The Warrior's Way (Apache Protectors: Tribal Thunder)

by Jenna Kernan

  “I see.”

  She was about to say that it wasn’t necessary for the others to chaperone. But the way he looked at her gave her pause. He seemed hungry and that simple glance was all it took for her heart to pound and her stomach to twist. Oh, she wanted Jack Bear Den in all the ways a woman wanted a man. And since she could not leave, having chaperones might be a really wise idea. She needed to either stay away from Jack or get it over with. After all, he was just a man. Getting him out of her system might be the wisest course. There was no regulation against sleeping with him. He was not a colleague or a suspect. He was the friend of her cousin.

  Fair game.

  Sophia ignored the internal warning alarm sounding in her mind. She’d had short affairs before. They were the best kind, allowing her the excitement and physical contact of a man’s company without the entanglements. Leaving before they did was just self-preservation, because, sooner or later, they all left. But she’d never been this interested before. In fact, she had intentionally picked men she had minimal interest in. Made leaving easier.

  “Sophia? Will that arrangement work for you?”

  “Seems fine, but not Wrangler. She’s connected to an ongoing investigation. It would be best if I had no contact with her.”

  “See, I’d think you’d want contact. Especially if you think she’s involved.”

  “Not my investigation,” she said.

  “We don’t think she’s involved.”

  “Why is she still up here? I’d think a woman like her would be bored to death.”

  “Well, if she leaves, the highway patrol or Flagstaff PD will arrest her as a person of interest in the Pine View fire.”

  “Ah,” said Sophia.

  “She didn’t do it. But you make up your own mind. If you don’t want her to stay, I can speak to Dylan. But it’s an insult and he’s my friend.”

  “They’re a couple?”

  “Yes, but they don’t live together.”

  That surprised Sophia. From all accounts Meadow was a wild woman with numerous short, public affairs.

  Sophia took the irresistible bait to meet the infamous heiress, Meadow Wrangler.

  “She’s your guest,” said Sophia.

  He gave a toot on his horn and hit the lights of the SUV. A moment later the headlights illuminated a large square structure, the lodge she supposed. Onto the porch spilled five men, two women and a child. She recognized only one—Wallace Tinnin.

  “That’s our tribal director in red. The rest are all members of Tribal Thunder.”

  “The men, you mean.”

  “No, all. Our warrior sect includes women. But not children. Lisa, the girl, is not yet a member. But if we are successful, she will live to join someday.”

  The gravity of his words struck her. What for Sophia was a hypothetical problem to be considered and quickly set aside was for the Turquoise Canyon Tribe a matter of life and death.

  Jack made introductions on the porch. Sophia shook every hand as if she was running for public office. She recognized Meadow Wrangler from her photo, but the blue hair was new. Sophia tried not to stare. When she met the executive council president, she both shook his hand and bowed her head in respect. She did the same when she met Kenshaw Little Falcon, their shaman and leader of their medicine society.

  The formalities complete, Morgan Hooke offered to take Sophia to her cabin to freshen up.

  “Where’s Agent Forrest?” asked Sophia.

  Kenshaw Little Falcon took the question.

  “He had to return to Phoenix. I drove him to the airport in Darabee. But he left the car for you.” He motioned toward the dark portion of the field, where she had seen the vehicles parked when they’d arrived.

  Luke had abandoned her. Nasty trick, she thought. Sophia tugged at the hem of her blazer and forced a smile. She was now alone among strangers.

  “I see.”

  Morgan lifted a lantern from a nail and motioned Sophia down the steps.

  Sophia knew of Morgan since her cousin had been lead on the FBI investigation into the shooting of the Lilac gunman. Morgan’s father had killed the shooter, a paid assassin, according to Luke. How had that affected this woman and her child?

  “Let me show you to your cabin so you can freshen up before supper,” Morgan said again.

  Under the bright starlight, they picked their way to the cabin. Morgan preceded her through the door and set her lantern on a small wooden table. Then she fished in her pocket for a book of matches, lifted a second lantern from a nail beside the cabin door and lighted the wick. The smell sent Sophia right back to the home of her childhood, making her stomach roil.

  “Everything all right?” asked Morgan. “It’s not much, but Dylan cleaned it up and Meadow changed the bedding. It’s all new.”

  Meadow changed the bedding? The woman she believed to be a spoiled little rich girl had made a bed? Sophia couldn’t believe it.

  “Meadow?”

  “Yeah. She’s not so bad.”

  Oh, Sophia had to disagree. If she wasn’t bad, she lived in the same house with bad for most of her life.

  “It’s lovely,” said Sophia.

  And it was so much nicer than her childhood home on the Black Mountain rez had been.

  “Well, you can’t beat the view of the river and the canyons across the way. You can’t see it now, but tomorrow, from the porch, it’s beautiful.”

  The river again. It seemed to be taunting her now.

  “Plumbing works. Hot water, too. Just no electric. You know how to light a kerosene lamp?”

  Sophia was all too familiar with how to do so, but had hoped she would never have to use a lantern again.

  She forced a smile. “Absolutely.”

  “They brought your bag in. It’s by the bed.”

  Sophia followed the direction Morgan indicated and found both her briefcase and the bag Luke suggested she pack “in case things run long.”

  “Do you want me to wait for you and bring you back to the lodge?” asked Morgan.

  “I can find my way.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you to get settled.”

  Sophia just wanted to slip into her yoga pants and a loose T-shirt and climb into bed. It had already been a long day.

  “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  “Bring a lamp,” said Morgan as she hesitated at the door. “We are so grateful to you for coming to help us. Luke told us all about you, and we are hopeful you can give us advice so we can protect ourselves. I don’t know if Jack told you but I lost my father to cancer. But before that I lost him to BEAR. It’s a dangerous group and none of us believe they are done. They still have the Lilac explosives. If this is their target, we are in terrible danger.”

  Sophia did not have the first idea how to reply. Mostly she felt guilty for wanting nothing more than to get out of here. Being so close to the river now gave her the creeps. And she realized why. Because she believed her cousin and Morgan. BEAR was still out there. How would she feel if she could not pack up and leave in four days?

  Had they planned all this, Luke and their shaman, Little Falcon? To show her the pastures that lined the river and the town and this gathering place, the very heart of the reservation, so she could see what would be lost? The problem that had been theoretical was now all too tangible.

  Morgan hesitated, lingering. “I have a little girl. We live right in Piñon Forks. Her school is there, too.” Morgan’s hand went to her stomach and Sophia saw the definite bump she had not seen before. Morgan was expecting a child.

  The two women stared across the silent cabin.

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Sophia.

  Morgan cast her a sad smile and left her with her troubled thoughts. For the first time in five days, the investigation was not the most important thing on Sophia’s mind.

  Chapter Four

  Sophia unpacked, then used the bathroom, checked her hair and reworked her ponytail before heading back across the open ground with the darn kerosene l
amp held high to light her way.

  She knocked and entered. The smell of fry bread made her mouth water and brought her back to some of her earliest memories. Meadow motioned her to a chair and the group sat to eat baked chicken with a tangy sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, three different types of casseroles, including one of a noodle pudding that was especially good, and the fry bread, golden brown and piping hot. Sophia knew how much trouble it was to turn the simple ingredients for fry bread into dough and appreciated the effort as much as the flavor.

  After the meal, several newcomers arrived and both Morgan and Meadow were absent. Their shaman greeted her formally, as if they had not just shared a meal, his smile flanked with vertical lines. Then he motioned her forward to meet an older man, who wore his hair cut blunt at the shoulder. About his neck was a bolo of the tribe’s great shield inlayed with stone. The river, she noted, was a fine blue spiderweb turquoise.

  “Sophia, this is our executive director, Zachery Gill.” The older man extended his hand as Kenshaw continued speaking. “Gill is the new leader of our tribal council. Zach, this is field agent and explosives expert Sophia Rivas.”

  Gill had a fleshy tanned face and was dressed simply in a cotton shirt and jeans with no indication of his rank outside the ornate bolo.

  “Welcome to Turquoise Canyon, Agent Rivas. Thank you for answering our call for help,” said Gill. He motioned a broad hand to the empty chair and she took a seat. Gill sat to her left as everyone took their seats. The circular dining table had transformed into a war room.

  Each attendee introduced themselves by clan, family name and first name, and ended with their position. They were tribal law enforcement, tribal council and warriors of Tribal Thunder.

  When Jack spoke her stomach fluttered and she mentally scolded herself for her very physical reaction to the man that was seated on the far side of the table, which she now realized resembled a medicine wheel with each section made from a different color of wood. Jack sat at one point and she at another of the four directions. Did he notice that the line bisecting the table seemed to connect them?

  Finally the circle came back to their shaman. Kenshaw rose as he addressed the gathering. “Some of our tribe have been elected to protect the language, some care for and teach our young people, and still others guard our heritage. These men and women have one mission, the survival of our people, and each and every one is prepared to defend our tribe with their lives. They are at your service, Agent Rivas.”

  “While I appreciate the offer, no one is going to die as a result of my visit. I’m just here to have a look at the reservoir system. I’ll report back to my field office if I see any gaps in their existing protective plan. I can assure you that no one is going to compromise the power grid.”

  There was a general shifting of chairs and postures. You didn’t have to be a master at reading a room to know that the tribe members here disagreed.

  Director Gill spoke to Sophia. “Jack was just telling us about your plan to create a makeshift dam with a series of controlled blasts at the narrow point of our canyon.”

  Her eyes flashed to Jack’s and held. “That was not at all what I advised.”

  Gill continued as if she had not made an objection.

  “We feel, that should the Skeleton Cliff Dam fail, we would not have time to evacuate our people.”

  “I can assure you, it is very safe, protected by our Bureau and the state highway patrol.”

  “Yes, we know. We have seen them and our warriors have gotten past them. Back to my point—if the dam was to fail, how long would we have to evacuate?”

  Gotten past them? That wasn’t good at all.

  “That would depend on the scale of the breach.”

  Gill lifted his thin brow at her. “Total breach.”

  She drew a breath and released it. There was no way to deliver hard news but directly.

  “Minutes,” she said.

  *

  JACK WATCHED SOPHIA’S face as she delivered the news that the two settlements along the river, Piñon Forks and Koun’nde, would not have enough warning to evacuate.

  “But they could be moved to higher ground now. You have three towns. Those in the lower two could move to...” She lifted her gaze to the ceiling as she tried to retrieve the name of their third and smallest town.

  “Turquoise Ridge,” Jack said.

  She smiled at him and his stomach trembled in a way that he hadn’t experienced since middle school, when all his hormones had been popping in different directions. He grimaced. The woman was near desperate to be clear of them all. He knew that, but still he could not deny that, even knowing she couldn’t wait to be rid of him, he was still imagining what she’d look like out of that suit.

  “They could relocate there,” said Sophia.

  Zachery Gill took that one. “We have only sixteen hundred members. Over nine hundred live on the rez, nearly all of whom live along the river. Turquoise Ridge is for our miners and loggers. There’s nothing up there but rock and ponderosa pine.”

  “But it’s high ground,” she said.

  “It’s impossible. We even asked FEMA for temporary housing. I’ll bet you can guess the answer.”

  Judging from the pressing of her full lips, Jack felt that she did. FEMA would not provide emergency housing before an emergency and the federal and state officials had indicated that all was safe regarding the reservoir system.

  “Did you say you got men past the security?” she asked.

  “Men and women. The road across the top of the dam is blocked with one concrete barrier on each side and a state police vehicle on the east side. We were allowed on tours with only our tribal identification cards and saw the inner workings of each dam during public tours. We were allowed to walk up to the top of the dam.”

  “Single individuals could not carry enough explosives to destroy a dam. At worst they’d damage the power station.”

  “We have a twenty-four-foot police boat, which had been seized from the property of a drug dealer convicted on their rez. We use it for water rescues and search-and-rescue.”

  He had her attention.

  “We were able to bring it and a flat fifteen-foot Zodiac with a load capacity of 250 pounds simultaneously within ten feet of the base of the dam. We were there nearly forty-five minutes before there was a response.”

  Sophia was no longer meeting the director’s gaze. Instead she was staring into space. A moment later she reached for her phone.

  “I need to check in.”

  “You’re on leave,” reminded the shaman.

  “But if what you say is true then I need to report this.”

  Zach smiled. “We tell you this for two reasons. One, because we wish you to see that we are vulnerable.”

  They waited but Zach said no more. Sophia glanced at Jack, the look of confusion evident. He did nothing but glance back to the executive director. But now there seemed to be a steel band around his ribs squeezing away the air from his lungs and making it hard to draw a full breath. If just looking at her did this to him, he really, really needed to avoid touching her. Yet he could think of nothing else.

  Sophia inadvertently rescued him by directing her expressive dark eyes at Gill.

  “What is the other reason?”

  “You are here and you are listening.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help you blow up the canyon. It would be an ecological disaster for the river, not to mention destroying the water supply to both Red Rock and Mesa Salado Dams below this position.”

  “We disagree,” said Kenshaw. “Creating a temporary dam of rock and debris would actually save both dams from the flood and debris that would at best test the limits of their infrastructure. All reservoirs are at their limits now after a record rain. We believe this is what BEAR has been waiting for. The rains have come and gone and the water is high.”

  “I can’t help you do this.” She folded her arms. The action lifted her breasts.

  Jack stared and when he finally tor
e his gaze away, it was to meet Ray’s knowing glance. Jack wanted to knock the smirk off his face. Ray had settled down since marrying Morgan and taking on the role as father to Lisa. They were now expecting their first child, but there was still devilment in him. Ray leaned toward Dylan Tehauno and whispered something. Dylan’s gaze snapped to Jack, and he stared with wide eyes full of surprise. Jack had a reputation for being very selective when it came to women. Jack shook the thoughts from his head and realized Kenshaw was speaking, his voice as hypnotic as the wavering notes of a flute.

  “No need to decide and no action to take. Tonight we will pray and dance and perhaps then know better what direction to go.”

  “Folks will be arriving soon,” said Gill to Sophia. “You are welcome to join us. Tomorrow Jack will take you to the reservoir system. You can see if you think the protection is adequate. After that we will talk again.”

  Sophia stood. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I think I will turn in. Early start tomorrow.”

  Actually they would start late. Jack wanted her to see the day tours, but also night surveillance because Kenshaw was right. It was not that hard to get past one state police car parked at one end of each dam. Closing the bridge spanning the dam was a predictable security measure. But one Humvee followed by a tractor trailer could knock the concrete barrier aside without even slowing down.

  There were many things Jack wanted to show Sophia Rivas. But he would stick to the ones relating to the reservoir system. For now.

  Jack followed Sophia out of the council lodge. He paused to grab her kerosene lantern. The lantern was unnecessary really, because of the waning moon, now in its quarter. The silvery light reflected back on the placid surface of the Hakathi River.

  “You forgot your lantern,” he said and offered her the handle.

  She made a sniffing sound. “I don’t like them.”

  “Lanterns?”

  “Yes, lanterns—they smell,” she said.

  “I like it—it smells like—”

  “Poverty,” she said, finishing his sentence.

  He cocked his head at the odd association. Did she mean that people used kerosene when they had no electricity? For him the association of the lantern brought back memories of camping along the river as a boy, but perhaps she did not have electricity in her home on Black Mountain. His tribe had some homes on propane up in Turquoise Ridge, but most everyone had electricity and septic tanks. Hadn’t she?