Reluctant Runaway

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  A weight lifted from Desi’s chest. She had gone off the deep end with the Anasazi ritual thing. “That makes me feel better. A little silly, but better. Walk me out to my car.”

  “You got it.”

  Desi left her business card with her cell number on it beside the phone in Jo’s kitchen. No sign of the upset mother. Maybe doing some therapeutic tile work.

  They went to Desi’s rental car, and Ortiz helped her load the luggage. Desi turned toward the other woman. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Ortiz slammed the trunk.

  “Not about the suitcases. Thanks for getting Max off the hook with the city and tribal police forces.”

  Ortiz shrugged. “They didn’t have as much of the picture as we did. As soon as our own experts confirmed your company’s findings, we knew Max wasn’t involved. Besides, if three law enforcement agencies couldn’t dig up a motive for her, there wasn’t one.” The agent grinned.

  Desi dug her keys out of her purse. “Max couldn’t steal if her life depended on it. Do you know she once drove an hour one way to pay for a sucker her toddler stuck in her purse? I’m the thief.” She jabbed a thumb at herself. “Remember that.”

  Ortiz saluted. “Well meet tomorrow after I talk to Lucano.” She headed toward her car.

  Desi got in the rental. Even if her cannibalism theory was out the window, there was still plenty to look into. Sanctuary for one. She backed out of Jo’s driveway then put on the brakes as a realization hit her. She sat and stared into the dark. If the FBI hadn’t heard about the Holy City, what else didn’t they know about Inner Witness?

  She shook herself mentally. Not going there right now. She needed sleep. Gas, too. The gauge read under the quarter mark. She drove to the station a few blocks away.

  While the tank filled, she took out the brochure Jo gave her. Sure enough. The meat from sheep in different stages of maturity, paired with certain types of wine, was touted as a “point of faith contact” for receiving healing from various ailments. Unbred ewe for things like skin ailments and age-related problems. Ewe with first lamb at side for fertility. Mature buck for male problems. And the all-purpose cure-all—newborn.

  Brent’s words about Pete Cheama slithered through her mind. He claims the spirits have told him that Adam is the focus of battle in the unseen realm …

  She crumpled the brochure. No! Suspicions about what might have happened to Karen were ugly enough, but to think anyone would go after a baby for such a purpose—Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it.

  Ridiculous. She was overtired, overwrought, and making too much of a gruesome legend. But thank heaven Max had taken Adam out of town, because even Mr. Just-the-Facts Lucano believed in spiritual forces unleashed by bad choices. Karen had made plenty of those, especially by getting involved with Inner Witness Ministries.

  The pump clicked off, and Desi jumped. Hugging herself, she went in and picked up a bottle of water. Her hand trembled as she handed the attendant her money

  Could prospects get any worse for Karen? For all the poor folks duped by a faux-Christian ministry? Who could calculate the outcry against genuine ministries who’d be lumped in with the false when secrets were exposed?

  Desi climbed into her car and closed her eyes. She had to be wrong about the reason those artifacts were stolen, because being right was an alternative too awful to imagine.

  She started the car and pulled out. An odd thump sounded behind her, and she checked the rearview mirror. Her throat closed around a scream, and she lost her grip on the steering wheel.

  From the rear seat, a hideous kachina mask stared at her, with slitted eyes dark and liquid.

  Twelve

  Desi’s car swerved into the wrong lane of traffic. The driver of an oncoming vehicle laid on the horn. Breathing in gasps, she jerked back onto the proper side of the road.

  “Take it easy.” The deep voice slurred from the backseat. “You’ll get us in an accident … don’t need another one.”

  “Pete?” Desi’s voice came out a thin squeak. “Pete Cheama?” She applied the brakes and drifted toward the parking lane, her heart performing somersaults.

  “Keep driving, Ms. Jacobs.”

  Something hard poked the back of Desi’s neck. She gasped and returned to cruising speed. “What do you want?”

  “Take the next right. I’ll tell you … when to turn again.”

  “You’re not high, are you?”

  “No more meth. The old ways of my people saved me, but the world of the white man does not want to let me go.”

  “This isn’t the time for riddles, Cheama. Your daughter is mixed up in something horrible.”

  “This I know.”

  “You know?” Desi locked gazes with the person staring back at her in the rearview mirror. Streetlights flashed over his face. Not a kachina mask, but bruises and swelling around the eyes and jaw. “Is Karen alive?”

  A car honked.

  The hard object jabbed Desi’s neck. “Eyes on the road!”

  “Take it easy. I’m not used to strange men popping up in my backseat.” Miss Cool I’m not with all these cracks in my voice.

  “I don’t know if Karen is alive.” Cheama’s voice was flat, anything but hopeful. “Looking for her put bad people on my trail. I found out things about their business.”

  “Your accident wasn’t an accident?”

  “I should be dead.”

  “What happened? Who—?”

  “A semi forced me off the road.”

  Didn’t a semi driver shoot Ben Erickson? Desi swallowed. “A Gordon Corp truck?”

  “Maybe. No logo on the door.”

  “Ham Gordon needs to be stopped. Don’t you want to help?”

  The man snickered. “Gordon is a nutcase. He wants certain things, but doesn’t want to know how it happens. See no evil. Hear no evil.”

  “So someone else is pulling the strings?” Sparks danced up her spine. “The Boston FBI is chasing a bootlegging ring with connections here in New Mexico. Your daughter’s biker ex-boyfriend shows fresh interest in her before she disappears. Artifacts are stolen from a museum. A cult is operating out of this area. How does all of this tie together?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you’re connecting dots … that don’t belong together. Or maybe a few are missing.”

  “What do you know, Cheama?” The hairs on her neck prickled. “You need to turn yourself in. Agent Ortiz’ll get you protection and medical care. I can take you—” The hard object rapped the side of her head. “Ouch!”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but be silent.”

  Sweat popped out on Desi’s skin. Be silent. Be still—the words of the terrorist Abu al Khayr when her head throbbed from his blows. She couldn’t do this again!

  She floored the accelerator, and her unwanted passenger yelped and flopped backward. Jamming her foot on the brake, she hung on while tires screeched, and the vehicle did a 180. Cars darted around them, horns blaring. Desi’s vehicle came to a rocking halt straddling the centerline. She fumbled for the door latch and her seat belt, fingers thick and clumsy.

  A hand closed around her throat and yanked backward. Her head hit the backrest. She sucked for air, but got nothing. Black spots danced before her eyes. She clawed at the hand.

  “Stop!” Hot breath blasted into her ear. “You’ll be killed.”

  Desi froze, and the grip on her neck eased. She wheezed in a thread of oxygen.

  “Drive me … where I want to go, and I’ll talk to you … not federal agents. Agreed?”

  Desi managed the ghost of a nod. The hand left her throat, and she grabbed for air.

  Cheama muttered something sharp in another language. “Get going before the cops are on us.”

  Insides quivering, Desi put the car in gear and swung the vehicle around. She eyed her cell phone in the dash holder. If she could get her mitts on it for a second, she could punch in Tony’s autodial, and when she didn’t respond to his “hello,” he’d know she was in trouble
. For the FBI, zeroing in on the phone’s GPS chip would be a piece of cake. Great plan—too bad there was no way to act on it.

  Her passenger, his breathing labored, kept his weapon to the back of her head.

  She glanced in the rearview. “You need to be in a hospital.”

  “Turn west at the stoplight, and stay on that highway out of town.”

  Desi pressed her lips together and did as she was told. For miles, the vehicle held no sound but that of spinning tires on blacktop and the rasp of pain-filled breathing. Albuquerque dwindled and the desert grew. Within a few turns, they were on a little-used side road. Desi’s heart thudded. Cheama was taking her away from civilization out into emptiness, where he could do anything to her. She looked at the phone again.

  “Give it to me.” The weapon dug into her skin.

  “What?”

  “The cell. Hand it over.”

  Desi snatched the phone and tossed it over her shoulder. Her captor jerked, and an object thunked to the seat beside her. She looked down to see a foot long piece of wood. Some gun!

  “You’re hijacking me with a stick?” She checked her rearview mirror, but from the sound of the continuing groans, Cheama was lying down in the backseat.

  “It was all … I could find.”

  “I’m turning this car arou—”

  “Do you want to know where Sanctuary is?”

  Desi caught her breath. “What makes you think that question means anything to me?”

  “Funny answer coming from someone who wants me to think … she’s never heard of the place.”

  Desi’s pulse picked up speed. This guy said Sanctuary, not referring to Jo’s ephemeral city in the sweet by-and-by, but the desert compound here on earth. “You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Cheama, but you’re not thinking straight about getting your daughter back. You need to give your information to the people who can do something about it.”

  “You take me where I want to go … I’ll tell you everything I know. That simple. Not … talking to the feds.”

  She squeezed the steering wheel. How far should she trust this guy? Keeping his freedom meant as much or more to him than Karen’s safety. How did one deal with a person who grew up seeing the government as the enemy? “You could die, Pete. Let me take you to a hospital.”

  “My life … is not in your hands.”

  At least he had that pegged. “Where are we going?”

  “What’s the matter with your voice?”

  Desi cleared her bruised throat. “You choked me. Remember?”

  “I did?” A snort ended in a gasp. “Lady, I can hardly see. My arms are half numb. I had no idea what I was grabbing. Just get me to this place … and you can forget about me.”

  Forget about him? Not likely. But he wasn’t the threat his “stick trick” and her imagination had made him out to be. He’d even meant well in almost throttling her to death. She could have been hurt or killed jumping out into the middle of the road in a panic. “You’ll have to stay conscious to direct me.”

  “You … got it.” Noises in the back indicated that he was struggling into a sitting position.

  “Now start talking.”

  “When we get there.”

  Desi let out a frustrated sigh. “At least tell me what sent you to Jo’s to get Adam. Why would being with you make him safe? Seems to me you’re a trouble magnet.”

  “You won’t believe … my explanation.”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t believe that you believe it.”

  A raspy snort. “It was a dream … while I slept one night in the desert. I heard screams.”

  “Animals?”

  “No. I followed the noise … into a blind canyon—a place where no man had walked since before a Spaniard or a white man knew of this land. Bleached bones stuck out of the sand. Human bones … they were screaming. The sound hurt like a knife. I kicked and stomped … to make them stop. Finally, they were quiet … and the bones lay in splinters. Then I woke up, my blanket soaked in sweat.”

  Pale lines on the highway fled past Desi’s window. “That’s it?” She glanced in the rearview.

  Cheama held his head in his hands. “I told this dream in my medicine society. An elder said I shouldn’t have crushed the bones, because now my family line will end.”

  “So taking Adam was supposed to prevent this from happening?”

  “The elder said the outcome might change if my grandson was raised Zuni.”

  “And you expected Jo to hand him over to you?”

  “She knows the ancestral ways. She believed in them … once. I hoped she would hear me and understand that her grandchild should not be brought up in the cult of the Christian God.”

  “Your people see Christianity as a cult?”

  Cheama looked up. “I was educated in a university, and I married a white woman. Because of those mistakes, my thinking became twisted, and I used drugs to find a false power, but I also learned new ways to see. A cult is a system of religion. The system of the Christians was forced upon my people centuries ago and has made our spirits weak and our minds confused.”

  Weight settled on Desi’s chest, and her limbs went leaden. Air, soggy as a sauna, saturated her lungs. Her heart muscle ached as it struggled to pump blood as thick as pudding.

  “Jesus is not an oppressor.” The words burst from her lips, and the pressure on her chest eased. She steadied her breathing. This guy might not be physically dangerous, but if what she’d sensed was accurate, he carried hostile spirits around with him.

  She glanced again in the rearview. “Misguided acts have been committed in the name of every brand of religion on the planet, not just by those who claim Christ but don’t walk in His ways. Rumor has it your ancestors practiced cannibalism.”

  “This has not been proved.” Cheama’s breath rattled.

  “I think your dream was about the bones of their victims.”

  “My dream was about the future, not the past.”

  Desi slowed the vehicle and pulled onto the side of the road. She put the car in park, flicked on the dome light, and turned toward her passenger. He glared at her, clutching his ribs.

  “Maybe your dream was about both. You recognize the purpose of those stolen artifacts. You know they’re about to be used again. May have already been used.”

  Cheama’s face tightened. “You see? The elder’s words are coming true. Karen is gone. Adam alone remains, and those who hunt me may grab him and use him to flush me out.”

  “The baby isn’t in Albuquerque. How far can these people reach?”

  Her passenger grunted. “Gordon Corp is nationwide.”

  Desi’s mouth went dry. What had she done? Adam wasn’t safe in Albuquerque, but Boston wasn’t any better. People like the violent thugs who killed that museum guard and Ben Erickson had reason to go after him. Max and her family might be in danger because of her bright idea to send Adam away.

  “What’ve you got, Ortiz?” Tony sat back and rubbed gritty eyes. He glanced at his living room clock. Midnight here; 10 p.m. in New Mexico. “I’ve given you Desi’s gold mine. You must have something at your end.”

  “Pete Cheama, Jo’s ex, had a bad accident. We found his pickup a mangled wreck in a ravine.”

  “Did Cheama survive?”

  “He wasn’t with the vehicle, and we still haven’t found him. There was blood at the scene, but not enough to indicate death. We found a significant stash of street-ready methamphetamine under his front seat.”

  Tony whistled between his teeth. “Guess the DEA doesn’t have to keep wondering who’s carrying meth into your area.”

  “Cheama always was high on the suspect list. Unfortunately, we haven’t got the whole picture yet. Evidence shows that a second vehicle was involved in the accident.”

  “So you’re left with more questions than answers. I know the feeling. Was this an ordinary hit-and-run, or did someone try to kill the meth mule? Did a disoriented Cheama wander away, or did someone take him? And if someone
took him, why didn’t they grab the meth, too?”

  “You’ve caught the gist.” Ortiz clucked her tongue. “You can look at the evidence file when you get here. We suspect that the man may be lying dead in the desert somewhere. Good luck on us finding him. I’ve put surveillance on Jo’s house to be on the safe side.”

  “Thanks.” Tony yawned. “I appreciate that, especially with Desi staying there.”

  “She’s not there any longer. Jo went ballistic because Desi kept things from her, and she booted us both out. Desi went to a hotel, but she didn’t say which one.”

  “You didn’t make her tell you?”

  “Lucano, she’s not a suspect, so it’s not like we need to keep tabs on her every movement.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Tony muttered under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s okay. I’ve got her cell number.”

  Ortiz laughed. “I think you need to get your tail out here before you bust. I can’t wait to see you two together. Got to be better than a daytime drama.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’ve got a strange sense of humor?”

  “Hey, I’m proud of my rep. Get some rest. Another big day tomorrow—guaranteed.”

  Tony bit back a sharp answer to the laughter in her voice.

  “And Lucano—” Ortiz’ voice sobered—”I’m so sorry to hear about Erickson. I didn’t know him, but he was one of ours. You can count on us in Albuquerque to do whatever we can to find everyone responsible.”

  “Thanks, Ortiz. Speaking for the Boston office, we appreciate the cooperation.”

  Tony cut the connection. Just two more hurdles. Get the shrink off his back, and persuade Cooke that his little Westward Ho! was the best scenario for everyone.

  He punched in Desi’s cell number. His call went to voice mail. Blast! She must have shut the phone off so she could sleep. Not that he blamed her. She’d sounded pretty worn out when he talked to her earlier, and she wouldn’t have expected him to call again.

  He got up, padded to his bedroom, undressed, and crawled between the sheets. Desi was all right, just catching z’s in a hotel room. He’d call again in the morning. Nothing to worry about.