Another Chance (3 page)

His wife
practically gasped at being scolded by him in the company of their son and
daughter-in-law and having her precious pet referred to as if she were a common
dog.  “My little Sparkle is an AKC Champion Maltese!  She is not
livestock!”

Again Jordan
was opening her mouth to speak when this time, David cut her off.  “And
Jordan’s horse is a registered American Quarter Horse and has a few
championship titles of his own, Mom.  You aren’t a horsewoman, so don’t be
so quick to judge what you don’t understand.”

Jordan squeezed
her husband’s hand in gratitude as his mother turned to look at Tempest grazing
quietly in the field.  “Well, if he’s a show horse, that’s
different.  I’ve always admired competitors and the people in this
neighborhood shouldn’t object to a show horse.”

Jordan heard
the phone ringing and stepped back inside to answer it.  “Hello,” she
spoke into the receiver.  There was no answer, so she hung the phone up
and rejoined the family as they came back inside.  David looked at her
expectantly.

“Short call?” 
He said.

Jordan shook
her head and shrugged.  “Wrong number, I guess.  We’ve had several of
them lately.  We must have a number that’s one digit off from Pizza Hut or
something.”

They all
laughed.

The calls kept
coming.  At first they were occasional, then they became more frequent and
at uncommon times.  If David was at school, Jordan could sometimes hear
breathing and knew there was someone there.  She felt the caller knew that
David was at work.  It irritated her and for the first time, she became concerned
about it.

They had the
number changed and for a while there were no calls, then somehow, they started
again.  It was around the same time that she began to notice the man at
the feed store was getting more personal when she had to stop by there.  At
first, it was the way his eyes wondered over her body if she came to the truck
while he was near it.  Then he started using her first name, as if they
were friends.  She began to stay inside talking with the owner’s wife
until she saw that Lambert was busy helping someone else.  Then she’d cut
the conversation short and hurry to drive away before he could approach
her.  She even considered changing feed so she wouldn’t need to go in that
store, but she finally decided to just handle it head on and not allow herself
to be intimidated by some pushy excuse for a would-be Casanova.  If worse
came to worse, she could always complain to the owners.  They were good
people and she felt confident that they would not sanction the man’s behavior.

The next time
she needed feed, she made no effort to avoid him while he loaded her feed and
hay, and when he offered to come out to her house and unload it for her later,
Jordan gave him a stern frown.  “I don’t need help unloading my supplies,
thank you.”  She replied coldly.  “And if I did, my husband would be
more than glad to help me.”

“Your
husband?  You mean the school teacher?”  Lambert sneered.  His
tone seemed to hint that David was something less than masculine.

“My
husband
,
the football coach,” she snapped back at him.  Then she snatched the door
to the truck open and stepped up inside.  She grasped the door intending
to jerk it shut, but he held it in one big hand.

“You’re too
much woman for him, Jordan.  You need a man who knows how to take care of
you,” he almost whispered, before letting the door swing shut.

Her anger
overcoming her shock, Jordan lowered the window quickly.  “And you think
my husband isn’t man enough?”  Her voice was cold with fury.

He smiled
confidently.  “I know he’s not, because I’m the only man who can do
that.  Don’t you pretend you don’t know it either.  I’ve seen the way
you smile at me, always watching where I am when you come here, Jordan.  I
know that I’m the reason you come here.  We just need to have someplace to
meet.  Some place private.”

Shocked, her
eyebrows arched and her brown eyes flashed with yellow sparks of anger. 
“You’re out of your mind!  I watch where you are so I can try to avoid
being near you!  Get away from me and don’t
ever
come near me
again!”  She started her truck and roared away from the store, vowing
never to go there again.  She intended to tell David about the incident,
but later decided to just change feed and feed stores.  There was no point
in stressing David out about some jerk that she would never see again anyway.

As she
returned from a late, relaxing trail ride two days later, she had dismounted
and was talking to her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Swartz.  The older woman was
showing her a new shrub next to their driveway that her husband had
planted.  Jordan knew the two took a lot of pride in their yard and had
even gotten some helpful advice about growing a beautiful rose plant that her
mother-in-law had gotten for David’s birthday.  Tempest was resting one
hind leg, his eyes droopy from the warm sun, when Jordan’s attention was drawn
to the sound of a car, creeping slowly along the highway toward them.

“That man must
be lost,” Mrs. Swartz said softly, standing up straight and rubbing her back
with one hand.  “I bet he’s passed here six or eight times in the last
hour.”

Jordan looked
at the driver and her blood ran cold in her veins!  It was Frank
Lambert!  He flashed a big smile at her, raised his hand in a friendly
wave and drove slowly on.

“Do you know
him?”  Mrs. Swartz asked curiously.

Jordan
shrugged.  “Not really.  He works where I’ve been buying horse
feed.  I wonder what he’s doing out here.”

Mrs. Swartz
shrugged, returning her attention to her plants.  “I don’t know, but he
gives me the creeps.”

Jordan glanced
again at the car continuing down the highway at a crawl.  “Me too,” she
agreed.  Inside she was seething with anger.  How dare that man come
into her neighborhood and act as if they were friends!  This was too
much!  She would have to tell David about this and maybe even the
police.  She excused herself and led Tempest to the barn behind the house
to unsaddle him and turn him loose.

All the
athletic coaches had been called to a dinner meeting with the Athletic Director
of the school that evening and she knew David wouldn’t be in until around nine
o’clock, so she took a quick shower, had a sandwich and settled in to watch a
movie on the television in the den.

The ringing of
the phone shattered the subtle quiet of the room and her frayed nerves sent a
shot of adrenaline surging through her veins.  She picked it up and
managed a calm “Hello.”

There was the
sound of deep breathing, and then a coarse whisper burned her ear.
 
“We’ll be together, soon.”

Jordan didn’t
understand the muffled words the first time.  “What?”  She asked.

The whispered
voice repeated itself.  And then she knew who it was!

Terror like
nothing she had ever known flashed over her.  She slammed the phone
down.  It rang again.  She let it ring a couple of times before she
snatched it up again.  “You leave me alone!”  She hissed, and then
slammed it down again.  When it rang the third time, she turned the ringer
off.

Fighting
panic, she turned on every light in the house and every one outside, hoping the
lights would make her feel more secure and when David arrived at nine fifteen,
she practically knocked him down when she fled into his arms for safety.

Amid tears of
fear and shame, she told David about Frank Lambert.  “I don’t know what I
might have said or done to make him think I was interested in him!  I
swear I didn’t do anything intentionally.”

He wrapped his
arms around her.  “I know that, sweetheart.  It just sounds like this
man is some kind of nut job.  In spite of being the most beautiful,
sexiest woman alive, I can’t see a reason for him or any other man to be
attracted to you.”

She frowned up
at him.  “This is serious, David.  I’m scared.”

He wrapped his
arms around her and hugged her close.  “In the morning, we’ll go have a
talk with the sheriff.  I won’t have something like this upsetting
you.  We aren’t going to put up with it.”

His strong
arms held her close and there, against him, she felt her fears slip away. 
David would take care of her.  It was a little later that she went to bed,
while David looked over some paperwork he had brought home from his meeting.

The shattering
of glass woke her as the bedroom window burst into thousands of pieces and the
rest of that night was always her nightmare.  The breaking of the window
was the beginning of David’s death and her life as she had known it.

He was lying
in the bed, not quiet asleep, not quiet awake when he heard the almost
undetectable sound of a key, slide into the lock of the door to his darkened
motel room.  His senses were instantly alert and he silently rolled off
the bed onto the floor away from the door.  His Glock was in his hand as
if by magic.  The door had not yet begun to open, so he slipped silently
across the dark room and flattened himself against the wall behind the cheap
motel dresser.  It didn’t offer much protection, but an intruder would
expect to find him still lying asleep in the bed.

The door
creaked softly as it was pushed open.  He saw vague shadows silhouetted in
the doorway between the dim hallway light and his dark room and knew there was
more than one intruder as they slipped warily into his room.  At the
moment they realized he wasn’t in the bed, he stepped from against the wall and
spoke, his voice soft and menacing, the sound of him cocking his pistol filling
the silence of the room.

“Lookin’ for
me?”

They whirled
and one of them fired the 45 Magnum he was holding.  The bullet shattered
the window three feet to Wolf's left.  His hand jumped and his Glock spit
fire in the direction of the two intruders. The one with the 45 cried out and
turned, knocking the man behind him off balance as he too fired his
weapon.  This time the bullet sliced into Wolf's leg, burning the flesh
and knocking his leg out from under him.  There was scuffling and
confusion as Wolf fired off three shots instinctively, to protect himself as he
fell.  Pushing with his uninjured leg, he managed to dive behind the bed.

His dive
carried him further than he intended and his head hit the nightstand, almost
knocking him out.  Dazed for the moment, he didn’t hear the two men
cautiously approach the end of the bed and study his still form.

“You think
he’s dead?” one of them spoke in a whisper, his hand dripping blood from the
bullet hole in his shoulder.

The other man
shrugged, pointed his hand gun at the still form and pulled the trigger.  “Now
he is.  Let’s get out of here!  This place will be full of cops in a
few minutes.”

Wolf heard
their words faintly and felt the stabbing fire in his back as the bullet tore
deep into his body.  His body jerked spasmodically, then a thick fog of
blinding pain filled his brain and he slipped into merciful unconsciousness.

His next
thoughts were confused and frightening.  Bright lights glared down into
his sensitive eyes, he felt like he was lying on his back on a bed of fiery hot
bricks, with one raised above the others, near the middle of his back, just to
the left of his spine.  Unfamiliar voices came and went.  Sometimes
he picked up a word, and he knew there was movement around him, but none of it
made any sense.  His back and chest burned like an inferno and every
breath was agony.  I must be dying, he thought.  His mind jumped back
in time to his boyhood on the reservation.  He was with his grandfather
and they were talking about his grandmother who had passed away before the old
man had brought him and Feather home to the reservation.

“Shy Deer had
been sick a long time with the coughing.  She told me she was tired, but I
still had work to do, so she was going on ahead of me to the other side. 
Then she started singing her death song.  I knew then that she would
die.  I didn’t want her to leave me, but she knew there was a reason for
me to stay.  I think the spirits must have told her that you and your
sister would need me.”

The boy was
curious about the chanting he had heard from others even as they were
dying.  The old man sat before a smoldering fire and answered the
questions the boy had asked.

“When we know
that death is hovering over us, we sing to the spirits on the other side to let
them know we are coming and to ask the spirits here to show us the way.” 
The old man looked into the fire.  “We call it the death chant and to each
person it is personal and unique.”  Over the years, the boy had grown into
a man and had given serious thought to his own personal death song.

Feeling
trapped and alone within the fog of pain he somehow heard his own voice begin a
weak chant.  He had learned that the words of each death chant came from
the heart of the one who was singing it and to his surprise; the words came
easily from his heart and in his native tongue.

“Take me oh,
Great Spirit

For I am ready
for my death,

I have walked
the path You placed before me,

I have honored
the gifts You gave me,

I have been
thankful to be of The People,

And You know
who I am.

I am ready to
walk the path of stars

And join those
who await me there.”

The voices
around him grew quiet; the pain seemed to slip away into the fog.  He
began to whisper the words of the chant again.  They came to his lips much
easier this time.

“Take me oh,
Great Spirit,

For I am ready
for my death,

I have walked
the pa…”

Then a small
hand made quick, angry contact with his cheek, and he heard Feather’s furious
voice.  “You shut that up!  You hear me, Wolf?  You will
not
die!  I cannot let you go!”  Shocked by the quick slap, he stopped
singing.  He knew his sister’s rage.  She would do whatever it took
to make sure he heard her, even if it meant slapping death out of him.  He
groaned softly, the pain in his body becoming real again, becoming
all-consuming again.  The chanting had been on the verge of erasing his
pain forever and he wasn’t sure he wanted to give that up.  He tried to
start chanting again, but he couldn’t remember the song.  The pain
wouldn’t let him remember, and then he heard her voice again.