Native Born

by Jenna Kernan

  “This is Gerard.”

  She watched as his eyes rounded and his gaze flicked to her and then back to the photo. “He’s...an army captain.”

  She chuckled at how he’d avoided saying “black.” Then she accepted the photo. It still hurt to look at Gerard’s image, but the hurt was softer now, like a tug on her heart instead of a knife blade. She tucked away the photo.

  “Captain and a tank commander. And to answer your question, Gerard’s mother loved Amanda on sight. Diane moved out here to help me.”

  She had a grandmother, he realized. Two. His and Gerard’s.

  “When did you two break up?” asked Clyne.

  She scowled, refusing to answer that one. He waited and then tried again.

  “Why did you choose the name Amanda?”

  Back on less rocky ground, Cassidy gave him a reply.

  “She’s called Amanda because that was what she called herself when she arrived into the care of the BIA.”

  “She never could say it right. Avana. That’s what she called herself.”

  “Avana. Amanda,” said Cassidy.

  “What did she say to you that first meeting?”

  She had said that she didn’t want to speak of Amanda and here they were talking about her. She resisted but something in his gaze, something like pleading that he would never voice, made her relent.

  “She hugged Gerard’s leg and called him ‘Daddy.’ You should have seen him melt. Then she took his hand and my hand. I looked at Gerard and he nodded. We signed the papers that day.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No. We also turned down the three-month-old we came to see. We didn’t pick Amanda. She picked us.”

  He seemed about to say something when their meal arrived. Clyne handed back the photo.

  The waitress set Clyne’s food before him and slid hers over, letting Cassidy know that she was not happy to serve her.

  She thanked the waitress, who said nothing to her. Then Cassidy surveyed the offering. She’d stuck to the familiar, eggs, bacon, fried potatoes and white toast. She inhaled and glanced at Clyne’s meal. Before him sat a large bowl of a rich aromatic stew and something that looked like the fried dough from the Italian festival she and Amanda once attended in San Diego.

  “What’s that?”

  “Fry bread. Traditional Apache food. Try it.”

  “Is it sweet?” she asked, thinking of the powdered sugar that covered the Italian fried dough.

  Clyne made a face. “No. Sometimes we put chili or other foods on top, like this beef stew. It’s best hot.” He motioned for her to take some.

  She lifted her knife and fork preparing to cut away a bit as if it were an oversize pancake. He batted her hand away and took hold of the golden brown amorphous bread before tearing it into two pieces.

  “Like this.” He dipped it in his stew and took a bite. Then he dipped the smaller piece and offered it to her.

  She took it and their hands brushed. Cassidy felt the tingle of awareness dart up her arm and right to her center. Her eyes widened and her gaze flashed to his to see his jaw had gone rock hard. His brow sank over his beautiful eyes and the tingling awareness squeezed her heart.

  What the heck was this?

  Clyne pulled away, leaving Cassidy holding the bread in the air as if it were a telegram portending bad news. She lifted the fry dough to her mouth and took a small bite. He watched her chew and swallow. The veins in his forehead appeared. Her mouth went dry.

  “It’s very good.” Cassidy noticed the silence. She glanced about to see the room was also watching. Judging her?

  Clyne turned his attention to his meal.

  “I’m glad you enjoy it.”

  Cassidy focused on her meal as well, finishing in record time under the watchful stares of their audience.

  The check arrived and she made a grab for it. Clyne was quicker and her hand landed on his. She drew back so fast her chair rocked. It didn’t matter. The contact still made her insides twitch. This had happened once before, with Gerard, but it had developed slowly, over weeks. This was more visceral and much more immediate.

  Cassidy stared at Clyne Cosen.

  Oh, no. Please not this man.

  Chapter Seven

  Clyne left Cassidy at the tribal police offices across the street. For reasons he did not wish to examine, he walked her in to Gabe’s office. He told himself it was only to prove that he had done as he promised, kept a civil tone and shared a meal with Agent Cassidy Walker. He didn’t understand why Gabe thought this necessary. But it occurred to Clyne that instead of fighting Gabe on this, he should try to figure out what his brother, who had good reasons for his actions, was thinking.

  Unfortunately his uncle and Gabe’s second in command, Randall Juris, were both there. Detective Juris glanced at them through the glass windows that fronted his brother’s office. Juris looked from Clyne to Cassidy and his brows lifted. Juris had once been a Hollywood stuntman and extra in various movies that needed Native American actors. His big barrel chest, dark skin and classic features made him the perfect foil to the Texas Rangers, settlers and scouts he had failed to best on camera. The truth was he could have bested any of them.

  Cassidy paused outside the door to make use of the watercooler to assist in downing three brown tablets. She made a face and then shifted her shoulders. It was the first time that she’d given any indication that she’d taken a bullet yesterday. He knew how that felt, with and without a vest.

  “Is that because of yesterday?” asked Clyne.

  Cassidy shrugged and winced. “Just sore.”

  “Well, here she is!” The female voice came from behind them.

  Clyne recognized the familiar new arrival and groaned. His grandmother was bustling across the room toward his open door. Cassidy turned toward this smiling stranger, noted she was the target of his grandmother’s advance and wisely retreated two steps. She had time to crush the paper cup in her hand and drop it into the basket on the floor before his grandmother reached them.

  Glendora Clawson was sixty-nine but looked somewhere in her fifties. Her hair, which was mostly black, brushed her shoulders and she had a wide grin on her broad face. Her pink snow coat was open, revealing a plump body dressed in black slacks and a cardigan sweater with a silver dragonfly pin affixed to her powder-pink blouse.

  Cassidy backed into the wall of windows in her attempt to avoid his grandmother’s arms now wrapping her up like a mama bear. Clyne smiled in amusement as Cassidy Walker stiffened. Behind her the audience of Forrest, Juris and his brother watched the unfolding drama like fans in a skybox.

  Clyne met Gabe’s eye and thought his brother was smiling. Clyne had a sneaking suspicion that this was also his brother’s fault.

  Glendora stepped back, her dark brows lifted high on her forehead. Then she turned her attention to Clyne.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I had to hear from Gabe that Cassidy was here.” She said the name so casually as if she had the right to call Agent Walker by her first name, as if they were old acquaintances.

  “She is here on business,” said Clyne. None of them had told their grandmother that someone had shot at him yesterday. The woman had lost her husband and her only daughter. That seemed enough pain to them all.

  “Nonsense. You are both coming for supper tonight. I’m making a roast.”

  “We can’t,” said Clyne, but the sinking feeling already gripped him. He’d rather face a nest of rattlers than have this woman seated at his family table.

  “You will,” said Glendora, lifting a brow in his direction.

  Cassidy looked from one to the other. Cassidy shrugged and he nodded. Her face went grim for a moment but then she forced a smile and turned to his grandmother.

  “I’d be honored,” she said. />
  It was exactly what she should have said in this situation and Clyne knew it could not have been easy for her. His interest increased as he watched her with his grandmother.

  “Gabe and Selena will be there. Lea and Kino. Clay and Izzie.”

  And he and the FBI agent that wanted sole custody of his sister. Seemed like a date from hell to him. His only consolation was that it would be worse on Cassidy.

  He had to give Agent Walker some credit. She was cordial and warm to his grandmother. Her smile changed her entire demeanor and had him scowling. It was just not possible for him to find this fierce little warrior woman attractive. But he did. Damn it, he did.

  Gabe sauntered out and joined the conversation as Clyne wondered again how his neat world had started to spin so badly out of its orbit. Cassidy Walker’s arrival in Black Mountain was acting like the impact of a meteor to the surface of the earth. He couldn’t breathe past the billowing smoke his grandmother and Gabe were both blowing. He made his excuses and tried for a graceful exit, but his grandmother took a hold of him and extracted a promise that he drive Cassidy to their home.

  “She can find it,” said Clyne. “She has GPS.”

  “Which doesn’t work half the time out here. You know that. I want you to bring her.”

  Clyne surrendered and fixed a smile on his face that felt as tight as drying wax. “My pleasure, then, Grandmother.”

  She patted his cheek, making him feel about six years old and making him flush. He spun and retreated as his grandmother called out a time for him to pick up Agent Walker. He lifted a hand in acknowledgment and escaped to his offices, where he spent much of the afternoon distracted by the clock that ticked down the time until he had to pick up Walker.

  As the time approached to head for his home he grew more agitated. Here was another way Agent Walker would know them when he knew little about her. He didn’t want to know her or did he?

  He wanted his sister back and Cassidy Walker gone. But Gabe had said that to take a child from her mother was a terrible thing.

  Didn’t Gabe want his sister home?

  At the appointed time, he returned to the police station and Yepa, Gabe’s assistant, directed him to the conference room.

  “What do you think of her?” asked Yepa.

  “I don’t think of her.”

  That made her cock her head and give him a strange look followed by an annoying quirk of her mouth.

  Clyne reached the conference room and knocked. Someone called him in and he entered. There they sat, laptops open, files and folders strewn across the table. Juris sat beside Luke, who sat beside Cassidy. To Cassidy’s left sat Gabe and beyond him, Sergeant Salvo. Gabe peered over Cassidy’s shoulder at her laptop. Clyne narrowed his eyes at the position of Gabe’s chair. It seemed far too close to Cassidy. Clyne felt something inside himself growling. Gabe glanced up and his smile of greeting wilted to one of bewilderment. But he moved his chair away from Cassidy, who still stared at her screen.

  “You about ready?” asked Clyne.

  He noted the change in her body language the instant she heard his voice. Her expression tightened from relaxed to tense and her shoulders stiffened. She did not look at him but closed her laptop and collected her papers, tucking them into a briefcase. She rose and said her farewells. Luke told her he’d see her at Glendora’s.

  She followed him out, stopping at her car to relieve herself of her briefcase. She carried no purse, which didn’t really surprise him, though it was unusual for the women in his acquaintance.

  “I’ll follow you,” she said.

  That suited him fine.

  “Why did you agree to come?” he asked.

  She seemed as if she would not answer. “Curiosity. And my daughter asked me if I’ve met her brothers. She wants to meet you.” It was clear from her tight expression that she did not want this. But he knew that it was only a matter of time. There was no avoiding the inevitable. Jovanna was Indian and so she would be returned to her birth family and tribe.

  “And we want to meet her.”

  Cassidy said nothing to this. She hesitated beside her vehicle.

  “How did they get separated, your mother and your sister?”

  Clyne drew in a breath and braced to tell the tale as quickly as possible.

  “My sister was a very good dancer, jingle and fancy shawl.”

  She gave him a blank look.

  “Those are types of dances. At powwows?”

  She nodded half-heartedly.

  “There is money in it, if you win. Just like rodeo.” Which was how he and then Gabe had made money to help support the family.

  “There’s a big powwow up in South Dakota on the Sweetgrass reservation. She was bringing Jovanna to her first competition. They got hit head-on by a drunk driver. My mother was killed instantly and Jovanna survived. They were wearing their regalia and my mom’s ID was still at the campsite. She was listed as a Jane Doe. It took them a week to even tell us about the accident. By then she was already buried up in the Sweetgrass reservation cemetery.”

  “But why didn’t they ID Jovanna and send her back to you?”

  Clyne swiped a hand over his face.

  “Because the report said ‘no survivors.’ We were told she had died with our mom.”

  “But how?”

  “Penmanship. The state police officer wrote one survivor and it got transposed into no survivors on the report.”

  Cassidy thumped back against the side of her car as she absorbed this.

  “How did you figure it out?”

  “The cemetery records showed that they buried only one body. We were trying to place a stone lamb on Jovanna’s grave and discovered the mistake.”

  Cassidy swiped a tear from her cheek. Clyne’s throat felt tight.

  “We better go,” he said.

  She nodded and slipped into her dark government-issue sedan and started the engine. He trudged to his SUV and led the way. Cassidy followed him in her sedan with the tinted windows. She followed him to the door of his grandmother’s home, where she met the first member of their family, Buster, a rather old and partially deaf sheepdog who, at twelve, was the most senior one of them.

  The family hound was a mix of several breeds with the long snout of a collie and the mismatched blue and brown eyes of a husky. Buster’s legs and face were a buff color and his back showed the blanket common in some collies and shepherd breeds. His full, bushy tail wagged as he reached them.

  His walk was stiff but he still bowed a greeting to Cassidy, who offered her hand for Buster’s inspection. His white muzzle and clouding eyes revealed his age. Buster was gentle but protective, which was why he was surprised to see him lick Cassidy’s hand.

  She followed the shepherd mix to the living room, where his grandmother made introductions to his brothers and their wives and Gabe’s fiancé. Uncle Luke arrived for supper. He was wise enough to know that Glendora’s cooking was not to be missed. Finally, Cassidy followed him to the table, where they posed for a photo, taken by Luke, and then all sat.

  He didn’t want her here. So why did he keep looking at her?

  His grandmother’s table was round so there was no head of the table. But she had placed Cassidy next to him. Better, he thought, for he could keep an eye on her.

  In deference to their guest, the family spoke in English. Only the prayer of thanks was offered in Apache. The meal smelled delicious, but the scent of Cassidy kept intruding. She smelled of summer flowers and baby powder and he wanted to tuck her under his arm and inhale.

  Cassidy listened as Kino and Clay spoke of their time with the Shadow Wolves on the Arizona border. Gabe relayed tales of when he and Clyne rode the rodeo circuit together. Finally Glendora steered the conversation to Cassidy. She started with Luke, asking how they had met and what it wa
s like working together. Luke’s comments were far too glowing for Clyne’s taste.

  Clyne focused on his meal but his heart wasn’t in it. Cassidy’s presence was ruining his appetite.

  His grandmother left the table to retrieve the dessert, two fresh-made pecan pies. Kino’s wife, Lea, rose heavily to her feet to help serve. Her hand went occasionally to her round belly, caressing the place where her first child grew. Only one more month and Clyne would be an uncle.

  Once all the plates were full, Glendora resumed her seat and turned her attention to Cassidy.

  “Cassidy, do you have any family out here?” asked Glendora.

  Clyne did his best to pretend he wasn’t listening.

  Cassidy swallowed her mouthful of pie and returned her fork to her plate, correctly judging that the interrogation had finally reached her. “I’m an only child, but both my parents are gone.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. How many brothers and sisters have you, Cassidy?” asked Glendora.

  “None.”

  Glendora blinked as she absorbed this. Clyne knew that his grandmother wanted more children but also had had only one, his mother.

  “I see,” said his grandmother. “Where’s home?”

  “I’m an army brat. Moved around a lot. New England, DC, then up in Alaska for a little while. I also lived in Germany.”

  “Heavens. A world traveler.”

  Rootless, thought Clyne. With no home and no people. Only herself and her stolen daughter.

  “How did you choose the FBI?” asked Gabe.

  Now his brothers were getting into the action. Clyne glanced at his watch, wishing the evening away.

  “I enlisted in October of 2001,” she said.

  Clyne’s head jerked up because that was when he had joined the US Marines. Back then he had felt the need to defend his country. Now he only wanted to defend his people and their land.

  “I met my husband in basic training. He was deployed before me.”

  Glendora blinked, her gaze shifting to Cassidy’s left hand but their guest wore no ring. Many FBI officers did not.