Turquoise Guardian

by Jenna Kernan

  “Amber?” he whispered.

  “She left. When the shooter spotted her empty cubicle, he said he would find her.”

  His heart gave a leap and hammered now, hitting his ribs so hard and fast it hurt.

  “Where is she?”

  “Left. Harvey Ibsen’s home. Paperwork. Oh, it hurts. My kids. Tell them I’m sorry. That I love them.” Her eyes fluttered shut.

  Someone entered the office.

  “Security!”

  “In here,” Carter called.

  A moment later a man in a gray uniform shirt and black pants appeared in the doorway. His gun drawn.

  Carter lifted his hands. “Unarmed.”

  The man aimed his weapon. Carter didn’t have time to get shot.

  “EMTs on the way?” he asked.

  The man nodded, his face ashen.

  “Come put pressure on this.”

  He did, tucking away his weapon and kneeling beside Carter before placing a large hand on the folded fabric over the woman’s abdomen.

  “You know a guy called Harvey Ibsen?” Carter asked.

  “Yeah. He works here.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I don’t know. In town, I guess. Who are you?”

  “Friend of Amber Kitcheyan.” Friend? Once he had planned to make her his wife.

  “Yeah?”

  Carter was already on his feet. He pointed at the woman. “She wants her kids to know she’s sorry to leave them and that she loves them.”

  The security officer blanched. Carter stepped away.

  “Hey, you can’t leave.”

  Carter ignored him. If the shooter was after Amber, he had to go. Now.

  “She also said that the shooter was looking for Amber. Send police to Ibsen’s home. I think he’s heading there.”

  The man’s eyes widened and he lifted his radio.

  “Call Amber’s cell. Warn her,” said Carter.

  “She doesn’t own a mobile. Or at least that’s what she told me.” The security officer’s eyes slid away.

  Carter groaned. Of course she didn’t. That would have made the necessity of him delivering this message superfluous. He headed out, following the ghastly bloody footprints. His phone supplied an address for a Harvey Ibsen, and his maps program gave him the route.

  Ibsen didn’t live in Lilac. According to Carter’s search engine, he lived in Epitaph, the tourist town fifteen miles north of here. The name, once a joke for the number of murders committed during the mining town’s heyday, now seemed a grim omen.

  Carter swung up behind the wheel of his F-150 pickup. Amber’s boss was out the very day this happened. A coincidence that was just too perfect in timing. Luck. Fate. Or something else?

  He didn’t know, but he had a sour taste in his mouth.

  Chapter Two

  Carter headed out, turning away from the town of Lilac, named not for the color of the rock, but the name of the man who decided to crush the poor-quality copper ore in a stamp mill and make the low-grade ore profitable.

  En route to Epitaph, he phoned his twin brother, Jack, a detective with the tribal police back home on Turquoise Canyon Reservation, and filled him in.

  “We have no jurisdiction outside of the tribe,” said Jack. “You’re practically in Mexico.”

  Actually he was thirty miles from there and heading north.

  “See what you can find out. Tell them that Amber is a member of our tribe.”

  “She left the tribe, Carter.”

  “They don’t know that.” Carter reined himself in. He wouldn’t lose his temper or shout at his brother.

  There was a pause.

  “Ibsen lives in a small housing development in Epitaph. You need the address?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. I’ll call border patrol. They might have a checkpoint set up along that stretch. What is the shooter driving?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Do you want me to call the others?”

  He meant the members of Tribal Thunder, the warriors of the Turquoise Guardian medicine society. The ones charged with protecting their ancestral land and people from all enemies.

  “Call Little Falcon.”

  “I’ll call Tommy, as well. He’s down there somewhere. Maybe he can help,” said Jack.

  Tommy was their brother. At twenty-six he had scored a spot on the elite all–Native American trackers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as the Shadow Wolves, and had been down there on and off for two years. Carter supposed not all the Bear Dens could be Hot Shots. A Hot Shot was a member of an elite team of firefighters flown into battle forest fires, and the Turquoise Canyon Hot Shot team was one of the most respected and sought after in the nation, a reputation they had earned with hard, dangerous work. He and the other members of his former US Marine outfit all missed the buzz of adrenaline, and so had joined the most dangerous job they could find as a substitute.

  “Great. Gotta go.”

  “Be careful,” said Jack.

  Carter hung up and slipped the phone into his front pocket. Amber still didn’t have a cellular phone. She hadn’t owned one the last time he’d seen her either.

  “Please, don’t let that be the last time,” he whispered and pressed the accelerator.

  * * *

  AMBER HUMMED A tune about being happy as she rolled along. The fifteen mile drive out to Harvey Ibsen’s was uneventful, and the scenery was lovely, so different than Turquoise Canyon. The roads were well maintained and flat as Kansas. She whizzed past dry yellow grass dotted with silver-green yucca and woolly cholla cacti with spines that looked like fur.

  There were no cacti up on Turquoise Canyon. Here the planes stretched out wide-open to the snowcapped Huachuca Mountains to her right and the rockier Dragoon Mountains to her left where Apache warrior, Cochise, once kept a stronghold. The mountain ranges here did not look like those near Black Mountain, but at least the Huachucas got snow.

  She missed home, still, after all this time. The Turquoise Canyon Apache Indian Reservation gleaned its name from the exposed vein of blue stone on Turquoise Ridge. Her tribe was a conglomeration of many Tonto Apache people, the losers in the wars against the Anglos, relocated twice until finally reclaiming a small portion of their lands. And the Turquoise Canyon Apache tribe had timber, turquoise and decorative red sandstone. They also had the best Hot Shots in the world. She supposed the warrior spirit lived on in the men of her tribe who now flew all over the West to battle forest fires.

  Carter was a Hot Shot. Her smile faded, and her heart ached at the thought of the man she’d once loved.

  She caught movement behind her and saw a dark vehicle closing fast. She held her steady pace and frowned as she recognized the van a moment before it swerved to the opposite lane and zoomed past her. It was the same illegally parked van at the loading dock, or so she thought. Her brow wrinkled as the vehicle vanished in the distance. How fast had that van been going to make her look like she was driving backward?

  Amber continued on but now with a sense of disquiet that niggled at her. She signaled her turn, though there was no one behind her.

  She checked the numbers on the houses she passed. She had been here once on a similar mission, but the houses were very alike; her boss’s home had solar panels, so she studied the roofs as she passed. When she arrived at number nineteen, she slowed before the house. Harvey’s hybrid vehicle was parked in the drive. That’s when she saw the familiar blue van was already on the corner. She slipped the car into Park, instead of electing to turn into Harvey’s ample drive. Something felt wrong, and she leaned forward to stare out the passenger window. Something about that van gave her the creeps.

  Amber had to be back soon because the shipment was being unloaded
as she sat there dithering. As she turned off the engine, she resisted the urge to start the engine back up again. The last of the air-conditioning dissipated, forcing a decision. She was being ridiculous.

  She grabbed her satchel and then the car’s door handle, stepping out into the street. She took a moment to tug down her cream-colored jacket and smooth her dark slacks. Then she closed the door.

  She’d just made it up the drive when she heard a male voice speaking from inside the house. The tone was so strained that she did not at first recognize it, but then the strangled timbre became familiar, a version of Harvey Ibsen’s speech that she recognized but had never before heard.

  “I told you everything. I reported it, for God’s sake. I told you we had a problem.”

  There was a pause and then Ibsen again, whimpering, begging now.

  “Oh, but I’m one of you. I’m the one who—”

  The sound of a gunshot brought Amber up straight. Her eyes widened, her jaw clamped, and her grip on the shoulder strap of her satchel tightened. Her mind struggled to catch up with her body as her heart rate leaped and a sheen of sweat covered her skin.

  The second shot set her in motion. She spun and ran back to the curb. She dropped her satchel in the street beside her car as she crouched.

  Her breath now came so fast she choked on the dry air. Heat from the pavement radiated up through the soles of her shoes, and her image reflected off the metal of her door panel before her. She could see herself in the white paint—all wide eyes and cowering form.

  She glanced toward the van, perpendicular to her hiding place, and inched back out of sight, dragging her leather bag along the road as she moved away from the house. She ended up behind her rear bumper as she heard the sound of footfalls crunching on the ornamental stone. She peeked up over the trunk.

  He held a long black rifle in his hand, and his head was turned toward her car, the one that he likely knew had not been there when he entered Ibsen’s home. He looked directly at her and she at him. They made eye contact for one endless second and then another. His step faltered as he changed direction, raising the rifle stock to his shoulder as he headed for her at a quick march.

  Chapter Three

  Carter took the turn too fast, the wheels of his truck screeching in protest. This was the street. Where was Amber? And then he saw her. The car. The shooter. All at once.

  Amber cowered beside the rear bumper of a rust bucket of a car that looked as substantial as an aluminum can. The dark blue van parked on the adjoining cross street looked right as a getaway vehicle. Before the house stood a single male, forties to fifties, dressed in jeans and an olive green windbreaker, an assault rifle lifted to his shoulder. His jaw was large and dark with stubble. Carter saw brown hair, a broad nose, a down-turned mouth and square forehead. Was this the man who had killed all those people at the copper mine? The gunman swung the rifle in Carter’s direction as Carter’s truck screeched to a halt beside Amber. He had expected her to open the door, but she didn’t. Didn’t wait for him to shout directions either.

  Instead, Amber vaulted into the bed of his pickup and rolled as Carter accelerated. The spray of bullets peppered his tailgate as he turned away from the van. Behind him, the gunman stood in the road for a moment, then lowered his rifle and ran toward the van.

  It wasn’t over. He felt it in the pit of his stomach.

  Amber pounded on the small sliding glass window that separated the cab from the truck bed. He swiped the window open and glanced back at her. She stared at him with wide eyes.

  “You,” she said.

  He cast her a half smile and returned his focus to the road which was complicated by the distraction of Amber slithering through the narrow opening with the undulating ability of a belly dancer.

  “You hurt?” he asked.

  “No.” Amber looked over her shoulder out the back. “He killed him.”

  “Ibsen?”

  “Yes. I think so. I heard my boss... I heard shots. Maybe we should go back.”

  “No. Call 911.”

  “No phone.”

  “I’m buying you a phone.”

  “No, you are not.”

  He didn’t have time to argue with her now. So he drew out his phone and passed it to her. She called the emergency number and gave them the address and situation. Her voice hardly wavered at all, but she kept her opposite hand pressed to her forehead as she spoke.

  When she finished, she relaxed her hand, and his phone dropped limply into her lap. Suddenly she stiffened.

  “My satchel!” She half turned in her seat. “I left it in the road.”

  “Forget it.”

  She pivoted back to place. “The packing slips. I’m responsible. They’re gone,” she said.

  She settled in the seat beside him, her brow furrowed.

  “Did you get a look at the one with the rifle?” asked Carter.

  “What? Oh, yes. A good one.”

  “Driver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think about them. Every detail.”

  “Are they coming?” Amber glanced back through the rear window at the road behind them.

  “Not sure.”

  She gripped his forearm with both hands tight. The scar tissue tugged, and he winced. Who would have thought such a small woman would be so strong?

  He scanned her worried face, taking in the changes, looking past the Anglo clothing and prim bun to the loose tendril of black silk caressing her jaw and falling away before her pointed chin. Her cheeks held a flush, and her dark eyes glimmered from beneath thick lashes, her eyes so black he could not see the pupils of her eyes. Her mouth, oh that mouth, pink and alluring with the small crescent scar cutting through the upper lip. That threadlike blemish had appeared while he was away on his first tour.

  He turned back to the road. Beautiful, he decided, still and always the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “How did you know where I was?” she asked.

  “I was at the mine.”

  “But why are you here?”

  There was no time for that now.

  “There’s been a shooting at the copper mine,” he said.

  He made another turn.

  “What?”

  He debated only an instant and then told her everything.

  “Everyone in my office?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “Looked like it.”

  Amber covered her face and wept. The urge to shield her from the pain surged inside him. But driving at top speeds he could not even loop an arm around her shoulders as she cried.

  Suddenly, she lifted her head and stared at him with deep dark eyes glimmering with pain. Her pointed chin trembled, and her tempting pink lips were parted in surprise. He felt a familiar tug at his heart. They’d been so good together.

  He forced his gaze away.

  “That’s why you wanted me to remember what I saw,” she said. “You think it’s the same man.”

  “I do.”

  He wondered if, instead of asking her to remember, he should tell her to forget. But it was too late. They’d seen the shooter. She’d seen the driver. They were involved.

  She righted herself in the seat and closed her eyes. Then she lifted his phone, and dictated every detail she could remember into a text. The sound of her voice still stirred him.

  When she finished sending the text she returned his phone.

  “Who did you text that to?”

  “Your brother Jack.”

  His phone chimed as Jack sent back a question mark.

  “That way, he has it, in case anything happens...”

  “Nothing is going to happen. I got you.”

  She stared with a solemn expression that made her seem world-weary. He summoned a quic
k smile he hoped looked reassuring.

  “Why are you in Lilac, Carter? Why today?”

  He had that creepy sensation again. The one he felt when he learned that her boss was out today of all days. “I have a letter for you from Kenshaw Little Falcon.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head, not understanding. “My uncle? Why would he send you?”

  “He heads my medicine society now.”

  Did she ask why he had been chosen or why the message needed to be hand delivered?

  “It’s not from my father,” she said, the statement really a question. He knew from her mother, Natalie Kitcheyan, that Amber had been back to visit, but she timed her appearances carefully so as not to encounter her dad, Manny Kitcheyan. She also never visited Carter again. After that last time, he couldn’t blame her. But the truth that she’d moved on tugged at his heart.

  Carter’s phone rang. He fished it from his front pocket and passed it to her again.

  “It’s Jack,” she said.

  “Put him on speaker.”

  She did.

  “Carter? Where are you?”

  “I got her. But the guy was there at her boss’s house. He’s there, Jack, or he was. Two men. Dark blue Chevy van. Unmarked. Arizona plates.”

  “I’ll call Arizona Highway Patrol. You safe?”

  “For now. We’re heading north.”

  “You guys clear?”

  “Not sure. Any chance you can send Kurt down here for us?”

  Carter was referring to their youngest brother, who was one of the pilots for the air ambulance transport team out of Darabee. In other words, Kurt might be able to get his hands on a helicopter.

  “Either of you injured?”

  He glanced at Amber, who was ashy and bleeding from the knees.

  “If you need us to be, then, yes,” said Carter.

  “There’s a hospital in Benson. Head there.”

  “En route,” Carter said.

  She disconnected and dropped the phone in his front breast pocket. She leaned in, wrapping her arms about his neck.

  “You saved my life.”