Navajo's Woman

“You guys hold it down,” Joe told them as he lifted the telephone receiver. “Yeah, Ornelas here.”

“Matt, you can give up trying,” Ellen said, smiling. “I don’t date Dundee employees.”

“So how come Hunter can escort you around and I can’t?” Matt leaned against the door.

Joe covered the receiver with his hand, gave his companions a stern look and repeated, “Hold it down. I can’t hear what my sister’s saying.”

“Because Hunter is a gentleman and you’re not,” Ellen said softly, then nodded and waved to Joe, letting him know that she’d heard him, understood and would be quiet now.

Joe removed his hand from the mouthpiece. “Sorry about that, Kate, but I’ve got a few friends over tonight.”

“You must come home, Joseph.” Kate’s voice held an edge of near hysteria and it wasn’t normal for his sweet, easygoing sister to be this upset.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Eddie. He’s in big trouble. We need you very badly.”

“What kind of trouble is Eddie in?”

“Trouble with the—” Kate’s voice broke “—the police.” She sighed. “He and Russ Lapahie are wanted for questioning in the murder of Bobby Yazzi, a man who is known for selling drugs to our children.”

Joe’s heartbeat accelerated. Eddie was in trouble with the police? He couldn’t imagine anything so ridiculous. Not a good kid like his eldest nephew, who was a bright student, an obedient son and a hard worker, helping his father on the ranch since he’d been not much more than a toddler.

“You said that Eddie is wanted by the police. Where is he now? Why hasn’t he turned himself in?”

“We don’t know where he is. Eddie and Russ are both missing. They’ve run away—”

Kate whimpered, and Joe knew she was struggling with her emotions, trying to not break down and cry.

“Andi says that their running makes them look guilty,” Kate said.

“Andi’s good at finding people guilty.” The mention of Andi’s name struck a disharmonious chord in Joe. He had spent five years trying to forget about the past, trying to put Andrea Stephens out of his mind.

“No, you misunderstand,” Kate told him. “Andi doesn’t think the boys are guilty. She knows they aren’t capable of murder. She simply pointed out what is so obvious—that by running, Eddie and Russ have only made matters worse for themselves.”

Ellen laid a hand on Joe’s shoulder and whispered, “Is there anything we can do?”

“Hold on, Kate.” Joe turned to Ellen. “Yeah. I’m going to need some time off. I have to go home. My nephew’s in trouble.”

“Take all the time you need,” Ellen said. “If I or the agency can help, all you have to do is call me.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll let ourselves out.” Hunter escorted Ellen to the open door, and they and Matt waved good-night, then closed the door behind them.

“I’ll take the first flight I can get. The Dundee jet isn’t available right now. I’ll call you back when I’ve made arrangements.”

“Ed and I will meet your plane.”

“Be brave.”

“Yes, I am trying.”

Joe replaced the receiver when the dial tone hummed in his ear. He and Kate had been as close as a brother and sister could be. He was the younger sibling, but only two years separated them in age. She had married Ed Whitehorn when she was twenty and had given birth to her first child at twenty-one. The entire family had adored Eddie, such a beautiful, clever child. Until Joe had resigned from the Navajo Tribal police force and left his home in New Mexico five years ago, he and his nephew had been the best of buddies. And even now, the two spoke often on the phone. He simply could not imagine how a good boy like Eddie could be involved in anyone’s murder, even as a witness. Unless he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But why would Eddie have been anywhere near a known drug dealer? And why had the boy run away?

Russ Lapahie was the answer to all Joe’s questions. J.T. had told him that Russell’s son had been in and out of trouble ever since Russell’s death. Trouble at school, trouble at home and trouble with the law.

“Doli can’t do anything with him,” J.T. had said. “And he won’t listen to Andi, either. They’re both ‘just women,’ as far as Russ is concerned.”

Joe grunted. To think that he had been the one to advise Ed and Kate not to forbid Eddie to hang out with Russ. He had mistakenly hoped that his nephew would be a good influence on Andi’s brother. Now, it looked as if he’d been wrong. The opposite had happened.

He couldn’t deny that his bad advice had been prompted partly out of guilt. After all, if Joe had looked the other way and kept his mouth shut five years ago, when he had discovered Russell Sr. was covering up his brother-in-law’s livestock smuggling ring, his former police captain would still be alive. And Russ and Andi would still have their father. The way Joe figured it, he not only had to go home to help Eddie, but to help Russell’s son, too.

“I want those boys found!” The dark hand that slammed down on the desk bore several crisscrossed scars, reminders of a long-ago knife fight. A fight he had won. Three diamond rings sparkled on various fingers, each catching the light from the green-shaded lamp to his right.

LeCroy Lanza glowered at his subordinates, both men killers by instinct and training. In his line of work, it didn’t pay to send out a boy to do a man’s job. He wanted Russ Lapahie and Eddie Whitehorn found and taken care of so that neither boy could identify him. He’d seen Russ’s face and had laughed silently at the boy’s wide-eyed shock after he’d witnessed the murder. He had seen the shadow of another person behind Russ, but LeCroy hadn’t been able to make out much. At the time, he’d thought the second kid was female. Apparently, it had been Eddie.

In retrospect, he realized that he should have sent someone else to take care of Bobby Yazzi, the two-timing little son of a bitch. But LeCroy Lanza had a reputation to uphold. He was known for taking care of his problems personally. And Bobby had become a major problem. Who had he thought he was—lying and cheating, stealing from the man who’d set him up in business? Nobody cheated LeCroy Lanza and lived.

“Charlie, you find out where those boys went. Hire some trackers, if necessary. I’ll call in a few favors and see if I can get any information that might help us.” LeCroy gripped Charlie Kirk’s shoulder. “I want those boys dead before they have a chance to talk to the police.”

Chapter 2

Joe hadn’t been home in five years, although his job as a Dundee agent had brought him out west a couple of times. When he’d left the reservation three weeks after Russell Lapahie’s suicide, he’d gone straight to Atlanta and had begun working for the Dundee agency. A couple of times his sister Kate and her family had come to Georgia to visit, and he kept in contact weekly by phone. And he and his cousin J. T. Blackwood e-mailed each other on a regular basis and spoke on the phone from time to time. Otherwise, he had cut himself off from his past, from his people and from his heritage.

Did he ever miss his old life? Did a part of him still long to truly be one of the Dine? Yeah, sure, in those dark, lonely moments when he had allowed himself to remember, he’d longed to see the Dinehtah. The land of the Navajo. He had been born here in New Mexico, on the reservation, and had grown to manhood within the closely knit family of his mother’s clan, just outside the town of Castle Springs. He had been proud of his heritage and honored to become a member of the Navajo Tribal Police. Once, Joe had thought of himself as a good guy, a role model for other Navajo youths, and at times, even a hero. But his days of being a hero, in anyone’s eyes, including his own, died along with Russell Lapahie.

His devotion to his family and his people had been the driving factor in his life, but all of that had ended the day Russell committed suicide. His friends, acquaintances and fellow officers seemed to forget that Russell had been the one who had betrayed his trusted position on the police force. That Russell had been the one who had committed a crime. During the worst of the maelstrom that infected their lives from the moment he arrested his captain until after Russell’s funeral, Joe had begun to doubt himself. Had he been wrong to reveal the crime and arrest the culprit because that man had been his friend and a superior officer? A lot of people seemed to think so. Including Andi, Russell’s daughter. She had turned on Joe with a vengeance.

If she had stood by him, supported him, believed in him, would he have stayed in Castle Springs? Maybe. After all these years, he wasn’t sure anymore. Not about himself. And certainly not about his feelings for Andi. All he knew was that at some time during the past five years, his guilt and remorse over Russell’s death had turned to anger. How could a man he had hero-worshiped have acted so dishonorably? Russell’s actions had not only destroyed his own life, but altered the course of other lives. Joe’s. Andi’s. Russ, Jr.’s. Doli’s. Everyone who had loved and trusted Russell.

Joe could not help thinking how odd it was that he, a Navajo born on the reservation, who spoke Saad and had tried to follow the traditional ways, who had once worn a medicine pouch inside his trousers and kept a feather attached to the rearview mirror of his truck to ward off evil spirits, who had attended the Navajo Community College in Tsaile, had been forced to leave all that he cherished. And Andi, born and reared as a bilagaana, had stayed on in New Mexico and embraced the heritage of a father she had barely known, of a people who had been strangers to her.

Whenever J.T. happened to mention Andi, Joe always managed to change the subject. He hadn’t wanted to hear anything about her, hadn’t wanted to know if she had married, if she’d had children. She was nothing to him. Less than nothing. But today he would have to see her again, come face-to-face with the woman who, if she had truly loved him, might now be his wife.

There was a stark, majestic beauty to his homeland. Mesas and canyons, wide valleys and narrow mountain ranges. On this drive from the police station to Kate’s ranch outside Castle Springs, he felt more homesick than he had when he’d been far away in Georgia. In five years, he had almost forgotten what it meant to be a Navajo, even though by his appearance alone he proclaimed his Native American ancestry. In Atlanta, he had grown accustomed to living a white man’s life, which in many ways he enjoyed. He had once thought he could never survive in the outside world, the world to which Andi had belonged. Strange that he now felt like an outsider in his own land. When they had been dating, Andi had told him that she wasn’t sure she could live on the reservation and adapt to Navajo life. Back then, he had thought their lifestyles might be the only factor that could keep them apart.

The road leading from the highway to Kate and Ed’s ranch lay just ahead on the right. They had lived in a trailer when he’d left the reservation, but three years ago they’d built a house in the middle of their land. He and Kate shared acres of land that comprised the sheep ranch, and his own small house still stood several miles from his sister’s.

Kate had offered to meet him at the airport, but he’d told her that he would just rent a car and drive out to their place. His first stop after landing in Gallup had been the police station in Castle Springs. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, since most of the people working there had been his fellow officers five years ago. The reunion had been surprisingly friendly. The new captain and an old friend, Bill Cummings, had shared all the information they had on the Bobby Yazzi murder case.

“Do you really think that Russ and Eddie might have killed Bobby?” Joe had asked.

“I would like to believe that the boys only witnessed the murder,” Bill had said. “Sometimes the innocent run, but… They are not helping themselves by trying to elude us. If they didn’t kill Bobby, they should not have run.”

Joe eased the rental car off onto the long, narrow road winding through the ranch land. He dreaded facing Kate, seeing the fear and agony in her eyes. Her first born was in danger, and she was powerless to help him. She was counting on her brother to save her son. Joe only hoped he could.

When Joe drew near the house—a clapboard painted the color of golden sand—his sister and brother-in-law came out onto the porch. Kate lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun when she walked into the yard. She was a lovely woman. Short, slightly plump and exotically dark. A pair of faded jeans clung to her womanly curves.

The moment he parked, Kate ran toward him. He had no more than slammed the door shut when she stopped directly in front of him. Tears clouded her black eyes. He grasped her shoulders.

“You must find Eddie,” she said.

The trembling in her body vibrated through his hands. “I will find him. I promise.” Let me be able to keep that vow, he prayed silently.

In his peripheral vision, Joe saw his brother-in-law’s short, barrel-chested, stocky frame shadowed by the edge of the porch roof. At his side stood six-year-old Joey, Joe’s namesake. And there, hiding halfway behind her brother, was ten-year-old Summer.

Kate grabbed Joe’s hand. “Come. You must be tired and hungry after your long flight. I have stew ready for lunch.”

Kate was so much like their mother had been, a gracious hostess to family and friends. Always enough food to share. Always a warm smile and a generous heart.

His dark-eyed niece and nephew stared at Joe, as Kate twined her arm through his and led him toward the house. Smiling at Joey, he ruffled the boy’s hair.

Joey smiled back at him and said, “Ya’at’eeh.”

“Welcome, Joseph.” Ed Whitehorn nodded his head in greeting.

“Thank you.” Joe liked Ed, a quiet, soft-spoken man, a hard worker and a devoted husband and father. Joe turned his attention to his shy little niece, a carbon copy of her mother. “Aren’t you going to say hello to me, Summer?”

Leaning her head to one side and smiling timidly, she fluttered her long black eyelashes and spoke softly. “Hello, Uncle Joe.”

“You’ve certainly grown since the last time I saw you. And you’re as pretty as your mother.”

Summer awarded Joe with a broad smile. “‘Ahehee’,” she said, thanking him for the compliment.

Joe lifted Joey to his shoulders, much to the boy’s delight, then grasped Summer’s hand and tugged her closer to him. “Your mother has promised me lunch. Is anyone else hungry?”

The children giggled as they entered the house with their uncle. Side by side, touching only in spirit, their parents followed.

Just an inch shy of six feet, Joe had to duck down to enter through the front door, in order to make sure Joey’s head didn’t strike the door frame. Once inside the house, Joe came to an abrupt halt before he had taken more than two steps into the cosy, colorful family room.

Standing there in the archway between the family room and the dining area was a woman. Long, flowing, dark brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. Pale golden eyes gazed at him. Andrea Stephens was tall, slender and somehow elegant in her jeans, boots and bold red-and-blue plaid shirt. Tiny diamonds sparkled in her earlobes, a remnant of her wealthy South Carolina upbringing. And a wide band of turquoise-laden silver circled her right wrist. Joe’s stomach knotted painfully. He had given her the bracelet, created by his silversmith great-grandfather and passed down to him by his mother. Why did she still wear the bracelet? Or had she simply put it on today, to taunt him?

Joe eased Joey from his shoulders and placed the boy on his feet. Both children stayed at his side as he stood frozen to the spot. He said nothing, only stared at Andi. Kate and Ed came inside, and within minutes Kate hurried toward her guest.

“Andi is going to have lunch with us,” Kate said. “She asked to be here to meet with you. She is as anxious to find the boys as we are. She is going to represent the Lapahie family today.”

“Where is Doli Lapahie?” Joe asked, without breaking eye contact with Andi.

“My stepmother has been distraught since she learned about Bobby Yazzi’s murder and the possibility that Russ witnessed the crime,” Andi said. “Dr. Harvey gave her a sedative last night and left instructions with her sister to keep her medicated if necessary. Doli is not a strong woman. Not since…”

Joe felt the sting of accusation without Andi actually blasting him with the words. He knew what she’d been about to say. Not since my father killed himself. Not since you betrayed a man who had treated you like a son.

Averting his gaze from her face, Joe cleared his throat. “I stopped by the police station in Castle Springs, and Bill Cummings filled me in on what happened. I can’t understand why Eddie and Russ ran away. If they weren’t involved—”

Kate and Andi cut him off simultaneously, saying, “They weren’t involved.”

“How can you think such a thing?” Kate glowered at her brother.

“Did Captain Cummings say that he believes Russ and Eddie were involved in Bobby Yazzi’s murder?” Andi asked.

“He didn’t come right out and say so, but he’s puzzled by their running away. I’m sure he told you that he sees it as a possible sign of guilt.”

“I do not believe my son is capable of killing another human being, and I told this to Bill Cummings last night.” Kate shook her head, regret in her voice and apparent in the desolation of her expression.

“I agree,” Joe said. “I don’t think Eddie would kill someone.”

Andi lurched forward, as if shoved by an unseen hand. Her topaz eyes gleamed brightly when she confronted Joe. “But you think Russ might have killed Bobby, don’t you. You are only too eager to believe that this is all my brother’s fault, just as you once—” Andi broke off, then rushed past Joe and outside, crashing the storm door closed behind her.

“Damn it, I didn’t accuse Russ of anything!” Joe hammered his fist against the nearby wall. Nothing had changed—not between Andi and him. Her distrust and hatred pulsated with energy. She had not forgiven him and probably never would.

“Do not curse in front of my children,” Kate scolded.

“Sorry.” Joe rubbed his knuckles.

“You must go after Andi and tell her that you—”

“I’m not going after her. I didn’t invite her here. I didn’t want to see her or talk to her. As far as I’m concerned, she can go back to wherever she came from and stay there.” He couldn’t say—wouldn’t admit to his family—that just the sight of Andi Stephens brought back all the emotions he had tried so hard to forget. The love and passion. The anger, guilt and remorse. She would forever be a reminder of his own shortcomings, his failure to live up to the expectations of all who had known and admired him.

Ed laid his hand on Joe’s shoulder, but looked at his wife. “Take the children into the kitchen and prepare our lunch.” The moment Kate scurried Joey and Summer through the house and disappeared into the kitchen, Ed tightened his hold on Joe. “We are all very worried. Kate and I. Doli and Andi. We are concerned about Eddie and Russ. They are both only sixteen. Young men now, but in many ways still boys. Boys who need our help.”

Joe realized that Ed had just chastised him in his own kind, subtle way. “That’s why I came home. To help Eddie. And to help Russ, too. I figure I owe it to Russell to do what I can for his son.”

Ed patted Joe on the back. “You are a good man.”

Joe shrugged. “I’m not so sure about that. Nobody around here thought I was much of a hero five years ago, did they.”

“When Russell died, feelings were running high among family and friends,” Ed told him. “You did not give anyone a chance to recover from the shock, before you ran away.”

Yeah, he’d run, all right. As far and as fast as he could. Back in the good old days, when he’d been a policeman, he had respected himself and enjoyed the admiration of others. He had prided himself on being a good Navajo and a good man. But for the past five years he had questioned himself, every choice, every decision he’d made. He had thought he was doing the right thing when he exposed Russell’s duplicity. The man had been his captain, his friend, a father figure to him since he’d been a teenager. And at the same time Russell Lapahie had been a man torn between duty and family loyalty, between upholding the law and breaking the commandments he had revered all his life.

And Joe had faced his own moment of truth. He had done the legally correct thing. But had he been wrong to expose Russell’s crime? Damn the man for having put him in such a position. A part of him could not forgive Russell for having placed him in such a no-win situation. And another part would never forgive himself.

“Go. Speak with Andi.” Ed squeezed Joe’s shoulder, then released his gentle hold and joined his wife in the kitchen.

Joe didn’t move for several minutes. Everything within him balked at the suggestion. He couldn’t talk to Andi, couldn’t make her see reason. He’d been in her presence only a few minutes, and already she had put words into his mouth, immediately assuming the worst about him.

How would it be possible for the two of them to act like normal, rational people when they distrusted each other so vehemently? The past lay between them, an old wound reopened, or perhaps never truly healed. He suspected that Andi had no more come to terms with Russell’s death than he had. Five years and fifteen-hundred miles apart—and yet they shared a grief that would forever bind them, and just as surely keep them apart.

Shaded by the branches of a pair of scraggly pinyon pines, Andi breathed deeply, drawing huge gulps of air into her lungs as she struggled to regain control of her emotions. She had known this would happen and yet she’d been given little choice but to come here today and meet Joe again after all these years. He had no more than opened his mouth before he’d practically accused Russ of being a murderer. Oh, he hadn’t come right out and put his feelings into words, not exactly. But his meaning had been clear. He thought the worst of her brother, just as he had of her father.

If Doli were capable of dealing with this horrendous situation, Andi might be spared seeing Joe again, spending time with him. But Doli was an emotionally and physically fragile woman, even more so since her husband’s death. Her stepmother had held her hand last night and pleaded with her to help Russ.

“You will find him,” Doli had said. “And prove that he is an innocent boy.”

From the moment she learned what had happened with Russ and Eddie, Andi had known that Kate and Ed would notify Joe. Who in their family was better qualified to track down his nephew than Joe Ornelas, former Navajo Tribal police officer and now an agent with a prestigious protection and security firm? And there had been no question in her mind that she would be the one to protect her brother, to make sure no one—especially not Joe—would place all the blame on Russ’s shoulders. Somehow she had to find a way to grow a tougher hide, and do it immediately. Their meeting didn’t bode well for future cooperation. But cooperate she would, even if it killed her. Whatever Joe did, she would be looking over his shoulder. Wherever he went, she would be one step behind him. When he found the boys, she would be at his side. No way would she trust him to look out for Russ’s best interests. Only she could do that.

Andi would never allow Joe to destroy her brother, de-file his reputation and publicly crucify him. She had been unable to help her father, to prevent him from taking his own life. But by God, she could and would do everything in her power to save Russ. She owed him that much. Owed her father, too, to protect his only son, not only from the real killer and the Navajo police, but from Joe Ornelas.

“Andi.”

She went rigid at the sound of Joe’s voice. Only in her dreams, often nightmares, had she heard Joe call to her. Go away. Leave me alone, she wanted to shout. He was the last man on earth she wanted to see, to be with. But they shared a common goal—the rescue of two young boys, each a family member, each a beloved child of people for whom they cared deeply.