Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  Kody turned his head, looking off to the northwest, in the direction of the secret side canyon and ruin he and Reagan had discovered. The dry, chilly winter wind slapped him in the face as it zinged down the narrowing, red-rock arroyo where he stood.

  “I will contact Michael by cell phone, Perhaps he could use your help with his search,” Hunter stated.

  “Will you also be notifying the FBI about the murder?”

  “In time,” Hunter replied. The corners of his lips twitched. “You’re on leave and this location is hours away from any FBI field office or tribal subagency office. Maybe I’ll collect more evidence first and then call my tribal police captain so he can notify the feds of the unnatural death.”

  “The one who has been killed,” Kody began, observing the traditional Navajo taboo of not speaking directly about the dead. “Doesn’t appear to be a member of the Dine.” He glanced in the direction of the body, then quickly looked away.

  “I agree. Looks more Greek or Italian…maybe Middle Eastern…to me.” Hunter tilted his head in the subtle manner of the Navajo. “Doesn’t seem like there will be a need for anyone to put this body into the ground by nightfall. No clan will be nearby to claim it.”

  Kody nodded. “In addition to the lack of religious and traditional reasons, I’d imagine the FBI will be ordering an autopsy of the dead man. There’s no compelling need for you to rush your investigation.

  “However, keep in mind that someone may have been abducted from here and may be in mortal danger.”

  Without responding, Hunter flipped open his cell phone and called Michael Ayze. In less than a moment, Michael agreed to meet Kody at a halfway point.

  As he prepared to walk up the rocky wash to the meeting place, Hunter stopped him with a hand to the shoulder. “Where is the bilagáana woman whose father may be missing?” he asked. “Has she returned to her home in California?”

  “She’s staying at our mother’s house for the time being,” Kody replied. “Just until we can get a line on her father’s whereabouts.”

  “Was it wise to leave her?”

  Hunter’s lack of an agreeable response clearly showed what he thought about leaving a defenseless woman at the mercy of the Skinwalkers.

  An hour later, after Kody and Michael had met up and then split again in order to cover a wider search area, Kody was still thinking back to his brother’s disapproving expression during their last conversation.

  As he climbed an aluminum ladder, heading toward a cliff ruin in the Backwash area, he began to chastise himself for leaving her. He hadn’t really liked the idea at the time, but he had strongly felt his responsibility to the Brotherhood.

  Swallowing back the choking worry, he kept reminding himself that Shirley Nez should be there. And as his mentor and teacher, she would never let anything bad happen to Reagan. He was positive.

  Reagan finished the dishes and went in search of the wireless handheld device that she hoped was fully charged by now. She needed information and was also dying to contact a couple of her computer buddies. It had been days since she’d been online and she worried that her mailbox would be jammed with out-of-date messages and spam that had managed to get through all her filters.

  She found the jacket on the floor in her temporary bedroom. Man, she sure hoped she would be able to get a good cell phone connection here in the wilderness. She knew there wouldn’t be any Wi-Fi nearby.

  Though she loved the cozy atmosphere of Mrs. Long’s house, her whole tradition-based life was just a little too retro to make Reagan feel at home.

  Jamming a hand into her jacket pocket to find the Blackberry, Regan stopped when she suddenly heard a soft knocking. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen door. Imagining that it was the neighbor Kody had said would be visiting, Reagan threw the jacket back on the bed with the phone still in the pocket and went to let the woman in.

  Right before she put out her hand to turn the doorknob, it occurred to Reagan that she had better check to see who was really knocking. Standing on tiptoes, she peeked through the decorative windows at the top of the door. Being five-nine was good for a few things, after all.

  On the other side of the door and slightly below her line of sight, an older woman stood waiting to be let in. The Native American lady wore a shabby but colorful scarf covering her gray hair, and a long-sleeved shirt in a deep purple color.

  Though not able to get a good look at the woman’s face, Reagan did see that she was carrying what seemed to be a covered cake plate. The old lady must indeed be Kody’s neighbor. Who else would come bearing gifts?

  But her build seemed a bit thicker than the other women Reagan had met up to now on the reservation. Still, this old person could not be a threat to anyone.

  Opening the door, Reagan found herself staring at sad eyes and an even sadder pair of rubber boots underneath an ankle-length skirt that seemed to contain every color known to man. The person introduced herself as Shirley, and in a minute or two, Reagan felt comfortable enough to let her come inside.

  Once she was across the threshold, the woman’s appearance changed. She suddenly didn’t look quite so old. Instead of stooped, she stood tall and erect, almost the same height as Reagan. Her eyes, a depthless black, darted purposefully in every direction. She was studying the room in what seemed like a boarding school inspection.

  “I baked a cake,” the old lady said as she shoved the plate at Reagan. “Special clan recipe.”

  “Um, thank you.” Reagan set the plate on the kitchen counter and removed the cover. “It looks delicious.”

  The cake smelled good, but it was plastered with a frosting that resembled coconut. Not Reagan’s favorite.

  “I will make coffee,” the neighbor murmured. “We will sit. Talk. Eat. The time will go fast.”

  “Uh, okay.” Reagan sat down at the kitchen table and watched as she rummaged around in the cabinets, looking for the proper things to make coffee.

  An odd thought flashed through Reagan’s mind—the idea that this scene was somehow all wrong. But the spark of inspiration was a high-speed notion, moving in and out of her consciousness like a bullet, so she shrugged it off.

  “Have you known Kody Long for a long time?” Shirley asked as she continued working at the kitchen counter.

  “Only for a few days.” Another something nudged at Reagan’s awareness, but whatever it was stayed buried in the recesses of her brain.

  “His past is full of regrets,” the older woman said in a deep, serious tone. “There is talk that he could have saved his father’s life, but did nothing because of his half-breed fears.”

  Reagan started to interrupt with questions, but decided to stay quiet instead. Her thoughts had already turned to the man she loved, whom she wanted to come home more than anything else on earth.

  As if an unseen light switch had been suddenly thrown, savage, erotic images descended upon Reagan and began to consume her, body and mind.

  “He was treated horribly by that wicked city woman he married, too,” Shirley continued blithely. “But I’m not sure what he could’ve expected from such a mixed marriage. A bilagáana woman is not to be trusted….”

  The old lady stopped and turned to give Reagan a hesitant smile. “Sorry. No offense?”

  Reagan shook her head and blinked back most of the wild images in her head. But now she felt positive that something was quite wrong here.

  She barely managed to stand up. As she looked directly into the elder’s eyes, her knees became wobbly and her head began to hurt.

  Instead of the eyes she had expected to see, Reagan saw something she was forced to classify as pure evil. Watery images blurred her vision as the face of an ugly, middle-aged man with acne-scarred skin and sharp fang teeth took the place of the old woman. Reagan had to grab hold of the kitchen table with both hands in an effort to stay steady.

  “May I help you?” she managed to ask in a hoarse voice.

  The woman had swung around and was pouring cold water into the pot wi
th her back to Reagan. “No, thank you. I…” She stopped in midsentence and stared out the window over the sink.

  It felt as if hours passed before the woman shut off the faucet and spoke again. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten an important appointment. I must go now.”

  “Oh?”

  The old lady turned, wiped her hands on her skirt and narrowed her eyes at Reagan. “I must go. Don’t forget to eat a piece of that cake. I made it just for you.”

  “Well, if you must….” Reagan waved toward the door, and the woman disappeared through it so fast it seemed like a blurred fast-forward on an old-fashioned VCR.

  Reagan collapsed at the table and dropped her head in her hands. Whew! Something had really gotten to her.

  Resting for a moment and trying to sort through her impressions, she soon realized that getting her thoughts back in order was turning out to be a lot harder than she had imagined. Earlier, she had noticed an effort someone was making to control her mind from afar. But what had just gone on around her, here in Audrey Long’s home?

  Reagan got up on unsteady feet in order to check out the back door window again, wondering why she hadn’t heard the old lady’s car driving away. Shirley had been just plain scary, and now Reagan’s mind was filling with all kinds of questions about the weird neighbor.

  Had that creaky woman walked over here? And had she intended to walk home when, according to Kody, she lived more than a quarter mile away? Reagan stretched on tiptoes again and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t see the woman in any direction she checked.

  Had the neighbor just disappeared? Hairs on the back of Reagan’s neck stood straight up on end and goose bumps covered her arms. But then an ancient two-door car with rusted fenders and a cracked rear window drove into the yard and stopped. Reagan’s whole body began to tremble.

  It didn’t take her more than two seconds to run to the bedroom and grab the Blackberry. She got a faint signal, but it was enough to make her call.

  She had memorized Kody’s cell number. Punching it in, she raced back toward the kitchen door while waiting for him to answer.

  He was on the line in one ring. “Yes?”

  “Kody, it’s me. Tell me what your neighbor, Shirley, looks like.”

  “What? Why…”

  She peeked out the window again and saw something that cleared her mind immediately. The explanation for everything that had felt wrong seemed to jab her right between the eyes.

  Outside, standing next to the beat-up car, was a well-dressed, middle-aged woman waiting patiently for someone to invite her inside.

  “How stupid could I be?” Reagan groaned with pure self-disgust, slapping her forehead with her palm.

  “What’s wrong, Red? Do you need me?” Kody’s voice was filled with concern.

  “I’ll just bet your mother’s neighbor…what was her name? Shirley Nez, right? Well, I’ll bet she owns a seventies era, green, two-door sedan, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, she does, but—”

  “Never mind.” Reagan groaned again. She had no intention of scaring him or causing him any more worry than necessary. “Go on with what you were doing. I’m perfectly fine. The neighbor is here and everything will be terrific after I let her inside.”

  “If you’re sure you’re okay…” Kody mumbled hesitantly, as if he didn’t know whether to panic or not.

  “I’m positive. Bye.”

  Reagan ended the call and unlocked the door. Stepping out on the porch to beckon the neighbor inside, she ticked off in her brain all the incredibly stupid things that she’d missed over the last half hour while she had visited with a very strange—and possibly very dangerous—old lady.

  No traditional Navajo would ever be unthinking enough to approach someone’s door without first being invited inside. Ben’s words came back to remind her of her first dumb move.

  Navajos try never to be rude to anyone, Kody had said. Reagan suspected that rummaging around in someone’s cupboards without being asked would probably be classified as quite rude.

  Traditional Navajos never use given names when talking to or about other Navajos. Reagan had totally forgotten Lucas’s caution. How could she? Really dumb.

  She waved at the real neighbor, who smiled and came toward her. By the time Shirley Nez was inside the kitchen, Reagan’s words were spilling out of her mouth like water over a dam.

  “And the old witch brought that funny-looking cake on the counter over there and insisted I eat a bite.” She heard herself gushing, while showing Shirley into the kitchen. “And she said stuff about Kody’s past that made me wonder if she wasn’t trying to drive doubts about him into my mind…and…”

  Shirley Nez’s smile turned to a scowl. “Take a breath. Calm down. Tell me—”

  “And when I stopped paying real close attention to what she was saying,” Reagan blurted, as if she’d never been interrupted, “my mind started to go blank and the numbers began to disappear again…and—”

  Kody’s neighbor turned without a word, picked up the cake plate and put the whole thing into the garbage can. It was such a rash move that Reagan stopped talking.

  “Sit down and catch your breath,” Shirley ordered. “I have to make a quick call and then we’ll get rid of this evil potion. We can burn it before Lucas arrives. He’ll be coming to hold a short Sing for you. I wish we had the time to do more, but unfortunately, the longer ceremony will have to wait.”

  Once again Reagan collapsed into the chair, stunned by the images Shirley’s words had conjured. But right away her mind began churning with new thoughts and questions.

  “Uh, please excuse me, Kody’s neighbor and mentor,” she began, addressing the other woman tentatively, as she remembered Lucas teaching her. “But can you tell me about the Brotherhood?”

  Shirley stopped with the phone halfway to her ear. She turned and silently studied Reagan’s face.

  “And while you’re at it,” Reagan continued in a brand-new and surprisingly forceful voice, “I want to know the whole truth. Every single thing you can tell me about the evil ones. And all you ever knew about Skinwalkers.”

  14

  K ody blinked back a shaft of fear, closing his eyes to the panic as he looked down at two hundred feet of nothing but air between himself and solid ground. It was so quiet he imagined hearing the drops of his sweat hitting the sand below.

  Just where was the Brotherhood and all his clan when he really needed them? Digging his fingers farther into sandstone crevices, he nearly laughed at his own stupidity. How could anyone with half a brain, who knew what he was facing, turn their backs on a Skinwalker?

  Good question. Maybe he would review his bad actions if he lived through the consequences.

  The first thing that Shirley had instilled in them was to never turn your back on the enemy unless another Brotherhood member was right there to watch that back. He’d also supposedly learned that same lesson long ago at Quantico.

  So he guessed that made him a double loser.

  His cell phone began to vibrate in his shirt pocket. Wedging the toes of his rubber soled moccasins ever deeper into tiny cracks in the face of the sheer cliff, he ignored the call.

  If that was Reagan again, calling to tell him something horrible had happened to her because he’d made the mistake of leaving her alone, he couldn’t face it. Not that he had a free hand at the moment, anyway.

  Guessing that he should probably say a few prayers, he began with one of the ancient chants. Kody figured he might as well try to do away with that rat of a Skinwalker snake by saying the right chant—if he could manage to get it all out of his mouth before he fell to his death.

  He’d been so not smart. Maybe he deserved to die. He had not followed Brotherhood prescribed commandments, and hadn’t even called Michael when he’d clearly spotted the snake’s trail and continued to track it alone.

  Less than an hour ago Michael had been right beside him, cautioning that if they were going to split up and take different trails, the
first one to see any sign of the evil ones must contact the other before he continued on. The operative word in that sentence had obviously been before. Too late now.

  Right then, Kody heard the sound of flapping wings directly above him as they cut through the air unseen. They seemed to be big wings—really big wings. As Red might’ve said, Ah, crap.

  All Kody could do was hang on and hope like hell it wasn’t a vulture. He was definitely not ready to give up just yet.

  “You need a hand, brother?” The sound of Hunter’s voice calling down from the clifftop above him might as well have been angels singing.

  Kody could only manage a grunt. But if his brother didn’t stop asking stupid questions and get on with saving his life, Kody would probably be hearing the sound of angels for real—and soon.

  As he grabbed the rope Hunter threw down to him, he started shouting orders, realizing he wasn’t about to die. Cursing all the way up the side of the cliff, he scrambled over the edge and into his brother’s waiting arms.

  “You have quite a vivid Anglo vocabulary, cousin.” Michael Ayze stood smiling at him from right behind Hunter’s back.

  Kody fell facedown on the flat stone of the cleft in the cliff where they stood, and nearly kissed the ground. “You haven’t heard anything yet,” he told his cousin with gritted teeth. He lay on his belly, trying to catch his breath.

  When he’d finally gulped in enough air to speak without gasping, Kody decided he needed answers from the two Brotherhood members who had saved his life. “How’d you know I was in trouble? And how on earth did you find me?”

  Hunter studied him for a moment. “You weren’t answering your cell. And it didn’t automatically go to voice mail. That meant you must be having problems.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The Bird People were the ones who found you,” Michael added. “Our cousin Lucas Tso learned of the trouble and asked them for assistance.”