At least she and David had achieved a truce, if not precisely a reconciliation. And at this point, she wasn't certain she wanted a reconciliation, with all the emotional baggage that came with one. She wasn't even certain she wanted a relationship that didn't involve a reconciliation! It wasn't as if she didn't have her hands full.
Full in more ways than one. She still had the mundane investigation for the insurance company, a couple loose ends to wrap up for other clients, and her own private investigation of Calligan and the looting of the burial ground to deal with. The last thing she needed at the moment was David Spotted Horse on her doorstep.
Or in my bed.
Even if he had completely changed his ways, there were still certain demands to be met when one had a lover. . . .
She closed her bedroom door, and shook her head. "No," she said aloud. "I don't think so."
Not with what Grandfather had taken to his room to complicate an already complicated situation. David had turned the trap, bait and all, over to her with only minimal argument. The medicine-pouch was Osage, was from one of the plundered cairns, and there was no way to tell how it had gotten there, or even how long it had been there.
She had turned it over to Grandfather after determining where it had come from. Handling it was not her concern at the moment. There was another car in the back drive-it was Mooncrow's and he was a perfectly good driver. He could very easily take the pouch back and reinter it, if that was what was needed.
She shook her head, and went straight to bed, wondering if she would ever learn anything more than that.
Unfortunately, the bomb wasn't likely to tell her much of anything. The trigger had been a simple one, a trip wire. The explosives could be found at any construction site where blasting might be needed, including any of Calligan's. In the morning she would dust the bomb for prints, but even if she found them, unless the owner of said fingerprints had a criminal record, it wasn't likely she'd find a match. Her request for a match check would go into a long queue of other similar requests from private agents-which had a lower priority than the requests from law-enforcement agencies. So even if she found prints and the bombmaker did have a criminal record, she might never get an ID until I after the case was solved or something forced her off of it.
Mooncrow couldn't make anything more of the pouch than she could, except to assure her that although Watches-Over-The-Land had made it, it had not belonged to him. In a way that was both reassuring and disappointing. It would i have been good to recover at least one of her ancestor's looted possessions, but she wasn't certain she had whatever it took to handle something once belonging to a shaman as [ powerful as her forefather had been.
In the end, when she looked at the clock in her headboard and saw the time, she realized that all she was going to do now was think in circles. Almost four in the morning, and she knew very well she was completely exhausted. She stripped and climbed into bed; but once she turned off the lights, she stared up at the ceiling, unable to go to sleep.
Well, I can force myself, she thought. I can make myself relax if I want to. But do I want to? Obviously there's still something bothering my subconscious. I suppose if I don't deal with it, it 'II be showing up in my dreams. I sure as hell don't need that.
It wasn't hard to figure out what that something was. David Spotted Horse, that's-what. He'd come back like the proverbial tomcat.
Though tonight he'd probably lost one of his nine lives from fright alone. He'd had a good scare thrown into him by the Little People. . . .
But now that she thought about it, she wasn't entirely certain that he had been in real danger after she knocked him on his ass. A scare might have been all they intended after that moment. They were so unpredictable; they were perfectly capable of changing their minds within a few seconds.
They 're almost as contrary as Mooncrow. Hard to tell what they intend from one moment to the next. Certainly the leader had been willing to listen to her, and although he had given in, it had been without much of a protest, much less a fight. Was that due to the effectiveness of her protections, to her own ability, or to the fact that they had decided not to bother with David, anymore and accept that she was protecting him? There was no way to tell besides asking them, and no guarantee that they'd tell the truth if she did.
Oh, if David had managed to get himself killed, they'd have taken him, all right. He fit right into the category of "those condemned to roam the earth, out of the sight of Wah-K'on-Tah" There wouldn't have been enough left of him to paint if the bomb had gone off in his face; he'd have been lawful prey. Messing with stolen Osage relics, dying without paint, being buried without paint-she had the feeling they'd have had him even if he'd been white.
Granted, he was a Cherokee, and normally Osage of her forefather's time hadn't much use for the Thing-On-Its-Head People, but these were mi-ah-luschka, and they were a law unto themselves. It didn't take much to wind up swelling their ranks, if they decided to take you.
But after she had saved him from blowing himself to bloody bits, and had confronted them, they had truly seemed less angry than resigned. There hadn't even been any serious argument when she claimed David was already under her protection and implied that he was acting on her behalf.
They did make certain he saw every single one of them, though, and they took a great deal of glee in his obvious fear. It was probably the first time he had Seen something not of the physical world, but of the Medicine world, at least as an adult. It had obviously come as quite a shock. And she had to admit, she had taken just as much enjoyment in his fear as the Little People had.
Maybe they knew that; maybe that was why they hadn't given her much of a fight.
So now he was a believer-in the Little People, at least. And she thought he might have seen her two spirit-echoes as well, her Medicine Woman-self and her Kestrel-self. The way he kept giving her strange looks when he thought she wasn't watching was proof enough that he had seen something odd about her.
Grandfather had hinted obliquely at something of the kind, and David had gotten a queasy look. David hadn't wanted to believe. He was one of those for whom the old legends were wonderful, but hardly applicable to modern times.
Odd. She should have been the one with that attitude. She was the one living in the Heavy Eyebrows' world, making her living their way. She was the one who actually fit into that world, at least outwardly. He was the activist, the rebel, who wanted at least a partial return to the Old Ways.
But that wasn't the oddest thing she'd had to deal with lately. On the face of it, she was as contrary as Mooncrow....
At least David's experiences had made him a lot more tractable when it came to persuading him that there was a lot more going on with this situation than what appeared on the surface.
After talking with him for four hours, she had to concede that he had changed some over the years. He wasn't as much of a chauvinistic brat as he had been. He wasn't as narrow-minded as she'd assumed, either. He still wasn't going to I win the Nobel Peace Prize by any means, but he wasn't as bad as he had been; he could compromise; he could be flexible when he chose.
He might even be a useful ally in this mess. He could go places she couldn't, and Calligan's men were already talking to him. She could get information back to them. He could be very useful, really.
She grimaced into the darkness. Face it, Jennie, you want more than an ally. You really didn 't want to send him off to his motel tonight.. . not when there's a nice bed in here, quite big enough for two.
Well, she had wanted to send him away, and at the same time, she hadn't. She had-because it gave her a lot of satisfaction to prove to him that not only was he not the hot stud he thought he was, but she could resist his blandishments with ridiculous ease. As good-looking as he was, he probably had no problem getting all the women he wanted. He wasn't used to being turned down, particularly not by a woman he thought was already "broke to his saddle." The brief look of incredulous shock as she closed the door had been worth it.
The trouble was, she had .to admit to herself that it had been very difficult to resist him. It would have been nice to be able to say that she was going to sleep tonight without any desires more carnal than a yearning for a bowl of the chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream in the freezer-but not even a bowl of ice cream was going to make her forget the way the lamplight gleamed on his hair, or the broad shoulders under that black turtleneck, or the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her. Ice cream was no substitute for what she really craved.
Nope. You're not a pushover, Talldeer, but you're really going to have to watch your step with him. It would have been all too easy to suggest he spend the night instead of driving back across town. And then it would have been even easier to suggest that he save his money and move in with her until- Until what? He didn't have any particular place he called "home," he'd made that very clear. His folks were uncomfortable with his kind of activism, and he was doing his best to keep them out of it by keeping clear of them. He had no regular job, and everything he owned fit in the trunk of his car. So why should he move out again once he'd moved in?
Oh no. That was too easy a trap to fall into. And it was a mistake she didn't intend to make. If David Spotted Horse moved back into her life, he'd better be prepared to take her as an equal.
And he'd better get a clean bill of health before he does it. I don't know where he's been-and I wouldn't even take Mooncrow's word on the subject of HIV without a test. So there.
And she would want to be certain that he understood all the rules as clearly as she did before anything got any further than "colleague."
Still.....
David-my equal? In Medicine matters, he isn't even in the running! she scolded herself. He hasn't even got both feet on the path yet! Oh no, if I get involved with him again, he had better have it clear that in Medicine, if I say something, I'm the expert. And in P.I. work, too. Maybe he knows the legal system better than I do, but I have my own areas of expertise. He has got to understand that and accept it.
And all the veiled compliments and broad shoulders in the world weren't going to change that.
Still. ... .
Finally her libido decided it wasn't going to win the argument with her brain and gave up, and she got to sleep.
Calligan had hoped to be called to the mall site by the police some time during the night. He was certain his trap would be sprung, and the explosion would wake up everyone within a mile of the river. When the alarm went off without emergency call, he woke feeling vaguely disappointed.
He'd been so positive that the Talldeer girl would take the bait. He'd never been so certain of anything in his life.
Well, if not tonight, then maybe tomorrow, he told himself. She can't stay away forever, and she can't resist an artifact. I left the thing right where anyone prowling would be certain to see it-and she would have been looking for exactly that kind of object. She just didn't show up, that's all. No big problem; she won't stay away forever. Probably she's making certain I don't have a night guard on the site. I'll get her when she finally does show.
So even though his wife seemed a bit jumpy this morning, he ignored her nerves. She hadn't slept well for the past several nights, and he couldn't get her to take a pill. Maybe he ought to tell her to go to the doctor . . . except that her restlessness hadn't disturbed his sleep any.
No, no point in making her see a doctor. Doctor visits were expensive, especially for things as intangible as "nerves." It was probably just hormones anyway. Women were slaves to their bodies, and half the time he thought they enjoyed it that way. It gave them excuses to become hysterical.
He ignored the slight shaking of her hands and the dark circles under her eyes. If he ignored this nonsense, she'd probably drop it. No point in reinforcing bad behavior by giving her attention for it.
He timed his arrival at the site so that he got there a good fifteen minutes before any of the men would. That would give him enough time to dismantle the trap and hide it away before anyone got there and became curious. He'd thought about leaving it in place-but some fool was only too likely to spot the pouch and try to pick it up. Or worse than a fool, a kid, messing around where he shouldn't be.
No, it was better to get rid of it during the day. He could hide the whole setup easily enough, then put it back after everyone was gone. That wouldn't be hard; the men left the site at quitting time fast, the goldbrickers. Not a minute of unpaid overtime on their sheets.
But when he got to the roped-off area and looked down, he got a severe jolt.