Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  As her fingers trailed over the polished mahogany stock, she considered how far she had come. An unlikely assassin, she was nevertheless a dedicated and proficient one. Over the last six months she’d taken what used to be a happy childhood hobby of target practice and turned it into a deadly vocation.

  She’d made herself over from a young rifle target shooter into a crack shot. A sniper who, with the right equipment, could put a bullet through the eye of a needle as it traveled at seventy miles per hour.

  But a needle was not her intended target. Not tonight. Not ever.

  The only target she ever intended to see down the barrel of her nightscope was the leader of the Skinwalkers: the Navajo Wolf. The man who had taken many lives and destroyed countless others. Seeing to his destruction was now her sole mission.

  Her previous life was long gone. Friends, family and old occupations had been ripped away. Her future looked every bit as bleak as her current life.

  But for tonight she had found a valid reason to take each breath. For tonight—for just a little while longer. Until it was done.

  Until the Navajo Wolf was no more.

  Cisco Santiago would’ve killed for a shot of tequila right about now. The day had been long and was getting longer. In fact, the moonless night looked about ready to give way to dawn. So, actually, he supposed it was already tomorrow.

  Still, he was sure the man whose SUV he followed would eventually lead him to the next piece in the puzzle. And that was worth a missed night’s sleep and a lost meal or two.

  The road under his vehicle’s wheels had turned to gravel about a mile back. And the landscaping—what little he could see of it by the stars—had taken on an eerie feeling of otherworldliness. His senses turned edgy. But though he remained alert, he wasn’t worried.

  The young Navajo man had claimed to have a relative in the desert who might be a reliable informant. But after watching the kid down several drinks in that bar in Farmington, New Mexico, Cisco had listened when his gut told him to drive his own car.

  His Charger, sleek on the outside but all V-8 hemi power on the inside, usually got him in and out of most tight spots. But perhaps tonight, what with the blackness of the night and the narrow gravel road, traveling in the other guy’s four-wheel-drive would’ve been the smarter move.

  There was nothing in life Cisco hadn’t tried and little he didn’t dare, including walking into some kind of setup. High risks were merely the potential for high reward. It was what had brought him the most success in his life. What had taken a poor barrio kid and turned him into a successful entrepreneur. Into a man who wielded enormous authority and respect, even in a chosen profession that normally invited neither.

  But Cisco was good at what he did and he liked being a high-powered skip tracer. “Bounty-hunter” was how he would be viewed in some less knowledgeable people’s minds. The bounty he usually hunted, though, was far more refined and intelligent and much harder to catch than the average person knew.

  Skip tracers worked for bail bondsmen. Cisco’s company did both bonding and tracing. Someone needed to bring in the errant white-collar criminals who had chosen flight instead of justice. The police were always glad to have help bringing their criminals back from overseas.

  That’s where he was the best, and where his employees excelled. He now had a dozen operatives, most of whom could be trusted to find and retrieve their quarries anywhere in the world. His businesses also employed crack international bankers and a raft of lawyers. Finding rich runaway criminals was usually a lot easier when you tracked their bank accounts rather than their actual movements.

  The road beneath his car suddenly curved, and Cisco automatically checked his rearview mirror to make sure no one was following. He saw nothing but his own brown eyes in the dim backglow from his headlights. He’d flipped off the dashboard lights earlier in order to better navigate in the pitch-black of such a remote area. But now he couldn’t even see the rest of his face in the mirror.

  Cisco worked on shutting down his growing tension by practicing the things that had made him the fearsome tracker. He prided himself in being able to give verbal descriptions of people’s physical attributes after only cursory inspections. He could call up vivid descriptions better than police sketch artists.

  In his head he listed the physical description of the Navajo he’d been following. A six-foot, strapping twenty-something, the kid wasn’t anything special in his jeans and all-weather jacket. His short, dark brown hair matched the deep-set brown-black eyes. In fact, the eyes were the only standout in the whole description, and that was because of the vacant, almost dead look in them. Cisco had seen some drugged-out gazes in his time, but the look in this kid’s eyes was something he had never beheld.

  Cisco gave up trying to catalog it and began listing his own description—or the description of the desperado he had worked so hard to become.

  The lean, six-two body of a dangerous man, usually clad in black jeans and leather jacket. The slightly too long ebony hair. The day-old stubble covering a jutting chin and slashing cheekbones. The brown and burnished-toned skin that spoke of a Mexican-American heritage. And the perpetual sneer that frequently pulled at the too-full lips and the razor-thin white scar at the side of his mouth.

  The scar was real and only one of many. He’d received it in a knife fight when he was a teenager. Women loved the scars. Men respected them.

  But the rest of the menacing image was meant for the mean streets. He had deliberately designed it to be a hundred and eighty degrees from the real man underneath. Cisco had gone way back to his hard roots to cultivate the perfect looks and image of the dangerous Latino hombre. A bounty hunter who never lost his man under any circumstances.

  The real Cisco preferred fine wine and rare first editions. He’d call himself a refined new-age man who’d earned a master’s degree in Art History. A self-taught man of the world who could discuss the Chinese philosophers and would easily win a debate on nearly any subject.

  The road ahead made another wide turn around the base of a cliff, and he remembered his true mission for this trip. Business wasn’t what had brought him to the Navajo reservation tonight. No, this was personal. And long overdue.

  Soon he would uncover the answers he’d sought for most of his life. Now that he had the time and the money to make things happen, nothing would stop him from learning the truth.

  The winds had finally died down as Sunnie took great pains fitting together the rifle components, then loading the shells into the chamber with a quiet snap. Caressing the sleek metal and warm wood as she went, she studied each piece. Testing, she tightened her finger lightly against the trigger, then lifted it again.

  The rifle had become like her child, to be petted and admired. It was a replacement for the baby she had once imagined she would have. But that was in another lifetime—before her fiancé betrayed her and sold her spirit to the Skinwalkers.

  Louis Singleton, the fiancé she had once loved and then grown to hate, had paid for sins against his own people. Paid with his life, like all who failed the Wolf. But she too had paid, in lost dreams, shattered hopes and months of reprogramming by the Brotherhood.

  Thank the gods for the Brotherhood. Without them, the Dine would be lost against their evil enemies. And she would’ve been lost, as well.

  The Brotherhood had rescued her, given her shelter and, in the end, a kind of peace. Though their efforts proved to be only a temporary reprieve from the horrors of the night.

  She now knew the truth: there could be no real peace. Not for her. Not until the Wolf was dead. Maybe not ever.

  Taking up her position, Sunnie waited. The night became timeless, the strain and tension on her body unheeded. She was ready to cope with any physical test.

  For weeks now she had watched and waited. Tracing patterns, seeing similarities.

  From an earlier time, she remembered this particular place. The canyon road below her was on the Navajo Wolf’s route when he moved around the reser
vation. She was the only one alive to know his custom was to travel the gravel road but only in the dead of night. Often-times he traveled as the Wolf. There would be little opportunity for taking a shot while he was in that superhuman condition.

  Would he come this time in human form and by car? If so, would it be in a caravan of comrades or all alone in his black sedan?

  The Navajo Wolf’s minutes on earth were numbered. Sunnie didn’t care how many protectors surrounded him. He didn’t stand a chance against her marksmanship.

  The Wolf would not be expecting such an ambush in Navajoland. It was not the sort of thing any traditionally trained Navajo would do. Not even the Brotherhood would attempt an out-and-out assassination.

  Sunnie’s own mother, a traditional Navajo, would have been mortified to think of her only daughter doing anything so out of character, regardless of how badly her family had been treated by the demon of the night. Traditional Dine did not seek revenge—or even punishment—for those who had lost the true Way. They sought only to rehabilitate the offender to harmony, restoring the balance within them and to their clan.

  But her mother had died when Sunnie was a teen, before the current Skinwalker threat had come to Dinetah. Sunnie now thought of her mother’s early death to cancer as a blessing. It had protected her from witnessing the ugly horror that had befallen her family and clan.

  And it had shielded her mother from the truth of what her only daughter had become: a cold, calculating killer. A woman whose only purpose in life came down to one shot.

  Sunnie knew the Brotherhood believed she was still safely hidden away with her new identity. And her real brothers thought she had left Dinetah long ago, as they had. Today there were few friends and no other family left to wonder about Sunnie Begay’s whereabouts and motives.

  Which should have been a sentimental thought, but Sunnie felt nothing. Nothing but the growing urgency to make that one shot.

  Then it was there. The faint buzz that had become known to the Brotherhood as the announcement of a pending Skinwalker appearance.

  She noticed a slight tension running across her shoulders and deliberately forced them down. There would be no mistakes tonight. No chance of letting the Wolf get away to wreak havoc on the Dine for another day.

  “Come on, you bastard. Drive into your destiny.”

  Through the darkness two pairs of headlights appeared around the curve that circumvented Hawk’s Way Bluff. She peered through her nightscope. A light-colored SUV led the way. The dark sedan followed closely behind.

  “No way, monster. No bodyguard in any SUV will protect you this night. You are mine.”

  Lightly squeezing her finger against the trigger, Sunnie watched through her nightscope and began tracking the sedan. Waiting. Anticipating the right moment.

  She smelled the snakeweed and gnarled juniper of the desert around her. Felt the warmth of polished wood beneath her cheek. This was her moment. There would be no wind to contend with. No innocent bystanders to interfere.

  Seconds clicked by as the sedan crept ever closer. Then he was there in her scope. Alone and driving.

  Her brain processed all the variables as her finger squeezed ever tighter. In the brightness of the infrared light through her scope she caught the same arrogant chin, the same sharp jawline she remembered from the times she’d seen the Wolf in person.

  Ten more feet…She took her shot.

  But at the last possible moment Sunnie realized what she’d really been seeing. The man in her scope was a good twenty to thirty years younger than the monster she sought. The skin under this guy’s stubble was not pockmarked. The thick hair was a touch too long and much too ebony.

  The man behind the wheel was not her target. Not the Navajo Wolf.

  Too late, she tried to deflect the bullet. Twitching her hand on the barrel, she knew before she looked up that it was not enough. The shot had already met its mark.

  She watched in horror as the sedan slowed, then ran off the road. It disappeared behind an outcropping of boulders.

  Looking toward the east, she half expected to find the SUV slowing and turning back to see what had happened to its companion. Instead the four-wheel-drive disappeared around the next curve in the road. Perhaps the big vehicle would have to find a wider place to turn around.

  She checked over her shoulder, anticipating some kind of Skinwalker retaliation. But nothing stirred.

  What had she done? Who had she shot?

  Who had she killed?

  Sunnie stealthily slipped across the gravel road, rifle in hand. She had to know for sure. This might be a more dangerous move even than a planned assassination of the Wolf, but she had to find out if the man she’d shot was truly dead.

  She had driven her old Jeep down the less steep side of the canyon and parked it about a half mile back up the road, out of sight. The whole time she’d been fully prepared to meet up with the SUV and whatever Skinwalker had been driving it. But there was no sign of anything.

  What would she find behind the boulders? Had the Skinwalkers changed forms and flown back to take away their own? Would the sedan be empty when she got there? Or would the whole vehicle have disappeared into the fog of evil that surrounded it?

  Tightening her grip on the rifle, she flattened her body against the granite and inched into the shadows behind the rocks. The gray cast of dawn was beginning to lighten the shadows now, and there would be no place to hide if a confrontation with the Skinwalkers took place.

  She knew it was only a matter of time.

  Surprised to find the sedan sitting with its nose smashed against the base of the bluff, Sunnie was actually glad to see that it had not been spirited away. However, she was also terrified. The Skinwalkers could still be on their way back.

  In a hurry now, she peered through the bullet-shattered side window and saw a man’s body squished between the seat back and the deployed air bag. There seemed to be blood on every interior surface of the front seat.

  She stepped closer to get a better look at her unintended target. One step. Two.

  Then she heard it. A moan. The man was alive.

  Without giving her own safety a second thought, Sunnie dropped the rifle, ripped open the driver’s door and quickly felt his carotid artery for a pulse. Once a nurse, always a nurse, she supposed.

  Surprisingly his pulse was strong under her fingers. Where had her bullet entered his body? The blood seemed most prevalent around his head. Her aim had been the temple, but that was not likely what she’d hit.

  Thank the Yei. Her last-second deflection had worked. She hadn’t killed him.

  “Can you move? Can you tell me where it hurts?”

  The man groaned as his head fell back against the seat. He was trying to be responsive but was too groggy. Sunnie figured it was a good sign. At least he wasn’t out cold.

  Searching for the wound, Sunnie took his face in her hands and gently probed for the entry point. All she found was an open gap in the skin high on his forehead, where her bullet had nicked him. The huge amount of blood was from the facial wound, nothing deadly. But apparently he had also hit his head on something during the car wreck.

  She took off her jacket and ripped out the hem of her T-shirt. Placing the bunched material against his wound, she tried to halt the blood flow.

  “What else hurts? Anything broken? Can you move?” Suddenly Sunnie wanted more than anything to get away from the sedan. But she would never leave him this way.

  “N-no. My head is all that hurts. Nothing else.” The man blinked a couple of times but seemed unable to focus. “What happened?”

  “I…You were shot and your car ran off the road. We need to move you from behind that air bag so I can check for other injuries. Do you think you can help me get you out of the car?”

  “Shot?” The man finally opened his eyes, and Sunnie fought the urge to gasp. A dangerous dark brown gaze watched her intently in the dawn’s first light.

  Who was this man? She could see he was not Navajo,
so his being a Skinwalker was an impossibility. But what was he doing out here in the dark hours before dawn, following the Skinwalker route?

  She slid her free arm between his body and the seat back, urging him gently to move. “Come on. It’s only a surface wound. I’ll help you stand. We have to go.”

  The man twisted his body awkwardly and put his feet on the ground beside the door. “Are we in danger? Is the car on fire?”

  They were in danger but not from anything to do with the car accident. And judging from his rugged appearance and arrogant stare, Sunnie wasn’t so sure this man might not turn out to be even more dangerous for her. She couldn’t be sure of anything until she knew who he really was.

  “No danger of fire. What are you doing out here at night? Who are you?” she demanded in a loud whisper.

  “Cisco,” he mumbled. “Francisco Santiago. And you?”

  “What happened to that SUV you were following?” she insisted without answering his question. “Did your buddies abandon you?”

  He started to shake his head but groaned instead and leaned into his open palm. “Man, my head is foggy. What did you say your name was?”

  “Sunnie,” she said. There was no reason to give him her real name. Not when she’d been living under an assumed one for the last year. “Sunnie Begay.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but the faint sound of the Skinwalker buzz seemed to grow in the distance. “If you’re not expecting that SUV to come back for you, we need to get out of here.”

  “Expecting…? No. I don’t even know that guy’s name. I was supposed to follow him to his clan’s hogan to meet with somebody else.”

  “Whose hogan exactly? What was the clan name?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Sorry.” He lifted his chin and looked at her. “I think I can stand now. Why are we in such a hurry to move?”

  “I’ll explain it to you later.” She helped him hang on to the sedan’s roof as he eased his way to a standing position. “You’re sure nothing else hurts? Not your ribs or anything in the chest cavity?”