Surrogate Escape

by Jenna Kernan

  “Want something to eat?” Duffy asked.

  Jake explained he just wanted to be sure Colt’s truck ran.

  “Well, Ty comes around and keeps it in shape, hoping, you know, that Colt will drive it again. Ty says Colt doesn’t like closed spaces. Me, now, I never considered a car a closed space on account of the windows, I suppose.”

  Jake made it up the steps and inside to see his mother, with Duffy yapping at him the whole way like a small, friendly dog. He kissed his mom and then felt bad he didn’t bring her something. But he remembered that what he usually brought was candy, and she was no longer supposed to eat that.

  She rose heavily from her recliner and hugged him. Her color was bad. He glanced to what remained of her left foot. They’d taken the big toe, now leaving her only the three middle ones.

  “How are you?” Jake asked.

  “Got a sore here on my foot.” She extended her foot to show the bandage. “Cat scratched me and I just don’t heal good anymore.”

  Kee had mentioned the sore to him. He hoped this one healed. His mother eased back into the overstuffed, sagging chair.

  “Have you seen Colt yet?” she asked.

  Jake was going to say that he’d tried on more than one occasion, but Colt always disappeared before Jake could find him. Just like the old games of hide-and-seek. No one could find Colt unless he wanted to be found.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, I need to see that boy with my own eyes. You tell him so.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Abbie is worried about him. And she needs to see her brothers. Lord knows she don’t listen to me.”

  Abbie was his sister, just thirteen. She was a good kid, but recently she vacillated between caring for and fighting with her mother. Her teen years had begun, and as her body changed, so did her disposition. Jake didn’t like to think of her becoming a woman, though since her sunrise ceremony, she was a woman in the eyes of this tribe and a full member of the Turquoise Canyon Apache.

  “She’s got a boyfriend,” said his mother.

  “What? Who?”

  “Donny Hosie. She talks on that phone you got her until after midnight.”

  Better than being out with him until then, Jake thought. He made a mental note to find Donny and have a talk with him.

  “What about Kee? You see him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, just today,” said Jake.

  “He’s so busy with the clinic move and then at the Darabee hospital. I thought when he finished his residency he would have more free time. Maybe he does, but he sure don’t come round here, and I’m giving up hope he’ll ever find a wife.”

  Kee had been the first one to get off the rez, and he only came back to work at the clinic. He had the most memories of their dad and said there was a time when he had been a father to them. Jake couldn’t recall that far back. As far as Jake was concerned, Kee and Ty were more father than his real one.

  “I’ll tell him you want him to stop by.”

  “I make him feel guilty, is what, on account of the fact that he can’t fix me.”

  “Mama, I need the keys to Colt’s car.”

  “Why?”

  “Undercover work.”

  “Really?” Her face brightened. “Is that why you’re not in uniform?”

  He grinned and nodded.

  His mother clapped her hands. She loved watching all the police procedural television shows and could not understand why it took so long to catch a criminal in real life when the detectives in nearly every show had the bad guys caught, tried and sentenced in under an hour, including commercial breaks.

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You aren’t even a detective yet.”

  “It’s a protective detail.”

  The sparkle went out of her eyes. “This doesn’t have to do with that woman, does it?”

  His stomach dropped. His mother rarely left the house, but her information network rivaled the network news stations. Duffy was one of her sources. Jake cast him a look and he shrugged.

  “Mama...”

  “Lori Mott. I heard you were at the station with her.”

  Obviously she had not yet heard about the attack at the clinic.

  “Still trying to snare you like a rabbit, is what.”

  Jake wondered what she would think if she knew Kee had tried to date her.

  “It’s complicated, Mama.”

  “No, Jakey. It’s not. She’s got a reputation.”

  Jake refrained from reminding her that her son Ty was a known associate of the Wolf Posse. You never left a gang, not without leaving the rez, so that meant Ty was still on the opposite side.

  His mother persisted. “Those Mott gals are all alike, and don’t even get me started on her mother. She can’t even settle on one man.”

  Kee’s words seemed to reverberate in his head. Jake cared about Lori, but there was a time when he had been relieved that he didn’t have to marry “one of the Mott girls.” Lori’s actions said his mother had been wrong and was wrong now.

  “She’s not like that,” Jake said, his voice low.

  “She is exactly like that.”

  “Mom, I love you, but if you keep up with this, you won’t see me any more than you see Kee or Colt.”

  The look of shock lifted his mother’s thinning brows, and she stammered. Jake had always done what he thought would make his mother proud, and except for one mistake, he had done that. That one mistake he had allowed his mother to pin firmly elsewhere. Now, seeing this from a different angle, he had doubts, including whether whatever he did would ever be enough.

  Kee said he should apologize to Lori.

  “I just want what’s best for you, Jakey.”

  Jake retrieved the keys from the fishbowl that included matches and loose change. “What if she’s best for me, Mom?”

  His mother’s jaw dropped. When she recovered and found her words, it was the same old refrain. “Sh-she tried to trap you.”

  “Mama, we had sex. Teenagers do that and we didn’t use protection. I didn’t use it. It was my fault, because I convinced her to have sex, and not the other way around. Understand?”

  She blinked at him in stunned silence.

  “I’m still on duty. I have to go.”

  He kissed her offered cheek. She gripped his hand, tethering him.

  “Dinner next Sunday?”

  “Working.”

  She turned to Duffy. “Working. He’s working. Kee’s working. Ty’s working, and my baby is living up in the woods like one of our ancestors.”

  “Give him some time, Mama.”

  “Ty won’t even tell me what happened to him. I opened his mail. You can go on and arrest me. He was discharged with psychiatric issues. Did you know that?”

  He did.

  “You know where he went when he come home? Not here to his family. No, he went to Kacey Doka’s house, but she’d already run off. Ty said Colt took that real hard.”

  The only female his mother liked less than Lori was Kacey Doka. She’d once championed the girl, who had lived with them for several months. But that was before Colt took an interest in her. Now his mother blamed Colt’s current problems on Kacey’s disappearance, though Colt’s discharge and Kacey going missing seemed unrelated. Jake wondered if it was possible that his mother would dislike any woman who had the audacity to date one of her boys.

  Jake drew his hand free.

  “She didn’t run off. She’s missing, Mama. Her family hasn’t heard from her.”

  “Why would they, way they treated her? She lived in this house more than at home until she up and left without even a word of goodbye. I’m just furious over it. Duffy, bring me some soda.”

  Jake never understood why his mother hated Lori Mott for her family and felt sorry for Kacey D
oka over hers.

  “All we have is diet.”

  “Don’t give me that. I know what you have in that refrigerator.”

  “Bye, Mama.”

  “You be careful, Jakey.”

  And then he was back out in the cool night. He took a moment to breathe the crisp air. His mother had been in a bad marriage. It was one of the reasons she was choosy about the women her sons dated.

  Jake had been happy when his father had been taken away by Wallace Tinnin, the man he always wished had been his father. That might have been the day that he decided to become a police officer. He wanted to take away men who hurt women and their own kids.

  He slipped behind the wheel of the 1957 Chevy pickup that had been rusting out in a pasture before Ty claimed it. His brother had traded the owner free tune-ups on his truck for life. Ty had said that he was reckless and the cattleman old, so it would be a good deal one way or the other. Then he had proceeded to change the old red rust bucket into a gleaming thing of beauty.

  Jake never cared for the colors until he’d learned why Ty had picked them. His choice was purely because neither mint nor maroon was found in any gang’s colors. He did not want his baby brother caught in Wolf Posse territory in a red truck, the color of their rival gang, or flashing gang colors. Ty meant to beat Colt senseless if he ever thought about joining a gang. It was the sort of tough love that they never received from their father. Jake had a feeling Ty would have turned out differently if someone had given him a mint-green truck.

  The Chevy also had maroon detail lines that became a group of charging horses on the front fenders. Ty’s work, of course—colts on a Chevy and a play on Colton’s nickname. Ty had become quite an artist. He had chosen the peculiar color palette for one other reason: it was distinctive enough to identify Colt immediately as Ty’s brother, and therefore off-limits to any in the Wolf Posse.

  Jake had never needed Ty’s protection because Jake gained respect from his popularity in school and his prowess on the basketball court. Now he had the protection of the law, which he enforced, and the family of his fellow officers.

  Had his boss, Chief Tinnin, suggested Colt’s truck because it was known by the Wolf Posse? And also because it was known that the only ones who ever drove it were Colt and Ty? This truck was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or in this case, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

  Ty’s hair was shoulder length and hung shaggy around his face. But their faces were similar enough to fool a casual observer. He thought Tinnin knew that when he’d suggested this.

  He sure hoped so.

  Halfway to the station, he pulled over and rested his hands on the wheel before pressing his forehead to the backs of them. Bear Den had told him they had failed to locate the baby’s mother. They were processing evidence and speaking to neighbors, but the missing girls and the evacuation resulting from the dam failure were top priorities. They had no matches on the prints taken from the infant’s foot and palm. In other words, no one seemed to be missing a baby. In fact, no newborns were missing this month anywhere in the country.

  So they were looking at a crime. A new mother who had birthed her baby and left it for him to find or not. He couldn’t understand it. Even when he’d been a frightened kid of sixteen with a basketball scholarship and a career chosen, he never thought of giving away his flesh and blood. He’d been ready to defy his mother’s wishes, stop everything, marry Lori and raise their child. But when Lori lost their baby, he’d been off the hook, and he’d taken no time to put the entire incident behind him.

  He’d wanted to be a good husband and father, if a young one. But he’d never gotten the chance to be either. Funny how the years never made that tug in his chest go away. He longed to try again with Lori and this baby. But first he had to get Lori to stop being so dang mad at him about what had happened between them. Kee had given him a suggestion on where to start. An apology.

  Trouble was, he wasn’t sure he deserved her forgiveness.

  Chapter Ten

  Lori sat in the back seat of the chief’s SUV beside Fortune in the infant car seat. Police chief Tinnin drove his personal vehicle, taking her far out toward Darabee in a roundabout route that would involve a vehicle switch and several of the officers, to be certain they were not followed.

  She had everything she needed to take care of a newborn for several days, along with some personal items, thanks to the help of Carol Dorset, the dispatcher for tribal police, who had gone to Lori’s home with the key Lori provided. She’d left it up to Carol as to what she might need.

  She should be worrying about whoever had tried to snatch Fortune, but instead she was thinking about Jake and the kiss he’d given her in the car outside the station. But the kiss didn’t bother her nearly as much as that little thing he’d done before kissing her. It had barely registered at the time, but he’d paused and glanced around to be certain they were alone. Did he want privacy, or did he want to be sure nobody saw him kissing her?

  The shame welled, familiar and bitter.

  Soon she would be holed up in a stranger’s home with the man she had once planned to marry.

  She thought she’d set up barriers between them so strong he’d never get through. But just like the dam above their rez, her barriers were not impenetrable. She knew this because she felt them cracking under the strain of his proximity.

  His kiss told her that he still had feelings for her. But her experience told her that for whatever reason, she wasn’t good enough to marry the golden boy of the Redhorse family. So, fine, she didn’t need him, but what she would not do was sneak around with him. He might succeed in going out with her if he showed some contrition and shouldered his share of the blame for their pregnancy, but she was not coming and going by the back door ever again.

  They pulled into the parking garage that adjoined the larger regional hospital in Darabee. She glimpsed the lights from the helicopter pad as they made the turn. One of their own tribe members, Kurt Bear Den, worked there as a paramedic. Tinnin wound his way up to the third level and pulled into the handicapped spot before the elevators, then parked facing out. Jack Bear Den waited. He approached the driver’s side window and spoke to Tinnin.

  There had been no traffic in the last half hour on this level. A few moments later, she spied a familiar mint-green pickup, Jake’s brother Ty behind the wheel. The truck stopped before them, and she blinked as she realized that she’d been wrong. The man exiting the truck was not Ty but Jake, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that advertised APTN, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. The center logo showed a television with antennae drawn like eagle feathers. It was exactly the sort of thing Ty would wear—and Jake would not.

  “All set,” he said to Wallace.

  “Good.”

  He could talk around her now, but in a few minutes they’d be alone in that mint-green Chevy truck—and then what?

  Jake moved the three bags from the seat beside her to the truck bed, and she carefully unfastened the car seat, then transferred it and baby Fortune to the passenger’s side of the truck. The infant really should be in the back seat, but there was none. No airbags, either, she supposed. Didn’t the men think of that when they’d chosen this vehicle?

  It was only then that she recognized this meant she would have to sit in the center of the truck, just like the night in Jake’s truck when they had been young and in love and she had believed that nothing in the world could keep them apart.

  * * *

  THEY DROVE IN darkness through Piñon Forks and Koun’nde to the higher elevations well past any potential flood area. He had been given temporary use of Daniel Wetselline’s home, since he was on duty tonight and his house would be empty. He pulled into the unfamiliar drive late in the evening and used the borrowed key to get them inside.

  Lori carried Fortune into the darkened entrance, and Jake flipped on the light. Jake had a look around
, and Lori took Fortune into the master bedroom to get them both ready for bed. She was feeding Fortune when Jake came in to check on them.

  “You going to sleep in here?” He indicated the queen bed by lifting his chin.

  She nodded. Fortune’s eyes drooped and she sucked with less intensity as sleep dragged at her.

  “Hungry?” he asked Lori.

  “Thirsty.”

  “I’ll meet you out in the kitchen.”

  Lori got Fortune washed up and changed. She walked her about the room as she had done with many fussy babies, but this felt different. She was in a home, to begin with. But that wasn’t it.

  She admitted what was inside her heart to Fortune in the quiet of the bedroom. “I’m not going to want to give you up, boo.”

  Fortune gurgled and her eyes closed. Lori turned to breathe in the sweet scent of the infant and brush her lips over the soft fuzz on her head. Then she lay Fortune down in her bassinet, hoping the infant would sleep a few hours before waking again.

  Lori took a deep breath and smoothed her hair, gathering herself to meet Jake in the kitchen.

  He greeted her with a smile and offered her cereal with milk and a large glass of sweet tea. Jake refilled his bowl and joined her at the table. She finished the offering and had a second cup of tea.

  “Want to watch some television?” he asked.

  “What time is it?”

  He checked his wristwatch. “Nearly midnight.”

  “I think I’ll turn in. See if I can get a few hours of sleep before she wakes up again,” said Lori.

  “I can see to her. I’m used to waking up in the night. I’m on call for accidents and such, and I’m a light sleeper.”

  “We’ll see.” She sent him a smile, and he returned it. They stood in unison, then cleared the dishes to the sink. He moved closer and stopped just inside her personal space.

  She tucked her arms about her, wishing she had the courage to wrap them around Jake.