Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  “That’s right.” He took a second and thought about her complete acceptance of such an odd idea. Seemed too easy.

  “You’re not buying the shape-shifting part, are you?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said with complete equanimity. “I understand that susceptible people will accept any concept as long as it’s fed to them the right way and for a long enough period. And when people accept and believe, then it doesn’t really matter whether the concept is absolute fact or not. The damage can be just as deadly.”

  Well, what do you know about that? The woman was as intelligent as she looked. Must be her Navajo heritage.

  Lucas just hoped she would never have to face the reality of this one particular deadly concept.

  “Go. I’ll be fine.” Teal was trying to shove Lucas out of her front door. “We’ve checked the place. No intruders to be found. I’ll rest today and won’t work. I swear. We’ll start again tomorrow, but you don’t need to hang around and watch me take naps today.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe I should wait outside in my SUV. Just in case you need anything.”

  “No.” She gave him another little push. “Don’t waste your time. I’m going to take a shower. Go home. Be creative.”

  As she locked the door behind him and turned toward the bathroom, Teal found herself smiling. She wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened, but sometime during their car trip back to her house they had become friends. Apparently, being almost lovers first hadn’t ruined their fledgling relationship.

  She’d also come to another interesting conclusion. Lucas must’ve convinced himself as a young boy that he could truly read minds. No child would’ve deliberately put up with being as isolated as he’d claimed to be.

  Teal thought back to her own childhood for a moment and shook her head. Hers was goofy, not really isolated, yet not really Miss Popularity, either. So she understood where his life had been back then.

  Lucas hadn’t wanted to be the outcast, he’d said as much. So obviously this mind-reading thing was not a ploy for attention. He had to have really believed it himself.

  But why had he suddenly lost his supposed abilities at the very time she turned up on the scene? Weirder and weirder.

  Teal ducked in and out of the shower. By the time she’d dried off, her mind was back on the investigation.

  That was when she realized she’d forgotten to take the mud sample from the victim’s boots into the lab for analysis yesterday. Her brain must’ve been so consumed with her body aches that she’d hadn’t thought of it at all.

  Well, no problem. The lab was only fifteen minutes away. She’d zip down there in her Bureau-requisitioned sedan, drop off the sample and then come right back here for a nap. Twenty-four hours late to the lab was no big deal, anyway. The lab was probably backed up at least that far.

  After a moment’s indecision, she decided to put on a nicer pair of black slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. Just in case someone from her office spotted her going into the lab. She tried never to be caught in public without wearing the good old Fibby uniform.

  Digging around in the bottom of her closet, Teal found the khaki pants she’d had on the night of her mountainside slide. The pants probably needed to be pitched. The rump was split open and the knees were shredded. But in the front right pocket, Teal found the clear plastic evidence envelope with the mud sample.

  Good to go. She tore out the front door with her car keys in one hand and the plastic bag in the other.

  Danger! Do not drive that automobile.

  Who’d said that? Teal stopped dead in her tracks and swung around, fully expecting to see the speaker standing nearby. But she was all alone in her front yard with the empty car.

  Gulping back a lump that had formed in her throat and rubbing the chill-bumps off her arms, she took another step toward the driver’s door of the sedan.

  Do not go. Danger.

  Where was that voice coming from? Teal prayed she wasn’t hearing voices from her imagination. Had she hit her head on the way down the mountainside? Was she having a hallucination caused by the old grandmother’s medicines?

  She blinked her eyes and swiped her hand over them to make sure she was awake and not dreaming. The voice was indistinct, but nevertheless, the meaning was as clear as the autumn skies.

  Looking around once more, she squinted to study the stand of tall cottonwood trees behind her rented mobile home. The trees swayed in the slight breeze and she could hear the leaves rattling like someone crumbling paper.

  A few birds circled above the trees and a couple more were sitting on the apex of her roof. Other than that, not a living soul seemed to be around. Even the highway in front of her house was quiet for the middle of the morning.

  This was ridiculous. She must be daydreaming. Tightening her grip on the keys, she moved to the car’s door.

  8

  L ucas drove down the long, lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop that was known locally as Owl Springs School Road. He’d already passed the cutoff leading out through silver mesquite and creosote bushes over to the Raven Wash Medical Clinic that his cousin, Ben Wauneka, was temporarily running.

  But Lucas was not going to the clinic today. He was on his way back to his grandmother’s meadow. Back home. He’d driven this road a million times, and usually he loved to watch the pale tan-and-gray scenery of eroded gullies and dry arroyos go by his window. But today, even the blue-green vistas of the Lukachukai Mountains up ahead gave him no comfort.

  It would take another forty-five minutes to reach his studio, and with every mile he became more and more convinced that going home would mean being too far away from Teal. But he didn’t dare go back now. She would freak if she caught him checking up on her.

  No. He would try to concentrate instead on what kind of a Dineh could’ve committed the murder.

  A Navajo who didn’t want to be discovered? Had a Dineh member killed out of fear? It was possible but not likely.

  Even if such a Navajo had moved out of hozho, out of harmony with his spirit, he would not have committed the crime with a white man’s weapon. A knife or a shotgun blast would’ve been more a Dineh’s weapon of choice rather than the small-caliber pistol that had been used to kill the man.

  Lucas glanced to his right and noticed a dozen raptors off in the distance, circling their supper on the desert floor. So many birds of prey at one time was not the way of nature, he knew. Just the same as the .22 gun had not been the Navajo way.

  The sun dropped behind a cloud and Lucas slowed the SUV. Something was definitely wrong. He could feel it.

  He pulled off to the side of the isolated road and stepped outside. Was there something wrong with his vehicle?

  As he walked around, checking out the tires, Lucas began to wonder if someone he cared about was in trouble. This feeling of concern was quickly turning into overwhelming panic.

  Could it be his grandmother who needed him? Hating that he could not simply “see” what the trouble was, Lucas pulled out his phone and called his grandmother.

  She was home but annoyed at being bothered when she’d been tending to her herb garden. Just as he was about to dial the Brotherhood number of Hunter Long to check on his other warrior cousins, two hawks split off from the circling raptors and headed straight for him.

  “Brother Dineh,” one of them said as he landed on the SUV’s roof a few feet away. “I am known as Accipiter striatus. I am of the Sharp-Shinned Hawk Clan, born for the Bird People. I have taken over Hastiin Hawk’s duties as warrior general of our allied armies.”

  “Hastiin Hawk is no longer chief?”

  “He was lost in a battle with renegade vultures.”

  “Skinwalkers. I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good friend.”

  “We have come to warn you. The female who you defend is in danger.”

  “Um…The young woman? The FBI agent?”

  “The woman you call Bright Eyes. You must protect her. She does not see and must not drive. Her road machine has b
een sabotaged.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “We saw. We tried to warn the woman, but she does not listen as you do.”

  “You can talk to her? The same way you do to me?”

  “The same.”

  Lucas was surprised, but less panicked than he had been a minute ago. He put thoughts of why the Bird People could talk to Teal when they’d never before been able to talk to anyone but him into the back of his mind.

  He would call Teal and tell her not to get into her car until he got back there and checked it out. She should be asleep now anyway.

  “Go now. She does not listen.”

  “Now? You said you tried to talk to her. Hell, is she going to drive the car—now?”

  “Danger.”

  Lucas jumped into his SUV and pulled back out onto the blacktop, turning in as tight a U-turn as he could manage.

  Damn the woman. She had promised to rest.

  Presuming she had not been killed in a car accident or an explosion first, Lucas swore to wring her neck as soon as he got back there—right after he kissed her senseless.

  He roared into Teal’s front yard, mostly riding on the two left-side wheels. The trip that had taken him close to half an hour out took only about fifteen minutes back.

  His satellite phone was burning up from his frantic efforts to reach Teal by phone. No answer. Was she gone? Asleep? Dead?

  Teal. Her car was sitting right where it had been when he’d left forty-five minutes ago. It looked just the same. Obviously no explosions had happened and Teal could not have driven it away with any hidden defect if it was still here.

  Had the Bird People been lying to him? That certainly seemed unlikely. They had no motive for betraying their Brotherhood allies.

  Jumping out with his engine still idling, Lucas headed for her front door, calling her name over and over as he went. Where was she? Sound asleep?

  If she was still okay, he had just learned a good lesson. No matter what she said in the future, he was not going to leave her alone again until the murderer had been caught.

  “Teal,” he shouted as he banged on her front door. “Bright Eyes, answer me.”

  “What’s all the screaming about?”

  It was Teal’s voice. But the sound seemed to be coming from the direction of her car. No way. It was sitting turned off and vacant.

  “Where are you?” he said as he jumped down from her front stoop and dashed over to the sedan to check it out.

  At that moment a pair of feminine shoes poked out from under the car. Next came shapely legs clothed in sharp-creased black pants. Finally, the rest of Teal appeared as she climbed out from underneath her sedan.

  The white blouse she had on was filthy, and a spot of purple fluid dotted the tip of her nose. He had never been so glad to see anyone in his whole life.

  “What’s the big deal?” she asked him as she tried to clean off her hands with a dirty rag.

  “You’re okay.” He grabbed her up, torn between killing her on the spot and dragging her inside to make love.

  “Hey,” she complained. “I am okay. What’s the matter with you?”

  He plastered her face with kisses and held her tight, waiting for his heart to start up again.

  “You’re going to get yourself all dirty,” she said as she pushed herself out of his arms. “What are you doing back here anyway? I thought I sent you home.”

  Lucas gulped in a breath. “And I thought you were going to rest. What are you doing all dressed up and hiding underneath your car?”

  Looking up into his panicked face, Teal realized that the panic was directed at her. He must’ve felt something was wrong and raced back to find out for sure.

  “I wasn’t hiding. Someone tampered with my car. Probably last night while I was away. I’m no real crime scene expert, but this looks like a case of attempted murder to me.”

  “You discovered something wrong?”

  “Oh, yeah. The automatic braking system sensor wire was disconnected. Then whoever wanted me dead reconnected the wire after adding a thin piece of plastic underneath the connector. We learned all about this trick in training. It disables both the system and the sensor lights so the brakes will fail with no warning.”

  “Was there brake fluid on the ground? A loose wire? How did you know what to look for?”

  Teal almost opened her mouth to tell him that she’d heard warning voices in her head. But just in time she thought better of it.

  She decided to turn the questioning back around to him. “Why are you back here? Did you ‘see’ the trouble in your head?”

  Not wanting to suggest that it might have been him who had disabled her car and then come back to make sure it had worked, she didn’t want to push him too hard. He was one of the good guys, of that she was positive by now.

  Taking her by the elbow, he began dragging her towards the front door. “If someone wants you dead, you make a terrific target standing out here in the open like this. I’ll explain when we get you safely back inside.”

  “All right,” she muttered. “I have to call the evidence team anyway. And now I guess I need another shower.”

  Fuming, Teal folded her arms over the fishbowl balanced in her lap and turned to stare out the SUV’s passenger-side window. It had been a long, frustrating few hours since she’d discovered her car had been tampered with.

  The FBI evidence team had showed up within minutes of her call—along with her boss. Shortly after that, Councilman Ayze, Director Sam and a raft of Navajo bigshots showed up in her front yard for an impromptu meeting of minds.

  They’d eventually come to the conclusion that her life was in too much danger to allow her to continue with the investigation. They were just about to take it away from her and turn it over to Special Agent Kody Long, when Lucas stepped in and convinced them she should be allowed to continue what she had started.

  She’d be grateful to him some day, too. Whenever she quit being so furious she could skin him alive.

  After another hour’s worth of discussion with the bigshots, it was decided she would remain in charge of the investigation—but with stipulations. She could not stay at her own place for the duration of the investigation. Its location was obviously too well-known. And she was ordered to have at least one Dineh member with her at all times. Night and day.

  Guess who volunteered himself and his guest bedroom for the job?

  “You’re not really still mad at me, are you?” Lucas slanted a glance in her direction as he drove them down the washboard gravel road on the way to his house.

  She blew out a breath. “Why should I be mad? You saved my job.”

  “Well, yes. But…”

  “I must admit,” she interrupted. “I’d be a whole lot more comfortable if my fish wasn’t packed up and if all my worldly possessions weren’t stuffed into the back of this SUV. More comfortable if I could just go on home tonight to my own bed.

  “Did you have to be so quick to volunteer?” she asked rhetorically. “Maybe if no one had stepped forward to take me in, they would’ve let me stay at home.”

  “Now, Bright Eyes, you know that wasn’t going to happen. It’s too dangerous there. If I hadn’t offered, you would’ve lost your assignment—and your house would’ve still been too dangerous to stay in. You know that’s the truth.”

  “Why is your place any safer than mine?”

  He tsked, as if explanations should be unnecessary. “Your rental house is right on a major highway with nothing but a scrawny patch of cottonwoods to offer protection. My home is way off the beaten path on a rise overlooking my grandmother’s meadow, and has natural protection from a cliff directly behind the house.

  “Plus,” he added. “My house has had curing ceremonies done to make it safer. And then, there’s also my grandmother right down the road who can foresee trouble in the future.”

  “Right. Silly me. I should have known. My weapons and training are no match for a farsighted little old lady and a stony
shrimp-colored cliff.”

  “Teal. What changed? Just a few hours ago you said you were glad we’d be riding together.”

  “Riding together. Not living together.”

  “You’ll be comfortable at my place. I swear. It’s for the best. You’ll see.”

  He’d said it like that was the end of the discussion. And Teal supposed he was right. There was no way out of this mess now. She might as well shut up and make the best of it.

  A few hours later, after Lucas had tucked her stuff into his tiny spare bedroom, he sat watching Teal as they both sipped after-dinner coffees at his dining-room table. She’d quit being mad at him right after he’d made her lamb chops and strawberry shortcake for dinner. She looked so beautiful sitting there that he barely noticed the tiny lines and purple smudges around her eyes.

  But he did notice. And vowed that tonight she would be getting a full night’s sleep. With no interruptions.

  She never had gotten that nap today. And he’d never given her an answer about how he’d known she might be in trouble.

  He’d thought all afternoon and evening about what to say. Should he try to explain about talking to the Bird People?

  His gut said no. She would only come to the conclusion that he was even stranger than before.

  But his heart said yes. He wanted her to know everything about him. More, he desperately wanted her to be the only one who truly understood him.

  “So…You never answered me about how you knew to come back to my house this morning. If you’re not getting your sight back, what made you turn around?” Teal tilted her head and the corners of her mouth cracked up in a half smile.

  See there? They were already thinking alike.

  She had taken the news about the Skinwalkers quite well. And the Bird People said she could’ve heard them talking if only she would’ve listened. That made her special—like him.

  And perhaps worth the chance.

  “This is going to sound crazy…”

  She smothered a laugh. “No, really?”

  “You’re a laugh riot, Bright Eyes,” he said with a forced smile. “You want to hear the truth or not?”