Read Online Tainted Trail by Wen Spencer - Free Book Online Page B

caught him and eased back. “Okay, that’s not going to work.”
    Through a screen of pine, Ukiah gazed up at the cliff face. The white tips of broken branches stood out in sharp relief against the green needles and dark wood. He stared for several minutes until he realized Alicia must have tumbled down through the tree, the branches snapping as they broke her fall.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Max kept Ukiah from sitting up again. “Just lie still, son.”
    â€œAlicia. This is where she would have landed . . .”
    Â 
    His moms had been reluctant to let Ukiah off the farm without them. With his newborn sister taking up all his Mom Lara’s time, life would be simpler, however, if they allowed fifteen-year-old Ukiah to work part-time with Max. In what would become the pattern for years ahead, Ukiah rode with Mom Jo to her workplace at the Pittsburgh Zoo. While they waited for Max in the zoo’s parking lot, Mom Jo taught Ukiah how to call her on a public payphone and filled his pockets with quarters. The Max that picked him up that day had been a man fighting grief and depression, so the ride to the office was filled with edgy silence.
    Later, Ukiah would have a scale of luxury to measure the Shadyside mansion against. At the time, the office was merely a very big house, nearly void of furniture. Max led Ukiah through the empty rooms to a keeping room off the kitchen. Besides the grandfather clock presiding over the foyer, the desks and file cabinets occupying it represented the only furniture on the first floor.
    What surprised Ukiah was that there was someone already in the room. A teenage girl sat at the nearest desk, studying a computer screen intently. She shook the last bit of a candy bar at Max in greeting, not looking up.
    Max checked Ukiah with a hand on his shoulder. “Alicia, there’s someone here I want you to meet.”
    Alicia glanced up, startled at Ukiah’s presence andscrambled to her feet, popping the last of the candy bar into her mouth. “I was working on those background searches.”
    â€œGood.” Max indicated Ukiah with a pat on his shoulder. “This is Ukiah Oregon. He’s the John Doe case I went to Oregon to trace.”
    Ukiah and Alicia stared at each other. Her hair fascinated him, a rich shade of purple he had never seen outside of certain flowers. He didn’t realize people came with such hair color. Certain cartoon characters suddenly seemed more feasible.
    In addition to her hair, Alicia had an abnormal number of tiny holes in her ears, from which dangled elaborate pieces of silver-and-amethyst jewelry. Was there some correlation to the color of her hair and the jewelry?
    â€œOh, wow! He looks like a Wolf Boy.” Alicia breathed out a chocolate-flavored sigh. She held out her hand to him. “Hi! I’m Alicia Kraynak.”
    He leaned over to examine her outstretched chocolate-coated fingers. Deciding she was sharing with him the last remains of her candy bar, he licked her fingers clean. Her hair, according to her life pattern, should have been brown, like her eyebrows. So how did it get purple?
    â€œUkiah!” Max choked on something that sounded like a laugh.
    Alicia’s eyes had gone wide. “Um, it’s okay, Uncle Max.”
    â€œYou’re supposed to shake her hand, Ukiah, not lick it.” Max picked up Ukiah’s hand, molded it around her salvia-damp palm, and made him shake it up and down. “Look her in the eye. No, not like that—like you’re pleased to see her. Um, we’ll work on the smile. Now say: ‘Ukiah Oregon, pleased to meet you.’ ”
    Ukiah did as directed and Alicia’s eyes crinkled into a huge smile.
    â€œThat’s great!” Alicia claimed back her hand. “Let’s try it again.”
    So they practiced shaking hands with Max interrupting to make small improvements. Later Ukiah would realize Max’s patience stemmed