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  Owl Dreams by John T. Biggs

  Copyright © 2013 John T. Biggs

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Oghma Creative Media

  Formatting by Kimberly Pennell

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-942428-87-9

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by

  Pen-L Publishing

  12 West Dickson #4455

  Fayetteville, AR 72702

  Visit our web site at www.Pen-L.com

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Sarah reached into her purse and retrieved the sticky note her mother had taped to the refrigerator.

  Sticky notes and tape, an early sign Mom was off her bipolar meds.

  “Meet me at the Dog House Drive-In at 12:30 P.M. I have a big surprise.” It was signed “Your loving half-sister, Marie Ferraro,” followed by three smiley faces.

  Sarah knew when her mom became her sister, the big surprise would be a man, and that would be hardly any surprise at all. She stood in the parking lot, getting the lay of the land. Always good to have an escape route planned when Mom was in half-sister mode.

  Sarah recognized the sound of Italian shoes on macadam closing in behind her. Marie had arrived.

  “There’s a problem, Sarah.”

  Marie took her daughter’s arm and turned her to the left. Two young men with exceptionally good posture stood in the parking lot. They wore inexpensive-looking sport coats that bulged over one hip and matching Foster Grant sunglasses. Either this was the new look for Mormon missionaries, or they were FBI.

  “Archie thought a hot dog drive-in would be safe,” Marie said. “Federal agents prefer Mexican Food. We should have gone to a sushi place.”

  “I’m missing a class for this,” Sarah said. “Couldn’t I just watch the video on the next segment of Cops?”

  “It’ll all be over in a minute, Sarah, and anyway, anthropology is a waste of time.”

  Marie had been conducting her own study of Man since puberty. She didn’t have everything worked out yet, but she was getting better. An illegitimate daughter at age fourteen hadn’t slowed her down, but the walk, the talk, the sultry look, all the moves that made the wheel of history turn for thousands of years still worked as well as ever, at least for Marie Ferraro, Sarah’s mother and sometimes-half-sister.

  “It’s Chinatown, Jake,” Sarah said.

  “You see too many movies, although Roman Polanski is kind of cute.”

  He filled the bill for Marie all right. Pedophile, criminal, running from the law.

  Marie smiled. “You can learn everything you need to know about men from Nicholas Sparks novels and Lifetime TV.” She strolled toward the FBI agents like a Victoria’s Secret model in heat.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” She crowded into the agents’ personal space—way in—touched one of them on the hand and bumped the other with her hip. Both contacts lasted longer than necessary.

  “I was wondering . . . .” She kept her hip against one man while speaking to the other.

  Sexually ambidextrous, Sarah realized. How long did it take to perfect a skill like that?

  “I was just wondering . . . .” The tip of Marie’s tongue played over her lips, which somehow made the front of the agents’ pants stand out even more than their pistol bulges.

  It didn’t matter what Marie was just wondering because these men were ready to listen. She held both of one agent’s hands and bound the other one securely with the pressure of her hip. They didn’t stand a chance; Harry Houdini in his prime couldn’t break free from Marie Ferraro’s estrogen grip.

  Sarah had watched her mother demonstrate sexual jujitsu a thousand times. Use an opponent’s weight against him. Pin him to the floor with the power of his own erection. So easy for a woman like Marie, who knew everything there was to know about the weakness of the stronger sex.

  “I was just wondering if you and your partner would care to join us for lunch—you know, you look just like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.” She said this somehow to both agents at once. Now she had each of them by one hand, leading them toward Sarah, who was shaking her head no and thinking about the seminar on Mounds Culture Diaspora she was missing, while Marie seduced the FBI.

  The agents had probably never seen North by Northwest, but they were being treated to a colorized description of the major plot points on the parking lot of the Dog House Drive-In while Marie Ferraro’s boyfriend escaped.

  Sarah looked around, trying to figure out which lawbreaker belonged to Marie. There were lots of possibilities. Guys with scars and arcane tattoos that anthropologists would study in a thousand years when they were safer to approach.

  Either bad guys all liked hot dogs, or they were getting into practice for when they ordered their last meals before they were humanely put down with intravenous injections, observed by death penalty opponents who never tired of watching executions.

  That one. Sarah locked eyes with a tall, lean, possibly Hispanic man wearing distressed jeans, sneakers, and a Hawaiian shirt—apparently you could eat inside the Dog House Drive-In even though there were bars on every window. The place looked like a jail so its customers would feel at home.

  Sarah’s suspect slipped his hand into the waistband of his pants the way a professional baseball player adjusts his penis, and before she could say, “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” he pulled a pistol from his belt and aimed it at the FBI agents.

  Marie pushed the agents in front of her and lay down on the parking lot, gracefully, like people used to do in black and white spy movies starring Audrey Hepburn.

  Sarah dropped to the macadam—less like Audrey Hepburn, more like a marionette whose strings were cut.

  Marie and Sarah rolled to safety, more or less, while the cops and the gunman fired bullets in every direction and covered the macadam with hot brass, like a metal hailstorm.

  Nobody hit, no glass broken, no bullet holes anywhere to be seen. Thank God for the wide-open spaces of Albuquerque.

  It all ended when the gunman ran out of bullets and the FBI agents didn’t. One of them said, “On the ground, asshole,” and the other repeated the statement with a little more volume to make up for coming in late.

  The gunman put his pistol on a faded yellow line beside a handicapped parking space and nudged it in position so that neither the barrel nor the grip touched unpainted asphalt. Then, he pushed loose gravel aside, creating a relatively clean space a little larger than the shadow he cast on the macadam, and lay face down with his arms extended.

  “I’ll bet he keeps his cell nice,” Marie said.

  Sarah watched the two agents read the gunman his rights while they pushed his face onto the parking lot and cuffed his hands behind him.

  “And if you can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed to defend you.” The agent reading the little laminated card did look a little like Cary Grant, but he had a southern accent and a little stutter when he asked if the shooter wanted to give up his rights.

  “Looks like he’s already given up everything else,” Marie told Sarah.

  “Is that your new boyfriend, Mom?”

  “Heavens no, Sa
rah, this is New Mexico.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Lots of bronze-skinned people around with guns and warrants. Those agents just arrested the wrong Indian.” Marie pointed to a quiet disturbance at the most distant corner of the parking lot. A man sat on the asphalt with his hands in the air while his car backed onto Central Avenue.

  “Archie’s borrowing a Toyota Prius for a while.” Marie said. “Come on, I’ll drive you back to school.”