “I was just mumbling to myself. What were you saying?”

      The woman laughed and gave her the information the chief had asked for, about an upcoming criminal case.

      * * *

      SHE COOKED A light supper, just creamed chicken and rice, with green peas, and made a nice apple pie for dessert.

      Her father came in, looking harassed. Then he saw the spread and grinned from ear to ear. “What a nice surprise!”

      “I know, something light. But I was hungry,” she added.

      He made a face. “Shame. Telling lies.”

      She shrugged. “I went to church Sunday. God won’t mind a little lie, in a good cause.”

      He smiled. “You know, some people have actually asked me how to talk to God.”

      “I just do it while I’m cooking, or working in the yard,” Carlie said. “Just like I’m talking to you.”

      He laughed. “Me, too. But there are people who make hard work of it.”

      “Why were you in the chief’s office today?” she asked suddenly

      He paused in the act of putting a napkin in his lap. His expression went blank for an instant, then it came back to life. “He wanted me to talk to a prisoner for him,” he said finally.

      She raised both eyebrows.

      “Sorry,” he said, smoothing out the napkin. “Some things are confidential.”

      “Okay.”

      “Let’s say grace,” he added.

      * * *

      LATER, HE WATCHED the news while she cleaned up the kitchen. She sat down with him and watched a nature special for a while. Then she excused herself and went upstairs to read. She wasn’t really interested in much television programming, except for history specials and anything about mining. She loved rocks.

      She sat down on the side of her bed and thumbed through her bookshelf. Most titles were digital as well as physical these days, but she still loved the feel and smell of an actual book in her hands.

      She pulled out a well-worn copy of a book on the Little Bighorn fight, one that was written by members of various tribes who’d actually been present. It irritated her that many of the soldiers had said there were no living witnesses to the battle. That was not true. There were plenty of them: Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow and a host of other men from different tribes who were at the battle and saw exactly what happened.

      She smiled as she read about how many of them ended up in Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous traveling Wild West show. They played before the crowned heads of Europe. They learned high society manners and how to drink tea from fancy china cups. They laughed among themselves at the irony of it. Sitting Bull himself worked for Cody for a time, before he was killed.

      She loved most to read about Crazy Horse. Like Carson, he was Lakota, which white people referred to as Sioux. Crazy Horse was Oglala, which was one of the subclasses of the tribe. He was light-skinned and a great tactician. There was only one verified photograph of him, which was disputed by some, accepted by others. It showed a rather handsome man with pigtails, wearing a breastplate. There was also a sketch. He had led a war party against General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and won it. He led another party against Custer at the Little Bighorn.

      Until his death, by treachery at the hands of a soldier, he was the most famous war leader of the Lakota.

      Sitting Bull did not fight; he was not a warrior. He was a holy man who made medicine and had visions of a great battle that was won by the native tribes.

      Crazy Horse fascinated Carlie. She bought book after book, looking for all she could find in his history.

      She also had books about Alexander the Third, called the Great, who conquered most of the civilized world by the age of thirty. His ability as a strategist was unequaled in the ancient past. Hannibal, who fought the Romans under Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War at Carthage, was another favorite. Scipio fascinated her, as well.

      The ability of some leaders to inspire a small group of men to conquer much larger armies was what drew her to military history. It was the generals who led from the front, who ate and slept and suffered with their men, who won the greatest battles and the greatest honor.

      She knew about battles because her secret vice was an online video game, “World of Warcraft.” A number of people in Jacobsville and Comanche Wells played. She knew the gamer tags, the names in-game, of only a very few. Probably she’d partnered with some of them in raid groups. But mostly she ran battlegrounds, in player-versus-player matches, but only on weekends, when she had more free time.

      Gaming took the place of dates she never got. Even if she’d been less moral, she rarely got asked on dates. She could be attractive when she tried, but she wasn’t really pretty and she was painfully shy around people she didn’t know. She’d only gone out a couple of times in high school, once with a boy who was getting even with his girlfriend by dating her—although she hadn’t known until later—and another with a boy who’d hurt another girl badly and saw Carlie as an easy mark. He got a big surprise.

      From time to time she thought about how nice it would be to marry and have children. She loved spending time in the baby section of department stores when she went to San Antonio with her father occasionally. She liked to look at knitted booties and lacy little dresses. Once a saleswoman had asked if she had children. She said no, she wasn’t married. The saleswoman had laughed and asked what that had to do with it. It was a new world, indeed.

      She put away her book on the Little Bighorn fight, and settled in with her new copy of a book on Alexander the Great. The phone rang. She got up, but she was hesitant to answer it. She recalled the threat from the unknown man and wondered if that was him.

      She went to the staircase and hesitated. Her father had answered and was on the phone.

      “Yes, I know,” he said in a tone he’d never used with her. “If you think you can do better, you’re welcome to try.” He paused and a huge sigh left his chest. “Listen, she’s all I’ve got in the world. I know I don’t deserve her, but I will never let anyone harm her. This place may not look secure, but I assure you, it is...”

      He leaned against the wall near the phone table, with the phone in his hand. He looked world-weary. “That’s what I thought, too, at first,” he said quietly. “I still have enemies. But it isn’t me he’s after. It’s Carlie! It has to have something to do with the man she saw in Grier’s office. I know that the man who killed Joey and masqueraded as a DEA agent is dead. But if he put out a contract before he died... Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” He shook his head. “I know you don’t have the funds. It’s okay. I have plenty of people who owe me favors. I’ll call in a few. Yes. I do appreciate your help. It’s just...it’s worrying me, that’s all. Sure. I’ll call you. Thanks.” He hung up.

      Carlie moved back into the shadows. Her father looked like a stranger, like someone she’d never seen before. She wondered who he’d been speaking to, and if the conversation was about her. It sounded that way; he’d used her name. What was a contract? A contract to kill someone? She bit her lower lip. Something to do with the man she saw in the chief’s office,