Turquoise Guardian

“If she’d stayed, she’d be dead.”

Jack glanced toward the window and swore.

Carter followed the direction of his brother’s fixed attention. Amber was standing in the parking lot before the station alone.

Jack quirked a brow. “Still think she’s innocent?”

Chapter Five

Amber stepped from the concrete building that included tribal headquarters and the tribal police station and breathed deep.

The air smelled so different here. She’d almost forgotten the crisp clean taste and the moisture. There was water here. Back in Lilac the earth was scorched and parched and thirsty. The dust was everywhere on everything and everyone. She didn’t think she’d ever be clean again. Now she was. Standing here where she belonged.

Or had belonged.

Relinquished, they called it. Carter said it was irrevocable. She’d checked, of course, called the tribal council offices and asked if a tribe member who had relinquished their membership could reapply. The woman on the phone had been blunt. No, she had said. The decision is not like a reversible blanket. Relinquishment is permanent and irrevocable.

Amber added one more item to the list of things her father had stolen from her. And still he was her father and, as such, deserved to be honored. But not loved. He’d lost that along the way.

She thought of Carter, there when she needed him most, and found herself shaking her head in astonishment. He had a message from her uncle, his shaman. She wondered if the message he carried was from her mother or her father.

She set her jaw and breathed, the cool air calming her. What would she do now? She could not go home to her family or stay here on tribal land. She could not bear to go back to Lilac, knowing what had happened. She shivered, afraid of the ghosts of all the ones she knew, torn from this world in such a brutal and cruel way.

Carter would know what to do. He was always so sure of himself. So sure he did not need to ask her what was true, he just moved forward. Omnipotent. But that wasn’t love. It was some kind of possession. He had been too much like her father, and she would not have one more man controlling her. So she’d ended it. The decision had been hard but right. So why did it still hurt so much?

But oh, he was more handsome now than ever.

He had grown out his hair since his military service, and now he wore it loose and long, so it reached midway down his biceps, the strands shining blueblack in the sunlight as they’d flown in the chopper from Lilac. From her place lying on the gurney she could see him sitting beside his brother Kurt. Carter was a Hot Shot now, according to her sister Kay who sent her letters of the happenings on the Rez. Carter no longer wore his uniform, as he had the last time she had seen him. After three tours in the Middle East, he had been honorably discharged and relinquished the US Marine’s uniform for a pair of snug jeans. He wore them cinched about his trim hips with an ornate red coral and turquoise buckle and a soft chambray shirt that showed his muscular form. She wondered if Carter had made the ornament himself because he was a talented silversmith.

A Subaru SUV pulled into the station. She noticed it because such foreign cars were uncommon up here on the Rez.

The black vehicle circled the lot and came to a stop at the curb before her. The driver put the car in Park but didn’t shut down the engine. His passenger met Amber’s gaze, and a smile quirked his lips as he exited the vehicle.

He wore a gray blazer and dark slacks. His ashy brown hair was trimmed and a shade lighter than the closely cut beard. He looked vaguely familiar, but she did not remember where or when she had seen him before.

“Ms. Kitcheyan? Will you please come with us, ma’am?” He had a strong Texas twang in his speech.

Amber stepped back. He reached in his blazer, and she saw his shoulder holster and the black butt of a pistol. He drew out a leather cover and opened the case, revealing an FBI shield.

“I’m Field Agent Muir with the FBI. My driver is Field Agent Leopold. We’ll be taking you to the police station in Darabee to record your statements,” said the agent.

Amber slipped back as her eyes shifted from the agents and then over her shoulder to the station door. It seemed impossibly far. She did not want to go with this man but thought running would be embarrassing.

She glanced at Muir, trying to understand the deep dread congealing in her stomach.

“If you’ll step into the vehicle, ma’am.” Muir extended a hand, indicating the rear seat that lay behind dark tinted windows. She shivered.

“I can’t. They’re waiting for me inside.” She thumbed over her shoulder.

His smile looked more predatory than reassuring. And then it clicked. He wore a sports coat and pants. Not a suit. A sports jacket. She quirked a brow at that; it didn’t seem right.

“Ma’am,” he said again, his tone carrying a warning.

She didn’t hear Carter arrive, but heard him a moment later and turned as he spoke.

“What’s going on here?” Carter asked.

Muir showed his shield and repeated his request for Amber to step into the vehicle. His partner exited the driver’s side and rounded the fender, his hand on the pistol clipped to his hip. He looked remarkably like Muir, with dark brown hair and aviator glasses that covered his eyes. He wore an ill-fitting black suit that puddled at his loafers.

Carter faced off with Muir.

“You’re on tribal land,” said Carter. “Sovereign land. You can’t take her.”

Muir and Leopold shared a silent look, and Carter spoke to her in Apache.

“These two aren’t FBI.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re not taking her,” said Carter to Muir.

“Wanna bet?” said the driver, Leopold, drawing his weapon.

Horror immobilized Amber as the driver flicked off the safety and pointed the weapon at Carter. She moved to step before him, but he tugged her behind him.

“What’s your name?” asked Muir.

“Carter Bear Den.”

The men exchanged a second look. Leopold gave a lazy grin.

“Get in,” said Muir. “Both of you.”

They headed for the black Subaru SUV. Her eyes narrowed at the vehicle. Federal agents drove American-made vehicles. Impala, Taurus, Dodge Charger. She knew that from working a summer internship in Benson with Public Safety. What they didn’t drive was foreign cars.

Carter was right. These two were not FBI.

She glanced to Carter, but he had his eyes on Muir who had now drawn his weapon.

“Get in,” he said, motioning with his pistol.

Amber stepped up and into the SUV. Carter followed a moment later, and the door clicked shut behind them.

Carter spoke to Amber in Apache before either man got in the vehicle.

“Jack’s watching from inside. He’s seen them take us. We just have to stay alive until he can get to us.”

Muir, or whatever his name was, got in first. He sat facing them, pistol pointed at Carter until the driver returned to the adjoining seat. Then they ordered Carter to lift his hands. The driver snapped a handcuff on one of Carter’s wrists, threaded the chain through the handgrip fixed above his door before clipping the other cuff on his opposite wrist.

Amber swallowed and sank back in her seat trying to slow her heartbeat and think. Carter’s face was grim, and she found no reassurance there.

Was there a tire iron or something? She glanced about and found a car so spotless it belonged on a showroom floor.

They left the small lot and turned away from Darabee. That was bad, she thought, because to the south was only Red Rock Dam and the resort community of Turquoise Lake. Beyond that, down the highway which many called the Apache Trail, lay Phoenix.

The Subaru accelerated. Amber glanced at the digital speedometer, seeing that they had reached sixty, and the speed was still increasing. Outside her window the town of Pinyon Forks quickly gave way to pastureland dotted with the tribe’s cattle. Past the open stretch, the mountains rose, thick with lush green Douglas fir and ponderosa pine that grew in abundance on their land. The tribe’s land, she corrected. Not hers. Not anymore.

“What will they do to us?” she asked in Apache.

Carter’s jaw set, and she had her answer. They were dead unless Jack found them first or she or Carter did something. Muir still sat with his back toward the windshield. Gun pointed at Carter.

“Attach your harness,” Carter said in Apache.

“English,” said the driver.

Amber drew a breath at the implication and reached for her safety belt. Whatever Carter planned, it involved a quick stop, maybe worse.

She fastened her seat belt that included a shoulder restraint. Carter, of course, could not do the same. She grabbed the armrest tight and waited. They were going so fast now, the seconds taking them farther and farther from Pinyon Forks.

Amber cleared her throat. Whatever Carter planned, it needed to be soon. But Muir kept his weapon raised and his attention on Carter.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said.

Muir didn’t bite. “Go ahead.”

“Pull over, right now!” she shouted.

His eyes flicked to her, but the gun stayed pointed at Carter. Leopold did not even flinch but kept both hands on the wheel as Muir gave her a ferocious glare. In that moment of inattention, Carter clamped both hands around the handgrip, lifted one booted foot and kicked the driver with such force the man’s head impacted the side window, cracking the glass.

Muir looked to his partner as Carter swung the pointed toe of his boot in his direction, the tip impacting Muir’s eye socket. The man yelped and slapped his free hand over his eye, his pistol dipping out of Amber’s line of vision.

Amber gasped at the violence of the attack and because the car was swerving now, leaving the highway at dizzying speeds.

The SUV veered across the center line as the driver’s head lolled back in the seat, his hands dropping from the wheel. Muir lifted the pistol, and Amber lunged, leaving the shoulder restraint behind as she grabbed his arm with both hands and yanked up as the first shot went into the roof. Carter was now wrapping his legs around both the seat and passenger, trapping Muir’s arm beside his head.

The SUV careened off the opposite shoulder and slid down the short embankment of grass. The jolting ride pressed Amber back into her seat. She grabbed at the door handle, but the door did not open. They bounced and jerked as the SUV thrashed through the long grass and weeds before breaking through the barbed wire fence. Her shoulder harness engaged, pinning her back in her seat and giving her an excellent view of the looming drop-off to the stream she knew ran cold and deep all year.

Amber screamed as the earth fell from beneath the front fender. The vehicle tipped to a right angle, and she glimpsed the rocky creek bed visible only because the snowpack had not yet melted with the spring runoff. An instant later, they hit the rocky bank. Her shoulder harness bit into her chest and squeezed her hips as the vehicle came to an abrupt halt at the same moment the front air bags inflated, throwing the unconscious driver and struggling passenger back. Their side air bag inflated, dislodging Carter. He was thrown sideways so hard it looked as if he were being hauled by a rope. He didn’t move again.

The car’s metal groaned, and the car fell back, the rear tires striking the bank behind them before coming to rest.

White powder filled the cab, and she couldn’t see. Carter slumped beside her.

She shook him, screaming his name, then remembered it was dangerous to shake an accident victim. Then she shook him again. He didn’t rouse.

White swirling dust began to settle on them like frost. The stillness deafened.

Chapter Six

Amber had to find the handcuff key. The guys in Benson had kept theirs in their wallets.

She released her seat belt. When she rolled her shoulder, she winced. Where was Muir’s pistol?

First things first. She pushed the unconscious Muir forward into the deflating air bag and groped his back pockets, finding nothing. On her second try she located his wallet, in the front pocket of his blazer. She opened the worn brown leather and saw the license which read: Warren Cushing.

“Muir,” she muttered and continued her search, locating the small handcuff key that most resembled a tiny luggage key.

How long until one of them woke up? She kept the wallet and used the key, more worried when Carter’s hands dropped limply to his lap.

“Wake up, Carter!”

She tried the door again to the same end and then stared at the gap between the seats. It took only a moment to vault through the opening and lunge across the driver to reach the door release. The latch clicked, and she felt like crying in relief. Instead, she continued, head first out the door, clasping the armrest in passing to keep from sprawling on her face.

Once outside the SUV she spotted the driver’s gun in a holster clipped on his belt. His face was a bloody mess as it seemed the air bag had broken his nose. She reached Leopold’s gun, or whatever his name really was. His pistol went in the back of her waistband as if she were a gangster. She shut the door and hurried to the rear door where Carter slumped. Amber tugged Carter’s door open and reached for him. He was heavy, and she realized she could tip him out, but then what?

She considered shooting both the unconscious impostors and dismissed the notion as she wrinkled her nose in disgust. She couldn’t. She knew that much.

Her eyes caught the glint of something shiny, and she spotted the gun on the floor mat by Carter’s feet. That pistol went in the front of her waistband. She could hear Warren Cushing groan as he started to regain consciousness.

She felt the pressure of time and the choice of leaving Carter or staying here with these two strangers. Well, she had the guns. What if Carter had been wrong and these men were really FBI and she and Carter had just attacked federal officers and wrecked a federal vehicle?

Amber’s shoulders slumped. She wiped back tears and retrieved Carter’s phone from his rear pocket. For the second time in one day she called for help, only this time she used Carter’s favorites list to find and dial Jack Bear Den’s cellular phone.

“Where are you?” asked Detective Bear Den.

She told him as best she could, not liking the high frantic quality of her voice. “We crashed the car. These men said they’re FBI. Carter says they aren’t, and one has an ID reading Warren Cushing, and he told me his name was Muir and—”

“Slow down,” said Bear Den.

She grabbed a breath and swallowed, then started again. Her words came out a jumbled mess, and it took a moment for her to realize that Detective Bear Den was shouting her name. She stopped talking.

Then she noticed something, the meaning rising to fill her consciousness.

“I smell gas.”

“What?” asked Bear Den. “Get him out of the vehicle!”

She thrust the phone in her pocket as the implications made her heart beat in her throat, choking out the stench. She gave Carter another sharp poke in the ribs. This time he groaned.

“Wake up, Carter,” she said. “Wake up now!”

“Amber?” The voice came from the phone behind her. She ignored it to grasp Carter by the front of his soft chambray shirt.

She glanced about for cover. The closest thing was a large rock, to the left by the water, but it was too close and still half submerged in cold water. Next was a second outcropping along the bank that was maybe fifteen feet away. She glanced up the incline to the road above them, and it seemed impossibly steep.

She slung Carter’s arm over her shoulders and tugged.

“Come on, Carter. Move!”

He groaned, and his arm tightened on her shoulders.

“Up, soldier! That’s a direct order.”

Another groan, but he swung his own legs out of the SUV and slid against her. His eyes fluttered.

“What happened?” He lifted a hand to his head.

“Later.”

“Yeager. Get Yeager.” Was he back in Iraq?

He slipped to a knee, and she had a sinking feeling that she’d never get him up again.

“Gas,” he said.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

He used her as a crutch, and the weight nearly buckled her knees as they inched past the rear of the smoking Subaru and along the rocky bank of the stream. She threaded them under an overturned juniper, which had toppled from the bank above and now hung precariously before them.

They had come only twenty feet. But it would have to do because Carter dropped, carrying her to the ground with him. The juniper branches, still lush and loaded with the tight gray berries, fell like a curtain between them and the Subaru. She feared it would be little protection if the vehicle exploded. She got him to his side, and he groaned again.

“Like getting kicked by a horse,” he muttered.

She picked up the sound of car doors closing and cowered. Was that help or the impostors coming after them?

* * *

CARTER’S EARS BUZZED as if he had just come from a rock concert. Dappled light filtered down on him with shards of sunlight so bright they seemed to slice the tissues of his eyes. His face hurt. His neck ached. He groaned.

“Quiet now,” said a soft female voice, and a small hand pressed to his shoulder.

Who was that? He forced his eyes open. There, lying beside him, was an unfamiliar woman who seemed to be covered in baby powder. For just a moment he thought he was dreaming as he looked on the sacred deity, Changing Woman, who brought rebirth to the land.

He lifted a hand to touch her cheek and found it warm and alive. Tear stains cut tracks through the white dust, revealing the soft brown skin beneath.

He glanced at his wrist, all red and raw skin, as if he’d been tied. Carter’s gaze flicked back to hers.

“Amber?” he asked.

He had never seen her like this, disheveled and lost. What had happened?

He rocked his jaw, wondering who had hit him as he moved his hand from her face to his.

Amber took hold of his hands and squeezed. The ache now moved to his chest. Only she could make his heart ache and his body come alive with longing.

He’d loved her as a girl and lost her when she became a woman. He’d tried to forget her. Carter admitted now that he never could. Not this one, because she still owned a piece of his heart. He knew this because that piece now bled with longing for her. The woman who’d left him. But worse, she’d left her family and abandoned her people.

“Amber,” he whispered, reaching up and cupping her cheek.

She smiled, and the powder on her face flaked at the corners of her eyes. Her hair was also powdered like George Washington’s and tucked up in a knot at the back of her head. She used to wear it down so that it brushed the waistband of her jeans and his thighs when she sat astride him as they made love.

Why? Why had she thrown it all away? Their future—a life together here where they both belonged? Why was she ashamed of who and what she was?

Now her bun had shifted. Tendrils had escaped and hung about her powdered face. Her Anglo blazer was streaked with grime and sand, and she’d lost the top two buttons of her blouse. He reached up and cupped her chin, his thumb brushing that tiny crescent scar at her mouth.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Hush. Someone is here.”

“Who?” he whispered and craned his neck in the direction she faced. That’s when he realized he was lying against a wall of dirt behind a fast-running stream. The sun that hit them full in the face did not touch the opposite bank. Afternoon then or morning. He tried to make sense of his surroundings.

It all came back to him, up to and including the air bag punching him like a prizefighter.

“Where are we?”

“About ten miles outside Pinyon Forks,” she whispered. Then Amber cocked her head. Now he heard the voices.

“Down here,” said a male voice. The way he spoke made Carter think he was Anglo, Southern.

Who? he mouthed. She shrugged. Then she moved up close to his ear and whispered.

“I called your brother. He’s coming. But the Subaru was leaking gas, and he told me to get you out.”

And she had. How the devil had this little woman moved him?

Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke again. “I have their guns. Those guys. But someone else is here now.”

“Jack?” he whispered.

“I don’t think so.”

From the top of the bank, seemingly right above them, came the voice again.

“Where is she?”

That one sounded Anglo, he thought.

Next came another voice, deeper, with a speaking pattern that lacked the Texas twang.

“They got away.”

“They can’t have gone far,” came the reply.

Amber flattened into the warm earth beside him, covering her mouth with one hand and retrieving a gun from the waistband of her slacks. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She rolled to her side and then reached behind and beneath her blazer, laying a second gun on his chest. He took it, and their eyes met. He saw no fear now. Only a cold determination and willingness to do what was necessary. She would have made a good soldier. His gut twisted, so damn glad she had not been there with him in the Sandbox.

“They’re right on our tails,” said the first voice. “We have maybe another two minutes.”

“But she’s right here!” said his companion.

Amber’s eyes widened. She was the only “she” out here.

“No time,” repeated the first man. “Get my brother. We’ll have to come back for her.

“Hurry up,” said the first man.

A car door opened, the metal groaning a protest.

The same voice again. “Let’s go.”

Carter looked at Amber. Her hand was pressed to her mouth again as if to keep from screaming. Her eyes were wide. Seconds ticked by, and then two more doors slammed and tires patched out on the gravel that lined the shoulder of the road.

Amber slid her hand away from her mouth. “Are they gone?”

Carter nodded. “I think so.”

“Should I check?” she asked.

He shook his head. There was no reason for her to see this. He could protect her from that image, the kind that stuck in your mind and flashed back like a thunderstorm.

They said they had two minutes.

“We wait,” said Carter.

Insects buzzed in the grass above them, and the wind brushed through the long needles of the ponderosa pines on the opposite bank. Amber returned her gun to her waistband and then gripped his arm with two of hers as she huddled close.

“How did you get me out?” he asked.

“You walked, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

There was a whooshing sound, as if from a strong gust of wind. Black smoke rose up behind them, billowing in a dark column in the bright blue sky.

“Fire,” said Carter.

Had the men retrieved Muir and Leopold before setting the Subaru ablaze?

Tires crunched on sand. Amber’s grip tightened, and she ducked her head.

“They’re back,” she whispered, her voice strained.

“Carter? Amber?”

He knew that voice. It was Jack.

“Here!” he yelled. When he stood, the dizziness came with him, clawing at him and making the ground heave. Amber was there beside him, steadying him, holding him so he didn’t fall.

“Slow,” she said. “Go slow.”

She could have run to his brother. But she didn’t. She helped him walk, leaning into him as she wrapped an arm about his middle and gripped his opposite arm, now draped over her narrow shoulders. Then he scrambled up the steep bank on his hands and knees toward the road topping the rise and saw the SUV consumed in flames.

Chapter Seven

Amber felt safe again, at least for now. Detective Bear Den had transported them back to Pinyon Forks and the Turquoise Canyon police station. On the way they had told Carter’s brother everything. Once they arrived, she’d had a chance to wash her face and hands, brush out the powder from her hair and drink some water with Carter standing guard outside the door.