Native Born

by Jenna Kernan

  Cassidy squeezed the doorknob as her entire body leaped from drowsiness to tingling awareness. Clyne Cosen naked was a better stimulant than a double shot of espresso.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  Clyne startled and then whipped the towel off his shoulders and threw it around his hips.

  “I didn’t know. It wasn’t locked.” She forced her gaze to his face.

  He gripped the towel with one hand and pressed the other to his chest.

  “Didn’t hear you.” He blew out a breath. “Thought it was Jovanna for a minute.”

  She tore her gaze away and looked at the door, seeing there was no latch.

  “No lock?” she asked.

  “Shut is occupied in this house. I’m sorry no one told you.” Cassidy retreated so fast she stumbled into the hall. Clyne tucked in the edge of the towel, fixing it in place. He was naked except for a narrow band of terry cloth. She thought he looked even more appealing with his muscular frame damp from the shower and his wet hair clinging to his wide shoulders. He showered with that small beaded leather pouch, she realized. She had seen the sodden leather nestled just below the hollow of his throat. Something else she didn’t understand, she realized.

  “Do you carry that thing everywhere?” he asked, pointing his razor at her pistol.

  “Nearly.”

  “I’ll be out in a second.” He let his gaze sweep down her exposed legs and then returned his attention to her face. The look he gave her could have steamed the mirror.

  “We’re in trouble. Aren’t we?” she asked.

  Clyne didn’t look at her. “Cassidy, am I the guy you want to introduce to your family?”

  His tone was sarcastic. Her answer was not.

  “I don’t have any family except Amanda.”

  When he looked at her again, the heat was gone, replaced by a look of pity.

  “No one?” he asked.

  She swallowed but the lump continued to rise in her throat, so she shook her head in answer. Then she closed the door, removing the sight of his jaw dropping open. Of course he couldn’t imagine that, no clan or tribe or community. No huge loving family. No place that was home.

  She didn’t care. Home wasn’t a place anyway.

  Cassidy returned to her room and dressed, waiting until she heard Clyne leave the bathroom and the sound of his bedroom door clicking shut before she ventured out into the hall and into the bathroom.

  It still smelled like soap and aftershave.

  When she reached the kitchen a few minutes later it was to find Clyne dressed in polished, elaborately stitched cowboy boots, dark jeans and a deep blue button-up shirt cinched at the throat with a chunk of turquoise the size of a quail’s egg. The long wet hair was now contained in a neat braid secured with a bit of red cloth. His gray blazer sat on the back of the chair.

  He glanced up at her and motioned to the seat across from his. His presence so captivated her that she hardly noticed his grandmother, dressed in black knit pants, white blouse and pale blue cardigan sweater.

  “How you like your coffee?” asked Glendora, sliding a mug before her.

  “Black,” said Cassidy. “Thank you.”

  Glendora nodded. “Same as Gabe and Kino. I think all police drink coffee black. No fuss. Right?” She motioned to her eldest grandson. “This one drinks it with milk. Lots of milk. Good thing I still have some cows!” She turned back to the stove. “I’m making potatoes, scrambled eggs and bacon. But then I remembered that Jovanna doesn’t eat meat. So I don’t know what to do. I never cooked for a vegetarian before. I generally use the bacon grease for the potatoes and eggs.”

  Cassidy stood, tentatively approaching the stove. “I can make her breakfast. She likes fried eggs and toast.”

  They spent a few minutes discussing her daughter’s diet until Glendora felt more comfortable.

  “Last night, she asked me to call her Jovanna,” Cassidy announced.

  Clyne and Glendora stared.

  Glendora clasped her hands together. “She did!”

  “She said that was what her first mom named her.”

  “First mom?” Clyne said, his brow lifting as he replaced his coffee to the table. “That’s what she called her?”

  Glendora bustled as she spoke. “The lady from Child Welfare will be here soon. She’s taking Jovanna to school and she said she’d be back after school to check in, too.”

  Buster appeared and stood by the back door. Clyne let him out by opening the door without moving from his place. A moment later Amanda emerged in the doorway. Jovanna, Cassidy corrected herself.

  She had already dressed in the same clothing she wore yesterday. She accepted greetings from them all and sat between Clyne and Cassidy. Buster scratched at the door and spent breakfast eating the crusts of toast offered by Jovanna.

  Her daughter munched her toast and sipped her milk. Then she eyed Clyne and said.

  “Are your nightmares about breaking glass?”

  Clyne choked on his coffee, narrowly missing spilling on his pristine shirt.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  “Yes. I was scared, but Mommy came right in. I have them, too. I hear glass breaking and screaming and I wake up.”

  Clyne looked to Glendora. Had they both correctly guessed at the root of this particular dream? Clyne turned his attention back to his sister.

  “Mine are about the time I was a soldier.”

  “My father was a soldier, too. He was killed in action by an IED. That’s an...”

  “Improvised explosive device,” said Clyne.

  “That’s right!” said Jovanna.

  Clyne’s complexion had taken on a green tinge. He knew IEDs. That much was certain. Had he seen one detonate or stopped someone who carried one?

  “I wish he was still alive. You two could be friends.”

  Clyne and Cassidy exchanged a look. It was doubtful that Amanda’s father and Amanda’s brother would have ever been friends.

  “Right, Mama?”

  “I think they have a lot in common.”

  Amanda munched her toast, slipping another crust under the table, where it vanished. The sound of Buster chewing came an instant later.

  Child Welfare arrived on time and Cassidy kissed her daughter goodbye. She called Diane to check in and asked her to overnight a box of clothing to Clyne’s address and Diana said she had sent a box yesterday to her hotel address. They should arrive today. That was a relief because her daughter was not wearing the same thing to the reservation school tomorrow.

  Buster scratched at the door, and Clyne let him out and then called to Glendora.

  “I think Buster is following Jovanna to school.”

  Cassidy looked out the back door and saw Buster tearing down the drive and out onto the road.

  “I’ll go after him,” he said and turned to Cassidy. “Want to see the school?”

  She did. They left together in her car. On the way she asked if he would be willing to translate some of Manny Escalanti’s phone conversations and he agreed. They finished the lot before reaching the school.

  “What do you think?” she asked, regarding her careful notes.

  “Well, the brown rabbit might be his way of speaking about Ronnie Hare. He said he’d gone for a run and that he was a bad swimmer.”

  “Swimmer?”

  “Might mean he’s not willing to cross back over the Salt River to our reservation or that he’s not willing to leave the reservation to go to Mexico.”

  “He said his cousins are taking care of the rabbit,” said Cassidy. “Is that bringing him supplies or is that an order to kill him?”

  Clyne gave her a long look. “I don’t know. But if it were me, I’d want Ronnie Hare dead. He was the messenger between Escalanti and t
he Mexican drug lords.”

  “Who is bringing messages now? I wonder.”

  “Good question. Either way, you guys better bring him in quick.” Clyne pulled into the school lot. There sat Buster, before one of the string of windows on the side of the building. “There he is.”

  “Is that her classroom?”

  “If Buster says so. That dog lost her once. He’s not letting her go a second time.”

  Cassidy thought that Clyne and Buster had a lot in common.

  Clyne called Buster but he had to carry the dog to the car.

  Cassidy stood beside her vehicle staring at the window Buster had chosen. How many times had Amanda had to begin again? Be the new kid who started months after everyone else with a new teacher and a new set of requirements? Six? Seven? How many more times was she going to pick up her daughter and move her like, what had Clyne said, as if she was a canary?

  Six months. It wouldn’t be enough to set down roots. Not the kind that sank deep, those that took a lifetime to grow. And her daughter had only—

  “Six months,” she whispered.

  Clyne stood beside her, holding the giant dog as if he were a puppy instead of a senior citizen with a white muzzle.

  “Cassidy, it’s fair. Six months with us after nine years with you. Give your daughter a chance to know us.”

  “It’s too much. A child shouldn’t have to choose between two families.” She should never have to choose. She should be able to have her mother and her family. But how?

  “The courts make them do it every day. You know it. I know it.”

  Cassidy looked at him with big blue eyes, brimming with tears. It hurt to look at her, but he couldn’t look away. Clyne knew the face of grief, intimately.

  “What if she chooses you?” she whispered.

  And there it was, the reason she had fought so hard to keep her child.

  “She’s all I have, Clyne. You have brothers, their wives, your grandmother. Your whole tribe.” She looked away. “She’s all I have in the world.”

  “Gabe says you are a part of Jovanna, because you raised her. That’s why he wanted you here.”

  “And maybe for me to see the family I am keeping her from,” said Cassidy.

  Clyne gave her a lot of credit for admitting that.

  He opened the door and let Buster into the backseat. Then he opened her door and waited for her to take her seat. She handed over the keys.

  She didn’t recall him starting the sedan, but the speed bump leaving the school grounds snapped her back to the present. She looked at him and he glanced to her and back to the road. Behind them Buster panted and paced across the backseat.

  “Is it a good school?”

  “I went there. My brothers, too. Lots of our kids go on to college. Jovanna can take advanced classes at the high school later on.”

  “She won’t be here that long.”

  He said nothing to that.

  “Tell me about the Sunrise Ceremony,” she said.

  Clyne looked out at the road as he tried to think back to the last ceremony he attended instead of the woman beside him. Cassidy had moved past a distraction. She hadn’t even mentioned their exchange last night. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her, them. He was in trouble. Big trouble.

  “Clyne?”

  “Yes. I’m thinking.” About the fuchsia underthings worn by this field agent and former army evac pilot.

  He described the ceremony that took place each July Fourth. He did not tell her that it was the same day that his mother had died and his sister had been lost.

  Instead he described the chanting prayer and the drumming of the males of the family and all of the families coming from other reservations. The gifts given and received. The feasting and music and dance. The sacred objects and the bee pollen to be sprinkled on Jovanna by the medicine man to bring prosperity, fertility and health. But there were gaps. Parts of the ceremony were secret to outsiders and others secret from the Apache men. Even he did not know what Jovanna’s mentor would teach her during their time of seclusion, only that it involved the mysteries of womanhood.

  “She will dance through an entire night and greet the rising sun, still dancing.”

  Cassidy frowned. “Isn’t that too much to ask of a little girl?”

  “No. It’s a test of strength and she won’t be alone. Others will dance with her. Her mentor, grandmother and sisters. Then she’ll sleep a little and there will be feasting. Finally the Crown Dancers will dance when she becomes Changing Woman.”

  Her voice turned wistful. “I’d like to see Amanda dance.”

  He didn’t correct her or call his sister by her given name, but he thought that Cassidy should be there. That Gabe was right to want to include this woman in Jovanna’s inner circle. Did it make them less her family to have Cassidy as her mother?

  He wondered what his own mother would advise him? He knew that she would want what was best for Jovanna. But what was that?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Luke called that afternoon to announce a major break. Cassidy was reviewing the transcripts from Manny Escalanti with Chief Cosen when Luke reported that he had caught Ronald Hare at the food drop he’d been scouting in Salt River. They now had in custody a man who could testify against several of the big players on both reservations and confirm exactly which cartel they were dealing with. That was if he was willing to play ball. If not, he was going to prison.

  Cassidy knew that it would be up to the Salt River tribal council whether to try Hare in tribal court or turn him over to federal jurisdiction. Now the transcripts she was accumulating on Manny Escalanti took on new urgency. Luke had made certain that Hare’s arrest was public because he wanted to see the rats scatter.

  Late in the afternoon, she collected a large box from the hotel. Amanda’s clothes. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  Now she had an excuse to stop by the Cosens’ again. She glanced at her watch. Amanda would be home from school by now. Cassidy was dying to hear about her first day.

  Perhaps she could stay the night again. A perfect image of Clyne naked except for that white towel burst across her mind like the finale of a fireworks display. He was that breathtaking.

  Eventually she would have to move back to the hotel.

  Six months without Amanda. How would she do it? Of course she had to eventually move back to Phoenix and she wasn’t about to move to DC or New York with Amanda being a captive of the Apache tribe.

  Bear born of Eagle, he had said. What did that even mean? Clans, she supposed.

  Clyne stopped by to speak with Gabe but as he entered his brother’s office, his gaze moved immediately to her. She stood as he paused, noticing every last detail about him. His hair was in one braid today, wrapped in maroon cloth overlaid with a crisscrossing series of leather cords. She could barely manage a clip in her hair and he’d managed that.

  He lifted his gaze and it locked with hers. Her stomach twitched and her skin turned to gooseflesh in excitement. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t stopping this man from walking across the hall and over her threshold. Not for long. It was just a matter of time. He knew it and she knew it.

  This was bad.

  She dragged her gaze away and met Gabe’s speculative eyes. His gaze flicked to Clyne and then back to her. She could see the suspicion solidifying to certainty. He lifted his brows and her ears went hot.

  Clyne finally noticed his brother’s scrutiny. The corners of his mouth drooped.

  “What?” Clyne said.

  “Nothing,” said Gabe. Then he lifted his finger and aimed it at his older brother. “But I don’t want to hear one more word about Selena’s father and how marrying her will ruin my reputation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Clyne.

  B
ut his color rose with the denial.

  “No? Maybe I don’t need to sleep on my office couch tonight. Maybe my bedroom is free.”

  Cassidy looked to Clyne to see how he wanted to play this.

  “It’s not free,” he said.

  “But it might be?”

  Clyne didn’t deny it.

  “Oh, great!” said Gabe. “Just great.” He pointed at Cassidy and kept his eyes locked with Clyne’s. “This is the kind of thing I’d expect from Kino or Clay. But you? I don’t believe it. She’s a federal agent. She’s white. She’s fighting us for custody.”

  Clyne rounded on his brother. “You’re the one who said to bring her here. Include her in our family.”

  “I didn’t mean you should sleep with her!”

  “I haven’t,” he said.

  “Yet,” said Gabe.

  Heads in the squad room snapped up. She wished she could sink through the floor, and Clyne seemed to have turned to stone. His eyes shifted to Gabe and just his hand moved as he closed the door to his office.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Clyne asked.

  “What, you think it will stay a secret? Your assistant already told Yepa that you took her to lunch.”

  Cassidy had met Yepa, Gabe’s personal assistant.

  “You were seen with her at the casino hotel, leaving her room. Plus Yepa’s brother drives the school bus and saw her car in the drive a little too early this morning.”

  “Jovanna didn’t take the bus,” said Cassidy.

  Gabe shook his head as she missed the point. Black Mountain was a small community and they had already made the list of interesting doings here.

  What was that buzzing sound?

  Cassidy’s phone vibrated across Gabe’s desk. Conversation stopped. The phone buzzed again. She lunged and scooped up the device.

  Phone in hand, Cassidy checked the ID and saw it was her boss.