“I told you before, I’m done talking to you.” Mary Barlow raised her chin mutinously, but her gaze kept darting beyond Joe to the street in front of her motel.
“And I told you I know you were lying about not being aware of Oree’s activities. You were there when many of his drug transactions went down. I’ve got people who will testify to that. Makes you an accessory, Mary. I can charge you with that.”
She licked her lips, and for a moment he almost felt sorry for her. The days since he’d last seen her had not been kind to the woman. She looked as if she hadn’t slept, and it was obvious someone had used her for a punching bag. Her lip was split and there was a multi-colored bruise beneath one eye.
“Do what you gotta do.” Her attempt at bravado fell flat. “I don’t believe you can get anyone to testify. They’re all just as scared as I am.”
Interest piqued he leaned forward. “Who are they afraid of, Mary? The same person who did that to your face?”
“I ran into a door,” she muttered.
“Must have had a fist attached to it. You could file a report, you know. Whoever did that could be brought in and charged.”
She made a derisive sound. “As if you guys could get anything to stick to him. His daddy’s money would have him on the street in an hour and an hour after that I’d be dead.”
Stunned, Joe just stared at her for a moment. “Are you saying Graywolf did that to you?”
“I’m done talking. Didn’t have anything to say to you last time, but that didn’t stop me from getting this.” She fingered the bruise beneath her eye.
Adrenaline spiked through him. “If you’ve got information about Brant Graywolf we can protect you. If you just tell me what you know, I can make sure…”
“No one can be protected from Brant.” A car driving by seemed to spook her, and she bolted by him, heading for her vehicle. “If you don’t believe me, ask those three kids they found a few weeks back.” She yanked open her door but before she got inside she sent him a bitter smile. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t. They’re dead.”
“They’re waiting for you in the captain’s office.”
Joe looked from Vicki Smith to the area she indicated, but the blinds covering the office window were closed. “Any idea what’s going on?”
Vicki shook her head, the action sending her brunette bob swaying. “All I know is someone from Border Patrol walked in asking for you, and five minutes later Captain was telling me to get on the radio, and get you in here.”
Border Patrol? Joe immediately thought of Bernie Silversmith, and his step quickened. Maybe he’d discovered something about the tread he’d faxed him.
But the man with Tapahe wasn’t Bernie Silversmith. He was a white man, short, balding and stocky, with a permanently rosy complexion. Ruddy skin met pale in a horizontal dissection across his broad forehead, where constant hat-wearing had protected his scalp.
“Joe.” Tapahe greeted him. “This is Border Patrol Supervisor Clint Dawson.” Dawson rose. He had a white man’s handshake, firm, held a trifle too long, as opposed to the Navajo preferred manner of only a light touching of the hands. “I spoke to Bernie Silversmith about you. He says you’re a good cop.”
Joe lifted a shoulder. “He has to say that. He still owes me money from the last time we played poker.”
Dawson smiled briefly. “I’ll remind him of that the next time I see him.” He reseated himself. “Bernie posted that tread you’d faxed him on an interagency Web bulletin board and it drew some immediate interest. I was just telling your captain here that we’ve run across that same tread a couple dozen times in the last few years.”
“Have you matched it to a make and model?”
The man’s blue eyes glinted. “We’ve done better than that. We’ve gotten a description of the vehicle it belongs to. A 1998 Econoline four-wheel drive van that’s been seen in the vicinity of known crossing points. The coyote smuggles the illegals across the border on foot, the van picks them up and they vanish.”
Joe digested the bit of news. “Coyotes,” or guides who took money from people wishing to enter the United States illegally, were known for their ruthless cunning. With nearly two thousand miles of southern border for the Border Patrol to protect, they were too often successful at finding ways to get their clients across. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of the guides taking the money and then beating or killing their customers. “When you say they vanish…”
Dawson looked grim. “I mean their families never hear from them again. We haven’t found any bodies. They just disappear. The Mexican government has looked into it, but they haven’t found any unidentified remains, either.”
“A coyote wouldn’t take them over the border, just to kill illegals here,” Joe interjected. “So what does that leave? Slavery?” It was one thing for the criminals to take a few thousand dollars for sneaking people into the country. It was quite another to bring them in and then hand them over to human traffickers to be exploited in the sex trade, farm fields or as household labor.
“Possibly. And there have always been coyotes offering reduced fees for clients willing to act as mules. But in the last year we’ve been hearing of one getting the illegals to carry loads of a purified form of crystal ice purchased from a cartel down there. And the last time we saw that tread, we found traces of ice at the crossing nearby.” Dawson shrugged. “Right now that’s all we’ve got.”
Excitement rose, simmered. This was the connection, finally, to Quintero, Graywolf and Lee. Joe could feel it. He remembered the bottled water, blankets and food wrappers that had littered the cave. Exactly what would be needed to hide a bunch of illegals until the next stage of their journeys. “Maybe it’s time to flag that syringe as a priority,” he said to the captain. He was willing to bet that they’d find traces of Rohypnol or some other tranquilizer used to render the aliens helpless before transporting them to their captors.
“You read my mind,” Tapahe replied. “I’ll call the lab. You contact the other members of the task force and see how quickly you can get them here.”
The table around the conference room was crowded, despite it being a Sunday evening. John Honani, the Hopi DEA agent, sat silently amidst the buzz in the room. FBI agent Delmer Mitchell was trying, unsuccessfully, to add creamer to his coffee without it splashing on his stained suit. Dawson was back, along with Manny Lopez, a Customs Service supervisor coordinating that agency’s cooperating officers. Quentin Tarken was another fed, apparently working with Mitchell. Joe had never met him before.
Because he knew Arnie would never let him hear the end of it, Joe had called him, and the man had been only too eager to leave the overly solicitous care of his wife. When everyone was finally seated, Joe said, “I think the easiest way to bring everyone up to date is to let individuals discuss their part of the case. Then we’ll talk about the newest developments.” He turned to Honani. “John, do you want to begin?”
“We’ve had an informant in the Contreres cartel feeding us information on their expansions of super-labs,” the man began. “They took advantage of the States’ new controls on ingredients for homemade meth by cranking up the production of the purer, more lethal crystal ice we’ve seen flooding the country. Joe and Arnie were investigating an influx of the drug here, and because we had reason to believe some of the Contreres supply was ending up in these parts, we decided to coordinate our efforts.”
Joe’s mind drifted as each task member briefly relayed their role in the investigation and information on the case. Surveillance on Graywolf hadn’t yielded a thing so far, and Joe was beginning to question whether he was attributing the kid with too large a part in this deal. They could ill-afford to waste resources. It took a lot of manpower to watch him round the clock, with officers on foot and in cars. So far they’d established his routine of going to work in the headquarters of his father’s construction firm somewhere close to noon, and leaving again around five. Nice hours if one could get them. From there he visited with friends, all of whom were being checked out, or went back to the family home, located on one of the largest privately owned pieces of property on Navajo Nation lands.
The Graywolfs enjoyed a standard of living unrivaled on the reservation, which probably accounted for the kid’s spoiled manner. Riches in their culture weren’t traditionally attributed to money or material goods but measured in family and connection to their past. That had been one of Charley’s teachings that Joe had taken to heart, much to Heather’s dismay. Toward the end of their marriage all she’d talked about was the promise of better opportunities off the reservation.
His attention snapped back to the conversation at hand, as Dawson was winding down. Joe gave a succinct description of his efforts and the events in the last several days, ending with the notebook pages he’d perused in Niyol Lee’s bedroom.
There was a moment of silence as the members digested the information. “And the last date in his book…when was that again?”
“Two days from now,” Joe answered. “The other dates seemed to be correlated within a day or two of a deposit in his savings account. It’s not a stretch to believe that Lee is getting paid well for providing a service, and he has dual citizenship, allowing him to move freely between here and Mexico.”
Rising, he passed out copies of the composite sketch of the man.
“If your witness can make a positive ID of Lee as the guy who shot at her, we’ve got enough to go in and search Lee’s parents’ home. Seize the bankbook, notebook and anything you might have missed.” Tarken rubbed his jaw, dark with five o’clock shadow.
“Maria Lee would probably give it to us without one,” Joe said, ignoring the obvious slur on his abilities. “But why tip off Niyol more than we already have? Right now he doesn’t realize we know something is going down, so there’s no reason for them to change their plans. It seems more productive for us to figure out where it’s going to happen, or at least where they’ll be bringing the illegals so we can nail them then.”
“There are thousands of places on the reservation that would hide a vanload of aliens and several hundred kilos of meth.” This from Manny. “With the slot canyons, cliff dwellings and caves in the area, we could search for months trying to find where they moved their operation.”
“I think we can rule out any public area,” Arnie put in. “Too risky. The area has to be remote, yet vehicles have to be able to get in and out. Somewhat close to a road, because a van, even four-wheel drive, isn’t going to do cross-country for long stretches.”
Joe glanced at the man approvingly. Even with his absence in the last few days, they remained on the same wavelength. “Exactly. Last time they had it all planned out. Accessed an isolated spot where they could have some privacy. A perfect system, actually, because they made sure they weren’t going to get sheepherders wandering through there with their flocks, either. It’s too soon for them to have arranged another place like that, so they had to move quickly, maybe to an area not so perfect.”
“Or they may just cancel this run until they find someplace perfect.”
Joe looked at Tarken curiously. He seemed more truculent than helpful, and Mitchell, in his presence, didn’t speak up much. “You’re forgetting the guy we saw leaving on the ATV. He had it piled with parcels, which makes sense if the van was full of people. They were moving shop not cutting and running.”
Delmer Mitchell finally spoke up. “I thought I read about lots of abandoned mines on these lands. What about one of them?”
“Most are on public lands,” Joe said slowly, considering the idea. “And a lot were sealed off in recent years, when government funding was used for the reclamation act.”
“But not all of them,” Arnie mused. “And I think they focused on the abandoned uranium mines, because they presented the biggest risk. It’s worth checking into.”
“I still say it’s a needle in a haystack,” Tarken said flatly. “We can’t waste federal resources putting together a sting on a possible coyote run unless we have better intelligence than this.” There was agreement in the expressions of the other federal agents, with the exception of Honani, who remained impassive. “Get us something more concrete. All of us should go back to pulling on the threads we’ve been working. Maybe something will shake loose.”
As if his remark had signaled an end to the meeting, the men began to push away from the table and stand. Dawson came over as the agents were filing out of the room. “Lopez and I can at least put out bulletins for officers to watch for that van on the date you mentioned. It’s a long shot, but someone might spot it. And we can show copies of that composite around, too.”
Joe thanked him politely and the Border Patrol agent followed the others out the door. But the man had been right. It was a long shot, and from all accounts, Lee, if he was the driver of the van, had a long and successful career outwitting the officers dotting the States’ southern border.
“So what now?” Arnie asked when the room was once again empty. “I still think that mine idea has merit. Maybe we should focus on that.”
“With only two days to work with, we need to narrow the search. A place close to here,” Joe murmured, his mind racing. “A place that might not be a permanent site, but where they have reason to believe they’d be safe.”
“A mine that hasn’t been reclaimed in a really remote part of the reservation,” Arnie said doggedly. “Say, within a seventy-mile radius of the last spot.”
“Or a place where few people could travel freely,” Joe mused. “Like private property.”
The other man got up and went to the coffeemaker, picked up the carafe and shook the miniscule remaining amount in disgust. “They wouldn’t have time to arrange another lease so quickly.” He replaced the container on the coffeemaker and came back to the table.
“But what if one of them had property they could use? Just until something else gets obtained.” A glimmer of an idea was taking hold. “Who has access to more property than a third of the tribe combined?”
“Graywolf?” Arnie sank into a chair. “Well, his family has property. And the construction company would have a lot of sites that could be possible areas, too.”
Joe shook his head. “Too much traffic in and out of a construction site. No, if it were me, I’d pick a place I knew. One I could be pretty sure would be left alone. And even better if I knew no one could get to it without trespassing.”
“The kid would be taking a heck of a risk.”
The more Joe considered the idea, the more it made sense. “He thinks he’s smarter than we are. He thinks he’s above the law. He got caught several times for dealing, with barely a slap on the wrist. A track record like that might convince the kid he’s infallible, instead of realizing he owes it all to smooth lawyers and family money.”
“Maybe he’s not calling the shots at all, maybe his father is-did you ever think of that?”
“There’s nothing pointing that way, but if he were, it would be one more reason to focus on Graywolf land for the new site.” Joe got up and strode to his desk where he’d stacked the information they’d gotten from the land office, took out a map of the Navajo lands and spread it across his desk.
“And you said my desk is bad,” Arnie commented, trailing out to watch Joe quizzically. “Looks like you became a slob in my absence. What is all this?”
“Information.” Joe grabbed a section of maps and property documentation and thrust it toward his partner. “I needed to find out who owned that piece of land where Delaney was shot at, and Garcia brought a whole box of this stuff back from the land office. Start going through it. Maybe we can find something on the Graywolf holdings.”
Although he wasn’t looking up, he could hear the smirk in his friend’s voice. “Delaney? Would that be the lady you didn’t want on the reservation?”
Deliberately, Joe kept his gaze trained on the map. “Like you said, Charley and I had different opinions. It really doesn’t have anything to do with Carson.”
“Oh, really.” Arnie went to his desk with his pile of papers and sat down. “Seems to me that the case isn’t the only thing I need to be caught up on.”
But Joe wasn’t about to say anything further. Whatever this thing was between him and Delaney, it wasn’t something he wanted to share. It wasn’t even something he could easily identify to himself.
It’d be easy to tell himself that sex was all that bound them. Easy to accept the boundaries she’d so carefully laid out for their relationship. But it was hard to reconcile a casual no-strings liaison with the need that was beginning to burn in him at the oddest times when she wasn’t near. Or with the sense of contentment he felt with her curled up beside him, as she slipped uneasily into a troubled sleep.
It was dangerous for a man to allow a woman close enough to fill parts of himself he hadn’t realized were empty. And it was far more dangerous to let such a woman know that she wielded that kind of power. He had no intention of doing either. He knew Delaney Carson well enough to be certain that would frighten her at least as much as it did him.
The sunsets on the land of Dinetah would always remain the most spectacular in her memory. Delaney finally lowered her camera and sat down on the ground in back of her small house to enjoy the final display of crimson bleeding over the horizon. Her computer was already loaded with similar images, far more than she needed for the book. But the rest were for her. Brilliant washes of color to remind her of the Navajo custom of finding beauty all around them.
Saturday had been spent with Eddie in her first visit to Monument Valley. She’d quickly discovered how naive it had been to assume she could “see” a place so vast in one day, so they’d focused on the southern end, around Hunt’s Mesa. It had taken her four-wheel drive and some hiking to get them to the more inaccessible parts, but the landscape of lonely buttes and sculpted red rock formations had taken her breath away.
There had been a sort of sacredness about the place that quieted the spirit and hushed the soul. One that hinted of centuries-old ghosts and long-dead secrets. She’d been left with a lingering sense of sadness that she’d never truly understand what it meant to the Diné to stand in that place. And a sort of peace that came from being there at all.
Although she didn’t hear his approach, she felt a presence behind her and knew instinctively who it was. “You missed it,” she murmured. Shadows were spreading along the darkened horizon and the sky had grayed. “Do you ever get used to that kind of beauty day after day?”
He’d squatted down behind her. She could feel his breath in her hair and had the urge to lean against him, to feel his strength and warmth envelop her. She squelched the temptation. A woman who got too used to leaning on someone else could easily forget how to rely solely on herself.
“Grandfather would say that when a man stops seeing the beauty around him, he also stops seeing himself and his place in the world.”
“And what would Joe Youngblood say?” She didn’t know where this compulsion sprang from, to scratch below the surface for glimpses of the enigmatic man beneath.
“No,” he said simply. “I never get used to it.”
She would have been content to sit and watch the stars break through the night sky as it darkened but she sensed a restlessness in the man behind her. Rising, she dusted off her jeans as they headed to the house.
“I spent a day with Cowboy Nahkai,” she informed him as they entered the living room. The hours she’d spent with the older man had been an intriguing glimpse into a mystical part of the culture. The crystal gazer had explained his role as a diagnostician of various ailments, and the resulting recommendation for the proper ceremonies or chants to focus on healing.
“When people like Cowboy and other medicine people die, too often their knowledge dies with them. Already there are fewer ceremonies done than when I was a boy. Fewer chants remain well-known.”
“They need to be documented,” she said, horrified at the thought of traditions being lost forever.
“Applying for the job?” But where the words would have been caustic when they first met, she detected a note of teasing in them now.
“No. Even I can agree that it would be a job best done by a tribe member for the tribe.”
He sank heavily onto the sofa and for the first time she noted the fatigue on his face. It was evident that he’d been keeping long hours, and not for the reason she did, pushing herself to work until well after midnight hoping to drop into the bone-weary sleep of the exhausted.
“Are you hungry? I have…” She took mental inventory of her cupboards. “Peanut butter.”
“Tempting. But, no. I stopped at Charley’s before coming here.” He reached up for her hand and gave it a tug, so she sat on the arm of the sofa next to him. It didn’t escape her notice that he didn’t relinquish his hold on her, but laced their fingers together. “He rarely loses an opportunity to feed me, or to nag about proper nutrition.”
“He worries about you,” she murmured. He rested his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. She was tempted to smooth the lines from his face. Her free hand rose, hovered, before dropping into her lap again. She moistened her lips. “I can see it in his expression when he talks about your job. He’s proud of you, but he’s worried, too. He said…” She thought back, trying to recall the phrase correctly. “…that coyote is always out there waiting and coyote is always hungry.”
Coyote was a recurring figure in Navajo lore, appearing in most native legends, portrayed both as an essential figure that gave order to life, and an association with evil. If Charley had been referring to the dangers inherent in Joe’s job, she could certainly understand the reference.
He made a sound of agreement, although he didn’t open his eyes. “We have another saying, too. ‘It’s impossible to wake a man who is pretending to be asleep.’ I’m careful. I have to be. Charley knows that, but he’ll worry anyway.” He gave a fatalistic shrug.
He tugged on her hand, hard enough to have her tumbling into his arms and his eyes opened then, a satisfied glint in them. “The case might be coming to a head.”
It was difficult to concentrate on his words when she was all too aware of her unfamiliar position. She’d never been a lap-sitter. She doubted she’d sat on a man’s lap since she’d perched on her dad’s as a child. But as one of his arms came around her to pull her closer, a bit of the stiffness left her limbs and she leaned a little against him, letting herself enjoy his nearness.
He was still talking. “Arnie and I discovered that there’s an abandoned coal mine on the Graywolf property.”
“They own a coal mine?”
“It was started several years prior to the Black Mesa mining agreement and probably closed when a big operation was built.”
“So what’s an old coal mine have to do with your drug case?”
“Not just the drug case, as it turns out.” She listened, with growing amazement, as he explained how the events at the cave site overlapped with the case he was investigating. “If that date in a couple days means another run to the border, they need a place that is relatively safe and out of sight.”
Her throat went thick at the mere thought of forcing the aliens into a dark, yawning shaft, leaving them to wait in vain for what they incorrectly thought would be their bid for a better life.
“So if you know where the mine is, you can catch them red-handed.”
“Not exactly.” His voice was dry. “The mine is only a possibility at this point, certainly not enough to get us a warrant. We have to figure a way to narrow down the possibilities and get some hard evidence. A judge isn’t going to let us on private property with only supposition.”
She hadn’t considered that. They couldn’t check it out without more evidence to connect Graywolf to the investigation.
And they had only two days to find it.
A thought circled, barely formed. “Do you suspect the Graywolf family is involved, or just the son?” She felt his hand loosening the knot of her hair, allowing it to tumble around her shoulders.
“There’s nothing to point to Graywolf senior, and I’d be surprised if he were in on this thing.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to mention her idea, but after a second she thought better of it. She knew what Joe’s response would be, and it was always easier to ask forgiveness than permission. At any rate, he was exhausted and needed sleep.
She remained silent while he rose, with her in his arms, and walked to her bedroom. She stripped to camisole and panties and joined him in bed. His arm snaked out to pull her close, one of his legs covering both of hers, but he seemed content just to have her close, her cheek pressed to his chest.
And something suspiciously like contentment traced through her, as she felt her body relax and follow him into a deep and dreamless slumber.
She was suffocating. Facedown in rubble that used to be walls, floors, ceilings. Pinned beneath a giant invisible weight, every breath an agony.
The screams and moans of the dying were constant companions, slashing at her eardrums, echoing her anguish. But worse, far worse was when the screaming finally stopped. When she became aware that she was the only one left, buried alive in this crushing prison to die alone. One torturous moment at a time.
She struggled against that frantic certainty. Battled wildly against the constant pressure that held her immobile. Knowing all the while that she’d join the silent ghosts all around her…
“Delaney. Wake up.”
It wasn’t the soft command that had her eyes snapping open. It was the sudden release of the pressure that held her pinned. Support beams from the ceiling, maybe. Or stones from the pillars that had once dotted the hotel lobby.
She blinked, comprehension returning sluggishly. The dust that had filled her lungs only moments ago was gone. She was in a darkened room but the corpses around her had vanished. There was only a man, his expression grim and worried, surveying her carefully.
Understanding rushed in, mingled with humiliation. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” The words were sharp, though his tone was low. “Are you all right?”
She let out a laugh, one bitter breath, and scrambled off the bed. It was a wreck, sheets tangled, trailing on the floor from her fight to free herself of the nightmare’s grasp. And Joe’s. Her gaze bounced to him again. “Did I hurt you?”
The oath he uttered was dangerous. “Forget that. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” But she stumbled away from the bed, unwilling, unable to face it again. “I’ll be fine. Try to get some sleep.”
He followed her out into the other room, having pulled on his jeans without bothering to fasten them. She could feel him watching her in the shadows, and wished bitterly that she could prevent the shudders racking her body. Stop the nausea clenching and roiling in her stomach. And felt that familiar helpless fury when her body didn’t obey her mind and the shivers continued to skate over her sweat-slicked skin.
“Maybe you should go.” The walls of the room seemed to be pressing in. She was suddenly anxious to have him gone, before she disgraced herself completely and bolted from the house like a demented mental patient. “You aren’t going to get any sleep here, and you need it.”
He didn’t answer, but went back to the bedroom. She let out a pent-up breath and forced herself to walk, not race, to the front door. She fumbled with the lock and yanked it open, stumbling out onto the porch to haul in a greedy gulp of air, feeling marginally more normal just to be outside.
Normal. An ironic little smile settled on her lips. What passed for normal these days was a far cry from most people’s definition of the word. It took effort to remember what it had been like before she feared sleep. Before just the thought of enclosed places had her palms dampening, her pulse racing. When she had a little distance to recover from this latest episode she’d remind herself that the nightmares occurred less frequently. That she was, for all intents, moving ahead with her life despite all that had come before.
But now, in the dark and desperate hours of the night, the reassurances were empty.
“Come with me.”
Joe had appeared behind her, and she didn’t miss the care he took not to touch her. “No, I’ll see you later. Maybe when this thing is all over.”
He did reach out then, laying his palm on her shoulder to caress her arm in a long velvet stroke. “Let me show you something.” Reluctantly she followed him back into the house, both surprised and relieved when he headed through it, then out the back doorway and down the steps.
The quarter moon was smudged by inky fingers of dark clouds, but the stars were bright overhead, brilliant pinpricks of light glimmering against the black velvet sky. Feeling a little lost, she stumbled after him, her feet not nearly as sure as his in the darkness.
“Here.”
He’d made a bed of sorts from what looked like the sofa and chair cushions and her bedding. The thoughtfulness of the gesture stung her eyelids.
“I spent more time sleeping outside than in during months like this when I was a kid. It still brings me peace when something is troubling me.” He sank down on the pallet and pulled at her hand so that she landed beside him. With swift economical movements he got her situated next to him and pulled a sheet over them both.
“Peace can be elusive,” she murmured. But something resembling it settled in her now, with her head tucked beneath Joe’s shoulder, his arm around her and a billion tiny shards of light twinkling above her.
Though he was silent for a long time, she knew he wasn’t sleeping. His voice, when he finally spoke, was halting. “Does it bother you to talk about it? Make it worse?”
“Not really.” She stared unblinkingly at the constellations above. And that was true. Talking changed nothing. She’d become convinced that only time accomplished that, but had never imagined how excruciatingly slow that transformation would be.
“Why did you return? After they got you out. What drove you to fly back into the same danger and spend all those months there again?”
She’d been asked that question dozens of times before, and it was on the tip of her tongue to offer him the same answers she’d devised to deal with it. That immersion journalism gets in your blood. That she was unwilling to leave a job undone.
But because of all he’d offered her, here, tonight, she owed him the truth. “It was the only thing that helped me make sense of it,” she said simply. “That’s what people do, I guess, when faced with something horribly, unnecessarily tragic. All those people dead, and for what? I wanted something to show for our presence in that hotel. Because if I hadn’t after all that suffering, what was the point of it?”
“So you risked your life again so those deaths weren’t in vain.”
“No.” Her voice was sharper than she intended. “You make it sound heroic, and believe me, I was anything but. I was scared all the time. Always. And the only way I got through it was to spend my nights crawling into the bottom of whatever bottle I managed to score on the black market.”
“And yet you stayed.”
“I stayed.” In an alcohol-induced haze most nights, but she’d stayed. She’d remained several more long months reporting on the violence and devastation and then had politely flown back to the States before breaking down completely.
“Few could manage what you did.”
The words warmed her, even while she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe they were true. Yes, she’d managed to do her job even as she struggled with ghosts that had taken up permanent residence in her mind. And that had been a victory of sorts. But she knew exactly how far she was from vanquishing those specters completely. Charley was right. Coyote was always waiting. He was a constant presence inside her, ready to pounce when defenses were lowered.
“I think my ex plans to steal my son.”
Shocked at his non sequitur, she twisted her head to look up at him, but Joe’s gaze was fixed on the sky. “I learned by accident that she’s moved from Window Rock. A private investigator I hired confirmed it. She’s living in Phoenix at a furnished condo unit that rents by the week.”
“Have you talked to her? Maybe she just-”
“She lied when I called her cell. Mentioned that she’d found a different place in Window Rock that was closer to a park for Jonny.” Sarcasm laced his words. “Of course when I asked for the address she skirted that by saying she was planning to bring him here for his visit this coming weekend. She’s biding her time. The custody hearing is in a few weeks and the only chance she has to share custody is to remain on reservation lands. But once the hearing is over she’ll be gone. It’s all she talked about during the final months of our marriage. She wanted us to move away from here, to a larger city, off Navajo lands.”
The demand amazed her. “She didn’t know you very well, did she?”
He looked down at her then. “And you think you do?”
Though a voice inside her whispered caution, she nodded. “You’re a part of this place. It’s a part of you. It’s not something I can articulate or completely understand. But I know that much.” And she envied it, too. What must it be like to have such a powerful sense of belonging? To a place and to a people that shared the same rich past?
“She doesn’t know me well at all if she thinks I’ll let that happen,” he said flatly. “She didn’t cover her tracks well enough and I have someone watching her around the clock. For Jonny’s sake, I was willing to work out a compromise that would give him some stability with both parents. But she can’t have my son.”
She could hear the fear mingling with the determination of his vow, and she stroked his chest, soothing the muscles that had gone tense.
After a time he rolled to face her, his hand sweeping down her thigh and then up again, chasing the last remnants of chill from her skin. And when his face lowered, when his mouth settled against hers she gladly twined her arms around his neck, welcoming the embrace.
There was a slightly pagan feeling to making love outdoors, beneath the silent moon and scattered constellations. A sense of wicked pleasure in watching his skin gleam in the thin beams of moonlight slanting across it.
The world narrowed its focus until there was only the two of them, backdropped against the infinite beauty of the night. And when he moved over her, inside her, the breath rushed from her lungs and all she could see was the stars beyond the breadth of his shoulders, his face in the shadows, stamped with the primitive expression of a man claiming his mate.
The alarm shrilling insistently in the back of her mind was muted, but present. Because she knew then, with mingled certainty and sadness, that he was destined to leave a mark on her soul that time and distance would never completely erase.