by Aimée Thurlo
“I’ll wear boots,” she said. “But we have to go. If we take the map my mom gave your mother, we may also recognize other landmarks once we’re both out there. Then we’ll have to search for a large reddish-brown rock with a chunk missing, and see if it matches the piece from my father’s box.”
“I hate to put a damper on things, but to find one particular rock, we might have to stay out there for days. And even then, there are no guarantees. Remember that after twenty years, weathering will have discolored the main piece some more, and maybe even worn away some of the broken edges.”
“What other alternative do we have?” she said simply. “I’m not going to wait for the kidnappers to come after our son again.”
Anger rose up inside him as he thought of what had almost been taken from him. The thought of his only son, and the woman he loved being harmed in any way—No. He could never allow that to happen.
“Agreed. We’ll go out there,” he said brusquely. “But I’ll need to make a stop first. I want to get some bird shot in case we have a problem with snakes, and some other supplies. Would you consider staying at Black Raven Ranch and letting my brother and me hike out there?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “I’ve been in on this from the beginning. Do you honestly think I’m going to step aside now?”
“No,” he muttered, “but it was worth a try.”
Chapter Twenty
Back at Black Raven Ranch, Nick spoke to Jake, filling him in on their plans.
“I sure wish I could go along with you,” Jake said, “but I’ve just hired extra hands to help repair fences and round up horses. Are you sure you can’t wait a few days?”
“The sooner we get there, the better off we’ll all be.”
“I’d tell you to take the cell phone so you can reach me, but it’s pretty unreliable out there,” Jake said.
“Same with police radios. I’ve heard that the iron from the old lava flows causes the problem.”
“When do you expect to be back?” Jake asked.
“A couple of hours, all day. Who knows? You’ll see me when I get back,” Nick said.
“Good luck, brother. I hope it doesn’t end up being a wild-goose chase.”
“So do I.”
Saying goodbye, Nick went out to join Eden, who was already waiting in his old Jeep.
TWO HOURS LATER after Mrs. Chino had left to have lunch with her daughter, Annie sat with Christopher and Noelle in the sala, the big family room. Annie had two babies to take care of now and she was loving every moment of it.
Sitting on the rug, she played with them, enjoying their smiles and the sound of their laughter. She thought of how different things were for her this fall as compared to last winter when she’d been a pregnant widow trying to make ends meet. Now she was part of a wonderful family.
Hearing the phone ring, she picked up the receiver, not moving far from the babies.
“Annie, this is Thomas,” a familiar voice said. “We have a problem. There’s been an accident just at the end of Sage Canyon. Two Black Raven Ranch horses spooked and collided, and we need you to bring the horse trailer so we can get them to a vet. Can you do that?”
“Sure, but I’ll have to bring the kids. Mrs. Chino left.”
“Just put them in their car seats and get here as quickly as you can. You’ll be able to see us once you arrive at the stop sign across from the northwest gate.”
“I’ll be there as fast as possible.”
Worried about the horses, Annie got the kids ready quickly. Any injuries could be disastrous to the animals unless treated right away.
As she strapped the kids into their car seats inside the extended cab of the pickup, she thought about Nick and Jake’s uncle. She was a bit surprised that Thomas had been hired on. Ranching certainly wasn’t in his blood, and he didn’t seem the type to go in for hard physical labor. Maybe he’d finally decided to start trying to pay off his gambling debts.
Working efficiently, Annie hitched up the horse trailer and got underway. She headed north up the main ranch road, glancing in the rearview mirror for the umpteenth time. Both kids seemed perfectly happy. Chris was chewing on a teething ring, while Noelle contented herself by waving her stuffed bear in the air.
As Annie pulled up to the stop sign across from the northwest gate, she caught a glimpse of another vehicle parked just behind a cluster of pines. Suddenly two men wearing stocking masks jumped out from the brush bordering the road and leaped onto the running board on both sides of the truck. The one on the driver’s side pointed a gun directly at her face.
“Turn off the engine and give me the keys. Then hand me your cell phone and pop the hood open,” he growled.
Shaking badly, she did as the man requested, handing him the keys and phone. “Pop the hood.… Why?”
“Just do it.”
She obeyed, knowing she had no other choice with a pistol just two feet from her. The second man jumped off the passenger side and moved around front, doing something to the engine.
“Now I need the boy,” the gunman snapped.
Annie knew then that these were the kidnappers. The knowledge filled her with fear so intense she could barely draw in a breath. “What do you want with Chris?” she managed, her heart drumming at her throat.
The man pointed the barrel of his gun directly at Noelle. He knew she was the older of the two. “I don’t need that one. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”
Annie began to shake even more than before. She wasn’t sure if anyone could actually shoot a baby, but she couldn’t take a chance. She opened the door and went around to the other side of the truck, the man with the gun right behind her. As she unfastened Chris’s car seat, she desperately tried to think of a way to save both babies.
The man’s partner returned with a van a moment later. The gunman suddenly pushed Annie aside hard, knocking her to the ground and grabbed the car seat with Chris in it. As his partner opened the side doors of the vehicle, Annie saw Thomas inside, bound hand and foot, and gagged.
Terror shot through her. If there had been any doubt in her mind before, there wasn’t any now. She knew that these men were going after Nick and Eden, and were going to use Chris as leverage.
It was Noelle’s crying that pushed her to get back to her feet. She’d injured her knee, but there wasn’t time to worry about it. As the van roared away, Annie limped back to the truck. Though she suspected it was useless, she tried to start the engine, but it wouldn’t make a sound.
Biting back the pain, Annie reached into the backseat, grabbed her daughter and started walking down the road as fast as she could. There was a farmhouse about a mile away. She’d use the phone there, and warn the police and Jake.
EDEN PICKED her way carefully across the rocky terrain. Footing was precarious here, and the sharp edges of the lava flow could cut through the soles of shoes. Though she was wearing boots, one wrong move could mean a nasty cut. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also the danger of snakes. Twice now she’d heard an ominous dry rattle as she stepped too close to where one lay in a drift of sand beneath a rock, sheltered from the sun.
Nick guided her across the worst of the stretch. His strong hand at times became the only point of safety in one of the most forbidding sections of land she’d ever been.
Below the escarpment they were now climbing down was a natural basin, devoid of most plant and animal life except for a few hardy tufts of salt-tolerant grass and the ever-resilient insects. Poor drainage had resulted in the buildup of alkali that was so thick in places it formed a crust that crackled beneath a hiker’s shoes. Even the small tendrils of the old lava flow extending out into the flatlands had a white ring around them, indicating how high the water level could rise during the rainy season.
It was a depressing place. As the sun rose in the sky she moved carefully, always searching for that particular rock that was missing the chunk she carried in her knapsack.
Time passed slowly, and it seemed like they’
d been out there forever. Finally, tired and discouraged, she sat down on a relatively smooth rock formation that looked like a lump of black taffy poured over an earlier lava flow. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. No wonder your mother couldn’t find the spot either.”
Nick’s gaze drifted over the terrain. “My mother was no outdoors person. She wouldn’t have stayed out here as long as we have.”
“Come to think of it, my mom got lost even in Santa Fe. What we need to do is find a landmark she could have depended on to orient herself no matter when she chose to come back here—day or night. If we do that, we’ll be able to find the other landmarks on her map.”
He looked around. “There is something that remains constant, despite the season. The low spot at the center of the basin. And there are only a few big rocks down there.”
They hurried down into the lowest spot in the basin, and Eden climbed up onto the largest boulder there, which was about the size of a large tree stump.
“If we imagine that this is the high spot she indicated on her drawing,” Eden said looking north, “then that rock out by itself straight ahead is the one. It’s about fifty paces away, wouldn’t you say?”
Together, they crossed to where the basketball-sized rock lay and rolled the boulder over. “I think this is what we’ve been searching for,” Eden said, barely able to contain her excitement.
Eden reached into her backpack and fished out the rock she’d found among her father’s things. Moving it around like a piece of a puzzle, she finally felt it fall into place, fitting against one corner almost perfectly.
“That’s a match,” Nick said grimly. “Now we dig.” He reached for the folding shovels he’d strapped to his backpack and handed one to her.
As the sun pounded down on them, they moved the rock marker aside and began digging. It was hot, sweaty work. Before long, Nick stopped and stripped off his shirt. Perspiration covered his chest, making his bronzed muscles glisten in the sun. He was all steel and hard planes. Desire rocked her, unexpected and fierce.
With effort, she tore her gaze away but, as she tried to grip the shovel, she realized her hands were trembling.
“Do you plan on just staring at me, or will you actually start moving some dirt?” he teased.
“I’ll work, but you’ve got the advantage. You can cool off by removing your shirt.”
“Feel free to take off yours. I’m fair.”
The slow grin he gave her made her tongue wedge in her mouth. Her pulse raced out of control. Eden made herself take a long, deep breath. Then, when she looked back at him and saw his eyes bright with mischief, she realized just how much he was enjoying baiting her.
She matched his smile. “And if I took off my shirt, would you be able to work?” Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the dark passion that suddenly flickered in his eyes.
He captured her gaze and held it. “Let’s save that particular game for another time,” he said, his voice low and seductive.
A shiver raced up her spine, but she didn’t dare look back at him. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on digging.
A few minutes later the tip of Nick’s shovel touched something metallic and hard. He began to move the sand away with his hands, trying to uncover what lay beneath. “Be careful. We don’t want to damage anything.”
Working together, they managed to free a metal box the size and shape of a small suitcase. The lock was in place, but the case was rusted and swollen from water damage. “I’d like to carry just the contents back with us. It’ll be easier and I can always come back for the box later.”
Nick smashed the lock, hitting it hard with a rock, then pulled open the lid. Aluminum foil was wrapped in thick layers around a smaller, cylindrical container inside.
Peeling some of it away, Eden laughed when she saw a blue ceramic jar with a matching lid. “It’s Mom’s old cookie jar.”
Nick took off the rest of the foil, then removed the lid, which had been sealed shut with freezer tape. The canvas, conical-shaped mask was inside, safe and dry. On top of it lay the fetish that belonged to that Tsave Yoh.
“The artifacts,” she whispered, her throat constricting with emotion. “Now the rituals can be held as they’d been meant to be.”
“With these things back, our tribe will finally be able to put the past behind them,” Nick said. “But it’s not over yet. We still need to bring in Rita and her brother. We know that they’re at the bottom of everything, including spreading the lie that my father was involved.”
“But we still don’t have enough against them, do we?” Eden asked.
“This evidence may give us an edge. There’s technology available now that wasn’t around when the crime took place. The fact that this mask and the fetish weren’t part of any display may really help us. Remember that these artifacts were stored at the Center because it was supposed to be the safest place in town. Rita and her brother may have known something was being stored for the tribe in the vault, but they wouldn’t have been told what it was, and they wouldn’t have been allowed to touch any of it. We’d expect your mother’s fingerprints to be on these artifacts, but if the FBI lab can lift their fingerprints from these items as well, then we’ll be a step closer to proving that they were the ones who took them out of the vault, intending to steal them.”
Eden looked around to verify that they were still alone. “Let’s hurry back to the pueblo. We need to get these things in a safe place.”
Nick noted her apprehension. “Don’t worry. No one can sneak up on us out here. There’s not enough cover.” He placed the mask and fetish inside his backpack.
Carefully Eden put the cookie jar in her own backpack. She intended on bringing it back unbroken. “I’m going to keep this to remember my mom and everything she went through. Not that I’d ever forget.”
They hurried across the basin and climbed to the top of the escarpment, reversing the route they’d taken before. Picking their way across the treacherous rocks, they finally reached normal terrain, the piñon pine-dotted upland desert that rimmed much of the pueblo’s land.
They’d stopped for a moment to drink some water from a canteen, when suddenly they heard a clear voice from behind the brush directly ahead.
“Don’t make another move. We’ve been watching you through binoculars since you went down below, and we know you’ve found the mask and the fetish. Put both backpacks on the ground, and walk away.”
Nick instantly jerked Eden down behind the tall sagebrush.
“No deal,” he yelled back taking his pistol out of its holster.
Eden nodded in approval. “They’re not going to take this from us. We’ve worked too hard for it,” she whispered.
“We have hostages,” the man said, his voice cold. “Wanna see?”
As they peered out from their cover, they saw someone being pushed out from behind a low, wide piñon. It was Thomas, his hands tied, and a piece of duct tape over his mouth. Nick cursed.
“And we have more!” the man’s voice added.
Eden heard the sound of a baby crying and her heart suddenly froze. “That’s Christopher.”
A masked figure carried out Christopher in his car seat and set him down out in the open, then quickly disappeared.
Eden reached for Nick’s backpack. “That’s it, they win. I’ll give them what they want.”
“No, wait,” he said, holding on to her.
“Stop playing games,” the woman ordered simultaneously. “Toss your gun out into the open, Deputy, then the backpacks. If you don’t, I’ll shoot the hostages.”
Though he hated the thought of relinquishing his weapon, Nick knew he didn’t have a clear line of fire and couldn’t have risked a shot. All he could do now was buy time.
Nick unloaded his pistol, then tossed the clip and the weapon in separate directions. “Rita Korman, we know it’s you, and so does Captain Mora,” Nick said. “And your accomplice is your brother, Wayne. The game’s up. You can’t play this out
and win.”
The sound of her laughter reached them. “Sure we can. And we will. But you can try to save some lives unless you want me to shoot your uncle and the baby. Just keep in mind what happened to Isabel and James Maes when they decided to fight us. James came to us with replicas of the artifacts, pretending to be ready to deal in exchange for his wife. We saw that all he’d brought were copies and refused to deal. That’s when he went for my gun. Isabel tried to help him and, by the time it was all over, they were both dead. We didn’t want to kill them, but in a gunfight things have a way of going very wrong. Play things smart. Don’t push this and end up making the same mistake they did.”
“Please don’t hurt anyone else,” Eden cried. She tried to go to her son, but Nick tightened his grip on her arm and held her back.
“Then do as I say. Now!” Rita shouted. “All we want are the artifacts. By the time you get to civilization, we’ll be gone from this God-forsaken pueblo forever.”
“What assurance do we have that you won’t start shooting once we put the artifacts on the ground?” Nick looked over at a nearby tree, where a piñon jay had just screeched, then grabbed Eden even tighter.
“None at all. But if you stay where you are, I’ll kill the baby and old man while you watch.”
Nick heard the cry that was wrenched from Eden’s throat and pulled her closer to his side. “Trust me,” he mouthed.
Hearing a rustle to their right, Nick turned and grinned at his brother as he came through the brush. “You took your sweet time. I heard your birdcall.”
“Are you alone?” Eden asked Jake quickly.
“For now. I came ahead, figuring you might need someone in your corner right away,” Jake said, tightening his grip on the rifle in his hand. “Martin is getting the men together, and Captain Mora is already on his way here.”
“We can’t use that. Not yet,” Nick said, pointing to the weapon. “But I have an idea. Change shirts with me and take my badge. Wear it on your shirt pocket to give them something more to think about. Let them see you, and stall any way you can. While they’re busy keeping an eye on you two, I’ll go around and take Wayne out first, then Rita.”
