Lone Rider Bodyguard

by Harper Allen

  And if she was, she suspected it wouldn’t make a pinch of difference to Tye. I don’t believe in much of anything… She’d seen beneath the hard surface of the words he’d spoken the other day, and guessed what he’d left unsaid: …not even myself.

  He’d known instinctively how guilty she’d felt over not loving Frank—known and related to that guilt, because by his own admission he’d felt it, too.

  He’s never fallen in love, she thought suddenly. He’d like to—maybe that’s why he told me he’d wished he could change, become another kind of man. But he knows himself well enough to admit that he can’t…and likely for the same reason I can’t change who I am. I was raised by Granny Lacey to believe in marriage. Tye was raised by a man who saw it as a contract to be broken.

  “So this is the young man who decided to be born in the back seat of a car. It doesn’t appear as if it did you any harm, but your mom looks a little peaky.”

  At Joanna Tahe’s gently teasing words, Susannah hastily fixed a smile to her lips and received an answering smile from both Joanna and the woman heading out the door with the sturdy, black-haired baby in her arms. The ex-maternity nurse exchanged goodbyes with her patient before turning back to Susannah, her glance keenly assessing.

  “You’re my last before lunch, so we won’t have to rush,” she said, leading the way to the examination room opening off from the small reception area. “I like to have mom and baby weighed first and then I’ll do physicals on the two of you, but I always think the most important part of this primary exam is for you to feel you can talk with me. About anything,” she added, handing Susannah a clean backless smock and taking Danny from her. “Fortunately, I’ve found that walking around with your rump exposed to a total stranger seems to break the ice pretty darn fast.”

  This last was delivered with a wry grin, and the slight awkwardness Susannah had been feeling evaporated. Twenty minutes later as she finished getting dressed again, she found herself chatting with Joanna Tahe as if they’d been friends forever.

  “I was pretty sure he was doing just fine, but it’s good to hear it from a professional. His weight’s right?”

  “His weight, his development, his everything.” The other woman hesitated. “And physically you’ve got nothing to worry about, either, but I hear you’ve been living with more than a little stress for longer than you—”

  Joanna broke off with a frown at the sound of the clinic’s outer door being opened and closed. With a swift apology, she got to her feet and went out to the reception area, and a moment later Susannah heard her speaking rapidly and firmly in Navajo to her visitor, but whatever it was she said, it didn’t have the desired effect.

  “Nali, please. You can’t go in there!”

  The woman who appeared in the open doorway, followed almost immediately by Joanna Tahe, had to be Alice, her grandmother, Susannah guessed. Her face, as wrinkled as a walnut, was framed by hair that, despite her age, was still the color of a moonless night, pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head and bound by white yarn. Unlike the other Dineh Susannah had seen this morning, Alice wore some semblance of traditional Navajo garb, although, despite the late-May warmth, topping her many-tiered skirt and her silver-buttoned, velveteen blouse was an olive-drab safari-type jacket. Granny Lacey’s incongruous note had been a pair of high-cut sneakers she’d taken to wearing with her support hose and her neatly ironed dresses, Susannah remembered with affectionate amusement. But as strong-minded as Lacey Bird could be at times, it seemed as if Alice Tahe had her beat hands-down in the stubborn department.

  Her granddaughter shot Susannah a look of frustration before speaking firmly to the old woman. “Nali, this is a medical place and the examination room is private. I told you Matthew and I would come to your hogan for lunch today. We’re having stew and fry bread, remember?”

  In their nest of wrinkles, obsidian eyes snapped angrily and Alice Tahe shook off her granddaughter’s restraining hand. “I remember. I cooked the mutton myself this morning.”

  She pointed at Susannah, the heavy turquoise bracelet she wore sliding up her fragile-looking wrist. “You’re the one the Skinwalker wants, Belacana—you and your boy-child. What did you do to him, to make him hate you so?”

  “Nali, that’s enough!” There was a thread of anger in Joanna’s voice, but beneath the anger Susannah was sure she heard fear. “Matthew has told you there is danger in speaking so publicly of these things, and I am telling you not to frighten my patients in such a manner. I have respect for the old ways, Grandmother, you know that. But you said it yourself—Susannah is not of the People and this can mean nothing to her. Now, please, you must go.”

  “I’m not Dineh, no.” Holding Danny tightly to her, Susannah stepped in front of Joanna before she could take her grandmother by the arm again. “I’m from a place called Fox Hollow, Mrs. Tahe, but your granddaughter’s wrong. This Skinwalker you’re talking about—he’s pure evil, isn’t he? Whatever name a body calls him by, my own granny taught me to watch out for him when I was just a little girl.”

  Alice Tahe nodded, and her wrinkled lips stretched into a thin smile. “I know, Belacana. Your grandmother was in my dream last night. She told me to warn you.”

  “Granny Lacey?” Shaken, Susannah stared at the old woman. Then she shook her head, but before she could say anything Alice Tahe went on impatiently.

  “She wears shoes like the ones the young boys wear.” She shrugged. “But she came at the end of my dream. First I saw Skinwalker, hiding in the desert watching you and your newborn son.”

  “I’m sorry, Susannah.” Joanna’s gaze was dark with concern. “You don’t need this on top of everything else you’ve gone through—”

  “No. No, let her tell me the rest of her dream,” Susannah said shakily. “Nali, did Skinwalker say what he wanted with me and my child?” Unconsciously she used the term of respectful affection Joanna had addressed her grandmother by, and the obsidian eyes watching her softened.

  “He told me nothing. He didn’t know I had entered his world until the smell of the woodsmoke on my clothes came to his nostrils, and then he was angry. He tried to turn on me, but I was protected.” Alice Tahe’s voice had been steady enough, but now it quavered. “He said he had killed many men, and he had enjoyed killing them. He said you and the child are part of the debt his enemies—”

  Her words broke off and her gaze widened fearfully. Her hand went immediately to a small leather pouch at her waist, and the next moment Susannah saw the thong it was attached to snap into two strands.

  The open pouch fell to the floor, a drift of bright golden pollen spilling from it.

  “Nali!” Joanna Tahe rushed to her grandmother’s side just as the old lady’s legs gave way. “Nali, you must lie down. Let me help—”

  “Get away from me!” Alice Tahe’s words weren’t directed at her granddaughter, Susannah realized, but at someone or something only she could see. Her breath was a labored gasp. “Get away from me, Skin—”

  A terrible spasm of pain contorted her features. The hand that had been fumbling for the leather pouch flew to her chest before falling again to her side, her head slumping back bonelessly on her neck.

  “Her heart.” Joanna Tahe lowered the frail body to the floor, the worry in her voice mixed with professional decisiveness. “She’s been having pains lately. I can start CPR but she needs to get to a hospital, except Matt gave me a lift to the clinic today and I don’t have my truck here.”

  “Where’s your telephone?” Swiftly laying Danny in his carry-cot, Susannah turned to the door leading to the reception area, but her companion stopped her.

  “The phone’s out today. Whenever there’s a storm brewing we seem to lose service.” Already she was unbuttoning the silver-coin buttons on the wine-colored velveteen blouse. She looked up worriedly. “We can’t wait for my brother and Tye to return. Can you go for help, Susannah? Jimmy Rock’s trailer’s just down the road.”

  She only wished she could do mo
re, Susannah thought as she hurried from the clinic a few minutes later. The attack Alice Tahe had suffered had been a direct result of her determination to warn the Belacana of danger, and her agitation had proved too much for her.

  You shouldn’t have encouraged her, she told herself guiltily. Why did you?

  There was no easy answer to that question, she admitted. As she’d told the old lady, she knew full well that evil existed—the last nine months had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But as Tye and Del had insisted, Skinwalker was just a legend. The threat that had followed her here was a human one and if Jess Crawford was right, that human threat was called Michael Saranno.

  “I’ll admit she has the gift,” she gasped out loud to herself, rounding a bend in the road and seeing the trailer home Joanna had spoken of. “Plenty of folks have second sight, or just plain get feelings they can’t explain away. Maybe she can even read a body’s mind, even if she doesn’t know she’s doing it. I was thinking of Granny Lacey’s high-tops right before she mentioned them.”

  Her foot slipped on a loose stone and a stabbing pain shot through her left ankle. At the same moment, the dark clouds that had been massing overhead gave an ominous rumble, and instantly the rain came pouring down.

  It was like stepping into a waterfall, Susannah thought, blinking rapidly against the rain but then giving up and settling for peering through her half-closed lashes. Trying not to put too much weight on her left foot, she half stumbled, half ran toward Jimmy Rock’s trailer. In her urgency she didn’t see the pothole until she was upon it.

  This time her misstep was disastrous. It also, she was to reflect thankfully hours later, probably saved her life.

  Because, as she fell face forward into the craterlike depression, she felt a sharp tug, as if something had suddenly torn the sleeve of her dress, and heard the flat and deadly sound of the rifle that had just been fired in her direction.

  Chapter Eight

  They hadn’t learned anything from Alfred Nez because Alfred Nez hadn’t been at his hogan when they’d arrived, Tye thought in mild annoyance on the drive back to the clinic to pick up Susannah. Alfred Nez, they’d eventually discovered, had left early this morning on a spur-of-the-moment trip to visit his daughter in Window Rock. Unfortunately this information had only been gleaned after forty-five minutes of roundabout conversation with Nez’s nearest neighbor, Charlie Smith, who, if he wasn’t quite Alice Tahe’s age, was pretty close to it, and like many elderly, lonely people was inclined to be garrulous when he had a captive audience.

  Over glasses of some sickly-sweet lemon-lime soft drink Matt Tahe had patiently discussed with Nez’s neighbor the pros and cons of using a medicinal dip against ear mites in Charlie’s small flock of Churro sheep, the benefits, if any, of the Navajo Nation being granted statehood as some felt it should be, and Charlie’s disgruntled opinion of the younger generation of the Dineh. Charlie’s niece’s son was a wild one, Tye had gathered from the old man’s disgusted dismissal of the boy.

  “He skips school and listens to crazy music,” Smith had grunted, pouring another round of lemon-lime soda. “He acts like he has no relatives.”

  Among a people who held family connection to be all-important, Tye knew this phrase was used only to convey serious condemnation. But though his niece’s son had apparently forgotten the old ways according to Charlie, it was obvious Matt Tahe’s deferential manner had gradually won him over.

  “Your sheep pen looks stout and secure,” Matt had observed eventually, sipping his third soda with all evidence of appreciation. “But I saw a ewe full of milk with no lamb to feed. Was it too weak to survive?”

  “It was carried off in the night.” Charlie Smith’s garrulousness abruptly dried up with Matt’s question. “A coyote, perhaps.”

  “My grandfather, you know Alfred Nez has talked of seeing a Skinwalker in the shape of a wolf in the canyons not far from here. Now he has gone to visit his daughter in Window Rock, and I wonder if he left because he feared the witch had followed him here from the canyons. Was it a coyote that took your lamb from such a sturdy pen, my grandfather? Or was it a wolf—a wolf walking upright like a man?”

  “I do not know, my grandson.” Smith had addressed the younger man with the same respect that Tahe had shown him, but his gaze had slid away nervously. “I saw a shadow, nothing more. I had taken up my rifle when the sheep’s screams woke me and I fired at the shadow, but although I was sure my aim had been good the shadow leapt away, taking the lamb with it.”

  And that had been pretty much that, Tye thought now as Matt capably steered the pickup in a slalom course around the ruts and potholes on the road leading to the clinic. A man had thought he’d seen something in a canyon two nights ago. A lamb had been stolen. An old lady had seized upon a legend to make some sense of a few violent and frightening incidents.

  And just before Greta Hassell had stopped her truck at the side of the highway last week, Susannah had felt the presence of evil threatening her and Danny.

  That was more understandable than the rest. She and her son were threatened, and as Jess’s digging had seemed to indicate, by a man evil enough to target an innocent woman because of a monetary loss.

  Innocent. That was the word to describe Susannah Bird, all right. Sudden frustration washed through him and he exhaled more sharply than he’d intended.

  She was innocent and she was good—good in the most basic meaning of the word, good to the very fiber of her being. She was uncomplicated, again in no sense of the word but the least elaborate one. She was unsophisticated, and if she had any of the pretty little tricks the women he knew used to pique a man’s interest, she’d never taken advantage of them.

  There was no damn reason why he shouldn’t be able to look at her and feel nothing more than an altruistic and entirely laudatory desire to help her and her baby. But what he felt when he looked at Susannah Bird was about as far from altruistic as it was possible to get, and there wasn’t anything laudatory about it at all.

  He wanted to see that honey-brown hair spread out on a pillow—his pillow. He wanted her in his bed, he wanted to see those full, soft breasts that were always primly covered by those god-awful cotton dresses she wore, he wanted to hear that honeycomb voice of hers wrapping breathlessly around his name just before she lost all coherency, just before he lost his mind.

  And he could bring her to that, Tye thought. Because the one word he wouldn’t use to describe Susannah Bird was straitlaced.

  She probably thought the Sunday-school exterior she projected was the real her. He knew women, and he knew better. Just below the surface there was a part of Susannah that was pure Saturday night, part of her that wanted him as much as he wanted her, part of her that could engage the devil in his own game and leave him begging for mercy.

  She wasn’t straitlaced. And if she didn’t have any tricks, he knew them all, and had never seen any reason not to use them to get what he wanted. So having her in his bed didn’t have to remain just a fantasy.

  But a fantasy was all it would ever be.

  Hell of a time to acquire a set of morals, Adams, he told himself disgustedly, especially when you’ve gotten along fine without them up until now.

  He wasn’t a player. More than a few of the relationships he’d been involved in had taken months to run their course, and one liaison had been almost as long-lived as some of the marriages his father had negotiated divorce settlements for. But forever wasn’t in the cards—never had been, never would be. And despite the heat he knew was in her, Susannah would want not only passion from him but commitment.

  “Hell, it would never last between us,” he muttered under his breath. “If I’ve learned one thing from growing up with Marvin Adams, it’s that. And when Danny starts thinking of some man as his father, the son of a bitch should be someone who’s going to stick around.”

  “Damn straight,” Matt agreed, shifting the truck into a lower gear. Tye looked sharply at him.

  “Damn straight what?�
�� he demanded edgily, pissed off with himself for speaking his thoughts aloud.

  “Damn straight whatever it was you just said,” Matt said mildly. “I didn’t catch it all, but it sounded as if you were in no mood to have anyone arguing with you about it.”

  Tye glared at him suspiciously. A corner of Matt’s mouth quirked up in a smile. Despite himself, Tye felt a rueful grin spread across his own face.

  “Damn straight I’m in no mood,” he answered. “Neither are you, right? You were hoping to learn something more concrete today, weren’t you?”

  “I wanted to learn enough to eliminate some far-fetched possibilities,” Matt said slowly. “I didn’t. I don’t expect you to understand, Tyler.”

  “Good, because I don’t.” Tye raised his eyebrows incredulously. “You’re not trying to tell me you seriously believe a man can turn into—”

  He broke off abruptly as they rounded a last curve and the clinic came into view, blue-black thunderheads now making it seem as if the sky was closing in on the small building. But that wasn’t the only difference from the scene he and Matt had left an hour ago. Now the parking lot was empty of trucks except for his and one other. Into the unfamiliar vehicle’s covered back cargo bed two young men were carefully sliding what looked like a makeshift stretcher. The body on the stretcher wore a many-tiered skirt and, incongruously, a bush jacket.

  “That’s my grandmother!” Matt wrenched the steering wheel over and turned into the clinic lot even as the skies above them opened and the rain that had been threatening all morning came bucketing down. Bringing the vehicle to a skidding stop he jumped out, Tye close on his heels.

  Alice Tahe—it was Alice Tahe, Tye saw as they reached the two young men and their burden—looked to be in a bad way, her skin ashen and her eyes closed. His first thought was that she’d suffered some sort of attack, and his off-the-cuff diagnosis was immediately confirmed by Joanna Tahe as she exited the clinic.

  “Matthew!” She hastened through the pouring rain to her brother, her features carved in tense lines. “I think Grandmother’s had a heart attack. I got her stabilized, but she needs a doctor.” She inclined her head toward the two young men. “Tom Dove and his friend dropped by to tell me Tom’s wife can’t make her appointment this afternoon. Tom’s driving me to the hospital with Nali, but I didn’t know what I was going to do about Danny.”