Before Sunrise

by Diana Palmer

  IN THE SHERIFF’S CAR, Cortez was grinding his teeth. The road had four forks just past the cabins. What had seemed like pinpointing a location was now another puzzle.

  “Stop,” he told the sheriff. He got out of the car and walked to the crossroads, narrowing his eyes as he bent down to look carefully at the ground. The snow had covered up everything, but surely there would be a trace of tire tracks if the Bennett woman had come this way!

  The sheriff got out and stooped as well, searching. He brushed at snow-covered leaves gently.

  “You hunt, don’t you?” Cortez asked him.

  “Since I was a teen. You’re looking for ruts, right?”

  “Right. It’s the only chance we have.”

  They bent to the task with flashlights. It didn’t take long. The dirt roads weren’t well-traveled this time of year, so there were no old tracks to confuse them.

  “Found it!” Cortez called, motioning to the sheriff, who stooped beside him.

  There, just under the snow, was a firm tire track in the soft dirt—missing one vertical tread! He explained it to the sheriff, who’d been following the case.

  “Good thing she didn’t realize that tread was so easily identifiable,” Sheriff Steele said.

  “Absolutely. Let’s go!” Cortez jumped up, running for the car.

  The sheriff got in under the wheel, started the engine, and turned down the path from which the four-wheel-drive vehicle had come. He called on his radio for reinforcements, in case they had more crossroads to check. Considering how long Phoebe had been missing, she’d be near dead of exposure by now. Another few hours and it wouldn’t matter if they found her—because it wouldn’t be in time.

  Cortez knew that. He also knew that there was every possibility that Claudia Bennett had killed Phoebe. She could be lying in the snow, her soft eyes closed forever in death. His jaw clenched so tight that his teeth hurt. As the car sped along the snow-covered trail, he was praying for all he was worth.

  The rutted path seemed to go on forever, down and down, around curves and turns, toward a valley below. There was still a chance that the Bennett woman had killed Phoebe, just as she’d killed her accomplice. Unarmed, Phoebe wouldn’t have stood a chance. Cortez couldn’t think about that possibility. He’d been cold to her at their parting. It would haunt him forever if she died.

  The snow was still coming down, heavier now. The sheriff was slowing for the turns. Both men were intent on the road ahead as it leveled out and ran in a straight line toward the horizon.

  The radio buzzed and the sheriff answered it. He stopped the car in the middle of the road and listened, his eyes wide and stunned. Cortez was listening, too. He only smiled.

  “We have a message from a Mr. Redhawk in Oklahoma to relay to you,” the dispatcher had said. “He says it concerns this case, and it’s important.”

  “Okay,” the sheriff replied, puzzled by Cortez’s fixed gaze. “Let’s have it.”

  “He says you should look for a fork in the road where two huge hemlock trees are placed, one across from the other, and there’s a dead log lying halfway in the road. She’ll be there. He also says,” she hesitated, clearing her throat, “that the young lady is pregnant.”

  Cortez groaned out loud. “Is she alive? Ask him if she’s alive!” he demanded.

  The sheriff gave him a curious look, but he relayed the question.

  There was a brief pause. “Yes. He says she is.”

  “Thank God!” Cortez ground out, averting his face, which would show a suspicious wetness in his dark eyes.

  The sheriff thanked the dispatcher and gave Cortez a glance. He barely noticed. Phoebe was pregnant? He couldn’t believe it! But his father was almost never wrong. If he hit the nail on the head this time, he might have just saved Phoebe.

  The sheriff’s expression was elegant. “You don’t believe in this psychic business, I hope,” he scoffed. Just as the last word left his lips, they parted and he gaped as he stopped the car suddenly.

  There, in front of them, the road forked. At the left fork, there were two hemlock trees and a dead log just halfway in the road. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Who is that Redhawk guy?”

  “My father,” Cortez murmured dryly. “He’s a shaman.” He didn’t add that among the Comanche there was no organized group of medicine men, or shaman, that visions were individual and private. His father’s gift wasn’t because of any status in the culture he belonged to. It was as individual as Charles Redhawk himself was.

  The sheriff glanced at him. “I’d like to meet that gentleman,” he said sincerely, wheeling the car down the rutted road.

  Cortez leaned as far forward as his seat belt would allow, his narrowed eyes intent on the road ahead. Please, he prayed silently, please don’t let me lose her. Nothing in life would ever matter again if Phoebe wasn’t in the world.

  The sheriff slowed as they rounded a curve and then accelerated on the straightaway, where the surroundings widened into clearings on both sides of the road. There were huge oaks and pines and hemlock trees along the road. Snow blanketed the surroundings. In the rear view mirror, he could see his own tire tracks growing deeper.

  “Stop!” Cortez yelled suddenly.

  Instinctively the sheriff hit the brakes and stopped about a foot from a curled up figure right in the middle of the road.

  Cortez jumped out and ran to Phoebe. He caught her up in his arms, horrified that it might be too late, despite his father’s assurances. His arms crushed her to his chest. “Phoebe…sweetheart, can you hear me?” he grated at her ear.

  Incredibly, after seconds of anguish, he suddenly felt her breath against his throat. “Thank God, thank God, thank God!” He groaned into her hair. “Phoebe. Baby, can you hear me? Phoebe! Phoebe!”

  She heard a voice. She felt warm, strong arms around her. Had she died? She took a painful breath and coughed, shivering as her eyes slowly opened. She looked up into Cortez’s drawn, contorted, beloved face. “Jeremiah?” she murmured. She smiled as her cold fingers reached up to touch his cheek. “Am I dead and gone to heaven?” she whispered fervently.

  “Not dead,” he groaned. “But it feels like heaven. Thank God we found you in time…!” His mouth ground down into hers fervently, with all his fear behind its pressure. Under it, her lips were cold, but responsive. He wanted to kiss her until she warmed, but there was no time for it now. He had to force himself to stop. His face pushed into her throat as he held her. He let her go for a minute and wrenched off his jacket and stuffed her into it.

  “Oh, that’s so warm,” she whispered delightedly, shivering.

  “You’re half frozen!” he groaned, wrapping her up tight.

  “I never thought you’d find me,” she whispered, clinging to him. “My feet were numb. I couldn’t walk anymore. I was so afraid…!”

  His mouth stopped the words. “You’re safe. You’re safe now! I’ll never let you go again! Not until I die. I swear it!” He pulled her up gently, hesitating when she cried out as she put pressure on her feet. He turned her so that he could lift her with his right arm, so that his left only had to support her legs. He carried her to the car, ignoring the twinge of pain in his shoulder.

  “You’ll hurt your shoulder! You mustn’t lift me…!” she protested.

  “Be quiet.” It was painful to know that even now, she was more concerned for him than for herself. She loved him. He could feel it. He loved her, with every cell in his body. He wrapped her up tighter.

  Even though he felt the pain with every step, he carried her all the way to the car. He had the sheriff open the door from the inside, and he put her into the back seat. He pulled off her shoes and rubbed her stockinged feet roughly with his big hands, until feeling came back into them. “Have you got a blanket?” he asked the sheriff.

  “No, but I’ve got a sleeping bag in the boot,” the sheriff replied, popping the trunk button on the dash. He went to fetch it, handing it in to Cortez, who wrapped it quickly around Phoebe’s legs.


  “We have to get her to the hospital at once,” Cortez said to the sheriff. Only then did he recall the other thing his father had said. He looked at her with wide, curious eyes, wondering if the old man could possibly be right. He had a high percentage of accuracy. Could she be carrying his child? It seemed almost too much to hope for, on top of the miracle that put her, alive, in his arms after the terror of the past few hours.

  “We can’t go to the hospital,” Phoebe said in a croaky tone. “I know where the pistol landed. We have to find it. I’m sure it’s the murder weapon.”

  “Phoebe,” Cortez protested.

  “I knocked it out of her hands at the last minute,” she added. “She was going to shoot me in the back. I thought if I could turn fast enough and knock the pistol out of her hands, I might be able to get away. I was scared to death, but it worked. She has small hands and it was a big .45 automatic.”

  Cortez shivered at the thought of what could have happened, at point-blank range with a gun of that caliber. He could still see the last murder victim, most of his face missing. He wrapped Phoebe up tighter, his face anguished. “You need treatment,” he argued.

  “It can wait. I’m all right. If we don’t go now,” she said gently, “I’ll forget. She can’t be allowed to get away because you don’t have the gun that will convict her.” She glanced past him at Sheriff Steele, who was trying to be invisible. “Tell him I’m right,” she pleaded.

  The sheriff grimaced. “He knows you’re right,” he replied.

  Cortez lifted his head. His eyes were warm and soft in the interior light of the sheriff’s car. “Okay, we’ll look for the gun. That’s my girl,” he added softly, and with pride.

  She smiled and touched his mouth with her fingertips.

  “We’ll look,” he said, getting out of the car. He closed her door. “Let’s go,” he told the sheriff. “If she can point out that weapon, we’ll have a good case.”

  “You bet we will,” Steele said with a chuckle.

  THEY DROVE TO THE SPOT where the Bennett woman had almost killed Phoebe. Incredibly, she’d walked almost three miles from the site.

  “Pull right in there,” she pointed over the front seats. “It was just in front of that big oak tree.”

  The sheriff stopped the car. Phoebe, warm now, got out and handed Cortez back his jacket. She was wrapped up in the sleeping bag, wearing it like a shawl.

  “It’s this way,” she said, gritting her teeth as she recalled the terror of her last visit to the spot.

  She led the two men to the edge of the small ridge that sloped down to yet another, and then another. She closed her eyes, remembering her position and Claudia Bennett’s position. For an instant, she felt sick. Then she caught herself and straightened. A lot depended on her memory. She couldn’t let a killer get away.

  She looked toward the ridge. “It went in that direction,” she pointed past the big oak tree. “It was very heavy, so it couldn’t have gone too far. She tried to search for it when I ran and hid, but she couldn’t find it. Snow was falling and it was getting dark. I guess she thought I might attack her from behind if she stayed,” she added with a wan smile.

  Cortez was looking around with a guarded expression. He could picture Phoebe with a gun at her back held by a desperate woman. If she hadn’t had good reflexes…He couldn’t bear to think about it.

  The sheriff gathered a few sticks and made an arrow with them, pointing in the direction Phoebe had indicated.

  “Great idea,” Cortez said with a smile. “I’ll get my forensic team out here with a metal detector. We’ll find the gun in no time,” he assured the sheriff. He turned to Phoebe. “Right now, we’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

  Even as he spoke, a deputy sheriff’s car came down the road behind them, followed by a green forestry service vehicle.

  “Talk about great timing,” the sheriff chuckled as Drake Stewart got out of his car and approached them, the forest ranger following suit. “Drake, you need to take Phoebe to the emergency room and get her checked out.”

  She turned to Cortez. “You aren’t coming?” she asked suddenly, worried.

  He hesitated for a second, torn between duty and concern.

  “It doesn’t take rocket science to process a crime scene,” the sheriff told Cortez. “Too many cooks spoil the soup, anyway. I’ll stay out here with your forensic team. We’ll find the gun and I’ll show them where to get impressions of the tire tracks,” the sheriff assured Cortez.

  “I’ll call Alice Jones right now and bring her out here with her van and equipment,” Cortez compromised.

  “I’ll drop Phoebe and Cortez at the hospital, then I’ll go by the motel where Alice Jones is staying and lead her out here,” Drake volunteered.

  “Good man,” Steele said, smiling. “You do that.” He glanced at Cortez with a somber expression. “The perp is still on the loose, and she’s already tried to kill Miss Keller once. You’re needed more at the hospital than here.”

  “Thanks,” Cortez told him.

  The sheriff shrugged his big shoulders. “We’re all on the same side.”

  “Indeed we are,” Cortez added, with a grin. “You’d make a great addition to our Indian Country Crime Unit. We value local law enforcement.”

  “Consider me appropriated,” Steele told him, smiling. “You’d better get going.”

  “I’ll get your sleeping bag back to you,” Phoebe told the sheriff. “Thanks a million!”

  “You’re welcome,” he said gently. “I’m sorry this happened to you. But I’m very glad you’re going to be all right.”

  “Me, too,” she murmured, smiling as she caught Cortez’s big hand in hers and held tight.

  REACTION BEGANTO SET IN when Phoebe was in a cubicle in the emergency room, waiting for the resident on duty to examine her. She couldn’t let go of Cortez’s hand.

  “How in the world did you find me?” she asked. “I didn’t know where I was or how to get out of the forest. I heard strange singing in the distance and went the right way. But when I got to the crossroads, I was too tired and numb to go on. How in the world did you find me?”

  “My father led me to you,” he murmured enigmatically. He linked her fingers into his, searching her wan face intently. His hair was down, as he usually wore it when he tracked. She reached out and touched a long, thick strand of it.

  “I’ve always loved your hair,” she commented softly.

  He caught her hand and drew it, palm up, to his mouth. His eyes closed as he savored the soft scent of it, her own special scent. “This has been the longest day of my life,” he said huskily.

  “Mine, too,” she replied.

  “Thank God you were desperate enough to try getting that gun out of her hands, or you’d be a case number,” he murmured.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said simply. She looked into his dark eyes. “Not until you do.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Not until I do, sweetheart,” he whispered huskily. His eyes were so tender and dark that she felt like crying.

  The resident came in while they were still looking at each other. “What’s the problem?” he asked pleasantly. He looked at his notes and added, “Miss Keller?”

  “I was kidnapped at gunpoint and carried off to be assassinated,” she said quietly. “She hit me over the head with something first, I don’t know what. I have headache and I had some nausea at first. But my biggest complaint is exposure. I had to walk out of the national forest to get help, and all I had on were a sleeveless blouse, thin slacks and flat shoes with stockings. I’m freezing.”

  The resident was giving her a tongue-in-cheek look. It lasted just until Cortez pulled out his ID and flashed it under the student doctor’s nose.

  “She’s not making it up,” Cortez said. “We’ve got a BOLO out for the perp. A woman, and she’s already killed once.”

  The resident looked interested. “The guy in the cave, right?”

  “I’m impressed,” Cortez said, grinning.

&n
bsp; “That’s why your name looked familiar,” he told Phoebe. “You’re the anthropologist everybody’s talking about. You’re the curator at the local Native American museum.”

  “Yes, I am,” Phoebe confessed.

  The doctor pulled his stethoscope from around his neck, plugged it into his ears and listened to her chest. He did a standard examination, careful to look for any signs of concussion.

  “We won’t know until we do an MRI, of course,” he said, “but considering that you were unconscious for a few minutes, I think it’s concussion. Any dizziness, light sensitivity, nausea?”

  “Nausea, just at first. No light sensitivity. Heck of a headache,” she added with a weak laugh.

  “Well, I think we should keep you tonight,” the resident said. “I’ll need to run more tests…”

  “Can you do a blood test? We think she may be pregnant,” Cortez added with breathless tenderness, combined with a glance at Phoebe’s shocked face that was as intense as a confession of love.

  “You can’t know that!” she exclaimed.

  “I didn’t. When my father called and told us where to look for you, he said you’re pregnant.”

  “Is your father a doctor?” the resident asked curiously.

  Cortez cleared his throat. “He’s a shaman.”

  The resident’s eyebrows arched. He clasped the chart to his chest. “Let me guess. He told you to put two large silver coins in your pocket just before you were shot,” he murmured to Phoebe. He nodded when she laughed self-consciously and Cortez arched both eyebrows. “He’s become a local legend among the medical staff here. Considering his batting average, I’d say the blood test is a pretty good idea.” He gave Cortez a measuring glance.

  Cortez clutched Phoebe’s hand and smiled. “It’s mine,” he said proudly. “And we’re getting married next week, whether she wants to or not.”