Jericho Jaxon Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  Prologue

  Arizona (May 1999)

  Gia Jaxon stared down into the gorge below her. She had no idea how high up she was, but she was confident that when she jumped, the fall would be enough to kill her. She’d planned to wait until her eighteenth birthday to do the deed, but screw it. Today was the day that her miserable little life would finally come to a tragic end.

  She thought she’d feel relieved. Or at least a little less dead inside. For the first time in a long time, she was the one who was taking control of her life, rather than the other way around.

  But she didn’t feel anything. As the Pink Floyd song goes, she was comfortably numb.

  She didn’t leave a note. She couldn’t think of anything to write that didn’t sound like a ridiculous cliché. The teen-angst thing was completely overdone anyway.

  As she gazed at the jagged rocks below, Gia wondered if she was supposed to say something before she took a swan dive. Not that she felt like much of a swan. She was more of an ugly duckling. And the place she selected to take a dirt nap was secluded, so it wasn’t like there was anyone around to hear her last words anyway.

  As she inched toward the edge of the canyon, her heart began to pound in her chest. What if she botched her suicide like she’d botched everything else in her life? She could end up in even worse shape.

  She decided to take a run at it; that would give her enough velocity to ensure that she made it to the bottom of the ravine.

  As she slowly took a few steps backward, she was startled by a deep male voice behind her. “Don’t do it.”

  Panic surged through her body as the sound of his footsteps in the gravelly desert moved closer toward her. She attempted to take a step but was frozen with fear. Now she wasn’t just an ugly duckling; she was also a sitting duck.

  The guy circled around her, then stood like a muscular wall between her and the gorge so that she couldn’t jump.

  It wasn’t too often that someone in Arizona wore all black, especially in the late spring when the temperature was just starting to hit the triple digits. The guy looked like he had stepped out of a bad teen horror movie. As if his dark cargo pants and black military boots weren’t pretentious enough, he was wearing his dark hoodie like a cloak.

  Gia stared into his coal-black eyes. There was something creepy about the way his irises blended with his pupils. She wondered why she wasn’t more frightened of the guy than she felt. He was probably six foot five and powerfully built. With her petite frame, he was easily twice her size.

  Oddly, there was something about the guy that put Gia at ease. There was a gentleness about him that offset his physically intimidating presence.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice wavering.

  When he pushed his hood down, she got a better look at his face. There were two deep scars on his light-bronze skin: one from the edge of his right eye to the middle of his cheek and the other straight along the center of his chin. They made his rugged appearance look even rougher.

  “I’m saving you,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She bit her bottom lip in an attempt not to laugh because he looked so serious.

  “I don’t need anyone to save me.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  His words were clipped, and his tone was no-nonsense. This guy was all business. Too bad he was right in the middle of her business.

  “Why don’t you let me do what I came here to do?”

  “I can’t.”

  My life is not worth living, she thought.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Gia knew she didn’t say the words out loud, but he responded anyway. She briefly wondered if she was going crazy. Not that it’s sane to jump off a cliff to one’s death.

  “Look. Dude. I just want to be left alone. I came here for one reason. You’re cramping my style.”

  He looked her up and down. “I’ve never seen a style like that before.”

  “You’ve never heard of the retro revival? The reemergence of the mod scene?”

  As he shook his head, the blazing Arizona sun reflected off his shiny dark hair, giving it an iridescent blue sheen like a raven’s wing.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying. Okay?”

  “It’s not okay.”

  Gia heaved a sigh. She was determined to jump whether he liked it or not. If not today, then some other time.

  “If you don’t let me do the deed, I’ll just come back later when you’re not here.”

  As he crossed his arms in front of him, he seemed even more impenetrable.

  “Just forget it,” she grumbled in frustration. “I’m out of here.”

  She turned and stomped away, but the guy was right on her heels. When she stopped and turned to face him, he nearly ran into her.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “I want to make sure you get home safely.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  “Someone has to.”

  Gia didn’t remember the last time she had felt like someone cared about her. Maybe before her dad had started drinking heavily. But that was a long time ago.

  “You don’t have to follow me home.” The guy didn’t seem to take a hint. Gia clearly didn’t want him around.

  He obviously had other ideas. He continued to walk beside her as she made her way through the scrubby desert behind her father’s trailer. Her dad called the bald desert land his little piece of paradise.

  To Gia, it was more like a slice of hell.

  Gia didn’t realize it, but she would never be alone again. The stranger with the dark eyes would never let her out of his sight. From that day forward, he’d always be with her.

  Chapter One

  Arizona (Present Day)

  “I’m not the guy you’re looking for.”

  I’m standing in front of the man who is supposed to be my father. He’s thirty-eight, but he looks ten years older. His shoulder-length hair is already starting to gray, and his tanned skin is dry and weathered. He bears little resemblance to the handsome guy from my mom’s high school yearbook. Time has not been kind to Colton Clark.

  “My aunts told me—”

  A wave of his grease-stained hand stops me midsentence. “Those witches don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Technically, my aunts aren’t witches. They are fortune-tellers. They claim to be psychic, but I think they’re just skilled at telling people wh
at they want to hear. They raised me after my mom ran away. My entire life, they’ve told me that my mom took off with Colton, the guy she dated in high school. They led me to believe that he was my father.

  I drove two hours on my bright-yellow Vespa scooter to middle-of-nowhere northern Arizona to finally meet him.

  When he coughs, it sounds like he’s going to hack up a smoke-filled lung. I take a step back to avoid the spewing phlegm.

  He reeks of stale cigarettes and beer, like he spent the night partying at one of the biker bars I passed by on the highway and never bothered to take a shower.

  “How did you find me?” he asks when the coughing finally subsides.

  It wasn’t easy. It took a little bit of detective work.

  “You signed up for your Cordia High School Reunion Group online.”

  “Oh yeah.” He rubs his temple. “I don’t know why I bothered. I don’t care about any of those people.”

  “What about my mother?”

  Her memory brings the hint of a smile to his otherwise somber face.

  “She’s the only person in that Podunk town who cared about me.”

  “But the two of you weren’t a couple?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head, then stares out into the open desert that surrounds his run-down trailer. “We covered for each other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He rubs his scruffy chin for several moments, then exhales.

  “Your mother didn’t want anyone to know about her real boyfriend. And I didn’t want anyone to know about my boyfriend.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “It was the nineties. A few years before the tech boom in Cordia. It was still rural Arizona. Things back then weren’t like they are today. If you were gay, you kept it to yourself.”

  “Can you tell me anything about my mom’s boyfriend?”

  Even though he shakes his head, I can see in his pale eyes that he knows more than he’s saying.

  “Please . . .” I bat my big brown eyes at him and try to look like Oliver Twist pleading for more gruel.

  He glances around, even though we’re the only two people in the remote area. “You can’t tell anyone that I told you this. Got it?”

  There’s fear in his eyes, even after all these years.

  I gulp. “I’ve got it.”

  He bites the inside of his cheek. He still seems hesitant.

  “If you really cared about my mom, please tell me.”

  “The guy she started dating . . . it was like he appeared out of nowhere. He didn’t go to our high school. I’m not sure he went to high school at all. There was something really weird about him. I have no idea where he came from, but it definitely wasn’t Arizona. He always wore all black, even in hundred-degree heat in the middle of the summer. I’m talking about long black pants and a long-sleeved black sweatshirt. He was the biggest guy I had ever seen. Your mom was tiny like you. Only five three. Maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds. This guy was twice her size. No lie. He was huge. And scary as hell. He had these scars on his face like he’d gotten into a knife fight. And he had these huge dark eyes. They were as black as onyx. Once he and your mom got together, he never let her out of his sight.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “The guy never spoke to me. Not once. He’d just stare at me with those eerie, dark eyes. The dude totally creeped me out.”

  For a moment, Colton seems to be lost in the memory. Then he starts to hack up his other lung. He holds up a finger as if he has something else to say, so I wait as patiently as possible.

  Anyone who knows me knows that patience is not one of my virtues.

  “Your mom said his name was Luca. That’s all I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For what it’s worth, not everyone wants to be found.”

  As I ride my Vespa down the dusty dirt road back toward the highway, I feel heavy with the disappointment of not finding my father. After several months of research, I’m still no closer to discovering the truth about what happened to my parents.

  I blink back tears. I’m not the world’s best driver. The last thing I want to do is cry while I’m trying to make my way back home.

  Have my aunts been lying to me all these years? Or did they truly believe that my mom ran away with Colton? As soon as I get back to Cordia, I’m going to push them for answers.

  When my scooter begins to sputter and finally stops, I realize it’s out of gas. In the middle of the Arizona desert. Without a service station for miles.

  Could this day get any worse?

  I pull my phone from my pocket and pray to whatever gods may be out there that I have cell service.

  I dial my best friend Gunner’s number. He answers on the first ring. “Did you find him?”

  I heave a sigh. “I found Colton, but he’s not my father.”

  “You’re sure he’s not your dad?”

  “Positive.”

  “That sucks.”

  “What really sucks is that I’m out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Any chance you can get the truck and pick me and my scooter up?”

  He laughs. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not unless you want your best friend to die in the desert and my rotting carcass to be eaten by vultures.”

  “You know, you have a way with words. And not a good way either.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Where are you?”

  I give him directions.

  “You are in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Which is why I need your help.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t take rides from any strangers.”

  There’s nothing but scrub brush and tumbleweeds as far as my eyes can see. I don’t think I’ll be running into any strangers.

  “Please tell me you brought water,” I say as soon as Gunner hops out of his dad’s beat-up old pickup.

  “Nice to see you too.” He hands me a cold plastic bottle.

  I quickly open it and guzzle down half of its contents. “Thanks.” Then I lift my dark-brown ponytail and place the bottle on my sweaty neck to cool it down.

  “My dad was supposed to head out to a gun show this afternoon. I grabbed the keys to his truck while he was on the toilet.”

  Gunner’s parents own a gun shop just outside of Cordia, in an area that’s now referred to as the West Side. Twenty years ago, before Cordia became the Silicon Valley of the Southwest, it was one of several small towns located between Tucson and Phoenix.

  That was before GenomeTech moved to Arizona and brought all its bioengineers and biotechnologists with it. The great weather and low taxes made Cordia an attractive option for the high-tech companies that followed, relocating their offices and employees from the West Coast to the booming rural Southwest.

  In less than two decades, Cordia went from a sleepy, one-stoplight town to a high-tech haven. It was like the California gold rush but in reverse. And instead of prospectors, there were thousands of scientists and computer geeks making their way to Arizona to stake their claim in the rapidly growing city.

  The old-timers who used to call rural Cordia their home were relegated to the West Side of the city—the area closest to the highway and farthest away from the lovely mountain views.

  Gunner’s parents’ gun shop is less than a mile from where my aunts live and work and where I grew up.

  “Your dad’s not going to be mad, is he?”

  Gunner shrugs. “He’ll get over it.”

  We carefully load my Vespa into the back of the truck. Gunner knows how much the scooter means to me. It was one of the few things my mom left behind when she took off. I found it in the storage garage behind my aunts’ house. Gunner and his dad helped me restore it to its original glory.

  We both hop into the cab of his dad’s truck. Gunner turns the radio to a classic-rock station even though he prefers country music because he knows how much I like it.

  Gunner and I have been best friends forever. No exaggeration.
My aunts took care of him whenever his parents went out of town for a gun show, so we were raised like brother and sister.

  As soon as we’re on the road, I fill him in on some of the details of my practically fruitless endeavor. “Colton did give me some information about the guy my mom was dating before she ran away.”

  “I know how important this is to you, Jericho. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up again. I hate to see you disappointed.”

  “Finding my parents is the only thing in my life right now that is important. I feel like I can’t move ahead until I know where I’ve come from.”

  “Most people our age do everything they can to escape from their pasts and their parents. You’re obsessed with finding yours.”

  I’ve been told that I have a one-track mind. I’m determined to do whatever it takes to find my mom and dad.

  “I’m sure there’s a good reason your mom left Cordia. Look around you. Can you blame her?”

  A tumbleweed rolls by as if on cue. He’s right. When you’re raised in a family that can’t afford the beauty of a man-made country-club lifestyle, the harsh desert can be a bleak home.

  “She didn’t just leave Cordia. She left me too.” And I want to know why.

  I need to find out the truth.

  We both listen to the music for a while, getting lost in our own thoughts.

  When Gunner runs a hand through his messy brown hair, I sense he’s getting ready to restart our conversation. He does that whenever he’s got something on his mind. Maybe the gesture stimulates his brain cells.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what you found out? About the guy who your mom was dating?”

  I give him a condensed version of what Colton told me.

  “The guy sounds like an alien,” Gunner says matter-of-factly.

  “An immigrant?”

  He laughs. “Not that kind of alien. The ones from outer space. Extraterrestrials.”

  I roll my eyes. “Please. Not another one of your conspiracy theories.”

  Gunner gets it from his parents. They’re preppers who believe in some wild stuff. The government is trying to kill us through our cell phones. The attack on the Twin Towers was an inside job. Astronauts never actually landed on the moon. Not that my aunts are much better. They make a living reading tea leaves and tarot cards. That went over well in a school filled with kids whose parents are scientists and engineers.