by Jenna Kernan
“This,” said Agent Hockings, “is federal land. As a federal officer, I do not need permission—”
“You are a trespasser on the Mohawk Nation. We are within our rights to—”
Whatever rights Vasta might have been about to delineate were cut short by the blast of a shotgun.
Hockings threw herself from the chair to the floor as Vasta ducked behind the metal desk. Axel dropped, landing beside Hockings, pressed shoulder to shoulder.
“Shots fired,” she called, reaching for her empty holster with her joined hands and then swearing under her breath.
“Who are you yelling to exactly?” Axel asked. “We all heard it.”
She pressed those pink lips together and scowled, then she scrambled along the floor, undulating in a way that made his hairs stand up and electricity shiver over his skin. He hadn’t felt that drumbeat of sexual awareness since that day in high school when Tonya Sawyer wore a turquoise lace bra under a T-shirt that was as transparent as a bridal veil. She’d been sent home, of course, to change, but it hadn’t mattered. Images like that stuck in the memory like a bug on a fly strip. He had a feeling that the sight of Hockings’s rippling across the floor like a wave was going to stick just like that turquoise bra.
“Out of the way,” Hockings said, her thigh brushing his shoulder.
The electricity now scrambled his brain as the current shot up and then down to finally settle, like a buzzing transformer, in his groin. High school all over again.
Vasta squatted at the window and peeked out. The only thing he held was the venetian blinds. His gun remained on his hip. He glanced back at Axel and cocked his head.
Axel realized his own mouth was hanging open as if Agent Hockings had slapped him, which she would have, if she knew what he had been thinking.
“They shot her car. Peppered the side,” said Vasta.
Her head popped up like a carnival target from behind the desk.
“Who did?” Her perfect blond hair was now mussed. Axel resisted the urge to lay the strands back in order. Was her hair silky or soft like angora?
“I dunno, but they are long gone,” said Vasta. “Even took the shell.”
“How do you know that?” She reached his side.
“Shells are green and red, mostly. Easy to spot on the snow.”
Agent Hockings moved to the opposite side of the window. “There is a whole group of people out there. Witnesses.”
Axel’s laugh gleaned another scowl from Hockings. Vasta’s mouth quirked but then fell back to reveal no hint of humor when Hockings turned from Axel to him.
Now Axel was scowling. Vasta was making him look bad, or perhaps he was doing that all on his own.
Axel reached the pair who now stood flanking the window like bookends. He pressed his arm to hers, muscling her out of the way in order to get a glimpse outside. Her athletic frame brought her head to his shoulder, and he was only five foot ten. She was what Mrs. Shubert, the librarian of the Kinsley Public Library, would have called petite. Mrs. Shubert had also been petite and was as mighty as a superhero in Axel’s mind. He knew not to judge ferocity in inches.
“Or,” said Hockings, “you could see if any of the spectators have a shotgun in their hand or shell casing in their pocket.”
“Illegal search,” said Vasta. “And none of them have a shotgun any longer. So, here’s what’s going to happen. Sheriff Trace is going to escort you out in restraints and put you in the back of his unit. Then he’s going to drive you outta here. If you are smart, you will keep your head down and look ashamed, because you should be.”
“I will not.”
“Then they will likely break every window in Axel’s cruiser and possibly turn it over with you both inside.”
Hockings stiffened as her eyes went wide with shock. The brown of her irises, he now saw, were flecked with copper. She looked to him, as if asking if Vasta were pulling her leg.
He hoped his expression said that the acting chief of police was not.
She turned back to Vasta. “You’d have to stop them.”
“Listen, Agent Hockings, it’s just me here. Last week, I was an officer, and now this.” He motioned to his chief’s badge. “Besides, I’m tempted to help them.”
Hockings looked from Vasta to Trace and then back to Vasta.
“Are you pressing charges against Hockings?” Axel asked Vasta.
“Are you serious?” she asked the sheriff.
He gave her a look he hoped said that he was very serious. “They have tribal courts and you do not want to go there.”
“They can’t prosecute a federal agent.”
“But can hold you until your people find out.”
Her fingers went straight, flexing and then lacing together to create a weapon that he believed she was wise enough not to use.
“Fine. So contrite. That will get us out of here?”
The acting chief of police nodded.
“What about my vehicle?”
“I’ll drive it to the border and leave it for you.”
“The border?” To Rylee, the border was Canada. Vasta enlightened her.
“The border of our reservation.”
Her gaze flicked between them and her full mouth went thin and miserly. But she thought about it. Axel just loved the way the tips of her nose and ears went pink as a rabbit’s in her silent fury.
“Fine. Let’s get going, if you have your keys,” she said, pushing past him.
The acting chief of police was faster, beating them to the door to the main squad room. There, two officers sat on a desk and table respectively, both kicking their legs from their perches where they had been watching the drama playing out through the glass door of the chief’s office.
“Josh and Noah, you two have point,” said Vasta, instructing the men to lead the escort.
Both men rose, grinning. Each wore tight-fitting uniforms. Josh’s hair was black and bristly short. Noah wore his brown hair in a knot at his neck.
They headed out behind the officers, with Axel holding Hockings’s taut arm as if she were his prisoner. Behind them came the acting chief of police. Trace tried and failed not to notice that he could nearly encircle Rylee’s bicep with his thumb and index finger and that included her wool coat. She glared up at him and her muscle bunched beneath his grip. Hockings clearly did not like role-play.
The crowd that Hockings had insisted Vasta question were now calling rude suggestions and booing. Vasta waved and spoke to them in Kowa, a form of the Iroquoian language. The officers before them peeled away, giving Axel a view of his cruiser and the rear door. For reasons he did not completely understand, his squad car was untouched. Axel hit the fob, unlocking his unit. Noah swept the rear door open.
Axel made a show of putting his hand on Hockings’s head to see that she was safely ensconced in the rear of his unit. The effect brought a cheer from the peanut gallery and allowed him to get the answer to one of his many questions about Hockings.
Her hair was soft as the ear of an Irish setter and blond right to the roots. Hockings fell to her side across the rear seat and remained on her side. Wise beyond her years, he thought.
The booing resumed as he climbed behind the wheel. It pleased him that Josh and Noah now stood between his unit and the gathering of pissed-off Mohawks.
And off they went. They were outside of Salmon River, the tribe’s main settlement, but still on rez land before Rylee sat up and laced her fingers through the mesh guard that separated his front from the back seat. Her fingernails were shiny with clearish pink polish and neatly filed into appealing ovals. Her wrists were no longer secured.
“How did you get out of that?” he asked.
“My father says you can measure a person’s IQ by whether or not they carry a pocketknife.”
“With the exception being at airports?” he as
ked.
“You going to keep me back here the entire way?”
“Not if you want to sit beside me.”
She didn’t answer that, just threw herself back into the upholstery and growled. Then she looked out the side window.
“They better not damage my car,” she muttered.
“More,” he said.
“What?”
She wasn’t looking at him. He knew because he was staring at her in the rearview until the grooves in the shoulder’s pavement vibrated his attention back to the road.
“Damage your car more,” he clarified. “They already shot at it. So, you find who you were looking for?”
She folded her arms over her chest. Just below her lovely small breasts, angry fists balled. She was throwing so much shade the cab went dark.
“How do you know I was looking for someone?”
“What Home Security does, isn’t it, here on the border?”
“In this case, yes. We have an illegal crossing and the suspect fled onto Kowa lands.”
“They have your suspect?”
“Denied any knowledge.”
Homeland Security Agent Rylee Hockings was about as welcome in Salmon River as a spring snowstorm.
“Maybe Border Patrol has your guy.”
“No. They lost ’em. That’s why they called me. They abandoned pursuit when our suspect crossed onto Mohawk land. Both the suspect and the cargo have vanished.” She glanced back the way they had come. “I need my car.”
What she needed were social skills. She didn’t want his help, but she might need it. And he needed to get her out of his county before she got into something way more dangerous than ruffled Mohawk regalia. Up here on the border, waving a badge at the wrong people could get you killed.
The woman might have federal authority and a mission, but she didn’t know his county or the people here. Folks who lived on the border did it for one of three reasons. Either it was as far away from whatever trouble they had left as they could get, or they had business on the other side. He’d survived up here by knowing the difference, doing his job and not poking his nose into the issues that were not under his purview.
There was one other reason to be up here. If you had no other choice. Rylee had a choice. So she needed to go. Sooner was better.
He considered himself to be both brave and smart, but that would be little to no protection from Rylee’s alluring brown eyes and watermelon-pink mouth. Best way he knew to keep clear of her was to get her south as soon as possible.
“The Mohawk are required to report illegal entry onto US soil,” she said. “And detain if possible. They did neither.”
“Maybe they aren’t interested in our business or our borders.”
“America’s business? Is that what you mean?”
He scratched the side of his head and realized he needed a haircut. “It’s just my experience that the Mohawk people consider themselves separate from the United States and Canada.” He half turned to look back at her. “You know they have territory in both countries.”
“Yes, I was briefed. And smuggling, human trafficking and dope running happen in your county.”
She’d left out moonshining. But border security was thankfully not his job. Neither were the vices that were handled by ATF—the federal agency responsible for alcohol, tobacco, firearms and recently explosives. He was glad because enforcement was a dangerous, impossible and thankless assignment. His responsibilities, answering calls from citizens via EMS, traffic stops and accidents made up the bulk of his duties. He was occasionally involved with federal authorities, collaborating only when asked, and Agent Hockings seemed thrilled to do everything herself. He should leave it at that.
“Borders bring their own unique troubles.”
“Yet, you have made limited arrests related to these activities. Mostly minor ones, at that, despite the uptick in illegal activities, especially in winter when the river freezes.”
He ignored the jibe. He did his duty and that was enough to let him sleep most nights.
“It doesn’t always freeze,” he said.
“Hmm? What doesn’t?”
“The river. Some years it doesn’t freeze.”
She cocked her head and gave him a look as if he puzzled her. “How long have you been sheriff?”
If she were any kind of an agent, she knew that already, but he answered anyway.
“Going on six years this January.”
“You seem young.”
“Old enough to know better and halfway to collecting social security.”
“You grew up here, didn’t you?”
“I’ve never lived anywhere else.”
“You have family up here?”
His smile faltered, and he swerved to the shoulder. He gripped the wheel with more force than necessary and glanced back at her, his teeth snapping together with a click.
One thing he was not doing was speaking about his past. Not his time in the military, not the men he’d killed or the ones he couldn’t save. And he wasn’t ever speaking of the time before the sheriff got him clear of the compound. He needed to get this question machine out of his county, so he could go back to being the well-respected public servant again.
As far as he knew, only two men knew where he came from—his father and the former sheriff. And he looked nothing like that scrawny kid Sheriff Rogers had saved. So changed, in fact, he believed his own father would not know him. At least that was what he prayed for, every damn day. All he wanted in this world was to live in a place where the rules made sense, where he had some control. And where, maybe someday, he and a nice, normal woman could create a family that didn’t make his stomach knot. But for now, he needed to be here, watching his father. Here to stop him if he switched from preaching his unhinged religious vision to creating it.
She opened her copper-flecked brown eyes even wider, feigning a look of innocence.
“What?” she asked.
He unlocked his teeth, grinding them, and then pivoted in his seat to stare back at her.
“Two hours ago, you showed up in the city of Kinsley at city hall, making it very clear that you did not want the assistance of the county sheriff. Now you want my résumé.”
“Local law enforcement is obliged to assist in federal investigations.”
“Which I will do. But you asked about my family. Like to fill in some blanks, that right? Something before I turned thirteen?” She was digging for the details that were not in public records or, perhaps, just filling time. Either way, he was not acting as the ant under her magnifying glass.
She met his stare and did not flinch or look away from the venom that must have been clear in his expression. Instead, she shrugged. “What I want is out of this back seat.”
He threw open his door and then yanked open hers. She stared up at him with a contrite expression that did not match the gleam of victory shimmering in the dark waters of her eyes. Dangerous waters, he thought. Even through his annoyance, he could not completely squelch the visceral ache caused by her proximity.
“You prefer to drive?” he said.
She slipped out of his vehicle to stand on the road before him. “Not this time. When do I get my vehicle back?”
He drew out his phone and sent a text. By the time she had settled into the passenger side, adjusted both the seat and safety belt, he received a reply.
“It’s there now,” he said. The photo appeared a moment later and he plastered his hand across his mouth to keep her from seeing his grin. Axel slipped behind the wheel and performed an illegal turn on a double solid, a privilege of his position, and took them back the way they had come.
“Why are you whistling?” she asked.
Was he? Perhaps. It was just that such moments of glee were hard to contain. By the time they reached the sign indicating the border of the
Mohawk rez, she caught sight of her vehicle.
Someone had poured red paint over the roof and it was dripping down over both the windows and doors on one side. There were handprints all over the front side panel.
“My car!” she cried, leaning forward for a good look. Then she pointed. “That’s damaging federal property.”
“Looks like a war horse,” he said, admiring the paint job. It was so rare that people got exactly what they deserved.
Chapter Three
Rylee Hockings stood beside the surly sheriff with hands on hips as she regarded the gooey paint oozing from the metallic door panel of her official vehicle and onto the road. She struggled to keep her chin up. Her first field assignment had headed south the minute she headed north. When her boss, Lieutenant Catherine Ohr, saw this car, she would be livid.
Her vehicle had been towed and left just outside the reservation land and abandoned beneath the sign welcoming visitors to the Kowa Nation.
“Maybe the paint will fill in the bullet holes,” offered Sheriff Trace.
His chuckle vibrated through her like a call issued into an empty cave. Something about the tenor and pitch made her stomach do a funny little tremble. She rested a hand flat against her abdomen to discourage her body from getting ideas.
“I could use those prints as evidence,” she said to Sheriff Trace.
“Or you could accept the life lesson that you might be the big cheese where you come from but to the Kowa, you are an outsider. Up here, your position will get you more trouble than respect. Which is why I offered you an escort.”
And she had turned him down flat. Despite his mirthful blue eyes, extremely handsome face, brown hair bleached blond from what she presumed was the summer sun, and a body that was in exceptionally good shape, something about this man rubbed her the wrong way. The sheriff seemed to think the entire county belonged to him personally.
“I need to call Border Patrol.” She left him to gloat and made her call. Border Patrol had lost their suspects after they entered Mohawk territory yesterday, Sunday, at three in the afternoon and had had no further sightings. Now she understood why they ceased pursuit at their border of the reservation and called her field office. They had set up a perimeter, so the suspect was either still on Mohawk land or had slipped off and into the general population. The chances that this man was her man were slim, but until she had word that the package and courier had been apprehended elsewhere, she would treat each illegal border crossing as if the carrier came from Siming’s Army.
