Turquoise Guardian

Amber had to be back soon because the shipment was being unloaded as she sat there dithering. As she turned off the engine, she resisted the urge to start the engine back up again. The last of the air-conditioning dissipated, forcing a decision. She was being ridiculous.

She grabbed her satchel and then the car’s door handle, stepping out into the street. She took a moment to tug down her cream-colored jacket and smooth her dark slacks. Then she closed the door.

She’d just made it up the drive when she heard a male voice speaking from inside the house. The tone was so strained that she did not at first recognize it, but then the strangled timbre became familiar, a version of Harvey Ibsen’s speech that she recognized but had never before heard.

“I told you everything. I reported it, for God’s sake. I told you we had a problem.”

There was a pause and then Ibsen again, whimpering, begging now.

“Oh, but I’m one of you. I’m the one who—”

The sound of a gunshot brought Amber up straight. Her eyes widened, her jaw clamped, and her grip on the shoulder strap of her satchel tightened. Her mind struggled to catch up with her body as her heart rate leaped and a sheen of sweat covered her skin.

The second shot set her in motion. She spun and ran back to the curb. She dropped her satchel in the street beside her car as she crouched.

Her breath now came so fast she choked on the dry air. Heat from the pavement radiated up through the soles of her shoes, and her image reflected off the metal of her door panel before her. She could see herself in the white paint—all wide eyes and cowering form.

She glanced toward the van, perpendicular to her hiding place, and inched back out of sight, dragging her leather bag along the road as she moved away from the house. She ended up behind her rear bumper as she heard the sound of footfalls crunching on the ornamental stone. She peeked up over the trunk.

He held a long black rifle in his hand, and his head was turned toward her car, the one that he likely knew had not been there when he entered Ibsen’s home. He looked directly at her and she at him. They made eye contact for one endless second and then another. His step faltered as he changed direction, raising the rifle stock to his shoulder as he headed for her at a quick march.

Chapter Three

Carter took the turn too fast, the wheels of his truck screeching in protest. This was the street. Where was Amber? And then he saw her. The car. The shooter. All at once.

Amber cowered beside the rear bumper of a rust bucket of a car that looked as substantial as an aluminum can. The dark blue van parked on the adjoining cross street looked right as a getaway vehicle. Before the house stood a single male, forties to fifties, dressed in jeans and an olive green windbreaker, an assault rifle lifted to his shoulder. His jaw was large and dark with stubble. Carter saw brown hair, a broad nose, a down-turned mouth and square forehead. Was this the man who had killed all those people at the copper mine? The gunman swung the rifle in Carter’s direction as Carter’s truck screeched to a halt beside Amber. He had expected her to open the door, but she didn’t. Didn’t wait for him to shout directions either.

Instead, Amber vaulted into the bed of his pickup and rolled as Carter accelerated. The spray of bullets peppered his tailgate as he turned away from the van. Behind him, the gunman stood in the road for a moment, then lowered his rifle and ran toward the van.

It wasn’t over. He felt it in the pit of his stomach.

Amber pounded on the small sliding glass window that separated the cab from the truck bed. He swiped the window open and glanced back at her. She stared at him with wide eyes.

“You,” she said.

He cast her a half smile and returned his focus to the road which was complicated by the distraction of Amber slithering through the narrow opening with the undulating ability of a belly dancer.

“You hurt?” he asked.

“No.” Amber looked over her shoulder out the back. “He killed him.”

“Ibsen?”

“Yes. I think so. I heard my boss... I heard shots. Maybe we should go back.”

“No. Call 911.”

“No phone.”

“I’m buying you a phone.”

“No, you are not.”

He didn’t have time to argue with her now. So he drew out his phone and passed it to her. She called the emergency number and gave them the address and situation. Her voice hardly wavered at all, but she kept her opposite hand pressed to her forehead as she spoke.

When she finished, she relaxed her hand, and his phone dropped limply into her lap. Suddenly she stiffened.

“My satchel!” She half turned in her seat. “I left it in the road.”

“Forget it.”

She pivoted back to place. “The packing slips. I’m responsible. They’re gone,” she said.

She settled in the seat beside him, her brow furrowed.

“Did you get a look at the one with the rifle?” asked Carter.

“What? Oh, yes. A good one.”

“Driver?”

“Yeah.”

“Think about them. Every detail.”

“Are they coming?” Amber glanced back through the rear window at the road behind them.

“Not sure.”

She gripped his forearm with both hands tight. The scar tissue tugged, and he winced. Who would have thought such a small woman would be so strong?

He scanned her worried face, taking in the changes, looking past the Anglo clothing and prim bun to the loose tendril of black silk caressing her jaw and falling away before her pointed chin. Her cheeks held a flush, and her dark eyes glimmered from beneath thick lashes, her eyes so black he could not see the pupils of her eyes. Her mouth, oh that mouth, pink and alluring with the small crescent scar cutting through the upper lip. That threadlike blemish had appeared while he was away on his first tour.

He turned back to the road. Beautiful, he decided, still and always the most beautiful woman in the world.

“How did you know where I was?” she asked.

“I was at the mine.”

“But why are you here?”

There was no time for that now.

“There’s been a shooting at the copper mine,” he said.

He made another turn.

“What?”

He debated only an instant and then told her everything.

“Everyone in my office?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”

“Looked like it.”

Amber covered her face and wept. The urge to shield her from the pain surged inside him. But driving at top speeds he could not even loop an arm around her shoulders as she cried.

Suddenly, she lifted her head and stared at him with deep dark eyes glimmering with pain. Her pointed chin trembled, and her tempting pink lips were parted in surprise. He felt a familiar tug at his heart. They’d been so good together.

He forced his gaze away.

“That’s why you wanted me to remember what I saw,” she said. “You think it’s the same man.”

“I do.”

He wondered if, instead of asking her to remember, he should tell her to forget. But it was too late. They’d seen the shooter. She’d seen the driver. They were involved.

She righted herself in the seat and closed her eyes. Then she lifted his phone, and dictated every detail she could remember into a text. The sound of her voice still stirred him.

When she finished sending the text she returned his phone.

“Who did you text that to?”

“Your brother Jack.”

His phone chimed as Jack sent back a question mark.

“That way, he has it, in case anything happens...”

“Nothing is going to happen. I got you.”

She stared with a solemn expression that made her seem world-weary. He summoned a quick smile he hoped looked reassuring.

“Why are you in Lilac, Carter? Why today?”

He had that creepy sensation again. The one he felt when he learned that her boss was out today of all days. “I have a letter for you from Kenshaw Little Falcon.”

“What?”

She shook her head, not understanding. “My uncle? Why would he send you?”

“He heads my medicine society now.”

Did she ask why he had been chosen or why the message needed to be hand delivered?

“It’s not from my father,” she said, the statement really a question. He knew from her mother, Natalie Kitcheyan, that Amber had been back to visit, but she timed her appearances carefully so as not to encounter her dad, Manny Kitcheyan. She also never visited Carter again. After that last time, he couldn’t blame her. But the truth that she’d moved on tugged at his heart.

Carter’s phone rang. He fished it from his front pocket and passed it to her again.

“It’s Jack,” she said.

“Put him on speaker.”

She did.

“Carter? Where are you?”

“I got her. But the guy was there at her boss’s house. He’s there, Jack, or he was. Two men. Dark blue Chevy van. Unmarked. Arizona plates.”

“I’ll call Arizona Highway Patrol. You safe?”

“For now. We’re heading north.”

“You guys clear?”

“Not sure. Any chance you can send Kurt down here for us?”

Carter was referring to their youngest brother, who was one of the pilots for the air ambulance transport team out of Darabee. In other words, Kurt might be able to get his hands on a helicopter.

“Either of you injured?”

He glanced at Amber, who was ashy and bleeding from the knees.

“If you need us to be, then, yes,” said Carter.

“There’s a hospital in Benson. Head there.”

“En route,” Carter said.

She disconnected and dropped the phone in his front breast pocket. She leaned in, wrapping her arms about his neck.

“You saved my life.”

She stared at him in a look that made his stomach tug. Those big, beautiful eyes open and grateful to him. How he’d missed her. Nine years since she’d broken it off. Seven since he’d laid eyes on Amber, but his heart remembered. He knew because it banged against his rib cage. He was thirsty for her, as thirsty as the desert longing for the yearly floods. He forced his gaze back to the road. He couldn’t do this again. The longing receded, replaced by the betrayal. Why did she leave her people?

Why did she leave him?

They could have worked it out. He’d been so stupid, and she’d been so stubborn. Blown to hell like that Humvee back in the Sandbox. No way to put back the pieces.

He glanced at her. Was there?

He looked in the rearview, spotted the van and stiffened. Amber followed the direction of his gaze, turning to stare through the rear window as Carter uttered a curse.

“It’s them!” she cried.

Carter accelerated toward the highway. His truck was tough, eight cylinders, but the van was gaining on them. That didn’t make any sense.

Amber spun in the seat, kneeling to look out the back.

“He’s got that rifle out the window.”

Carter pressed her head down. Then he brushed her off the seat so that she sprawled into the wheel well.

“Hold on.” His truck might not be as fast as whatever engine they had in that van, but it had higher clearance and tires especially made for riding over rock and through soft sand. Carter braked and swerved from the highway into the shoulder and then veered off toward the cover of the trees that lined the San Pedro River. He braced as more bullets punctured a line of holes across his truck’s rear gate. The rooster tail of dust and sand obscured the view of the van and hopefully them as a target from the shooter.

He needed both hands on the wheel to hold his course as they bumped across uneven ground and plowed through cacti; as the tall dry grass lashed against his bumper, sounding like heavy rain. He kept going, making for the river that he knew was dry in certain stretches for much of the year. Amber sat on the floorboards with one hand thrown across the seat and one on the glove box as she braced herself for the jolting ride through the thick chaparral to the flat stretch of the thirsty San Pedro. He had to get her out of here.

“Are they following us?” she called to be heard against the thudding of brush against the fender.

“Can’t see,” he said and lowered his chin as bursts of another desperate flight flashed through his mind like a thunderstorm.

Chapter Four

Carter made it to Benson and found the hospital. Jack had called in some chips, and Carter found Kurt waiting beside the air ambulance to transport him, Amber and a cooler full of blood to Darabee.

“Lucky you, there was a wreck on Route 88, and Darabee needs blood.”

“Fatalities?”

“Not if we hurry. Hop in.”

Kurt began his check as Carter helped Amber up and onto the gurney where the single paramedic waited. Carter wouldn’t feel safe until the chopper was airborne. He hadn’t felt this afraid since Iraq. But this time it wasn’t his own survival he contemplated, but Amber’s.

She lay on the cot beside the paramedic who had already cleaned up the abrasions on her knees and palms. She was wrapped in a blanket and still shivering. Carter scowled and adjusted the headset that allowed him to fill Kurt in on the details.

When they touched down, both the sheriff and his twin brother, Tribal Detective Jack Bear Den, were waiting. Behind them stood a member of Carter’s tribal council, Wallace Tinnin, the chief of tribal police, and Jefferson Rowe, the police chief from Darabee. Rowe was an Anglo, with dark curly hair that was receding and was clipped short at the sides. The deep parallel lines that flanked his mouth and the broad hooked nose did not quite balance his eyes, that were too widely set. Carter glanced to the parking lot beside the landing pad. He’d never seen so many police cars all in one place. Though he imagined the Lilac Copper Mine looked much the same about now.

“We have a welcoming party.”

“Looks like a welcoming party from Grey Wolf,” said Carter, referring to General George Crook by the name his people used. Crook had defeated the Tonto Apache with the help of Apache scouts, who were from a different tribe, back in 1883.

The slowing rotor blades kept back the welcoming committee temporarily, but Carter knew they needed to get onto sovereign land if he was to protect Amber.

The sheriff approached first. His brother was at the man’s heels.

The sheriff shouted louder than necessary to be heard over the helicopter.

“Mr. Bear Den, I’m Sheriff Bill Taylor. I need you and Ms. Kitcheyan to come with us.”

“Why?”

“She is a person of interest in an open investigation in Lilac,” said the sheriff.

“Is she being charged with a crime?”

The sheriff shook his head, his hand going to his fleshy neck and then up to the bristle of hair that was all that remained after someone had taken clippers to his head.

“No. A witness.”

“She’s a member of our tribe and as such will be returning to Turquoise Canyon.”

It was a lie. She wasn’t a tribe member anymore and had no rights to protection from their people. But none of his tribe members corrected him. In fact, Jack had already opened the door to his tribal police unit and retrieved Amber, who was now flanked by tribal police officers and tribal officials.

Chief Rowe and his men watched as the sheriff took a step to move past Carter, but he shifted to intercept.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“I was told Ms. Kitcheyan was in need of medical attention.”

“Delivered en route,” said Carter.

Amber was now in the backseat of Jack’s police car. Possession was now theirs. Carter placed two fingers above his brow and gave the sheriff a mock salute.

Then he trotted to his brother’s unmarked car and slipped into the passenger seat, dragging the door shut with a satisfying snap.

“I hope Kurt isn’t fired over this,” said Jack.

“Me, too.”

Police Chief Rowe stood beside Sheriff Taylor, who watched them with hands on hips as their chief of police, Wallace Tinnin, and tribal council member, Zach Gill, ran interference.

“They get the two in the van?” asked Carter, hoping like hell they caught the man responsible.

“Disappeared,” said Jack Bear Den to Carter as he pulled out. “Arizona State Police and local law enforcement are still searching.”

Carter glanced back at Amber, whose color had improved, but her blank expression and vacant stare worried him.

“She’s going to have to talk to them,” said Jack.

“They had video surveillance all over that building. They don’t need her.”

“Only witness, they said.”

“I saw him, too,” said Carter.

Jack lifted his brows. “But you I can protect.”

“You can protect us both.”

He gave a slow apologetic shake of his head. “It’s just a matter of time, you know. They’ll figure out that she’s not one of us, and when they do, I can’t stop them from taking her.”

Carter’s gut churned like a washing machine on agitate. Why had she done that—abandon her people and her poor parents? It was so stupid, pointless. He didn’t understand, didn’t think he could ever understand her actions. She had thrown them all away like a spoiled child.

“FBI is en route with requests to interview Amber.” Jack glanced back at his passenger.

“No,” said Carter.

“Carter, they’re the Feds. I might be able to hold them off for twenty-four hours, but eventually they’re coming to speak with her.” Jack had correctly guessed that his brother did not want to speak to the FBI.

Carter glanced in the rearview at Amber. “You okay back there?”

She nodded, her eyes still unfocused. The one-thousand-yard stare, the marines called it. Shell shock, PTSD and usually a domain reserved to soldiers. She hadn’t signed up for this.

“I’m taking you to the station. I can arrange to have one of my guys there when the FBI interviews you.”

“Just get us home.”

He drove them to the station and into the squad room where all nine of the officers from their tribe had desks. The chief’s office was in the corner with windows looking out at the room. Jack’s desk sat by the window with a view of the parking area and the road beyond.

Jack motioned to the chair beside his desk, the one reserved for witnesses and suspects. Which was Amber? Carter wondered.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

Jack gave her directions, and the brothers watched her exit to the hallway. Carter’s brother gave him a once-over.

“You all right?” asked Jack.

Carter shook his head. “I used to think so.”

His brother had served with him in Iraq. But after one tour, Jack had left the service. Now a detective, Jack was also a member of the Turquoise Guardians medicine society. Recently, Jack and Carter had also been inducted into Tribal Thunder. Their elite warrior band defending their people and their sacred land. Today Carter glimpsed the seriousness of their duty. How had Little Falcon known?

“Did you deliver the message?” asked Jack.

Carter patted his pocket. “Not yet.”

“What do you think it is?” asked Jack.

“A warning, maybe.” Carter met his brother’s troubled gaze with one of his own. They didn’t have to speak. Carter knew what Jack was thinking. He was also wondering if Kenshaw Little Falcon had prior knowledge of the mass shooting. The implications were staggering.

Jack pressed his mouth tight, clearly disagreeing. They were twins but did not resemble each other. Carter had features he thought were classic for the Tonto Apache people while Jack was built like a brick house. Carter wore his hair long and loose, but Jack clipped his dark brown hair short to avoid others seeing the natural curl, and had eyes that were closer to gray than brown. The differences didn’t end there; he was three inches taller and had thick eyebrows that peaked in a way that made Jack look dangerous even when he was just hanging out. There had been questions when they were growing up. They didn’t look like twins. They didn’t even look like brothers, and Jack didn’t look full-blood Apache. His skin was too light and his features too Anglo.

“The FBI has agents en route,” said Jack.

“Don’t let them take her, Jack,” said Carter. If she left their land, Carter couldn’t protect her. He knew it and Jack knew it.

Jack’s scowl made him look even more intimidating than usual.

“Anything on Ibsen?” asked Carter.

“Head shot. Dead. My buddy on highway patrol says it looks like the same shooter as at the mine. Can’t believe they missed the shooter twice. They’ve got helicopters, dogs, state and local cops, all searching and border patrol stopping everything heading south.”

“Think they made it before the roadblocks?” asked Carter.

“Impossible.”

“How do you think they got away?”

“Changed vehicles, split up. Likely they are within ten miles of where you saw them. They’re doing a house-to-house in Ibsen’s neighborhood.”

“That will take some time,” said Carter.

“I’m going to stick with Amber for a while,” he said, and Jack’s eyes narrowed, clearly not liking that plan.

“We should turn her over to the Feds.”

Now Carter was scowling because that was not going to happen.

“It’s my duty to protect her,” said Carter.

He referred to his duty as a Turquoise Guardian, to protect their people and their sacred land.

“Guardians protect the people. She’s no longer one of us.”

Carter glared at his brother. “She’s Apache. That’s enough.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

Jack grimaced but said no more. He’d been there to pick up the pieces after Amber had left. Carter wasn’t surprised that Jack was less than thrilled to have Amber back.

“Not again,” said Jack.

Carter met his brother’s warning with a glare of his own.

“She left. She didn’t write. She didn’t visit, not even after you were injured.”

“I saw her after I came home from the hospital.”

He hadn’t told Jack. A rare omission that clearly surprised his twin.

“But she left again.”

He couldn’t deny that. But he knew he’d shown her the door. He’d been so hurt and angry. Yeager had still been MIA, and his days were filled with horror and hope. She’d asked about Hatch Yeager.

What do you care, Amber? Really. You disappear for two years, and then you think I owe you answers. I don’t owe you a thing.

Carter met the disapproval in Jack’s words with a steady stare. “Yeah, she left again after I threw her out.”

Jack made a face. Carter couldn’t tell what his brother thought about that.

“Maybe she’s ready to come home,” said Carter.

And maybe he was ready to let her. After today that was at least a possibility.

Jack shook his head. “Maybe she had no other choice.”

Carter returned his attention to his brother, who raked a hand through his short brown hair. “What does that mean exactly?”

“She is a witness. They want her in federal custody.”

“We both saw him. He was at her boss’s house.”

“And her boss is dead, too. Everyone is dead but Amber.”

Carter didn’t like the way Jack said that, as if this were all somehow her fault.

“Can’t you just give her the message and forget about her?” Jack asked.

He’d never been able to forget about her. And oh, how he had tried. But even after all this time he wondered about what she was doing, thinking and if she missed him at all.

Could he?

He’d stayed away from her, but this was different. Because whether she would admit it or not, she needed him. He hated how much he needed that excuse to keep her close. He slipped both hands into his pockets, wishing he could give his brother the answer he wanted to hear and knowing he could not.

“I can’t,” said Carter.

Jack’s mouth went tight.

“Carter, I’m telling you this as my brother. Let her go.”

“Why?”

“Because Amber Kitcheyan isn’t just a witness. She’s also a suspect.”

“How do you know that?”

“They told my boss. She should never have left the office with those papers. Makes her look guilty as hell.”