by Jenna Kernan
“Is this one that clips in the front?” he asked, slipping a finger under the elastic of the shoulder strap of her bra.
“Jake Redhorse,” she said, her voice now a sweet combination of mock shock and humor. “How do you know about that?”
He grinned. “I’ve seen a few things since we were kids.”
Her grin widened, and she reached for the clasp. “Well, I should hope so.”
Lori opened the bra between her breasts and slipped it off like a shoulder holster. Her breasts were heavy and round and he wanted to kiss her. But he waited. Something about that smile kept him pinned to the spot as she placed her hands on her hips and slipped the scrap of fabric down. The lace rolled up like a leaf of tobacco as she stepped clear. And there she was, naked and his at last.
“Lori. You’re so beautiful.”
Her smile held a promise he intended for her to keep.
“And you are still dressed.”
He wasn’t, really. Only a T-shirt and his trousers separated them. But not for long. He ignored the twinge of pain as he leaned back against the counter to pull off his shoes and socks. Her warm fingers danced over his hips as she lifted the cotton shirt. He raised his arms, and she drew the garment swiftly away.
Jake bit his lip at the hitch of pain the movement caused as he lowered his arms, resisting the impulse to lift a hand up to cover his injury. When he straightened, it was to find Lori clutching his top in one fist. Her lush, inviting smile faltered and her brow knit.
“Oh, Jake. Look at you.” She stepped forward to gently run her fingers over the purple bruises that marked his torso.
“I’m all right, Lori.” He wasn’t going to let a few bruises stop him from showing Lori exactly what he could give her. He could provide for her and protect her. He could be a father to Fortune and a husband to Lori. If she’d just say yes.
But first he wanted to remind her of how good they were together.
Her fingers continued to dance over the marks left by their attacker. Bullets stopped by his vest, but the impact had damaged his skin and muscle. The bruises had spread, the marks reminiscent of the injuries she had seen as the result of auto accidents.
“I don’t know how this didn’t break a rib,” she said.
He took hold of her wrists, stopping her. “It didn’t. And I took an aspirin before dinner.”
“Aspirin makes you bleed more!”
“Ibuprofen, then. Lori, I don’t need a nurse right now.”
She straightened. “What do you need?”
“I need you, Lori.”
She blinked up at him, indecision plain on her face.
“Are you sure?”
“Letting go will hurt me more.”
Her kiss was gentle, and his response left no doubt that he wanted her passion, not her tenderness. Her hands slipped down his taut stomach and brushed over his aroused flesh.
“What about protection?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “You’re using something. Want a backup?”
She lifted her brows and gave him a contemplative gaze. Was she surprised he was leaving it up to her? She’d always been the more responsible one.
“I trust you, Lori. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel otherwise.”
She threw her arms about him, molding their bodies together. Then they were kissing again, hungry mouths full of promise and want. He retrieved a condom, opening the single packet. Lori took it from him, her fingers stroking and teasing as she slipped it over him. With a rush of need and desire, he took her in the shower. Afterward, he washed her body before allowing her to do the same for him. The results of her touch roused him again, and he left the shower with Lori in his arms, taking her to the bed. When at last they settled to sleep, he was certain that she knew what was in his heart, because he had told her everything with his loving. He trusted her with all he was, and he loved her with his whole heart.
They slept soundly, entwined in each other’s arms. Sometime later he felt her rise, heard the soft cries of a baby and then felt her return to his side.
Jake woke to the buzz of his cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. Lori’s arm was across his bare chest. He reached for the phone and she rolled away. He checked the display. It was his brother Ty—calling him at five o’clock in the morning.
Jake slid from the bed as he answered, then collected his scattered clothing as he exited the room where Lori slept.
* * *
LORI WEAVED TOWARD FORTUNE, half-asleep and eyes squinting against the light now coming through the window. Night, she realized, was turning to day. The changing table was in the other bedroom. Lori carried Fortune across the hall, changed Fortune’s wet diaper and headed with her to the kitchen to make formula, where she discovered a different agent sitting at the dining room table scrolling through emails on a laptop.
“Good morning, Ms. Mott,” he said. “There’s coffee on.”
She gave an appropriate reply but found her throat had a frog in it. Did all the agents have such precise haircuts?
After Fortune was happily draining a bottle and quiet except for the sound of her greedy sucking, she turned to the new man.
“I’m Lori.”
“Yes, ma’am. Agent Ronald Clifford.”
She smiled and nodded. “Any news?”
“Yes, ma’am. Officer Redhorse apprehended a suspect, Faras Pike, wanted in connection with this case.”
“Officer Redhorse?” Lori frowned in confusion and glanced toward the room where she thought Jake had still been sleeping.
She looked back to Clifford. “Isn’t he here?”
Chapter Twenty
“No, ma’am,” said FBI field agent Clifford in response to Lori’s question about Jake. “Officer Redhorse is back on the job.”
“What?”
“Reassigned, ma’am, by his supervisor.”
Reassigned, from his protection detail? Of course—with manpower so short on the rez, Chief Tinnin would not need Jake to protect her or the baby. That was now the job of the FBI. But for how long?
Was it over between them again? Just like that?
She could not believe that Jake would leave Fortune. It didn’t seem possible when he’d been so adamant about taking custody.
“I see.” She resisted the urge to retrieve her phone from the charger and call Jake.
“What will happen now?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“I mean with the baby.”
“Temporary placement in an undisclosed location. She’ll be safe, Ms. Mott.”
The ache began in Lori’s chest and moved out to cramp her stomach and squeeze her lungs. They were going to take Fortune away from her. She was going to lose another baby and Jake all over again.
“Excuse me,” she said, then ducked her head and hustled down the hallway to the room where she should have spent the night. Jake had been right to want to keep Fortune on tribal lands. Now the FBI had her and Fortune. How would she get them back home?
Once inside, Lori sat like a stone, feeding Fortune as the tears rolled down her face. Only after Fortune was happily gurgling in her bassinet did Lori indulge in clinging to a pillow and weeping. This was why she had not gone back to Jake. She’d known deep down that he’d never loved her, and even if he did, it wasn’t enough to stay and protect her from the FBI. But she admitted to herself that she loved him with all her torn and battered heart.
Sometime later she rose, showered and dressed. She was braiding her damp hair when there was a tapping at her door. She swiped at her eyes.
“Yes?”
The door swung open, and there stood Jake Redhorse in a dusty uniform with his hat in his hand. His smile dropped when he looked at her. The shower, it seemed, had not obliterated all signs of her tears. She remained where she was, resisting the urge to run to him.
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“Lori?”
“You’re back,” she whispered.
“Of course I’m back.” He cocked his head, his expression puzzled.
“The agent said you were reassigned.”
His dark brows lifted in understanding. “Oh. Yes, I did tell him that.”
A lie? She wasn’t sure, but her heartbeat increased as a stupid, unreasonable hope lifted within her.
He inched into the room and glanced at Fortune, who squealed at the sight of him and beat her arms up and down. He grinned and scooped her up, giving her a greeting in Tonto Apache and then bouncing her against his chest. He carried Fortune across the room and knelt before Lori.
“Why are you crying, Lori?” he asked.
“I’m not. I was crying.” The lie was obvious. “So where were you, then?”
“I met with Faras,” he said.
Her sorrow now turned to anxiety as her gaze swept him for injuries.
“You’re all right?”
He nodded.
“I don’t understand. Why would you go to him?”
He returned Fortune to the crib and came to sit beside her on the bed.
She sat beside him, her legs hanging limp over the edge of the mattress. She felt like a damp, discarded bath towel. It seemed a great effort to move.
“Wait, did you say you arrested Faras or met with him?”
“We had a little chat. He wasn’t arrested. Ty set up a meeting for me.”
She did not like the sound of that. Now she wasn’t sad so much as frightened. What had he done?
“I told Faras that the baby has been blood typed, prints and DNA taken.”
“Which is why they wanted her dead.”
“He never admitted involvement, but yes, I think so, too. He knows the feds have custody of her now.”
Lori was about to tell Jake that she had custody and she wasn’t giving Fortune up to the FBI. But she didn’t say that because it occurred to her that the FBI might be the only ones who could protect this baby she now thought of as her own.
But Fortune wasn’t hers. Never had been, really. She’d been called in as a nurse to do a job. She’d done it, and now it was time to let go.
She sniffed. Why had she let herself fall in love with Fortune? After all this time. All the babies she had cared for, and she’d never felt like this.
“Faras denies any culpability in the actions of either Earle Glass or Minnie Cobb. He suggested that the pair wanted to sell the baby on the black market.”
“Do you believe him?”
“It’s possible.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No. I don’t believe him. He knows exactly what his people are doing because he sent them to get Fortune. The important thing is that he has told me that none of his people will try again to retrieve the baby.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t want her.”
“Why did they want her to begin with?”
“He didn’t say.”
Lori glanced at Fortune, who was unaware, of course, of her peril. “Do you believe him?”
“Yes, but...”
“What?” she asked.
“Ty beat me to it.”
“To what?”
“Making a deal. I’m afraid Ty is the one who convinced him to protect Fortune, which means Ty owes Faras a favor. A big favor.”
The kind of favor that could land Ty in prison, Lori thought. Now her mood matched Jake’s as the worry tugged at her.
“What about your brother Ty? Bear Den guessed that he was at Gill’s place the morning of the shooting, right?”
“Yes. Bear Den spoke to Ty, who admitted to being at Gill’s place but claims he was guarding us, which I believe.”
“Does Bear Den believe it?”
“Doesn’t matter. Bear Den can’t prove a connection to Earle or Minnie, so Ty is in the clear for now.”
“Is Fortune safe?”
“Yes, because of whatever deal Ty made and because Faras knows that my entire force will hold him responsible if anything happens to that baby.”
“He has more men than our police force,” she noted.
“We’re getting two more.”
“What about Earle Glass? That’s Faras’s man.”
“Faras was willing to let Earle take the blame for everything. He knows we don’t believe that but also knows we can’t prove otherwise unless Earle talks, and he won’t because Faras will kill him.”
“Can’t the FBI protect him?”
“Do you want Earle Glass protected?”
Lori said nothing. It was the kind of decision she was happy she did not have to make.
“What about Minnie Cobb? She was after Zella, and I believe she was the one who came after Fortune.” Lori just couldn’t prove it and had failed to identify her.
“She’ll be called off.”
Lori nodded. She understood the deal but was still uncomfortable with it.
“Faras again?” she asked.
“Minnie belongs to the Wolf Posse. So she answers to Faras.”
“Does Tinnin know you spoke to Faras?”
Jake shook his head. “No way.”
“You could have been killed doing that.” She wanted to clutch his arm. But she remained seated with one leg splayed out on the mattress so that she now faced him.
“Killed?” He scoffed. “I could get fired.”
That confident grin made her chest squeeze, and another tear rolled down her damp cheek.
“I thought this would make you happy. She’s safe.”
But not ours any longer.
Lori nodded. “But there’s still something going on with the missing girls.”
Jake’s face went hard and his brow dropped. “The force is investigating, and we’re collaborating our efforts with the FBI Sex Crimes unit. We’ll find them, and we will bring them home.”
Lori was certain Jake would never give up. She hoped the girls were still alive, but she worried that the attention and the investigation might spook whoever held them. Surely Faras Pike knew who that was.
“Any hits on the DNA?” asked Lori.
“None. Sample and report remain on file,” Jake said.
“There’s something else,” he continued. “We have spoken to Zella and her mother about the baby.”
Lori braced herself. She remembered what it had been like telling her own mother that she was pregnant. The shame and the guilt still scorched.
“Yes?” She pressed a hand over her thudding heart, as if that might make the ache less painful.
Jake made a face at the memory.
“How did her mother take it?”
“I don’t think she cares one way or the other. She signed the adoption paperwork as Zella’s guardian to relinquish custody of the baby. She knows Zella is going to live on the Black Mountain rez, but if she is happy or upset, I couldn’t tell. I think she’s on something. Maybe just drinking too much. Hard to say.”
“So sad.”
Lori bowed her head. Zella was only fifteen. She had a crappy home life, which was probably why the gang had targeted her to begin with.
“She’ll be better off on Black Mountain,” said Jake. “She’s been living out in her shelter as much as in her mother’s house, and I don’t think her mother even noticed.”
“Poor kid,” whispered Lori.
Lori knew that the last thing Mrs. Colelay needed was another child. Lori thought she had at least seven, and one was still in diapers. She had seen him at the clinic for booster shots. But Mrs. Colelay could still demand custody of her daughter’s child.
“The tribe has accepted the Colelays’ paperwork relinquishing parental rights and agreed to allow the child Zella delivered to be placed up for adoption
within the tribe.”
That was good. Wasn’t it?
Lori’s gaze drifted to the baby, kicking her feet in the legless sack she now wore.
So Zella was safe and would have a better home. Fortune was safe from whoever had been chasing her, and Ty’s involvement in this matter was to remain secret. And just like that, the threat dissolved, taking with it some of the starch from her spine. Lori could go back to her life. Her cold, sterile, safe life.
Only, she couldn’t. She wasn’t that woman any longer. She’d opened her heart again. Against her better judgment, she’d let Jake and the baby crawl inside. What in the wide world was she going to do now?
“It’s over,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”
Jake smiled and nodded. But she didn’t smile back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lori sat in the temporary tribal seat in Koun’nde, waiting for the closed session of the tribal council. Fortune slept, cradled in her arms. Beside Lori sat Jake, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, spinning his hat in circles by the brim as he waited for the council to fill the seven empty chairs set around the large circular table inlaid with the turquoise for which their tribe was named. To her right sat Kenshaw Little Falcon, the tribe’s shaman. The council remained out on the porch conducting a preliminary meeting.
“Heck with this,” Jake said at last and rose to go to them.
Kenshaw watched him, then turned to Lori. “You can’t rush them. I’ve tried.”
Kenshaw Little Falcon had the lined face of a senior citizen, but his hair retained some of its once-dark color so that it grew in streaks of black and white. He’d dressed up for the occasion, which meant he wore a clean denim shirt and one of his best turquoise necklaces. This one was strung with turquoise beads that grew in size until they met the large silver medallion of a thunderbird. Lori knew Little Falcon was more than the tribe’s spiritual leader. He was also the head of the tribe’s medicine society, the Turquoise Guardians, of which she and Jake were the newest members. In addition, he headed the elite warrior sub-sect, Tribal Thunder. Kenshaw had also presided over her daughter’s funeral five years earlier.
“So you and Jake will both agree to shared custody?” he asked. She nodded. “What does your mother think of that?”
