The Kingmaker

nt of connection. She glances up, a mixture of curiosity and pleasure right there to match mine.

Except she’s seven-fucking-teen, and there is no place for pleasure or even more than the vaguest curiosity between her and me.

I drop her hand abruptly, breaking the electric link.

“Nice meeting you, Lennix Moon.”

Our stare holds an extra second. I dropped her hand, broke that connection, but it doesn’t seem to matter. There is still something linking us. She seems to know it, to feel it, too, because even with the cop waiting at the open cell door, even with her father out front presumably ready to ground her, she’s still standing here looking at me, a question mark hanging in the charged air.

“Lennix, your daddy’s waiting.” It’s the guy who was talking with us earlier. He’s glaring a narrow-eyed warning my way.

I drop my glance to the holding cell’s dirty cement floor.

“Oh, yeah,” Lennix says and clears her throat. “Guess I better go. I’ll, uh, see you later, Mr. Paul.”

I don’t look up again, but watch from beneath lowered lids as her moccasins take her out of the cell and away. It feels like I missed something or never had something that I’m sure would have been good. I know it’s unreasonable because I met her no more than an hour ago. We’ve had one conversation. Some people leave an impression. Lennix Moon Hunter has left more than an impression. She’s left her mark on me.

And it’s shaped like a star.

* * *

“I’m prepared to forgive you.”

These are the first words my father has spoken since he “collected” me from the police station in town. I’m glad the other protesters had all left by the time the officer came and called for “Cade.” Even though I’ll never see them again, I didn’t want that name clinging to me like slime. When I climb into the back of the Escalade, my father sits with folded arms and a ticking jaw, his head turned away from me. His outrage fills the air-conditioned space. His fury and mine silently wrangle as we head toward the airfield.

I ignore his ridiculous opening line, and swallow my irritation and indignation to respond. “Are you flying me back to Berkeley? I have shit to do.”

The frosty look on his face cools even a few degrees more. It’s his subzero face.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demands, the anger he’s checked roaring, snapping in my face with teeth. “Do you have any idea how much damage you could have done? What a black eye it would be for Cade Energy if anyone had realized who you were? That my own son protested my pipeline?”

“I agree with you there. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I’m a Cade either.”

“Boy, it’s your damn future I’m protecting,” he thunders, veins straining to get out through the skin of his neck.

“Taking away sacred land? Endangering a tribe’s water supply? Stealing all over again from people who have been done wrong by this country at every turn? That’s not my future, Dad. I don’t want any part of it.”

Hurt flashes through his glare, and for a moment I feel bad, but then I recall the stinging eyes of those in the cell with me. I see the dogs biting Mr. Paul. I touch the bite on my arm that was intended for Lennix. My father’s hurt is a shallow, temporary thing compared to how they have and will continue to be wounded. His is mostly dislocated pride.

“Well you won’t have a part of it then, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“Do this, and I’ll never work at Cade Energy.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m not threatening you, Dad. I’m saying if you go forward with this pipeline, there’s no chance in hell I’ll ever work with you.”

He stiffens, his eyes slits of reptilian green.

“We didn’t need you to build this company, and we won’t need you to keep it. I’ll be damned if you’ll manipulate me into anything. You wouldn’t know how to run a business if your life depended on it. That’s the problem, you ungrateful welp. You’ve had the Cade name all your life. You don’t have what it takes to make it without it.”

“Oh, like Owen became a senator without using the Cade name? Give me a fucking break. He’s your puppet. Your hand is so far up his ass, you have to wipe for him.”

“You’re jealous of your brother’s success. That’s pathetic, since you won’t do what it takes to succeed yourself.”

“I am doing what it takes to succeed. I have been. You just haven’t cared because it’s not your plan.”

“You don’t have a plan, boy,” my father sneers. “What plan is that? Saving whales and Indians? Walk away from me, and we’ll have something the Cade family has never had before.” He fills his pause with deliberate cruelty. “A failure.”