“My life. My place. The people that I know.”
Calico smiles. “Says the lone wolf who spends most of his life alone in the desert.”
“But it’s because I choose to, not because I have to. And what about you, Reuben? Are you willing to give up everything to live here in the wilds? The trading post? Your dog boys? Being the tribe’s War Leader?”
Reuben frowns. “From what I could tell, that was Sammy’s story, not hers.”
“You think the kid won’t jump in on it, if it serves her? Are the Aunts going to keep you on if you can’t show your face in the rez? What about the heat all of this is going to bring down on the entire tribe? The reputation of stealing and raping white kids?”
“He’s right,” Reuben tells Calico.
“Maybe about the kid and her crazy father,” she says. “But Sammy needs to learn there are boundaries he can’t cross, no matter how much money he’s got to throw around.”
I shake my head.
“I’m not saying we kill him,” she says. “We just need to show him some major consequences. A couple of months trying to make it on his own in the otherworld might do the trick.”
“And when he disappears—maybe for good?” I ask. “Who’re they going to blame?”
I look to Reuben for support, but his usually cheerful features have settled into a stern mask. “If we let Sammy get away with what happened to Derek, not to mention his lies about us,” he says, “it’ll just happen again. And it will happen.”
“Is that your hate-on talking, or something you honestly believe?”
“Does it matter? It’s still true. You know it is.”
And I do. But I still can’t help but feel there’s got to be a better way of dealing with this. I’ve gone all these years off the grid, minding my own business and staying under anybody’s radar. How the hell could it all have gone off the rails so fast?
One good turn is how. Not minding my own business, like Possum always told me to. But it wasn’t like I could leave the kid out there on her own in the middle of the night.
“Who was that woman that thought she knew you?” Calico asks.
“Beats me.”
“Hell, even I’ve heard of the Diesel Rats,” Reuben says, “and no offense, Steve, but you’re no Jackson Cole.”
Except there’s something in his eyes that tells me he knows different.
I sigh, but play along with him. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
Reuben grins. “’Course, I’ve never seen you cleaned up.”
“And you probably never will,” Calico says.
This is good, I think. Let them rib me, we’ll all relax.
But then Calico’s smile goes away. “So do we just grab Sammy,” she says, “or his big white hunter as well?”
“Sammy,” Reuben says before I can answer. “The hunter wouldn’t be here without him, and if we deal with Sammy, there won’t be any more of them.”
“Okay,” she says. “So it’s settled. Anybody want something to eat before we take him on?”
“I could do with a burrito and some water,” Reuben says.
I start to speak but Calico holds her hand up. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I know what you’ll want.” She takes a step and disappears, and then it’s just Reuben and me out here in the desert scrub.
“How the hell does she do that?” I say.
“It’s a ma’inawo thing,” Reuben says. “Some of them can move great distances when they switch between the worlds, so long as they’re going to a place they’ve been before. Otherwise, you have to be careful, especially moving from the world we know to these changing lands. If you’re on the top floor of a skyscraper and you step over, you’ll find yourself plunging twenty stories through the otherworld air until you hit the ground. Not pretty.”
I study him for a moment, then look away, letting the expanse of desert and hills do its calming magic for me.
“What?” Reuben says.
I look back at him.
“Don’t blame the messenger,” he says. “I didn’t tell you to move to the Painted Lands and hook up with a ma’inawo girl. I’m just trying to educate you.”
I sigh. “I think I liked my life better two days ago, when everything was simpler. And I should have just let somebody else find that girl.”
“Like you’d ever turn your back on anyone who needs a hand.”
“I’m not some fucking saint,” I tell him.
He grins. “That we can both agree on. But come on, Steve. You know what the Aunties say. You can pretend you don’t have troubles, but that doesn’t make them go away.”
I’ve never actually heard any of the Aunts say that, but I nod because it’s true.
“So how come you can’t do it?” I finally ask.
“Do what? Pick where we want to cross over?”
I nod.
“We’re not ma’inawo,” Reuben says. “The dog boys are a tribal thing. Our shapeshifting and theirs—it’s two completely different things.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s not something to get. It’s just how it is.”
“Okay,” I say, “so tell me this. There are girls running with your pack—why are you called dog boys?”
“We’ve got women, too,” Reuben says, “but we’re all called dog boys. I don’t know why. And before you get all PC on me, I know it’s sexist, but nobody seems to want to change it. It’s like everybody talks about deer women, how they’ll try to woo you away into the changing lands, but the stags are just as horny.”
He smiles. “No pun intended.”
“Is that what happened to me? I got wooed away into the otherworld?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think it was anything like that.”
“Me neither. Calico might have some antelope in her, but she’s no deer woman. She’s got too much trickster in her.”
The subject of our conversation steps back from her errand just at that moment. She’s carrying a couple of paper bags, one of which has a grease stain on the bottom.
“You know, it’s not polite to talk about a lady behind her back,” she says.
“But we were only saying good things,” Reuben tells her, “so does that still count?”
She tosses the bag with the greasy bottom to him. He catches it easily, opens it up and hands around burritos. Calico’s bag has water bottles, which she shares in turn. We sit down right where we are and dig in.
“I asked around about Sammy,” she says, mumbling through a mouthful of burrito.
“What did you do to him?” I ask.
“Oh please. Give me some credit. I wouldn’t cut either of you out.”
“I thought we agreed we were going to lay low for a while.”
She shakes her head. “You agreed to that. We didn’t.”
“What she said,” Reuben says before he takes another bite.
I sigh. “I think I liked you better before,” I tell her.
She frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I can see she’s miffed, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “Back before,” I say. “You were more fun. Not so…bloodthirsty.”
She stops eating. “I could say the same about you.”
“I’m not bloodthirsty.”
“No, but you’re not much fun anymore, either.”
“Hey, Bickersons,” Reuben says. “Do I really need to be in the middle of this?”
I almost snap at him, but I realize he’s right. And so’s she. I’ve let this take away everything I love about these mountains. And my friends. I look from one to the other, my burrito uneaten in my hand.
“You’re both right,” I tell them.
“I usually am,” Calico says with a smile. I’m glad that she’s trying to ease the tension too.
“What am I right about at the moment?” she continues, teasing me.
“I’m letting this get under my skin,” I say. “And we do need to deal with Sammy. But can w
e leave it at that? Sammy’s a problem here on the rez. But I don’t want to take anything out on Sadie. After the cops clear us, we never have to see her and her old man again.”
Reuben lays a hand on my forearm and gives me a squeeze. “This isn’t exactly the rez,” he says, “but I’m glad you’re on board.”
“And we leave the freak show that’s the Higgins family out of it?”
“I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” Reuben says with a smile.
I turn to Calico, but she’s not even listening. All her attention is on a pair of crows riding the winds above us, their caws blowing away in fading tatters. She’s gone paler than I’ve ever seen her before.
I call her name and she turns to me.
“Aggie’s in the hospital,” she says. “Sadie knifed her in the police station.”
“What?”
But I heard exactly what she said, and my whole body’s gone cold.
“They say she’s asked that nobody go after Sadie,” Calico adds.
“They?” I ask.
Reuben just points to the crows who are now flying off. “The ma’inawo aren’t like us,” he says. “They understand all the languages we’ve forgotten and the ones that were spoken before we ever showed up.”
“Did they say how Aggie is?” I ask Calico.
“She’s in intensive care. Those two women we saw earlier are with her.”
I set my burrito on the ground beside the water I haven’t tasted yet and stand up. “Okay, that’s it,” I say. “I told Sadie she can crap all over me, but she can’t go after my friends.”
Calico’s standing now too. “Aggie said no. We have to respect her wishes.”
“But if she doesn’t make it,” Reuben says, “all bets are off.”
“Do the police have her in custody?” I ask.
“No.”
“It’s my fault Aggie got hurt. I should’ve never brought that kid to her.”
“You had no way of knowing.”
“But how could she be that good an actress? Christ, maybe she’s hell on her family, too. Maybe that’s why her father dumped her.”
“No, I saw him at the community center,” Reuben says. “He was just as much a piece of work. The crows say anything about us teaching him a little respect?”
“He’s not worth it,” Calico says. “In the long run, hurting him will just blow back on you ten times as hard.”
Reuben sighs. “I suppose.”
He understands, but he doesn’t like it. I know exactly how he’s feeling. I so need to hit something right now.
“Now I’m really in the mood to see Sammy,” I tell them.
Calico smiles without any humour. “That, we can do.”
“All we need to do is track him down,” Reuben says.
Calico shakes her head. “We don’t need to. Like I said. I asked around while I was getting our food. A hawk uncle told me that he’s back up in the mountains at the hunting lodge.”
“Perfect,” Reuben says, then he asks Calico, “You have any shortcuts in this part of the dreamtime to take us there?”
She responds by offering each of us a hand.
43
Sadie
What she really wanted to do was point the pickup in whatever direction would take her the farthest away from the city, pedal to the metal, hasta la vista, assholes. But she knew as she pulled out of the parking lot of the tribal police station that could never happen. The cops would grab her before she got ten miles out. Driving in the direction she was headed, they’d have her even sooner. A teenage girl driving a stolen police vehicle toward Santo VV? She’d be a cinch to find, especially since there was only the one road from the tribal police station to the city. Before very long she’d probably have the combined might of the tribal police, sheriff’s department and state cops on her ass. Maybe the FBI, too. But unlike the thousands of square miles of desert and mountains that spread north and east and south, she could lose herself in the city and survive.
She just needed to get there.
The first thing she had to do was abandon the truck as soon as possible, though not before she ate up as many miles as she could. The less time she had to spend on foot, the better. She’d had enough of tramping around in the bush scrub to last her for-freaking-ever. But she also didn’t want to leave the truck abandoned on the side of the road. She might as well spray paint “Here’s your starting point” on it if she did that.
She was still trying to figure out the best thing to do when a “Do Not Enter When Flooded” sign popped up on the side of the road, indicating a dip coming up ahead. She slowed down as she drove down the sharp incline. When she got to where the dry wash crossed the road, she turned the truck to the right and drove up the wash. Luck was on her side—there’d been no other cars to see her turn off.
The course was narrow. Branches and cacti scratched at the sides of the truck as she wound her way along the dry sandy bed. But in moments the road had disappeared behind her. The only way she’d be spotted now was from the air.
She headed north for a while, trying to decide when and where to dump the truck. It had been at least ten minutes since she’d made her escape. Would they have called in the choppers yet?
She started eyeing the palo verde trees, looking for a place where they grew thick enough to form a canopy above the wash. Then she thought of better place to abandon the truck. A funnier one, too.
For a long time the scariest dudes in Santo VV had been the 66 Bandas. The gang had ruled everything north of the San Pedro River. There were other gangs, but they kept to their own little neighbourhoods. Nobody was as ruthless as the 66ers. They could get away with pretty much anything since they had the backing of the Garza Cartel. Gangbangers were scary enough, but nobody was stupid enough to get on the wrong side of Mexican drug lords.
Except somebody had, a year or so ago. Another gang took the 66ers down, the Cartel hadn’t retaliated, and things had been quiet for a long while now. But Sadie knew from the gossip at school that the 66ers were regrouping and were using their old clubhouse again—a property that backed right on to this dry wash.
She grinned. Just let the cops go looking for witnesses around the 66ers’ compound. Nobody in that neighbourhood would be stupid enough to talk about anything. And if that wasn’t enough, the Latino kids at school said a witch lived in the house right beside the 66ers.
Two days ago, Sadie would have laughed off the idea of a witch. Now she wasn’t so sure. But it didn’t really matter. People just had to think she was real. Between her and the gangbangers, that part of the barrio would be the safest place for somebody wanting to disappear.
Which was exactly what she planned to do.
It took her another few minutes to reach the 66ers’ compound. The clubhouse was a one-story adobe ranch with a red tile roof, various kinds of cacti clustered up against the walls. Between the wash and the house, the yard was strewn with various kinds of cars and motorcycles, a lot of them wrecks. A few raggedy mesquites and dying river oaks lined the edge of the property.
Because she was still in the trough of the dry wash, which was lower than the terrain it cut through, all that might be seen from the clubhouse was the top of the pickup with its band of police lights. She killed the engine, put it in neutral and let the pickup roll to a stop. Pulling the keys out of the ignition, she got out of the cab and lobbed them into the scrub on the far side of the wash away from the house before she continued north on foot.
“Hey!” somebody yelled from the direction of compound.
Sadie looked over her shoulder to see some big Latino guy trotting from around the house and heading in her direction. Behind him were a pair of others. She quickened her pace, breaking into a run when she heard a gunshot. The bullet pinged off a tree and went whining off into the scrub.
Crap. This wasn’t going the way she’d expected.
It was her own stupid fault. She hadn’t thought this through. Sure, it would piss off the police to have to
collect their pickup at the back of a gangbangers’ clubhouse. But of course it would also piss off the gangbangers. She hadn’t thought about the engine noise soon enough.
A second shot made her duck, but the bullet came nowhere near her.
She dared another quick glance behind her and saw that one of the gangbangers—tall and skinny with freakishly long legs—was gaining on her.
Time for plan B.
She scrambled up the bank of the wash and ran across a dirt yard, right up to the front door of the witch’s house. Looking back again, she saw that the gangbangers had stopped at the edge of the property. Interesting. They weren’t even shooting at her anymore. Maybe she could just cut across the witch’s yard and lose herself in the barrio. But then one of the men made a waving motion with his arm and two of them set off at a trot, circumventing the witch’s yard as they made their way to the front of her property.
Which left her with only one course of action.
As she returned her attention to the witch’s door she remembered the strange beings she’d seen in behind Aggie’s place, the animal people gathered around a fire. If they were real, if the gangbangers were too scared to chase her onto the witch’s property, then maybe there was more to the witch than just stories.
Double crap.
Before she lost her nerve, she lifted her hand and rapped sharply on the witch’s door. For a long moment there was no response, but just as she was getting ready to knock again the door swung open and an old dark-skinned woman stood there, regarding her with curiosity. She didn’t seem particularly scary. Her long hair was in a single braid that hung down the front of a plain white cotton blouse. She wore a dark skirt underneath and looked like some Mexican kid’s grandmother. But there was something in her eyes that made Sadie put her hand in the pocket of her hoodie and close her fingers around her utility knife.
“Is there something you want, girl?” the old woman asked in a gravelly voice after the two of them had stood there for a while regarding each other.
Sadie cleared her throat. “Sanctuary,” she said. “I want sanctuary.”
“This isn’t a church,” the old woman said.
The Wind in His Heart Page 25
