Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  “Thank you, cousin. Explain to our bird neighbors that it would be unlikely that the human or the van will be found again in that form in Dinetah.”

  Lucas nodded and turned to leave.

  “Stay for a few minutes,” Kody called out to him. “I have someone I would like you to meet.”

  He’d surprised himself by asking Lucas to stay. Not positive of his own motives, Kody just went with the flow.

  Turning back, Lucas raised an eyebrow in question. “Is this a person you believe to be a warrior working in disguise for the evil ones?”

  “No. Not at all.” Another surprise. Kody had meant that sincerely. Someplace along the line he had come to the conclusion that Reagan was not involved with the Skinwalkers…except for their unexplained continuing attacks against her.

  Lucas agreed, and the two of them entered the restaurant.

  Reagan tried not to stare at the two Navajo men sitting across from her. But it was tough not sneaking a peek at such magnetic and virile masculinity.

  Kody’s cousin was nearly as fascinating as he was. Lucas Tso had dark hair and dark eyes, along with a square-cut jaw and high cheekbones that could rival any fashion model’s. But his eyes were warm. When he looked in her direction, his gaze oozed friendship and welcome—quite unlike the erotic pull she found in his cousin’s deep, danger-filled brown eyes.

  “You have questions about the People,” Lucas said to her after the waitress had cleared the plates and poured their coffee, and gone back to the kitchen. “May I try to give a few explanations?”

  Reagan hadn’t mentioned having questions. But then she realized that Kody must’ve told him about her before the two of them had come inside the restaurant. Or maybe the guy was psychic. She wouldn’t doubt anything at this point.

  “Yes, Mr. Tso, I—”

  He held up his hand, palm out, and smiled at her. “Traditional Navajos prefer to avoid using proper names. That is your first lesson.”

  “Do you mean they don’t use first or last names…ever?”

  Lucas looked composed and calm. Reagan didn’t feel at all nerdy for asking dumb questions.

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “The Dine are given secret ‘warrior’ names when they are children, but no one ever uses them in public. And of course the People must use Anglicized names on federal and state government forms and in school. But among ourselves we rarely do.”

  Reagan thought that might lead to some very disjointed conversations. But she wasn’t about to mention any of her uninformed ideas right now. She needed to learn more first.

  Instead, she took a sip of coffee and listened to Lucas talk in his low, deep tones. Each of the Native American men she had met on the reservation seemed to have melodic voices.

  But it was only the FBI agent’s voice that could apparently turn her brain to liquid and drive fire through her veins.

  She didn’t dare look at Kody now for fear her new sexual awareness would get the better of her. So she tried to maintain her focus on his cousin.

  As Lucas lifted his coffee cup, Reagan’s gaze landed on the silver-and-turquoise bracelet on his wrist. Carved in a distinctive feathered pattern, it was truly beautiful. But she’d seen that same design somewhere else….

  Reagan slid a glance over to Kody’s wrist. Yep. Half-hidden under the cuff of his white, long-sleeved shirt was a duplicate bracelet.

  “I see you have noticed the bracelets,” Lucas said, as if he had just read her mind. “I hope they’re pleasing to your eye. I am the silversmith.”

  “You made them? Wow. You’re an incredible artist.” Something about the bracelets seemed odd. Why would they be exactly alike?

  “My cousin is a world famous Navajo artisan,” Kody said.

  The sound of his voice drew her attention back in his direction. Whoa. With one look her body started to hum again. What was up with that?

  Lucas set down his cup and slid out of the booth. “I must go.” He took her hand in both of his and gazed into her eyes. “I’ll leave you to ask the rest of your questions of my cousin. But I will tell you that the design you see on the bracelets signifies the wearer as a member of a special group of medicine men.”

  “Sort of like the Masons or the Knights of Columbus? I know they sometimes wear special rings or jewelry.”

  Lucas smiled warmly. “If you see this design anywhere in Dinetah, know that you can depend on the wearer. Trust him with your life.” He turned to Kody. “May I speak to you privately for just a moment before I go, cousin?”

  “Sure.” Kody dug into his pocket and threw a few bills on the table, then looked over to where she was sitting.

  “Excuse us a minute. Finish your coffee. It’s time we hit the road.”

  Reagan managed a nod, but had to blink her eyes just to keep from throwing herself at him. This sexual urgency thing was getting to be ridiculous.

  “The bilagáana woman lives inside a shell,” Lucas told him when they were outside. “The nut in the middle is good-hearted and full of beauty. But I fear something evil is attacking her from afar.”

  “What specific kind of evil?”

  Lucas shook his head to say he didn’t know. “I advise watching her with care. Do not permit her even a moment alone.”

  “But—”

  “You may need to contact a crystal gazer or hand trembler for a correct diagnosis of the problem. Your brothers will come if we are needed. But I sense that because she is Anglo, this is something meant only for you.”

  Kody thanked his cousin and watched him pull out of the parking lot in his four-wheel-drive Jeep.

  Navajo crystal gazers and hand tremblers were medicine men and women who diagnosed the evil in sick people. They told the healers who were “singers” what chants, ceremonies and combination of sacred plants would be needed for a cure.

  “Are you ready to go now?” Reagan’s question came from close behind his back. “I’m terribly concerned about my father. Do you think that odd little man back at the gas pumps had really seen him? I can’t imagine that my dad would actually be wearing a uniform while he was checking out an archeological site.”

  After Kody settled them both back in his pickup, he turned to Reagan, but had no intention of telling her the whole truth. “I have my doubts that we’ll find anybody in the Backwash Monument area. That guy was probably making that stuff up just to see your reaction. And even if he wasn’t, too much time has gone by since then.

  “But we’ve got a couple of hours of daylight left,” he added. “So let’s give it try.”

  Reagan wasn’t positive there would be any sunlight left at all at the rate they were going. They’d turned off the blacktop highway an hour ago and had been bouncing down a gravel road ever since. Her mouth and eyes were full of grit and her bottom was sore from continual contact with the springs in the truck’s passenger seat.

  The going was slow and she didn’t much care for the way the canyon walls were closing in around them. It had started off okay as they’d played tag with a shallow creek that ran in and out of cottonwoods and grasses on their way into the wide canyon.

  But now all that surrounded them were smooth sandstone cliffs, rock debris and giant boulders. Up ahead, she could see the canyon walls widen out again as the gravel road turned to orange-colored sand. Reagan wasn’t sure sand would be any better than the potholed gravel had been.

  During the ride, she’d been having a lot of trouble holding herself together. Despite the chill in the air, sitting in the same truck as Kody was making her sweat. Her palms grew damp and she had to keep rubbing them against her jeans. A trickle of perspiration ran down her neck and tickled as it dropped between her breasts.

  What the heck was she doing? Here she was, knee-deep in the mysterious disappearance of her father, and her hormones were totally out of whack. She was lusting after a near stranger, and at any moment things could probably get terribly dangerous. None of it made any sense.

  “I don’t mean to sound skeptical,” she sai
d between bumps. “But do you know where we’re headed?”

  Kody grunted and kept both hands on the wheel.

  “I mean, we haven’t seen a living soul since we turned off the highway,” she whined. “How could anyone notice anything this far down in the canyon? The sky has disappeared. It’s so dark down here that you can’t tell if it’s night or just deep shadows from the high cliffs.”

  “The gravel wash is the only way in,” Kody told her as he ground the truck’s gears. “The ancient ones built their homes on talus cliffs like these where they could see unwelcome visitors before they arrived.”

  “But how could that man have run into my father here?”

  Kody didn’t bother with an answer as he drove around an abrupt bend in the canyon. Immediately up ahead was a sort of campsite, but it appeared to be abandoned at the moment. A long, narrow canopy tent was set up, and under it a folding table and four or five empty chairs.

  He switched off the engine and they sat in eerie silence for a moment. “Looks like somebody’s been working but they’re gone for the day.”

  “Working on what?”

  Climbing out of the truck, Kody again didn’t answer as he bent to check the ground for tire tracks. He spread his hand out as a measure and judged that the really deep fresh marks were from a heavy SUV. The kind of vehicle that amateur archeologists liked to use.

  Kody turned in a semicircle and spotted a narrow opening in the canyon wall behind the tent. If he didn’t miss his guess, that rock crevice led off into a side canyon where someone had been working.

  “Get out. Let’s go up this way a bit and check it.”

  “In there?” Reagan asked, pointing to the opening as she climbed down from the truck. “It’s really kind of eerie in that narrow alley.” She straightened up, folded her coat in the seat she’d just vacated and narrowed her eyes at the dark slit in the rocks.

  “Come on.” Kody chuckled. “I’ll protect you. Everyone is gone now, anyhow.”

  He locked the pickup and took her hand, showing her how to squeeze through the opening in the rocks. Once they were past the narrow entry passage, the side canyon spread out and sunlight streamed straight down the sheer sandstone walls, illuminating their way.

  About fifty yards farther they found a series of aluminum ladders leaning against the walls and going straight up to nowhere. At least from their position it seemed they didn’t lead anywhere. But Kody knew better.

  “Looks like someone has found a new cliff dwelling. There aren’t supposed to be any ruins in this canyon that haven’t been mapped, but I’m betting that’s what this is.” He put his foot on the bottom rung of a ladder. “Stay here and I’ll check it out.”

  Reagan put her hand on his shoulder to stop him. “No, please. You said yourself everyone is gone for the day. Let’s just go, too. We won’t find my father up there.”

  Kody turned and tried to make his point. “Backwash Monument is federally protected tribal holy land. If uncharted ruins are up there and someone is ransacking them, the tribe and the FBI should know about it. I won’t be long, but I need to do this.”

  “Okay, I guess. But don’t leave me here,” she begged. “It’s spooky in this tiny canyon. I’m coming up with you.”

  High above them, silhouetted against the clear blue sky, a large bird screamed a shrill warning as it soared on the last of the day’s currents. At least, Kody thought it must be a warning, and his cousin Lucas’s admonishment to keep an eye on Reagan came back into his mind.

  But he was determined to go up the ladder, so he shrugged a shoulder and motioned for her to take the first step and lead the way. They would go together, and he would be her protector.

  She took each step with no trouble. It was him, moving under her and watching her bottom sway as she climbed the ladder above him, who was having trouble.

  He ignored his desire to reach up and cup her rounded, firm back end as her jeans stretched tighter with each step. For all kinds of excellent reasons, he meant to protect this woman. Protect her from the evil that stalked the rez. From her own lack of knowledge about the natural world. And most of all, from him and his outlandish and suddenly unruly desires.

  When she reached the ladder’s top rung, Reagan disappeared as she scrambled over the side of an unseen plateau. Kody was up and over the lip of the cliff behind her in three seconds.

  Not being able to see her had all of a sudden made him nervous. He wished now he hadn’t remembered what his cousin had said. Staying near would mean keeping their bodies in too close a proximity to suit his hormones.

  Vowing he would still keep an eye on her, Kody also vowed to stay a discreet distance away.

  Once he had his feet firmly planted on the rimrock shelf, he stared up at the ruin before him. It was large for an Anasazi dwelling, although it had been built typically long and narrow, along the fault line, and was protected from above by an overhanging cliff.

  Reagan crawled out of one of the house’s small openings, stood and walked to the edge of the plateau. “Just look at this view of the canyon.” In ten seconds, she’d already checked out the ancient houses by herself.

  Good job keeping her in sight, Special Agent Long, he chided himself. “In a minute. I want to see the ruin for myself. Stay where I can see you.”

  She ignored him. “It looks like rain. Smells like ozone, too.”

  Kody glanced at the sky over his shoulder and stopped dead. The clear blue sky of a few minutes ago had grown black and purple with threatening thunderheads.

  “Uh-oh. That’s not good news.”

  “You mean the rain? Why not?”

  The faint sound of thunder could be heard in the distance, rolling over the Lukachukais Mountains. Kody remembered enough to know the lightning could be upon them in a few seconds. That was the way with the weather here.

  “This time of year, it doesn’t just rain,” he tried to explain. “Storms over the mountains can bring lightning, hail, flooding, even snow at the upper elevations. Come away from the edge now, Reagan.”

  “But if the weather is turning bad, shouldn’t we go back down?”

  “I don’t think—” He was about to say they probably didn’t have time to go down the ladder before everything became slippery and beyond dangerous.

  Just then a flash of lightning split the air and the clouds opened up in a deluge of cold, biting sleet, making the words pointless. He grabbed her hand and dragged her back under the overhang.

  So much for maintaining a decent distance. It looked as if they were in for a long, potent night of togetherness.

  7

  K ody lifted a hand to wipe raindrops off her cheek. It was a simple automatic gesture, Reagan knew, and not designed to illicit a sexual response. But it made her breath catch. She coughed, and her breathing came in shallow, raspy pants.

  She shut her eyes, frantically trying to ignore the hunger pooling in her belly and settling with a thud between her thighs. What she felt was inappropriate, completely impractical and becoming impossible to ignore.

  “No,” she said aloud. By the time she realized that was her own voice making demands of her own better judgment, the word was already echoing off the cliffs and coming back again and again in embarrassing ripples. Reagan opened her eyes and groaned.

  “Oh,” Kody said as he jerked his hand back to his side. “Didn’t mean to—”

  Reagan shook her head vehemently. “You didn’t do anything. It was just me…being an idiot. Sorry.”

  The setting sun threw gray spears of dusk over the craggy cliff, and gusts of chilled wind raced across the plateau, enveloping her. Reagan’s overheated body reacted with a violent jerk to the dropping temperatures.

  She started to shake uncontrollably and the skin on her arms and neck raised up in goose bumps. Every breath drew icy air deep into her chest.

  “Can’t we get back to the truck?” she urged, almost incoherently.

  Kody shook his head. “Too dangerous now. One missed step on that ladde
r and…” He let the thought trail off, but the image he’d conjured wasn’t pretty.

  “How…how about using the cell phone to call for help?” she asked through chattering teeth.

  He shook his head. “Between the weather and the mountains, we’ll never get a signal out or in.

  “You’re freezing.” He’d added the thought like a news flash, but it couldn’t have been more obvious.

  “Uh. Y-yeah,” she stuttered. “I left my coat in the truck.” She’d been overheated back then. But in the last few minutes, her sweat had dried into chips of ice.

  It made her wonder how it could be possible for the blood to still boil in her veins as she stood this close to Kody. Outside she had chills, inside fire. Weird. And absolutely dizzying.

  He took off his jacket, put it around her shoulders and drew her close. “We’d better duck inside the ruin—out of the wind.”

  Reagan let him drag her through a thousand-year-old stone doorway into a dry, windowless room. But once inside, she discovered it was still possible to see, due to the dull grayish light coming not only from the open doorway but also through a tiny hole in the ceiling that by all rights of physics shouldn’t be there.

  According to her calculations, directly above this room was a thick rock cliff. So how did that tiny hole get way up there through a mountain full of solid rock?

  “These ancient ruins must’ve been designed and built by architectural geniuses,” Kody said, as if he’d had the same thought. “I understand the rooms stay warm in winter and cool in summer.”

  His warm breath whispered along her skin. The words stopped making any sense and seemed only to add to her growing intoxication. Had someone opened a champagne bottle?

  Reagan took a step in his direction, dumbfounded by the fizzy sounds popping and cracking in her ears. Absently, dreamily, she reached over and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his white shirt.

  “What’s up?” Kody said with growing wariness in his voice. “You sure you’re okay?”