by Jenna Kernan
“They can’t have gone far,” came the reply.
Amber flattened into the warm earth beside him, covering her mouth with one hand and retrieving a gun from the waistband of her slacks. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She rolled to her side and then reached behind and beneath her blazer, laying a second gun on his chest. He took it, and their eyes met. He saw no fear now. Only a cold determination and willingness to do what was necessary. She would have made a good soldier. His gut twisted, so damn glad she had not been there with him in the Sandbox.
“They’re right on our tails,” said the first voice. “We have maybe another two minutes.”
“But she’s right here!” said his companion.
Amber’s eyes widened. She was the only “she” out here.
“No time,” repeated the first man. “Get my brother. We’ll have to come back for her.
“Hurry up,” said the first man.
A car door opened, the metal groaning a protest.
The same voice again. “Let’s go.”
Carter looked at Amber. Her hand was pressed to her mouth again as if to keep from screaming. Her eyes were wide. Seconds ticked by, and then two more doors slammed and tires patched out on the gravel that lined the shoulder of the road.
Amber slid her hand away from her mouth. “Are they gone?”
Carter nodded. “I think so.”
“Should I check?” she asked.
He shook his head. There was no reason for her to see this. He could protect her from that image, the kind that stuck in your mind and flashed back like a thunderstorm.
They said they had two minutes.
“We wait,” said Carter.
Insects buzzed in the grass above them, and the wind brushed through the long needles of the ponderosa pines on the opposite bank. Amber returned her gun to her waistband and then gripped his arm with two of hers as she huddled close.
“How did you get me out?” he asked.
“You walked, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
There was a whooshing sound, as if from a strong gust of wind. Black smoke rose up behind them, billowing in a dark column in the bright blue sky.
“Fire,” said Carter.
Had the men retrieved Muir and Leopold before setting the Subaru ablaze?
Tires crunched on sand. Amber’s grip tightened, and she ducked her head.
“They’re back,” she whispered, her voice strained.
“Carter? Amber?”
He knew that voice. It was Jack.
“Here!” he yelled. When he stood, the dizziness came with him, clawing at him and making the ground heave. Amber was there beside him, steadying him, holding him so he didn’t fall.
“Slow,” she said. “Go slow.”
She could have run to his brother. But she didn’t. She helped him walk, leaning into him as she wrapped an arm about his middle and gripped his opposite arm, now draped over her narrow shoulders. Then he scrambled up the steep bank on his hands and knees toward the road topping the rise and saw the SUV consumed in flames.
Chapter Seven
Amber felt safe again, at least for now. Detective Bear Den had transported them back to Pinyon Forks and the Turquoise Canyon police station. On the way they had told Carter’s brother everything. Once they arrived, she’d had a chance to wash her face and hands, brush out the powder from her hair and drink some water with Carter standing guard outside the door.
We’ll have to come back for her.
Who where they? And why did they need to come back for her? She wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. She had gotten tangled up in something, but she didn’t know what.
She now sat with Carter in Tribal Police Chief Tinnin’s office devouring a sandwich, chips and a cookie provided by the same woman who prepared the meals for the prisoners. Amber was so hungry she barely tasted the food. Carter’s was already gone, and he sat back to finish his third bottle of water.
Some of the powder had settled in his part, clinging to his black hair. He wore a new clean T-shirt courtesy of his brother who had a locker across the hall. He also wore an unbuttoned green-and-white chambray shirt that was obviously Jack’s, because, though Carter was a big man, he had to roll the sleeves.
Carter watched her eat and smiled.
“Wish we had some fry bread,” he said.
Fry bread! She hadn’t had any since she’d visited her sister over the holidays. It was just one of many things she missed. She returned Carter’s smile.
He lifted the water bottle and drank, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with the rhythm of each swallow. Her mouth went dry, and her entire body electrified. Even after all this time he still made her want him without even trying.
She cut her gaze away, refusing to torture herself with the sight of him. But she was too weak, and her eyes found him again. The bottle lay between his two broad hands, tucked between strong thighs. She exhaled.
“Amber. You okay?”
She forced her gaze away from his groin, but it was too late. Now his eyes blazed in return, the sexual awareness crackling between them like static electricity.
“Amber,” he whispered, leaning forward.
She shook her head but moved closer until his fingers brushed over her cheek, leaving heat blazing in their wake.
She wished they could go back in time, back to those two kids who had fallen in love, and try again. Tell her younger self to be wise and give Carter another chance. But it was too late now, because she could never ask him to leave their tribe, and she was too ashamed to stay.
Despite her reservations, her heart hammered in giddy excitement and her skin flushed.
Focus. You’re in real trouble, and this man doesn’t want a woman who walked away from her family.
Carter had loved her. But he loved his people and his place among them more. He was not leaving, and she was not staying. There was no future for them. Only more pain.
“Thank you for saving us back there,” she said.
“I didn’t get us out. I’d have been cuffed to the handgrip in a smoldering wreck if not for you.”
He’d been the reason they had a chance to get out of that SUV, and they both knew it.
Her smile drop away. “Did they find them?” she asked.
“No. Those other two got them out before torching the vehicle. No sign of them since.”
“Oh, Carter. What’s happening?”
He lifted his water. “I was hoping you’d know.”
“I don’t. I can’t even imagine. It’s like a nightmare.”
Carter rubbed his neck. It was a gesture he used when unhappy, but she wondered now if it might stem from pain.
Carter had refused to go to the health clinic but had allowed Kurt to look him over. He declined the neck brace they recommended for the jolt he’d taken during the crash, but took the offered analgesic medication.
“Did you get through to your family?” asked Carter, changing the subject. Did he believe her? She couldn’t tell.
“I did. Your brother let me use his desk phone. I called Kay. She’ll get word to my mom and Ellie.” But not her father. Her father had made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with her ever again. Her stomach ached, and she felt even lower than before.
“Do you ever see them?” he asked. She could see the pain now, there in his tight expression and the watchful eyes. Did he still feel the ache that she carried like a stone in her heart?
“Sometimes. When I can. I see them at Kay’s.” Her younger sister had married at nineteen and moved to the smaller Rez communities of Koun’nde to the north of Pinyon Forks.
Now his eyes held accusation. “But you never came to see me again.”
She hadn’t. Not after that last time.
A manzana was Apache for an apple. It meant that she was red on the outside and white at the core.
She used the insult he’d thrown at her when he had been home recovering, and Yeager had still been listed as missing.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You told me to go away, me and my manzana clothing.” She lifted the hem of her ruined blazer to show that she still dressed like an Anglo working in an Anglo world.
His jaw tightened. And the glimmer of desire faded from his eyes, replaced with something hard and cold.
Detective Bear Den poked his head through the open doorway.
“The FBI is here. The real FBI.”
“You find them—the guys that took us or the other two?” asked Carter.
“No.” Jack shifted and rested a hand on his hip. “Vanished like ghosts.” He inclined his head toward the door. “They have some questions.”
Carter nodded and rose.
“Ah.” Jack shifted again. “They want Amber first.”
Carter hesitated, and she thought he might argue.
“You gonna sit in?” asked Carter.
Jack nodded and Carter resumed his seat. Amber stood, and her lunch rolled in her belly. She reminded herself that she had done nothing wrong. But it didn’t quiet her nerves as she trailed behind Detective Bear Den.
She’d had a chance to clean up in the bathroom, but the fine powder still clung to the creases of her dark slacks and jacket, resisting her efforts to beat it away. And the smell of the gasoline and the air bags clung to her like skunk spray, making her head ache.
She felt as lost as the day she left her childhood home at seventeen, and just like on that day, she didn’t know what would happen next.
Her world had somehow careened off-kilter, and all she wanted was to go to her crappy rented room in the guesthouse in Lilac, shower, sleep and wake up to find this entire day was just a nightmare.
Amber followed Detective Bear Den into the interrogation room where Tribal Police Chief Tinnin introduced her to two Anglos. Field Agent Parker rose and nodded. The man was in his thirties, cleanly shaven with extremely short hair that did nothing to hide his unfortunate ears that stuck out on each side of his head like pot handles. His partner, Field Agent Seager, had an under-bite that made his jaw thrust out. He also had blue eyes and prematurely gray hair. He stared at her as if he was hungry and she was lunch. Amber took a seat between Bear Den and Tinnin and the FBI across the table.
Over the next hour she was questioned and questioned again. She worked with an FBI artist to help create an image of the man she had seen at Mr. Ibsen’s home and another for the driver.
It quickly became apparent that her miraculous escape from her offices at the copper mine and then again from the home of her supervisor had set off all kinds of alarms with the FBI. The line of their questions and the repetition gradually made it apparent that they were unconvinced that she was exceedingly lucky and that Carter’s arrival was a timely coincidence.
“Ms. Kitcheyan? You were saying.”
“Yes. I opposed the land exchange between the Lilac Mining Company and the US Forest Service. But it’s not really up to me. Is it?”
The men exchanged a look.
“Are you a member of either WOLF or BEAR?”
“Of what?”
“Ms. Kitcheyan, did you have foreknowledge of today’s attack?”
“No.” She sounded shocked because that’s how she felt. What was happening? She knit her brow and tried to think. She glanced to Detective Jack Bear Den who watched her with interest, and she suddenly felt all alone in the room. She glanced toward the door to the interrogation room, wondering where Carter might be.
“Did you take part in the planning of this attack?”
“No, I did not!” Did she sound defensive?
The three men stared at her as her throat began a familiar burn that told her tears were imminent.
“Why did those men take you from this station?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you did know them.”
“No, I did not. They said they were FBI.”
“Yes, that’s what Chief Tinnin told us you said. But it seems more likely that you knew them.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“But you left the safety of the station. Why is that?”
“I wanted to smell the air.”
Both men scowled at that.
“Let’s go back to this morning,” said Seager.
They started again, and when they got to the questions about her knowing the men who abducted her and Carter, she stopped them.
“I have helped you. But now you are just asking me the same thing over and over. So I’m not answering any more questions,” she said. Now she sounded guilty as hell.
“That’s certainly your right,” said Parker, tugging at a pink ear. “But the man who murdered everyone in your office is still at large, and we thought you might want to help us with that.”
“I do want to help you.”
“We just want to be sure we understand. You left your office. You used the restroom. When you left the restroom you departed through the loading dock, breaking company procedure. There you saw the van with the driver, but you never heard a shot or saw the gunman.”
“Again, yes.”
“Are you sure you didn’t, maybe, pass the shooter in the hallway?”
“I think I’d recall that.”
The man’s mouth quirked. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Recall seeing the shooter?”
Chief Tinnin stood. “All right, gentlemen. You’ve had your interview. Detective Bear Den will walk you out. Two of my men will escort you off the tribe’s land.”
“We’re not finished yet,” said Parker.
“Oh, I’d disagree.”
“We have to interview Carter Bear Den.”
“Interview,” said Tinnin. “Is that what you call this?”
Seager had the good manners to break eye contact. Parker just looked belligerent.
“It’s federal land,” said Seager.
“I’d disagree again. It is Apache land.” He turned and motioned to the exit. Detective Bear Den held the door ahead of them.
Seager marched out.
Parker stopped and turned back to Tinnin before exiting. “US Marshals have been called. They’re taking her into protective custody.”
“She stays on tribal land,” said Detective Bear Den.
His chief cast him a look of annoyance but did not oppose him before the federal agents.
Parker rubbed the bristle on his head and turned to Tinnin. “You blocking us from taking custody?”
“For now.”
“There’s already been two attempts on her life.”
“Three,” said Tinnin.
Parker stormed out after his partner.
Amber slumped in her chair, finally able to breathe again.
Chief Tinnin ambled to the door, pausing to glance back at Amber. “I can only stall them for so long. Sooner or later they’ll figure it out, and then they’ll take you with them.”
The door clicked shut, locking her in the interrogation room alone.
Chapter Eight
Carter waited while his brother walked the two FBI agents down the hall and out of sight. He supposed that meant they were not interviewing him next.
His brother’s boss appeared after that.
“They don’t want to take my statement?” asked Carter.
“They sure do. Nearly pissed themselves in anticipation. I called a halt, but they’
ll be back tomorrow. It’s past suppertime and I have an agreement with the missus.” Tinnin gave him a good hard look. “You have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself tangled up in?”
“I just know that Amber is in trouble.”
Tinnin’s gaze was unblinking. “You could say that.” Tinnin looked at the tiled floor a moment and then lifted his gaze back to Carter. “You could also say that we have four suspects at large on our reservation, that your old girlfriend is the lone survivor in one hell of a mass slaying. That the van was recovered, but the gunman and his driver are still at large. That the man who admitted the gunman to the administration building in Lilac used the very same door as Amber and that the key card he used to gain admittance to the building came from a woman who worked in human resources until this morning when she was delayed by a bullet in her forehead. So, yes, son, I’d say Amber is in trouble.”
“Why are they after her?” asked Carter.
“Don’t know. But that random shooting doesn’t seem random at all. Not when they took out her boss and then were here to greet Amber. Love to know how they knew where to find her. Love to know why she practically walked out there to meet them. You got any ideas about that one?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm.” He pressed his free hand on his hip and shifted, resting a leg. “They called the US Marshals. I can stall but eventually she’ll be transferred to the custody of them as a protected witness. They want you, too, but I can give you a choice.”
“We could keep her here.”
“Well, no. I don’t have the manpower for protecting her. And I don’t fancy a mass shooting at my police station, plus she’s no longer one of your tribe.”
Carter knew that Tinnin was also a Turquoise Guardian. He’d spent time in the sweat lodge with him and attended prayer circles.
“I was sent to Lilac to deliver a message to Amber from Kenshaw Little Falcon.”
Tinnin slipped a hand in his front trouser pocket and thought on that a while.
“She’s his sister’s child, as I recall. You deliver it?”
“Not yet.”
“Suppose you go in there and give it to her now.”
“When the marshals come, I’m going with her.”
