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

by Jenna Kernan

  “What?” he howled.

  Sophia disconnected and met Jack’s gaze.

  “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m a fool,” she said.

  “No. You’re a warrior. And you just might have saved us all.”

  “What if your shaman is wrong? What if the dams are well protected or not even a target?”

  “You saw the protection. And we are a target.”

  She nodded. “I know it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sophia had been singled out for a hit by the Latin Kings thanks to the work of Martin’s brother, Juaquin. They had not figured out that she was FBI, but they knew she was on Turquoise Canyon. Just outside Tinnin’s office, Jack called Luke Forrest and told him what was happening—the attempted hit, the death order, Sophia’s resignation and the threat they still faced from BEAR.

  The agent didn’t take it well. But he could not come riding up the mountain to the rescue. There was too much chaos down in Phoenix. It was all over the news. Scenes of gas explosions and fireballs. Neighborhoods destroyed. Industrial parks in flames.

  “You going to be able to keep her safe?” asked Luke.

  “I’ll protect her with my life,” Jack said.

  “Not what I asked,” said Luke.

  “Yes, I’ll keep her safe. I swear.”

  On the other end of the phone there was a deep sigh. “Let me speak to her.”

  Jack passed off the phone and Sophia pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Hi, Luke,” she said.

  Jack felt sick and proud all at once. She was staying. Was it because of him or them? Or did she just see the need of protecting his tribe? Some deep animal part of him wanted it to be because of him.

  Sophia was Western Apache and exactly the sort of woman he always wanted and never felt he deserved, because he was different. Now he knew why and he wasn’t certain that knowledge changed anything.

  “I understand,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure. I know what I’m doing.”

  Most Apache women he knew stayed on the reservation, close to their families, their language and their culture. Sophia had broken free, left her tribe and made a life for herself down in the desert. And she had thrown it all away for this.

  He’d never be able to repay her, but he hoped she’d let him try.

  Tinnin met Jack’s gaze. His worried face told Jack that his chief wasn’t sure they could handle what was coming. He motioned toward his office and Jack followed, leaving Sophia in the outer office on the phone.

  “Will it work?” he asked Jack, motioning his head toward the river.

  “I hope we never find out.”

  “She can’t stay forever,” he said. “Eventually she will have to show one of us how to trigger the blasts.”

  “That was a condition of her supervision.”

  “But our guys can bypass the ignition system she set up.”

  “I’m not sure they can. I wouldn’t want to mess with the ignition system. It might blow up before the dam is damaged.”

  “I don’t like it. What if one of those gang members gets by us and kills her?”

  Jack’s body surged to life at the hypothetical, preparing to fight. “We have to keep her safe.”

  “For how long, Jack? Protection detail is straining our resources. I need you on the runaways.”

  Jack’s curiosity was piqued. “Did someone else go missing?”

  “Yes, Lawrence Kesselman’s kid.”

  “Which one? He has—what? Thirteen?”

  “It’s Maggie. She disappeared yesterday.”

  “How old?”

  “Fourteen. She’s the youngest to go missing. The others were between sixteen and eighteen.”

  Jack glanced to Sophia, who was still on the phone, and then to his boss. “How’s Jake Redhorse doing with the investigation?”

  “He’s fine, but he’s not you,” said the chief.

  Tinnin was putting him between a rock and a hard place. The crimes on Turquoise Canyon did not stop because of the outside threat. If anything, Jack’s inattention to his normal rounds had allowed crime to increase. The stack of paperwork on his desk was rising. He needed to get back to work and he needed to protect Sophia.

  “I’ll check in with Redhorse. See what he’s got so far.”

  “Do that,” said Tinnin.

  Jack turned his back on his chief and walked away making a mental note to speak to Redhorse as he worried about the missing teens. Right now he needed to focus on BEAR. If Sophia was willing to risk everything to protect them from the river, he would do the same.

  Jack returned to the squad room and his desk, taking a seat before the stack of unreturned messages. Sophia was off the phone and he was on his computer answering his email. She took a seat beside his desk.

  “Funny,” she said. “You have too much to do and I have not enough.”

  “That’s a good thing,” he said and smiled. But it wasn’t. They decided it was best for her to stay here, close to the river and the protection of the squad room.

  He took her with him in the afternoon to speak to two witnesses in one of his open cases, but he could not go on calls where she might be exposed or in danger. That evening, they ate together at his home in a kind of pall.

  “This is bad,” she said. “I don’t want the dams to go. But I can’t stay up here indefinitely.”

  But she now had nowhere else to go. He knew she would not return to her tribe. He wanted her to stay here with him, but how did he ask her that? She was an FBI agent, or she had been.

  “How did you leave it with your captain?” Jack asked. He wanted her to choose him out of love, not need.

  “He gave me one day to report. After that I’m insubordinate.”

  “I’m so sorry, Sophia, for dragging you into this and so grateful you are here to help us.”

  “I keep thinking of those explosives on that beautiful ridge. You understand that some of the rocks will fly over a mile and rain down over Piñon Forks. It will damage cars, buildings and people who don’t take cover.”

  “The tribal council has the word out. The warning sirens mean take cover. Not evacuate.”

  “But what if I figured wrong? What if the blast is too small or too big or it doesn’t completely stop the flood?”

  “You set the charges, Sophia. What do you think will happen?”

  “I’ve never set one that big.”

  “The miners were there. They tell me you got it right, exploited every fault and fissure. It will work, Sophia.”

  Sophia’s mobile phone rang and she glanced at the screen. “It’s Luke.” She stood as she took the call, as if coming to attention in front of a superior officer as she spoke her greeting.

  Sophia listened for a few moments then glanced at Jack and excused herself, stepping away from the table and disappearing down the hallway to take her call. She returned a few minutes later and stood beside him at his dining room table.

  “What’s up?” asked Jack.

  “He’s worried about me.”

  “Understandable,” he said.

  “Let’s go sit in the living room,” Sophia said. She offered her hand and he grasped it, allowing her to lead him along to the leather sofa. He sat closest to the arm and she in the center, half turned to face him. He found his fingers gripping into the soft padding as he braced for whatever was troubling her.

  “I asked him about your mom earlier today. He was getting back to me with some information.”

  Jack stiffened as hope mingled with dread. Was his mother alive? Was she safe?

  “He couldn’t get much out of his guy at the Justice Department. But he did find out that your mother is alive and living somewhere in the Midwest. Your mother is employed and she has remarried.”

  Jack pressed a hand flat on the armrest as his other hand squeezed the cushion edge flat. His mother had started again. Started a new family.

  “She has children, Jack. You have sisters. He couldn’t
find out how many or their ages.”

  Sophia slipped from the sofa and kneeled before him, taking his hands in hers. “You have sisters, Jack! More than one.”

  He couldn’t take it all in. He was confused and unreasonably happy. Should he feel joy or sorrow at knowing that he had siblings that he would never meet? His mother had given him a great and selfless gift, leaving him here to grow up an Apache man of the Tonto people. He wished he could thank her for that. He had his roots and his legacy, but he did not know his father’s people or his mother and now he added three more relations to that list.

  “I wish I could see them.”

  “Luke told me that you would ask that and told me to tell you that that is not possible.”

  “After all this time she still in danger?”

  “Relocation is a permanent step, Jack. Once you go in, you don’t come back. The Justice Department has never lost a single person who was relocated unless they broke cover. It’s the single most dangerous thing your mother could do.”

  “A photo then,” he said, knowing that a photo could be used to identify his family and therefore put them at risk. Even the simplest landmarks in a photo could reveal the part of the country and perhaps even the neighborhood where they lived.

  Sophia did not directly deny his suggestion, but simply glanced away and then slipped back to her seat beside him.

  Jack thought back to last February and remembered something. “When Carter had to leave us, my mother said something. It makes sense now.”

  “What did she say?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jack recalled exactly what his mother had said upon learning that Carter and Amber were being taken into witness protection. He repeated Annetta’s words for Sophia now.

  “She said, ‘Not again.’”

  Sophia cast him a puzzled look.

  Jack explained. “She had already lost her sister to the Justice Department and she was about to lose her oldest son. Ironic. For a time she lost Carter and kept the son that was not hers.”

  “Jack, I’ve seen your mother with you. You are her son.”

  Jack bowed his head. He knew that was true. His mother, Annetta, had never treated him any differently than the children she had had with Delane, except, perhaps, to minimize his concerns about how differently he looked than his brothers.

  “You’re right. Annetta has been a wonderful mother and Delane has been a doting father. I’m lucky. So why do I hurt inside?”

  “I don’t think you have to know your mother to miss her.” Sophia cuddled up close to him on the sofa. She collected the hand he used to deform the sofa cushion beneath him and lifted it to give him a kiss on his knuckles. “Funny, you have two good women in your life. I’d be happy to just have one.”

  Jack had been so tied up with his own erratic feelings that he had forgotten Sophia’s troubled childhood. He did not think to speak platitudes or trivialize her pain. But what could he say to comfort the woman who now comforted him?

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m lucky. I survived that and I’ll survive leaving the Bureau.”

  “You have a home here for as long as you like.”

  She gazed up at him with a look of curiosity. Did she understand his invitation was personal and not a general announcement of the tribes’ gratitude? He should make it clear that he wanted her to stay. But somehow the words failed him.

  “Jack, there is one more thing that I learned from my cousin. It’s also about your mother.”

  Oh, no, he thought, she’s ill.

  “Is she sick?”

  “No,” said Sophia, squeezing his arm and resting her chin on the top of his shoulder. “It’s nothing like that. I’m just not sure how to, that is, I don’t know how you’ll take this.”

  He meant to tell her that whatever it was he could take it. But instead his mouth hung open and he waited as if he was a punch-drunk boxer unable to lift his arms to defend against the knockout blow. But he did see it coming. She had held it back perhaps deciding whether or not she should tell him.

  “The Justice Department said she broke cover to come to Phoenix. As far as they could tell she never had contact with anyone from her tribe. They even checked the surveillance tapes to confirm she made no contact. In other words, she did not break the terms of her agreement. If she had, she would lose her status as a relocated witness. Just coming to Phoenix didn’t do it. But it was close.

  “She flew in and out on the same day. She was in the Phoenix airport for less than two hours. Surveillance tapes showed she did not speak to anyone other than the waitress who took her order. They checked on the waitress. She was not a relative.”

  “What was she doing here?”

  “I think she was here to see you.”

  Sophia gave him the date of her breach of agreement. He recognized the month and date immediately and that he had been in Phoenix, in the airport at the same day and time.

  “She came to see me.”

  “Yes. The Justice Department says your family was all there. Was that the day you came home from overseas?”

  The closing of his throat hit him so hard and so fast that all he could do to answer her question was nod. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the hot sting of tears roll down his cheeks. His mother had been there. Ava had seen him come off the plane. Drop his bag and hug his mother, father and two younger brothers. Carter had still been overseas, beginning his third tour. Jack had been certain after only one that the marines was not in his future. He had wanted only to come home to the place of his birth and return to the life he had left.

  Sophia’s arms went around him. She pressed her head to his chest as she continued to speak.

  “She was at the gate directly behind the one from which you disembarked and met your family.”

  Jack thought back to that day. Pictured her there across the wide polished floor, watching him greet the family she had given him. But unable to cross the few short steps to welcome him. Jack pressed a hand to his face as the sobs broke from his throat.

  Sophia held on tight and cried with him. Her words were strangled but he still managed to understand past the sound of his own cries.

  “It must’ve been the newspaper classifieds. Your mother, Annetta, must have posted the time and date of your homecoming.”

  Jack could only nod and sob.

  Sophia stroked his arm and pressed a hand over his chest. She made soothing sounds in her throat and ran her fingers through his hair. Gradually the tension and pain drained away leaving him spent. He wiped the moisture from his face and blew out a breath.

  “I haven’t cried since Carter came home from overseas.”

  “It’s cleansing, I think. Nature’s way of helping us grieve.”

  Is that what he had been doing? Of course, she was right. He was grieving for his mother, Ava.

  “I wish I could do the same and see them just once.”

  “I think if the Justice Department figures out what your aunt and mother are doing they might revoke her protected status. You would need to think long and hard about using the classifieds to arrange a meeting. It would be dangerous for her.”

  Jack let that wish die.

  Sophia sidled forward until she sat on Jack’s lap. She held his face between her two small hands and looked at him with a sweet expression of empathy.

  Jack’s heart still ached. But the pain was deeper now and mingled with joy. The dark feelings that he had harbored about not belonging were gone. He did belong here on Turquoise Canyon. These were the people who loved him and protected him and raised him.

  “I’m a lucky man,” he said.

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  They smiled at each other. Jack felt a rising awareness of Sophia as she draped her arms around his neck and her mouth turned upward in an inviting smile.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  Sophia shook her head, and her brows lifted as she gave him an enigmatic smile.

  “Thirsty?”r />
  Another slow shake of the head.

  “Sleepy?”

  Sophia giggled. Jack stood, carrying Sophia up with him. It was a short walk to the bedroom and the large welcoming bed. Jack did not know if Sophia meant only to comfort him, but he did know that for him this was so much more. He had found another person that he did not want to lose. Somehow, someway, Jack needed to keep Sophia with him. He began with soft, hot kisses to her neck and worked downward from there, each kiss a tribute.

  Sometime in the night she roused him from his sleep stroking her leg along his as her fingers danced circles over his chest. He pulled her up so she straddled his hips, giving her leave to claim what she had summoned. This time was slow and quiet and joyful as Jack tried to show her what he could not yet say... I love you.

  Afterward he held her as he slept, his slack fingers still tangled in her hair. It was there, naked and sated, that they still were when the siren sounded just after dawn.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sophia scrambled out of bed first, pressing her hands to her ears as she tried to understand what was happening. The siren, it meant something. Jack sat up in bed, his eyes wide.

  “The dam. Skeleton Cliff. That’s the warning.”

  She knew it, of course, because she had heard it sound every day she was in range at noon. But that had been a short friendly toot. This was a shrill shrieking blast that went on and on.

  “Dam breach,” he shouted, leaping from bed and dragging on his clothing.

  She glanced at the bedside clock. The time read 5:51 a.m. Nearly everyone in Piñon Forks would be asleep.

  Sophia scrambled to do the same, but he was already dressed and clipping his holster as she hopped on one foot in an attempt to tug on her second shoe.

  Jack grabbed his phone and punched in a number, then frowned. He tried again.

  Sophia had her holster on now and was dragging her hands through the tangle of her hair. She found the clip on the floor beside the bed and used it to hold back her long hair.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Jack continued to jab at his phone. “No service.”

  An icy cold washed down her spine. She needed cell service to detonate the explosions. A terrible thought rose in her mind.