Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “A waitress. Talk to me. Where does it hurt?”

  “Except for what seems like a lot of blood and a monumental headache, I think I’m okay.”

  She gave him a quick check and found no other cuts or obvious broken bones. “My Jeep is back down the road about a half a mile. Do you think you can make it that far?”

  “Probably. But I’m not sure I want to leave my car and all my stuff. Where are we going?”

  “I have a friend with a clinic nearby. I want to get you checked over. Maybe put some stitches in that cut on your head. We’ll send someone back in the daylight for your car and things.” Sunnie bent and picked up her rifle, then put her arm around his waist to steady him as they walked.

  He eyed the rifle, then tilted his head to her. “How’d I get shot, anyway?”

  She wanted to hedge but decided truth would be easier. “It was me. I shot you.”

  Chapter 2

  “O h, yeah?” As bad as his head hurt, Cisco didn’t think it was wise to wait for explanations.

  The dark-haired babe had just admitted to putting him in this condition. That was enough for now.

  Grabbing her by the shoulders, he twisted her against his chest with one arm and used his elbow to hold her by the neck. And, in a smooth move, he relieved her of the rifle with the other hand.

  But in an equally smooth reflex movement, she crammed her elbow into his chin and dug her boot heel into the arch of his foot. The foot hurt like a bugger and was bad enough, but the crack to his chin had him seeing stars all over again.

  Either she’d been trained in martial arts or he was a lot worse for wear from the gunshot and accident than he’d thought. She spun free; the rifle went flying, and he raised his arms to defend his head. She did the same and bent her knees in a fighter’s stance.

  “You need a doctor, you idiot,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t make me hurt you any more.”

  “Ha! Been there. It’s me that doesn’t want to hurt you.” Hell, the little bitty thing couldn’t be over five-three. He couldn’t see himself punching her square in the face, even if she had shot him.

  “Just let me keep the rifle. I think I have a right, don’t you?” he demanded.

  The answer he got was a swift kick to the kneecap. With a sharp crack and a roar of pain, he went down. But he managed enough presence of mind to roll toward her, grab her by the ankle and drag her crashing down to the ground on top of him. It was his advantage as he rolled her under him and imprisoned her with his more powerful and heavy body. She was fast. He was the elephant sitting on top of her.

  “Let me up, you big freaking jerk,” she squeaked breathlessly. “You’re crushing me.”

  “Why’d you shoot me?”

  “It’ll take too long to give you an answer. We’ve got to get out of here. Now. Or we’ll both end up shot—or worse.”

  Though he couldn’t see her face clearly in the darkness, he could hear the growing panic in her voice. Something was going on here he didn’t understand.

  He had to make a few quick assumptions. The first was, if she’d really wanted to kill him, she could have easily done it while he’d been passed out in the car. The second was, the tiny beauty had to be Navajo. She knew much more about this world than he did. And, finally, his street instincts were screaming at him to pay attention to her warnings.

  “Fine,” he told her. “We’ll go. But I still insist on carrying the rifle. Deal?”

  She groaned and gave a halfhearted squirm, trying to break free. It only succeeded in making him suddenly aware of what was lying below him. A woman’s body. Maybe a little too thin but certainly rounded in all the right places. That wasn’t something he particularly wanted his own wounded body to be noticing at the moment.

  “If you kill me, you won’t make it out of the desert alive. You know that, right?” Her voice was getting breathy from the weight on her lungs.

  “Right.”

  “Okay, then. Deal.”

  He didn’t give her an opportunity to renege, but moved off her and bolted a few feet, grabbing the rifle on his way up. It wasn’t that he needed another weapon—his was still in place under his jacket—but he sure as hell didn’t want her to have the rifle again.

  Positive whatever she’d intended with the shot had nothing to do with his personal mission to Navajoland, Cisco figured he had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was curious to know what she’d been after.

  He also wanted to know why she didn’t seem a bit concerned about being apprehended by the law for her assault. Didn’t the Navajos have some kind of law against shooting people who were simply driving down the road? He would bet they did.

  But she was obviously a Navajo, and he was just as obviously not one. This was her territory. Her laws. Her fight with some hidden force. He could imagine the local cops would all be on her side. But he sure as hell would find out. Just as soon as they reached civilization.

  His curiosity grew stronger with every passing minute.

  Cisco motioned her to start out ahead. “You lead. But stay close. It’s not yet light out here, and I wouldn’t want to shoot you in some important body part, like your head, when I couldn’t see where I was aiming.”

  Before this day was over, he swore the woman would answer to him for her actions.

  They walked silently back along the way he’d driven earlier. When they came to a bend in the road, she led him toward some scraggly juniper bushes. “Stay here a second while I check out the Jeep,” she told him as they stopped behind a boulder.

  “Why? What are you looking for?”

  “Only being careful.” Sunnie crept off into the gray light of dawn like an expert tracker.

  Cisco’s curiosity was expanding by the second as he kept his eye on her movements. What the hell was she so afraid of?

  In five minutes she was back. “It’s okay. Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “No,” he lied. “You drive. But no sudden moves I don’t understand.” He was glad for the chance to get off his feet again and maybe calm his queasy stomach.

  Their ride to the “nearby” clinic turned into a forty-five-minute ordeal. Vast empty areas of reddish sand and rock sped by in the growing daylight, but he never saw another living soul. The wind rushing through the open vehicle was too noisy for conversation. And the January cold drove right through his clothes, chilling him to the bone.

  Luckily the frigid temperatures were also numbing the pain in his head.

  They finally arrived at a one-story building with a large parking lot that held only a handful of cars at this early hour. As they turned into the lot he carefully read the sign declaring the place was Raven Wash Medical Clinic. It looked much like most urgent-care facilities and small clinics he’d ever seen.

  Sunnie parked in the back lot.

  “Two things,” he said as she turned off the engine. “Before we go inside, we’re going to stow the rifle in that locker compartment behind the seats there. And then I’m going to call 911 and report the shooting and the accident while you sit quietly and wait. Any comments?”

  She shook her head and folded her arms over her chest silently. But her expression said more than he wanted to hear. With the rising sun, he could clearly see her face. The nose was straight, the mouth firm and full. One smudge of dirt from their wrestling match creased her cheek right above a lopsided dimple.

  And the eyes…He couldn’t quite get a read on their color. Some shade of brown. But he could see that right this minute they were full of anger.

  He placed the rifle in the open locker behind the seats. Then he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.

  “Please state the nature of your emergency,” the man who answered said.

  “To whom am I speaking?” Cisco asked.

  “This is the Navajo Nation Tribal Police emergency services. Do you have an emergency?”

  “I’m calling to report a shooting and a car accident.”


  “State your name, and is anyone injured?”

  Hmm. Maybe calling 911 had been the wrong thing to do. “The name’s Cisco Santiago, and I’m injured. I was shot in the head.”

  “We’ll send an ambulance. Where are you?”

  “Uh, Raven Wash Medical Clinic. But…”

  “You’re at the clinic now?

  “Yeah, but…”

  “If no one else is injured, have Dr. Wauneka report the shooting to us. We’ll send someone over to take your statement.”

  “But wait. What about the shooter? I have her with…” The line had gone dead.

  He turned to Sunnie. “Guess that says a lot. Let’s go inside.”

  She led the way through a side door that opened by way of a combination lock. A combination she conveniently knew.

  As they entered the building, Cisco noticed a few more signs of life and was glad for a little warmth. From somewhere unseen came a low bass voice, mumbling in a tone that sounded a lot like chanting. Smells of coffee, eggs and bacon wafted along the corridors and competed with the normal smells associated with medical offices.

  Sunnie ushered him into an tiny examining room. “Wait here. I’ll let the doctor know we’ve arrived.”

  He leaned against the examining table and tried to clear his head. Would Sunnie be back or would she disappear? He knew he should be on guard, but his mind swirled with more intimate questions about the tiny, sad-eyed woman called Sunnie. A woman who knew how to throw a grown man and who could make a terrific shot with a sniper’s rifle.

  Many miles away from the medical clinic, in a mansion perched high on a cliff overlooking the San Juan River, the man who was known as the Navajo Wolf was fighting his own medical problems. All his power and money could not stop the effects of a thousand years of legend and magic.

  Fighting an hour-by-hour battle to breathe and also to locate the parchments that could save his life, the Wolf had recently taken to staying hidden away in his house. The numbers in his army were slowly dwindling, leaving him vulnerable. But he still had many left who were loyal.

  Oh, he knew that the best and the brightest of them were planning a power takeover. He was not stupid, even though the Skinwalker sickness had taken its toll on his mind. But so far he still had control. And every moment counted.

  He summoned the man who could take the form of the Burrowing Owl. His closest advisor, the Owl was leading the Skinwalker’s search for the parchments.

  “What have you uncovered, Owl?” the Wolf asked with a wheeze. Breathing had become more than uncomfortable, talking next to impossible.

  “I’m certain today we will reach the proper underwater cave,” the Owl whispered. “We’re mere minutes away from having the parchments in our hands. Then it will be a minor matter of deciphering the ancient writings. We are very close.”

  “You had better be,” the Wolf said with a grimace.

  “There is another matter that needs to be taken care of,” the Owl said hesitantly. “You know I don’t like diverting even one man from the search, but this seems…important to follow up.”

  “What is it?” Irritation crawled up the Wolf’s spine, but he tried to stay calm and draw out each breath. It did him no good to fly into a rage. That would only speed up his body’s deterioration.

  “One of your young recruits, in his human form, was sent to gather intelligence off Navajoland.”

  “Yes, yes. I remember agreeing to that order. What has he found?”

  “There was a man, a stranger, asking questions at a bar in Farmington last night.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Questions about deaths on the reservation. He seemed particularly interested in long-ago murders.”

  “How long-ago?” The Wolf tried to remain calm so he could focus. He knew there was some reason he was nervous about such questions. But through the fog in his mind, he couldn’t reach out and grasp the memories.

  “Around fifteen years ago. The time when you were gathering your new army.”

  “Where is this stranger? Did our man bring him?”

  “That’s the real problem,” the Owl admitted. “The stranger agreed to follow our man. If we’d gotten him here, we would already have his mind in our control and have our answers, but…”

  “What happened?”

  “This stranger is tough and bright. Carries concealed weapons and seems afraid of no one. He insisted on following our man in his own car.

  “As the two vehicles rounded the bend at Hawk’s Way Bluff,” the Owl continued, “the car had an accident and ran off the road. By the time our man realized he wasn’t being followed anymore and went back, the stranger disappeared.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this. What did our man find at the car?”

  The Owl shrugged. “A second set of tracks were made by a smaller man, much shorter than five foot six. There was a small scuffle. Maybe the second man got the drop on the stranger and forced him away at gunpoint. There was a bullet hole in the side window and blood all over the front seats.”

  “I know of no small-size men in the Brotherhood,” the Wolf said through whistling breath. “Yet I can’t help but think they are somehow involved.”

  “We retrieved the stranger’s laptop from his disabled sedan,” the Owl added as an afterthought. “I was sure we’d have the answers we seek from that machine by now, but apparently this stranger encodes his notes. We will have to break the code first.”

  A rage took hold of the Wolf. It blinded him with fury and left him shaking. “The parchments come first,” he growled.

  The Wolf grabbed the Owl around the neck and squeezed until the man’s eyes bugged out. “For all we know, this shooting was a Brotherhood diversion. They must realize we are closer to getting the answers than they are.

  “Spend no time away from working on the parchments to decode the stranger’s notes. I must have my answers first.”

  Sunnie flipped her cell phone closed and released her first easy breath since taking that mistaken shot in the dark. She leaned against the wall in the empty clinic hallway and wondered how long Cisco would be in Radiology. He’d been gone quite a while already.

  Earlier, after Cisco had been taken from the examining room wearing nothing but a hospital gown, Sunnie had snuck into his jeans and found a wallet. She’d located his California driver’s license and an ID issued by the federal U.S. Marshal’s office to carry concealed weapons. That small bit of information made her more curious than ever about the dangerous, dark-eyed stranger. She’d thought about searching for a gun but hadn’t had the time. It didn’t matter. She really didn’t care if he carried a weapon or not. Not as long as she had the rifle.

  “What the hell were you thinking, April Henry?” Her old friend and distant clan cousin Dr. Ben Wauneka suddenly appeared behind her and pulled her out of the hallway and into a vacant room.

  She didn’t answer him, but stared up into his soft, concerned eyes with a silent challenge.

  “Sorry,” Ben said contritely. “I meant to call you Sunnie. The name change is hard for those of us who’ve known you for years.

  “But it doesn’t change the intent of the question,” he continued with a scowl. “When you agreed to go into hiding, you swore you would not endanger yourself or anyone else by doing anything crazy.”

  “I’ve kept to myself, did what I promised. Except for that one time…” Sunnie couldn’t bring herself to speak of the horrible tragedy that had brought her out of hiding and changed her entire life for the second time six months ago.

  Ben’s eyes clouded over at her near mention of the tragic events of six months ago. “That was our mistake—the Brotherhood’s. We took too much for granted. But I’m talking about now, and you know it.

  “Whatever possessed you to go out into the desert in the middle of the night with a rifle?” His eyes cleared of sadness and then filled again with questions and betrayal. “Where the hell did you even get a rifle, anyway? And for you to shoot at a perfect
stranger—what has come over you? Such things are out of line with the teachings of the Navajo Way

  . They’re…”

  She took a step away and interrupted him. “Yeah, I know. Ideas like that are aligned with Navajo witches. With the Skinwalker Way

  .”

  Turning her back on him, Sunnie fisted her hands and inhaled deeply before she mistakenly made a few remarks that would cause the both of them nothing but more regret.

  “I don’t care,” she finally said over her shoulder. “I almost had him, the Navajo Wolf. And I will yet. Getting that bastard is all I live for now. When he’s gone—out of the picture for good—I don’t care what becomes of me.”

  “Oh, my young friend.” Ben put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. “You know getting rid of the Wolf is the job of the Brotherhood. What good would it be for the People to defeat the evil ones at the cost of our own spirits? The Brotherhood works within Navajo tradition in order to maintain balance and harmony.”

  She frowned and felt her lips narrow in disapproval.

  “You think we work too slow?” he asked with a small, sad smile. “An assassination won’t end the terror. There are three Skinwalker lieutenants who are ready to take over for the Wolf. The ending of his life will not win the final battle with the Skinwalkers. But I promise the Brotherhood is close to having the answers. Trust in us. Don’t do something like this to yourself.”

  The sorrow in Ben’s eyes twisted in her chest. “Let me help you once more,” he added in a whisper. “I’ll call my wife. You know Tory will take you in without a second’s hesitation. You are very important to her…to all of us.”

  Ben’s wife was also a physician and had once been Sunnie’s coworker and good friend. A few years ago Tory had come here as a brand-new Anglo medical doctor, sent to the rez to work off her school loans. The Skinwalker war had changed her life as it had changed Sunnie’s. As it had changed everything.

  “Tory is busy,” Sunnie argued. “She’s got her hands full being the New Plant Tender, finding the plants and herbs for you medicine men and also acting as a part-time doctor when needed. You can’t expect her to drop everything to babysit me while I go through another of your cures.