Burn(25)

“Because he’s Russian.”

“With no Russian accent. And he’s worked on farms for who knows how long. It’s like asking your dad about current affairs in Japan.”

“First of all, my dad was born in Tacoma—”

“I know, Jason—”

“But he does keep up to date with what goes on over there.”

She stopped in the road, noticing with a shudder that it was the same spot where Kelby had accosted them days before, when Kazimir had done the first of what turned out to be a number of unexpected things. “Where would a dragon get that information? Dragon newspapers? Dragon newsreels at dragon picture shows?”

“We don’t know how they communicate—”

“And like you said, we have more important things to worry about.”

Jason deflated a little. He looked up at the sky at what were so clearly snowclouds they might as well have had a label on them. They’d been threatening for a day, having ambled down from Canada, but it finally looked like they were ready to start making serious snow.

“Freaky times, huh?” Jason said, then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “I killed someone.”

“We did.”

“It wasn’t your hand on the gun.”

“He wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for both of us.”

“Yes, he would’ve.”

“And that would have been better? That he get you alone? And beat you to death with no witnesses? He was a bad, stupid man.”

“A bad, stupid man who I killed.”

He looked so sad there seemed nothing at all to do except kiss him, right there, out in the open, in the middle of the road.

“Ow,” she said.

“Jaw?”

“That was nearly broken by a man who would have murdered you.”

“Sometimes you just have to feel bad about a thing. Sometimes that’s the only thing that makes you human.”

This, she understood. Good God, did she. She carried the pain of her mother around her like an undershirt. No one could see it, but it covered her body.

They pulled apart as they heard a car coming up the road.

“You have to be kidding,” Jason whispered, as they saw it was the sheriff’s own patrol car.

“Just stay calm,” Sarah said, though it was fake bravery. She felt her whole world sliding away as the sheriff pulled to a stop and rolled down his window, like the ground was crumbling and there was nowhere to run. But it wasn’t to Jason he spoke.

“Your daddy hired a dragon, I hear,” he said.

Gareth Dewhurst didn’t trust the dragon, which was only prudent. He was never going to trust any dragon, and when Hisao Inagawa said it was a blue—from where? Who’d ever heard of a blue anywhere in this godforsaken state?—Gareth hadn’t even believed him, had thought his abrupt, frequently unlikeable neighbor was teasing him, which, knowing Hisao Inagawa, seemed improbable.

But a blue it was. Story on the blues was that they were mischievous, snide, imps. Everyone knew reds were imperious, would treat you like lowly subjects in a royal court even when you were paying them a single gold coin to dig you a new latrine. But blues were intelligent troublemakers.

“Where the hell did you find a blue?” he’d asked Hisao, way back when it first came up.

“The broker I got that red from a few years back recommended him,” Hisao had said. “Said he’d just shown up one night, asking for work.”

“Don’t you find that odd?”

“Since when have either of us been able to afford to refuse something just because of its oddness, Gareth?”

Which was true. Which was fair. After Gareth had married Darlene, it was something that had become even truer and fairer. Hisao Inagawa—difficult, angry, stern Hisao Inagawa whose life the government had, to put it delicately, screwed over pretty hard—had at some point become Gareth Dewhurst’s closest friend, for what it was worth, because Gareth was the only other person in Frome who might understand that.

So Gareth had contacted Hisao’s broker and been told, yes, there was a dragon looking for work, and yes, that dragon was a blue, but no, they were actually hard workers, and any reputation they might have had was built on such little actual knowledge as to be close to worthless.

It was only after Gareth had handed over what was damn near his last ten dollars to the broker for his commission that the broker gave him the letter.

“What’s this?” Gareth had asked.

The broker shrugged. “Came here, had your name on it. Letter of recommendation, probably. Some of the claws have them sent along.”

“That’s an ugly word,” Gareth said, distracted, opening the envelope.

He read the letter.

And now, right now, on this cold just-February day, he watched the blue dragon work in the second field, having completed initial clearing on the first far faster than Gareth had expected. He’d assumed the job would take a month, but this dragon would be done in under two weeks. This damnable dragon who had done not a single thing wrong in the time it had been working on the farm. This dragon who, indeed, seemed to have saved his daughter during an encounter on the road with the missing and not much missed Deputy Kelby.

This dragon Gareth had been asked to kill for five thousand dollars.