God. She’d heard about such temperatures, but she had never imagined she could shiver so hard she thought she would break apart.
Then he stopped by a car. A car so amazing, she forgot the cold and stood with her mouth open.
He handed her the keys. “Since you’re going to be doing my errands, let’s see you drive this bad boy.”
She stared at the keys. She stared at him. She stared at the car.
The bad boy was a black Jaguar XJ 757.
When she’d been with the Mongols, she’d been regaled with tales of Jaguar heists and how stupid they were, because cops always stopped Jags looking for drug dealers. Stealing an expensive car, she’d been told, was the best way to do a prison stint. Better to stick with a boring car: a Camry, a Prius, even a Santa Fe.
“Mr. White, I can’t...”
“Donald.” He opened her door and gestured her in. “It’s just a sedan. Go on.”
“Sure.” As the seat enfolded her with comfort and the scent of rich leather filled her nostrils, she told herself, It’s just a sedan. Just a sedan. But her inner self responded in reverent tones, It’s a Jaguar.
As soon as she started the car, Mr. White got in and turned on her seat heater, and the warmth stopped her shivering and added to the sense of luxury.
Driving out of the airport involved city streets; she was busy watching the signs, listening to the guidance system, figuring out which lane led to Glenn Highway going north out of town. At this point, the Jaguar was merely a car that handled well, and when one guy in a Ford F-150 pickup tried to race her, she gracefully allowed him to win.
Mr. White—Donald—seemed to be utterly unconcerned; while the car was giving her directions, he was typing on his phone.
She headed north, moving through Anchorage traffic. They crossed the water—Donald told her it was Knik Arm.
She nodded—who cared what it was called? She turned north onto Alaska Highway 3. After they passed through Wasilla, traffic thinned, then they were headed toward Rockin. Ahead of them were mountains, real mountains, and they passed lakes and rivers and a wild, weird, varied landscape of frost and ice. She had been expecting snow piled everywhere. But no; white swirled on the wind and glittered in the sun, but the road was dry and the hard ground was brown and green, and off to the side of the road, she saw her first-ever frozen pond.
Donald complimented her on her driving, then asked, “Have you traveled much?”
“Not in the last few years. I mean, naturally. But when I was a kid, yeah. My family went all kinds of places.”
“Where?”
“Around the States a little, but my mother is from Belarus, in Eastern Europe, so we visited there once when I was six.”
“Your mother’s an immigrant?”
“Yes.” Evie didn’t say more. She couldn’t. Her mother had never told her anything about Belarus except that she’d lived in an orphanage and out of all the men who applied for her hand, she’d chosen their father to marry.
At one point, after the divorce, Evie had bitterly told her mother she shouldn’t have picked a man who would rather buy a subservient wife than court an independent woman.
Her mother had said, Evie, I’m going to give you good advice. Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.
Evie still didn’t understand what she didn’t understand. But people could get ugly about immigrants, so she explained, “My mother’s a US citizen now. She did it in the minimum, three years. She’s very proud of her citizenship.”
“Uh-huh. Where else have you traveled?”
“When I was ten, I visited China with my father. My grandmother lives in Liaoning Province. We spent two weeks with her and a week touring the country.”
“Your father is Chinese?”
“Half Chinese. His father was European-American and met his mother at Yale, where she was an Asian archeology professor visiting from China.” Evie tensed, waiting for the questions...
How could a girl with such a distinguished and educated family background end up in JDC? Why wasn’t Evie enrolled in a distinguished university, graduating early, getting her historical or tech degree? Or languages? She was good with languages. Or...
Or. Or. Or.
She could feel Donald White studying her. “That explains a lot,” he said.
“About?”
“About your appearance.”
“Oh.” Her mother was petite, fair and curvaceous, with thick blond hair that grew to a luxurious length.
Her father was tall, skinny and tanned, with thick black hair that sprang over his brow and gave him a distinguished look.
Evelyn was like an egg scramble: a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Dark eyes, slanted over Eastern European cheekbones, and heavy eyebrows that needed to be waxed or plucked or whatever. Pale skin that burned and peeled every time she hit the beach. A flat nose, not much for boobs or hips, big ears. But she’d picked up a couple of really good things from both parents: she was tall, and the world was easier for tall people. Her hair was shiny black, thick and long. She’d shaved her head when she joined the Mongols, but when she got into JDC, she let her hair grow. She braided it, and more than once a swift swing of the head had knocked an assailant away. The longer it grew, the thicker the braid, the better weapon it became. No one in law enforcement knew, unless they were at the receiving end of a slap, and no one could make her cut it off.
Having Donald White stare at her made her uncomfortable, so she said, “Tell me about where we’re going.”
“Rockin is, um, small. Unprepossessing. Population onethousand plus people in the borough... You know what a borough is?”
Evie had done her homework. “A borough is what they have in Alaska instead of counties.”
“Right. In town, the buildings are old and mostly decrepit. Some people in Anchorage use the area as a weekend home destination—three-hour drive, houses on the lakes and rivers. It’s close to Denali.” He sounded impatient. “You know about Denali?”
“Denali is the tallest mountain peak in North America.”
“Big tourist attraction for people who like to hike, fish, do the wildlife thing.” He didn’t sound like he was a fan. He glanced behind the car. “On this road right now, there’s not much traffic, so open her up.” The car, he meant.
He was her boss, and she had been tempted anyway, so Evie obeyed.
My God. She’d never imagined driving a car like this. The Jag handled like a car that wanted attention. That wanted speed. That understood how to hug the corners. No wonder that one Mongol gang maverick had ignored all the advice and stolen a Jag. She now knew that however much time he spent in JDC, it was worth it.