“Is this Carver’s house?” she asked, staring at the home that looked like every other house along the road.
“He’s a buddy of mine.” He released his safety belt. “I need to check his place.”
“Can I come?”
He debated whether she’d be safer in the vehicle or with him. He might be out here with night-vision goggles and a scope sited on them right now. Or he might anticipate Kino’s move and be inside that house, waiting to ambush them.
Kino glanced at Lea and knew he wouldn’t leave her alone. Whatever was waiting, they’d face it together.
“Stay behind me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kino slipped out of the SUV. Lea exited a moment later and the cab light slowly faded to dark. Kino released the strap of his holster that kept his personal weapon in place and crept toward the side door. Lea fell in behind him.
“Why don’t we just go to your house?” she whispered.
His reply was so quiet it might have been the breeze in her ear. “If it’s an inside job, they might be waiting. I need to know it’s safe before we go there.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone is home,” she whispered.
Kino tried the door, found it locked and so rammed his shoulder into the wooden frame. The frame cracked and the door swung inward.
Lea gasped. “You broke it.”
“No talk now,” whispered Kino as he stepped inside, gun drawn. He knew Joe lived alone but it was best to be sure. He pointed to the kitchen floor. Lea nodded her understanding and crouched against the cabinets. He circled through the dining room and down the hall that led to the first of two bedrooms. Nothing moved as he checked the second bedroom and then the small bathroom. Once he’d checked the rooms, he returned to her.
“Clear,” he said.
“Lights?” she asked.
“Yeah. Okay.” Kino closed the front door and threw the dead bolt.
Kino walked to the entrance and flicked on the switch. The central circular fluorescent light flickered and then snapped on, emitting a soft buzz.
Kino wanted to check his place to see if anyone had been there, but he also wanted to sit tight with Lea until Clay was here to help him protect her.
“Can you put that away?” she asked.
“What?”
She motioned at his pistol. He holstered his weapon and she blew out a breath.
“I hate guns,” she muttered and wiped her hand over her mouth.
Kino wondered about her reaction to his semiautomatic as she looked around the room, as if suddenly free to explore.
“Your friend doesn’t know you’re here,” she said.
Kino shrugged. Joe’s house looked similar to his, except the kitchen cabinets were a yellowing white laminate instead of beige. The kitchen table was round instead of square but the chairs were just as mismatched. He pulled one out for her and she sat, sagging as if too weary to remain upright. He took the seat adjoining hers and folded his hands on the pinewood surface.
“We stay here until Clay calls. I’ll have to help him check our place. In the meantime, I need to know everything you remember about the man who threatened you. I know he’s white. I could see that much. Tall and lanky, but muscular. He looked fit.”
She nodded. “Yes. I could see the muscles in his forearm bunch.”
Kino felt his skin prickle with awareness. He was so close to getting this guy.
Lea started her description. The guy was over six feet tall. He was white with very short hair, brown in color, she thought, but his hat had covered most of it. He had no facial hair, but a heavy five o’clock shadow. He had no scars, tattoos or marks to distinguish him. She hadn’t seen his eye color because of his sunglasses, which were like the kind athletes wore, with black rims and blue-mirrored lenses. And she recalled the two deep vertical lines between his brows. He’d also worn a large black watch on the wrist that gripped the rifle.
When she finished speaking she was shivering.
“Age?”
“Forties, I’d say. Maybe fifties. I’m not good at guessing ages.”
“Rings? Jewelry?”
Lea spun the turquoise ring on her right finger. “None that I remember.”
“Earrings?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about his voice? Did he say anything?”
“He told me to get out of the truck.”
“Accent?”
“He sounded like he was from here, somewhere in the Southwest.”
“Anything else?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He scared me. Something about the way he moved, the angle of his chin, tucked in like this.” She inclined her head and pulled herself up.
“Imposing?”
“Yes. Definitely. And he had a big jaw.”
“Square?”
“No. Just big.”
“When did you notice the others?”
She pressed her hands over her mouth and shook her head. He wondered if she was going to be sick. Her eyes were closed. Finally she dropped her hands and folded them in her lap, letting her head drop forward.
“Not at first. I didn’t see the...bodies until after the shooting. I just saw him. I waved like a fool and called hello. I thought he was from Oasis.”
“Why?”
“Because he was already at the water station.” Lea tipped her head to stare at the stucco ceiling and inhaled a long breath. Then she returned her focus to him. “He just sort of ambled over, as if there was no hurry. It wasn’t until he was right beside my truck that I saw the blood on his shirt.” She had her hands pressed over her eyes now and she rocked back and forth as she spoke. “I pointed to the blood and his expression changed. He didn’t say a word, just stepped back to lift his rifle. Then he aimed it at my head and told me to get out of the truck. That was when you fired.”
“Did he touch your truck? The door?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Likely no fingerprints, then, Kino realized.
She lifted her chin and regarded him with big, dark eyes. “You going to find him?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I thought you were here to track smugglers.”
“That’s why they brought me. But I’m here for that man. I call him the Viper. He’s the man who killed my father.”
Lea’s eyes widened. “So you’re on some kind of vendetta?”
He nodded. “You could call it that.”
“What else would I call it?”
“Justice,” he said.
She blew away a breath, regarding him. “What are you going to do when you catch him?”
“What do you think?”
She couldn’t prevent the brief pressing of her lips and the disapproval that rose inside her. “It’s wrong—killing.”
“So is shooting four men in the back of the head. I need you to help me find this guy before he finds you.”
“I’m not a vigilante,” she said.
“I know what you are. You’re an activist who saves lost smugglers with your damned blue flags and water stations.”
She stiffened and aimed a finger at him. “Look... I’m a human being and I’m trying to keep the Sonoran Desert from becoming a killing field like South Texas. Migrants are going to make the attempt. All Homeland Security has done is drive them from urban centers and out here.” She waved dismissively at the kitchen walls. “They can’t make it, can’t carry enough water to survive, but they come anyway, because it’s better to take a chance than to die back there in a civil war.”
“You talking about Central America?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you care?” he asked.
“Why don’t you? Why spend your time
trying to avenge the death of one man when right now, tonight, there are mothers and children out there trying to reach one of my damned blue flags? What makes your dead father’s life more valuable than theirs?”
They glared at each other. Finally she leaned both elbows on the table and rested her forehead in her hands. Her shoulders sagged as exhaustion seemed to grip her again. “I thought you were protecting me because... But you just want me to identify this guy so you can shoot him.”
In most of his fantasies he used a knife, but she had the gist of it.
“Lea, you have been through a hard time.”
She rose. “Hard? She’s dead! Because of me!” Lea headed for the door. “I’ve got to go. I can’t have any more deaths because of me. I just can’t.”
He caught her before she made it halfway across the tiled floor.
“Let go!”
He let her slap at him and he took it until he had hold of her wrists. Then he let her struggle until she worked herself out. Finally she stood blowing and trembling like a spent horse.
Her head sank forward and she rested her forehead on his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Kino gathered her up in his arms and rocked, slowly, from side to side, quiet, rhythmic, as he held her. She seemed to fit perfectly against him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she muttered into the muscle of his shoulder, her words muffled by the contact of her mouth with his body. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Help me,” he said. “It’s not just my dad. This guy has been at this for years. I don’t even know how many men he’s killed. And it won’t end here. If we don’t stop him, he’ll just keep going.” He walked her back to the table, and as they sat down again, he prepared to tell her what he had not spoken about since it happened.
How a man had come to his house. Everyone had been at church, except Kino, who was sick, and his dad, who stayed back because his youngest son had a fever.
“My dad saw who it was at the door and told me to hide. Hide. I couldn’t believe it, but something in his voice made me cold all over. I made it under the kitchen table before someone kicked in the door. The table was like this one,” Kino said, resting his hands flat on the wood surface of the table. “But with one important difference. It had a tablecloth. That tablecloth saved my life.”
Kino described the argument. About money and drugs. A delivery. A stash house. He didn’t understand all of it at the time. Now he did. His father was transporting drugs and some had been missing. Kino had heard the shot and seen his father fall, head turned toward Kino, staring out at him with sightless eyes.
Lea took his hand and Kino looked away, shamed by the moisture that pricked his eyes.
“I saw the shooter squat down. He had on dark jeans and cowboy boots. Black ones. I couldn’t see his face—just his legs and hands as he searched my dad’s pockets. Then he opened a tobacco tin and picked something out of it.”
Kino remembered the long, pale fingers lifting something that looked white, like the larva he’d seen under a rotting log. But when the man had shaken it from side to side, Kino had recognized the sound. The man had tried another before finally settling on one. Then he’d pushed the rattle into the oozing bullet hole in his father’s motionless chest.
“That’s where they found me. I was still under there when they got back from church. My brothers, my mother and my grandmother.”
How long had Lea’s hands been over his?
“How old were you?” she asked.
“Eleven.”
He looked at her now. Was that horror or pity in her eyes? He didn’t know. But something about her had given him the courage to tell her what he would not speak of to the police, his teachers, the counselors, not even his grandmother when she’d found him years later crying in his bed.
The corners of Lea’s mouth tightened. “I don’t think he’d want you to risk your life to avenge his. He told you to hide for a reason. He wanted you safe.”
Kino was about to try to explain why he had to do this. Why he needed justice and, if not peace, at least the knowledge that this killer would not destroy another family.
But his phone vibrated, chiming the tone he’d programmed for Clay. He had a different tone for each of his brothers.
He answered the call on the second ring. “Yeah?”
Lea sat back.
“Any tracks?” asked Kino.
“Too many police vehicles and men tromping all over the place. If there were any, they’re long gone.”
“Not surprised.”
“I met the chief of the tribal police,” Clay continued.
“Yeah?”
“New on the job. White guy.”
Kino’s hairs lifted on his arms and neck. “How old?”
“Midforties. Why?”
“Just got a description of the Viper. He got dark hair?”
“Yeah. So does Bill Moody,” said Clay. “Lots of white men here. Everywhere. Right?”
“We need to get Lea to see Moody without him seeing her.”
“Okay.”
“And we need a background check on the chief. What’s his name?”
“Charlie Scott. Charles.”
“Can you call Gabe?” Kino asked.
“Already did. Didn’t ask about Chief Scott, though. Tomorrow, okay? He’s on his way to South Dakota now.”
Kino felt a pang of guilt. “How are they?”
“Good. Taking turns driving, like when they used to ride the rodeo circuit.”
Kino didn’t really remember that. He’d been too young. He only remembered his older brothers disappearing and coming home a week or so later, tired and hungry, but with money in their pockets and new shiny belt buckles.
“Right.”
He couldn’t say that he’d forgotten again because it would just aggravate Clay. Was it that he was missing the powwow or the rodeo that had his brother so bent out of shape? Still, he needed information on Chief Scott.
“What about Uncle Luke?” Kino asked, referring to his father’s half brother, a former US marine.
“He ride rodeo?” asked Clay.
“No, I mean what about asking him to check out Moody or Scott?”
Their uncle, their father’s younger brother, was a Black Mountain Apache who had been recruited into the FBI. Kino recalled that more than a few folks on the rez had been against his working for the government, saying things like you could never trust an Indian who worked with the Feds. But Kino trusted his uncle and he owed him.
“Worth a try. I’m on my way. Be there in five,” Clay advised.
“Meet you out front.”
“Yeah.”
When Kino disconnected, Lea stood and he did, too.
“I want you to wait here.”
“Alone in the house you broke into. Not happening.”
“You’re stubborn, you know?”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“It would be safer for you here.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
Kino left his vehicle in the carport and walked with Lea to his place. Together they circled the property and reached the street as Clay pulled up.
“No sign of a break-in,” said Kino.
Together, with Lea trailing behind, Kino and Clay checked and secured the house. Clay then left them to retrieve the SUV, pulling it into the carport, nose out. In the meantime, Kino rummaged in the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?” she asked him. Just the sight of the carton of orange juice made her stomach gurgle.
“I’m cooking for you,” he said.
She couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. “You cook?”
“I won a chili contest at our powwow last
year.”
“Awesome.”
“But it takes time to make a good chili. You like steak?”
“Yes.”
“Not a vegan or something.”
She gave a tired smile and a slow shake of her head.
Kino started cooking. He had steaks in the broiler and a bag of fries in the oven before Clay got back. Lea set the table and added ice to glasses. The fries were barely brown and the steaks still rare when they sat to eat. Kino was ravenous and, judging from the speed the food disappeared, so was Clay. But Lea ate slowly and very little.
After the meal, Kino found something for Lea to wear, coming up with a red T-shirt that read Rez Life and a pair of basketball shorts with a drawstring. She headed for the shower, clutching the clothing the way a child would hold a stuffed bear.
Clay watched her go. “That one has ‘trouble’ written all over her.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Just by the way you look at her, brother.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Well, you’ve already eaten, so why are you still drooling?”
Kino scowled. “I’m focused on finding the Viper.”
“Sure. Sure.” Clay stared at the closed door behind which came the sound of running water. “Still. A man can’t live on only steak and justice.”
Kino’s phone rang and he took the call. After a brief conversation he disconnected and met Clay’s inquiring stare.
“The victim’s name was Ernesta Mott.”
Clay nodded. “You going to tell her?”
Kino rubbed his neck, dreading the task ahead. “Yeah.”
“Better you than me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lea woke, her body stiff and her head aching along with her heart. Ernesta was dead. Was it her fault, as she believed, or the shooter’s, as Kino had said?
He had held her and rocked her long into the night. She had drawn comfort from his embrace and strength from his words. She thought he would have stayed all night with her if she had asked, which was why she hadn’t. But she’d wanted to. That had frightened her enough to give her the strength to send him away. Had she slept at all?
Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 1 of 2 Page 44
