by Jenna Kernan
There was no answer.
“Juris?”
Juris answered in Apache.
“Here. I’m out.”
Gabe used Apache, too. “Kino’s weapon?”
“Can’t get to it.”
The gunmen only had to kill Gabe and they could take off with no obstacle between them and the main road. From there they could disappear into the Salt River rez or hole up here on Black Mountain, maybe hightail it all the way to the border.
Shots continued, but they were coming closer. Gabe sucked in a breath and peered around the fender. He had a shot and he took it, dropping one of the final three men. Two targets remaining, he thought and aimed. Then he fired at the one behind the fallen man. His pistol clicked. Gabe reached for his clip, but he knew he wouldn’t be in time.
His next thought was that he had failed Selena. Not his duty, not his tribe—Selena, because she was the only one who mattered.
One of the two men stepped out from behind the front fender with a smirk on his face. A rifle shot cracked and the man dropped to his knees clutching his chest. His eyes rolled back and he toppled to the ground. A glance back showed Gabe that Frasco had recovered the rifle and used it.
Gabe faced the final man who aimed his automatic weapon as Gabe’s clip clicked home too late. Sixteen rounds and not one was going to save him.
A small figure in a familiar worn brown coat stepped behind the shooter. Selena lifted the tire iron and brought it down so hard on the gunman’s head that Gabe winced at the crunching sound. The cartel gunman squeezed off the trigger as he fell, but his eyes were no longer focused and his aim had drifted. The bullets went wide and the man sprawled facedown on the icy road.
Gabe rushed to Selena, scooping her up in his arms.
“How?” he said.
She was crying so hard that he didn’t recognized the sound at first, but it grew louder. The womp, womp, womp of helicopter blades. They turned to see the chopper heading straight for them.
Gabe released Selena.
“Kino!” He ran over the frozen ground to find Randall cradling Gabe’s brother’s head in his lap. Juris’s hand was clamped across Kino’s neck, but the blood spurting from between his fingers scared Gabe to death.
“Nicked the artery in his neck.”
Selena knelt beside Kino and added her hand to Randall’s.
“Dryer?” asked Gabe.
Juris motioned with his head. Gabe saw Dryer lying on his back, staring wide-eyed at the sky. His necktie was flung over his shoulder. There was a hole the size of a cherry stone in the shoulder of his jacket.
“Went through his arm and under his armpit. I checked,” said Juris. “Bullet’s in his chest somewhere. Dead when I reached him.”
Gabe checked Dryer’s neck and confirmed what Juris had said. Dryer had no pulse.
Frasco stood unsteadily on one leg in an open spot on the road, waving one hand at the chopper, the rifle still gripped in the other. The bird touched down, and Frasco limped away in the opposite direction.
The pilot remained in place, but two familiar FBI agents dropped to the ground—his uncle Luke Forrest and his partner, field agent Cassidy Walker.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gabe sent his brother and Frasco Dosela by chopper to the hospital in Phoenix escorted by Detective Randall Juris. Then he called Clyne, telling him that Kino had been shot and instructing him to find Kino’s wife and drive her and their grandmother to the hospital.
“Is he going to be all right?” asked Clyne.
“I don’t know.”
Clyne told him he’d call later and then he was gone.
Gabe’s men had arrived, followed by men from DOJ. Together they began the descent to the tractor trailer. The EMTs pulled in and checked Selena. She was bruised in the shoulders and ribs but was otherwise miraculously uninjured. Still, he felt the need to keep her close. The final gunman, Ronnie Hare, was still unaccounted for.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked Selena.
She nodded but clung to his arm. He wished he could gather her up, but the EMTs were checking the gunmen, his men were diverting traffic and there was so much that needed to be done. He didn’t want to do any of it. He just wanted to take Selena away.
“Won’t you want to question me?”
“Eventually.” He would have to because it was his job, but right now he saw the pure exhaustion on her face.
“You ditched that truck on purpose,” he said, not sure if he should be angry or grateful. Mostly he was amazed.
“What if I did?”
Why was he talking to her when he wanted to be kissing her and holding her and telling her how stupid he had been to ever take back that ring? He glanced at his uncle and his uncle’s supervisor and recalled that he had not yet told Clyne who she was.
It didn’t matter. Not now. He turned back to Selena.
“You could have been killed.” He managed to sound stern.
“I think you have that backwards.”
She was right. At the time when she had turned that trailer, the Mexicans were taking his patrol car apart with their semiautomatic weapons.
“You saved my life,” he said.
She smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“I don’t want you to do that again.” That came out wrong.
She wrinkled her brow.
“Take a risk like that, I mean.”
“Because you’re indebted to me? You don’t have to worry, Chief. It can be our little secret.”
That was what he’d made her feel, he realized, as if she were nothing, when the truth was she was everything. Better than he was in every way. She had understood the power of love all along. She hadn’t tried to control it or ignore it. Instead, she had accepted it and him with open arms. And when trouble had found her family and his feet went as cold as the snow beneath them, she had still given him what she thought he wanted—his freedom. And, fool that he was, he’d taken it and lost the best thing that ever happened to him.
“I’m an idiot,” he said.
Cassidy Walker joined them at the spot where the guardrail was broken and now stood twisted back upon itself like ribbon candy.
“Well, we found the snowmobile hidden in the empty cave back at the lake. The shooters all dead.” She glanced at Selena as if looking at a bug. “Is she hurt?”
“Bruised,” said Gabe.
“We’ll want a statement from her and from you.” She glanced at Selena clinging to his arm. Gabe knew that in the past he would have stepped away. This time, he pressed Selena’s hand closer to his side. She released him and started to withdraw, but he captured her arm and pulled her back.
“Not right now,” he said to Walker.
“Sooner is better,” she said, pressing.
Did Cassidy Walker know of his relationship to Selena? He thought that very likely. This time, instead of embarrassment, he felt a strong surging of protective instinct toward Selena. She’d defended him with her life and he’d be damned if he’d turn her over to the Feds.
“She’ll be giving her statement to me.”
“You don’t see a conflict of interest there?” Walker asked.
Gabe didn’t answer. Of course he was conflicted. And why in the wild world had he ever thought he wouldn’t be conflicted around Selena? He’d been delusional for years. Even back then he had known that, if forced to choose between his duty and Selena, he’d pick Selena. But now that seemed exactly as it should be.
Walker moved on, peering over the embankment. The tops of several trees had been shorn off by the trailer’s descent.
She stood on the road beside his uncle. He figured he and his uncle would be having a heart-to-heart soon. Right now he wanted to know if the final gunman had survived the fall.
It seemed she was planning on doing the questioning without his permission. She had guts, this woman. Normally he’d admire that.
“My father’s parole officer,” said Selena.
Cassidy Walker snorted in disbelief. “What?”
“Ronnie Hare,” said his uncle Luke. “He’s Salt River Apache.”
“Really?” Cassidy thought a moment, looking down over the cliff. “An Apache parole officer. Perfect cover for moving messages between the cartel and gangs. He was your father’s contact?”
Selena glanced from Gabe back to this aggressive woman.
“Contact? All I know is that this guy shows up at my door with a gun and threatens to shoot my mother. So I drove.” Selena pointed down the mountain. “That.”
Gabe looked at the truck. He knew it had been Selena’s pride and joy, and even though both the truck and trailer had been purchased used, it was the most amount of money she’d ever spent and likely still owed on the loans.
Walker took out a pad and started scribbling notes.
“What time was that?” she asked.
Gabe held up his hand. “That’s enough now. Selena’s going to the local hospital. This can wait until tomorrow.”
Walker extended a card to Selena. “Call me if you feel up to talking.”
Gabe picked up his radio and asked for one of the EMTs to take Selena to Black Mountain Hospital. Below them the barrels lay scattered over the snow. Some had rolled all the way to the bottom of the slope. Others had cracked open and the contents had bled into the snow.
Gabe’s men had reached the cab of the truck.
“Ask them what they see,” said Walker.
Gabe didn’t. Instead he faced off, squaring his shoulders.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
She made a face. “Chief of Tribal Police.”
“No. I mean, do you know who I am to your daughter?”
Gabe saw his uncle looking uncharacteristically nervous.
Walker went stiff and her blue eyes turned frosty.
“I’m here to do my job, Chief. Not to discuss my personal life.”
“I see. And your job involves telling me how to do mine and sending a DOJ agent onto my reservation to spy on us while keeping your partner in the dark. I have to say, Mizz Walker, you are not making us Indians feel any more comfortable about trusting the federal government.”
“This has been going on under your nose. Those men,” she indicated the bodies strewn across the road. “They are using this reservation like a child uses home base in a game of tag. You can’t stop them.”
“Perhaps not. But I can stop you.”
“This is a federal case,” she said.
“On Indian lands.”
“You’re going to need our help.”
“If I do, I’ll ask.”
“We are not leaving until that precursor is all accounted for.”
Gabe waited a moment. “I’ll ask my tribal council what they think about that.”
His radio came on and Officer Cienega’s voice emerged loud and clear.
“Cab is empty. There’s a blood trail.”
“Where’s Hare?” asked Walker.
Gabe smiled. “Looks like that rabbit has gone for a run.”
With a forty-minute head start, Gabe figured, on foot in deep snow.
“Cut for sign,” he said, ordering his men to find Ronnie Hare’s trail.
“A helicopter might come in handy in a search like that,” said Walker.
Selena started shivering. He didn’t know if it was from the cold or from the stress. But it didn’t matter. He needed to get her out of here.
“I have to call my mother,” she said as he walked her back down the road. She rubbed at her face and then spoke through the fingers that covered her mouth. “I still owe nine thousand dollars on that tractor trailer and rig.”
He took hold of Selena as they walked past the dead men. She shuddered and buried her face in his coat.
“You’re going to the hospital,” he said to her.
This time she didn’t argue.
“Who is that woman?”
He told her. She straightened up, moving away to look up at him.
“She’s Jovanna’s mom?”
Gabe felt his stomach hitch. “My mother was her mom. That’s the woman who illegally adopted her.”
“But it wasn’t illegal. They thought Jovanna’s only relative was killed.”
“Well, they didn’t do a very good job looking for her kin, now did they?” What was he doing, arguing with her? He looked at her sad expression and pale complexion and felt terrible. “I’m sorry. I just think none of this should ever have happened.”
“Still...” She stopped walking and glanced at the imposing little blonde woman at the cliff’s edge.
“What?”
“That woman took your sister out of foster care, gave her a home. It might not be the home you would have liked, but she adopted her and she might be the only mother that your sister remembers. She’s raised her for nine years.”
Gabe hadn’t thought of that. He’d been so busy trying to find his sister, it never occurred to him that his sister might not want to be found. She might be happy and might even love that bristly porcupine of a woman. The notion made him cross.
“What kind of a mother works as a field agent? Do you know how dangerous that job is? A mother has responsibilities. Plus her husband is dead, so it’s just her. If anything happens to her, Jovanna will be right back in foster care. She ought to consider that before she goes charging around with a gun on her hip.”
Selena studied Walker. “That’s sad. What happened to her husband?”
Gabe was about to say he didn’t know and didn’t care. But instead he said, “I only know he was in the armed forces.”
“Oh. Just like your uncle and your older brother.”
“Just like that.” Only they had both come home alive.
Andre Chee found them. The brother of his fallen officer was there with several other volunteer fire and rescue workers and said he’d be driving Selena to the hospital.
“Can’t I just go home?” she asked.
“Hospital first. I wish I could come.”
Selena gave him a sweet smile. “Duty first,” she said.
He wanted to deny it. And for the first time in his life he was tempted to leave an active crime scene. Selena made him want to do that, but instead of feeling frightened by his love for her he felt both lucky and stupid. He should have trusted her to help him do the right thing.
But he was still the chief of police. Now, suddenly, that felt less like an honor and more like a burden. But if he wasn’t a police officer, what was he? He’d done this job since he was twenty-two years old. The only other thing he was good at was rodeo and he was too darned old for that.
He stood with her for a moment, feeling lost as his job began dragging him away from the woman he loved—again.
“Will you be all right?” he asked.
“Yes. If they let me, I might drive my mom down to Phoenix to see Dad.”
“Let Mia, Carla or Paula do the driving.”
She nodded.
He had so much he needed to tell her. So many mistakes he needed to make right. But all he could think to say was, “I’ll call you.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They had all parties accounted for except Ronnie Hare.
Cassidy Walker offered the Bureau’s tracking dogs, but Gabe declined. There wasn’t a dog on the planet that could track better than his men. They had found where Ronnie Hare had been thrown or had jumped clear of t
he rolling truck. He had not been more than twenty feet down on the embankment. He had been bleeding but managed to get to the road and wave down a man in a pickup. He’d stolen the truck at gunpoint. The stranded driver, unaware that nearly the entire police force was around the bend, had been found walking back down the mountain with his dog.
The Feds had taken action then, sending out alerts and positioning road blocks at all roads leaving the reservation and Salt River.
But Gabe knew Hare and he knew Apache. Ronnie was not leaving the reservation and the protection it afforded to its members. He’d be making tracks to Salt River but likely not on any of the roads. If he reached his home reservation, he would find someone to help keep him hidden deep in some burrow. Instead of road blocks, Gabe made a call to Jack Red Hawk, the chief down in Salt River, told him what was happening and included the information on the stolen truck.
“Think he’s still in that truck?” asked Red Hawk.
“Would you be?” asked Gabe.
“I’d lose that vehicle at the first opportunity.”
“You know him?”
“Not yet,” said Red Hawk, “but I’m looking forward to getting acquainted with him and all his kin. Small place, Salt River. Someone will know someone. Ashoog, Gabe,” he said, using the Apache word for thanks.
“Don’t mention it. You take care now.”
As the bodies were photographed and bagged, Gabe said an Apache prayer over Matthew Dryer. Then his body was zipped away and carted off to the fire rescue truck with the others. The man was a hero and Gabe hoped his spirit would know peace.
At dusk Gabe sent Juris and Franklin Salva to the Piñon Lake caves to see if the barrels had been stored there.
Gabe called Clyne at seven but he had no information except that Kino was in surgery and the family was on their way to Phoenix.
“You got time to give me an update?” asked Clyne.
“A quick one.” Gabe briefly told him what had transpired. “The gunmen were Mexican cartel. They were moving their product to Salt River. Selena was driving. She’d been taken captive by her father’s parole officer. Looks like he’s been delivering messages from the Mexicans to both Salt River and the Wolf Posse.”
