The Warrior

“John. Yes, yes, that’s the name he gave. Do you know where I can find him?”

Daisy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“Uh, well…we were talking, and he mentioned he had a car for sale. I thought I’d drive by and take a look at it, since I’m still in the area.”

Daisy frowned. “I don’t know exactly where he lives. All I know is it’s that way.”

She pointed north.

“I seem to have forgotten his last name,” Dieter added.

“Nightwalker,” Daisy said. “His name is John Nightwalker.”

Dieter smiled. “Thanks so much,” he said, and headed out the door. He opened the Coke and took a big bite of a cinnamon roll before he put the car in gear and drove away. Things were already looking up.

Richard Ponte was alternating between panic and pure unadulterated rage. This was a nightmare. His carefully balanced empire was in danger of toppling, and all because of his own blood. A part of him knew it was his own fault. He’d been so confident of the power he wielded that he’d gotten careless, doing business at home. He knew better. But he hadn’t done better.

He glanced at his watch. It had only been an hour since he’d last talked to Dieter. He palmed his cell phone, resisting the urge to call Alicia again—to try to talk her into coming home on her own. After the fight they’d had, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. She hadn’t seemed to care about where the money came from that had afforded her the luxurious lifestyle she’d enjoyed. Who knew she could turn into a flag-waving bleeding heart? The truth was, he didn’t really know her at all, and this incident was proof of that. And learning she was no longer alone had been shocking. Where had the man Dieter described come from? How and when had she met him? It was all a mystery—and a mess.

The phone began to ring, jarring him out of his reverie. He glanced at the caller ID and then relaxed, shifted into business mode and answered with his usual voice of authority, and the morning continued.

Alicia was pouring herself a refill from the coffeepot when John came back into the kitchen. This time he was dressed, thank God. She didn’t think she could take another reality jolt like that without making a fool of herself.

“Did you find everything you needed?” John asked as he got a cup down from the cabinet and filled it.

Alicia lifted her cup. “Coffee was enough.”

John’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he raked her body with a slow, assessing gaze. Then he reached back in the cabinet, got down two bowls and pointed to a door behind her.

“There are a couple of kinds of dry cereal in the pantry. Pick one for yourself. I want Cocoa Puffs. Would you mind passing them over?”

“But coffee is—”

“You’re too thin.”

Alicia’s mouth dropped. In the world of high fashion, there was no such thing. She reached for the Cocoa Puffs and handed them to him, and as she did, she began to smile. The cartoonlike characters on the cereal box were such opposites of the persona this man projected. She eyed the other box of cereal, touting health and bran, then opted for Cocoa Puffs, as well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had chocolate anything for breakfast before.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”

Alicia paused with the bowl in her hand, and even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she knew how ridiculous they were going to sound.

“I guess because no one ever offered it.”

John’s eyes widened as he turned, staring at her as if she were a curiosity.

“Haven’t you ever made a meal for yourself?”

She felt heat on her face and an odd sense of guilt, as if she’d been examined and found lacking.

“No.”

He thought of White Fawn, down on her knees scraping bits of flesh and tallow from the insides of skins, hanging slivers of deer meat over small fires to smoke and dry. Picking berries to add to his meals, the tips of her fingers stained blue from their juice.

Then he took a slow breath and nodded. Judging her wasn’t any of his business, although he couldn’t resist a small dig.

“Sounds to me like you should have run away from home a long time ago.”

“You’re probably right,” she shot back. “Pass me the cereal when you’re through, please.”

He grinned and handed over the box.

Alicia felt its weight in her hand, but at that moment, she couldn’t have moved to save her soul. That smile…Sweet mercy. Thankfully, he turned his back on her to retrieve the milk from the refrigerator. By the time he came back, she had pulled herself together and had filled her bowl.

“Don’t float it,” she muttered, when he began to pour milk on her cereal.

He paused, eyeing the intent expression on her face as she watched the little chocolate puffs rising with the milk. He didn’t want to admit it, but she intrigued him.

“Then pour it yourself and consider it your first stab at cooking.”

Alicia’s face burned even more. She’d been rude, but not intentionally.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That came out as a demand, and I didn’t mean for it to.”

John shrugged. “You’re not running for Miss Congeniality…but we need to remember that you are running. So sit down and eat. When we’ve finished, we need to make a plan to get you to the proper authorities.”

Alicia wanted to be angry. She wasn’t used to being talked to this way, but her own sense of justice made her admit she’d asked for it.

“Yes. Thank you,” she said, then took the spoon he offered and followed him to the kitchen table.

They ate in silence. Every now and then, Alicia would sneak a peek at his face to see if he was still irked with her, but he seemed to have let it all go, which was fine. She thought about the scars on his body and wanted to ask, but she’d already been rude once. Adding to her list of transgressions didn’t seem like a good idea, not when he was helping her like this. So she dug into her cereal, enjoying the sugar-loaded treat more than she would have imagined.

Once John looked up and caught her in the act of staring. Instead of looking away, he surprised her by staring back.

Before she could move, he reached over and swiped his thumb across the corner of her mouth. “Chocolate milk.” When he licked the milk off his thumb in a slow, studied motion, an ache shot through her belly so fast she groaned.

“You okay?” he asked.

Hell no. “Other than the fact that you’ve discovered my ineptitude at feeding myself, my inability to take care of myself and the fact that I can’t keep all my food in my mouth, I’m just peachy.”

It was the sarcasm that got him. He grinned.

“Point taken.” He got up and put his dirty dishes in the sink. “Don’t rush on my account. I’m going to the office to check my e-mail and make a few calls.”

Alicia nodded, while another concern suddenly surfaced. She didn’t know a thing about what he did or how he got the money to live this way.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked.

He paused, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully, then shrugged. “These days, I mostly buy and sell stuff.”

“Oh…you play the stock market?”

“I don’t play at anything. One facet of my life is importing and exporting things, some of which are antiquities.”

“Really? Like what I saw hanging on your walls?”

“No, most of those are family relics. Feel free to look around. I won’t be long.” He turned and left.

Alicia nodded, then eyed his purposeful stride, along with his backside, with honest female appreciation.

Once she finished eating, she set her dishes in the sink as he’d done, then glanced out the windows. The wind was up. Whitecaps rode the waves all the way in to shore and then out again, while the waves crashed against the rocks. Not a good morning for a stroll on the beach, although it mirrored the turmoil in her life.

She needed to think. She knew senators, congress-men—all kinds of Washington, D.C., bigwigs…but they were also her father’s contemporaries. His cohorts. They were people who’d been to dinner at their Miami home, who’d vacationed with them at their villa in Italy. Which ones—if any—could she trust with her information? She’d grown up watching her father buy loyalty the way other people bought groceries. If she told the wrong person, she would be signing her own death warrant.

She wandered past the library, then down the hall into the living room, where Native American artifacts had been hung in tasteful abandon. But she wasn’t really seeing them for the worries and thoughts going through her mind. Then her gaze landed on some photos, and she moved a little closer.

They were obviously old—tintypes, sepia-colored daguerreotypes, even an old panorama-style photo taken on the rim of some mountain that overlooked a great chasm with a river far below.

She squinted her eyes to read the tiny label affixed to the bottom of the frame, noting that it was of a portion of the Grand Canyon and the river was the mighty Colorado. The photo to the right was of a single figure, a Native American man with hair hanging almost to his waist. His face was painted and his chest was bare. He was wearing a breechclout made of skins, with some kind of leggings. It was hard to make out details, considering the picture was an old sepia print, and faded at that.

But Alicia hadn’t been raised in her father’s business without some of it rubbing off, because it was the rifle he was cradling in his arms that caught her attention. It looked like a long rifle. One of the old single-shots that required patches and powder and lead balls. She glanced at his face again, partially hidden by the long fall of hair on either side, then started to move on when something caught her eye.

She leaned closer, peering intently at the man’s bare chest. There was a crescent-shaped scar right below his collarbone on the left side of his chest, just like one of the scars she’d seen on John’s chest this morning, when he’d walked into the house naked. She glanced up at the face in the photo, studying the features beneath the paint. Something about them…

“Fierce-looking creature, isn’t he?”

She jumped. The deep rasp of John’s voice in her ear was unexpected.

She nodded, then glanced at the collar of John’s T-shirt, curious about the similar scar, but the shirt concealed it.

“Do you know who he is? There’s no name on the photo.”

John glanced down at her, then shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

“A distant relative.”

“Oh…that explains why I thought he looked a little like you.”

John’s mouth twitched at the corner as he pretended to study the photo a little closer. It wouldn’t do to tell her flat out that it was him, and that he not only remembered the day the picture had been taken, but that he still had the rifle he was holding.

“I guess, to the whites, all Indians look alike,” he said, and then changed the subject. “Regarding your situation…have you figured out how you’re going to inform the authorities of what your father is doing?”

Alicia frowned. She didn’t think of herself as ethnically prejudiced and didn’t like him attributing that bias to her.

“I didn’t say that,” she replied, ignoring his question. “I said he looks a little like you. In fact, you even share a similar scar. Right there,” she added, pointing to the photo.

Without thinking, John’s hand moved to his chest, feeling the scar beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. He started to ask her how she knew about his scars, then remembered he’d walked bare-assed through the house right in front of her this morning, and sighed. It served him right.

“Hmm, I guess we do,” he said. “I never noticed.”

“You have a lot of scars,” she said.

“Yes.”

Alicia thought he would elaborate, but when he didn’t, she didn’t have the guts to ask him why.

“Now, about those phone calls,” John said. “What’s your plan?”

Alicia could tell the discussion about his ancestry was, for the time being, over. And he was right. There were things that needed to be set in motion so justice could be served.

“There are a lot of powerful people who are friends with my father, but this isn’t information that a regular police department would even deal with. Maybe the FBI…only Dad went to college with the deputy director. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not accusing him of being in cahoots with Dad, but I’m also not certain if he’d believe me. I have this image in my head of trying to convince people of the truth while Dad finds a way to make me out to be crazy…claiming I’m trying to ruin him because he disowned me, or something. And I don’t want to wind up in some loony bin, drugged out of my mind to keep me quiet, or six feet under because I was nothing but collateral damage on his path to his personal goals.”

John was listening, but he was also distracted by the fact that from where she was standing, he could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. It irked him that he’d even noticed, and he chalked it up to the fact that it had been a while since he’d been with a woman. Maybe all he needed was to take another drive down to Savannah, although the last time he was there, he’d gotten mixed up in a bank robbery and shot for his troubles.

“So what do you think?” she prodded.

That you’re not as skinny as I thought. “Uh…that it’s your call.”

She groaned, then turned away and strode to the windows.

John followed.

“Look…if you really don’t trust the powers that be, there’s always the media,” he said.

Alicia’s frustration shifted. “What do you mean?” she asked as she turned to face him.

“You know the newspapers…always ready for the next big scoop. I know a journalist who works out of D.C.—Corbin Woodliff.”

“The Corbin Woodliff who won a Pulitzer a couple of years ago?”

“Yes.”

Alicia’s pulse skipped. That might be the answer. “Can you get me in to see him?”

“If he’s in the country,” John said, watching the play of emotions on her face.

Alicia’s voice rose an octave, evidence of her excitement. “If he broke the news, then the authorities would have to follow through. They couldn’t ignore it. They couldn’t be bought off if there was a huge public outcry.”

John nodded.

A smile began in her eyes, then spread to her lips as she impulsively threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

“Oh, John…I think you’ve just saved my life…again.”

The first thought that crossed his mind was that he’d been right. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The second was that he’d managed to keep himself involved in her business by being the go-between for her source, which was good. He would do whatever it took to get to Richard Ponte. He wouldn’t let himself care that he was using her. His agenda had been going on too long for him to care about anything or anyone but the end result.

Before Alicia had a chance to register what she’d done, an alarm began going off. She jumped back, startled, as she looked around for the source of the sound.

“What’s that?” she cried.

John’s eyes narrowed. “A security alarm. Someone just came through the gate at the end of the driveway.”

“Was it locked?”

“Yes.” He didn’t add that he had additional security in place, in case anyone tried to bypass that lock.

“It’s not possible that it’s just a delivery…or a visitor?”

“I don’t get visitors.”

Alicia looked at him strangely. “Ever?”

“Ever,” John muttered as he headed for his office to check the security cameras, with Alicia right behind him.

Within seconds of getting to the security screen, he recognized who had triggered the alarm—and so did Alicia.

“It’s Dieter! Oh God…he’s found me! That means Dad knows where I am again.” Panic set in as the ramifications began to unfold. “That means you’re in danger, too. I shouldn’t have—”

John grabbed her by the shoulders. “Stop it! Stay here. I’ll deal with this.”

“But—”

He gave her a slight shake. “No buts. Just sit here and calm down. I’ll be back.”

That was easier said than done, but she did sit down, her gaze glued to the security screen as she listened to John’s receding footsteps.

It hadn’t taken Dieter long to find where John Nightwalker lived. Ironically, his success in locating the man was entirely due to the friendliness of Southerners. After a few wrong turns, he’d come upon a farmer fixing a fence on the shoulder of the road and stopped to ask him if he knew where an Indian called Big John lived.

The man swiped at the sweat on his face with the back of his sleeve, then pointed north. “About two miles on down the road. Got two big iron gates right across the drive. Can’t miss it,” he said, and went back to his fence.

Dieter quickly located the place. But the gates he’d been expecting were something similar to what he’d seen out in the farmer’s pasture to separate one field from another, not these. Not only were they every bit of fourteen, maybe even sixteen, feet high, they locked electronically. They were made of massive iron bars and very similar to the gates at the Ponte estate in Miami. It made him wonder who John Nightwalker was, and what he was doing up in those trees that he didn’t want anyone to see. Those gates told him that further security measures were no doubt also in place, but he was too afraid of his boss to listen to common sense and take a chance of failing him a second time.

There was a call button on the gate that was meant to be used, allowing whoever was at the other end to furnish access. But Dieter didn’t intend to announce his arrival.

He popped the trunk lid, then got out. Moments later, he headed toward the gate with his duffel bag in hand. He worked his way into the wiring, bypassed the electronic switch and disarmed it. When he heard it click, he grunted with satisfaction.

Within minutes, he was most of the way up the drive, running a mental checklist of his weapons and what he might need to get Alicia Ponte into his car.

When he turned a curve and saw Nightwalker’s black Jeep coming at him at full speed from the house in the background, his mind went into a tailspin. How the hell had the man known? No time for that. He switched into operations mode. He could ram the Jeep, but if the impact disabled his own vehicle, then he couldn’t get away. He was grabbing for his handgun as he stomped the brake and jammed the gearshift into Park.

He jumped out, keeping the open door between him and the vehicle coming at him, then hunkered down and fired.

The first shot hit a tire; the second went into the radiator, sending a spew of steam into the air. He expected the man to get out, but he thought the man would run for cover, not come at him with his bare fists. He hadn’t planned on leaving a body behind, but Ponte’s orders had been plain: Bring Alicia back at all costs. And now that order was about to cost this big Indian his life.

He stood up from behind the car door and took aim.

“Stop right there or I’ll shoot,” he yelled.

But John didn’t stop.

Seeing the gun was proof enough to him that Alicia had been right about her father. He wanted her back bad, and he was willing to do anything to shut her up. When Dieter yelled, John knew what was coming. He dreaded the first burst of pain, even while knowing it wouldn’t last.

“You’re trespassing on private property,” he called as he continued to approach.

Dieter’s finger tightened on the trigger. “I came to get Alicia. Turn her over to me now and I’ll let you live.”

“No,” John said coldly. “Get off my property now and I’ll let you live.”

Dieter’s heart skipped a beat. Why would an unarmed man make such a futile threat? Was there something here he was missing? He glanced nervously from side to side, searching the perimeter of the roadside for the possibility of guards he hadn’t taken into account, but no one showed. Convinced he was still in control of the situation, he pointed the gun straight at John’s chest.

“I’m warning you,” Dieter said. “Get back. All I want is the girl.”

“Not in this lifetime,” John said, and made a lunge toward the door.

Dieter fired and ducked just as the door slammed into his belly, face and shins. He was so blinded by the blood and pain he didn’t see his shot hit John in the shoulder, didn’t see the ensuing stain of red that began to spread across the front of John’s shirt.

The shot spun John around, landing him flat on his back in the dirt.

From her chair in the library, Alicia saw it all. The shock of realizing Dieter was willing to kill to get to her was confirmation of how desperate her situation was. When she saw Dieter fire and John fall back into the dirt, she ran out of the house and down the driveway, screaming Dieter’s name, begging him to stop and praying the shot wasn’t a mortal one.

Dieter staggered out from behind the door with the gun in his hand and his face streaming blood. His nose was broken. His lips had been crushed against his teeth so sharply that the insides felt like raw meat. There was a cut on his cheek and another on his chin, and he was cursing at the top of his voice, nearly blind with pain.

“You sorry bastard! You broke my face! All you had to do was back off, but you didn’t!”

He pulled the trigger again, sending a shot into John’s leg. The wound in John’s shoulder was already closing, and he was halfway to his feet when the next shot dropped him again. In the distance, he thought he could hear Alicia screaming. That meant she hadn’t stayed put. It also meant he needed to gain control of the situation before Dieter grabbed her and took off.

He rolled over onto his belly, grabbed a handful of dirt and then gritted his teeth as he pushed himself upright. Before Dieter could register the fact that the man he’d put two bullets in was up, John threw the dirt in his face.

Dieter ducked, but not soon enough. Dirt hit him square in the face, filling both eyes with painful grit and sand. He clawed at his face as John grabbed him, knocked the gun out of his hand with a hard chop to his wrist, then hit him in the chin with his fist. Dieter went down like a felled oak.

Once John had the man down and out, he gave in to the pain, leaning across the hood of the assailant’s car, bent double with the suffering.

That was how Alicia found him. The horror in her voice was evident as she arrived, out of breath and screaming.

“Oh my God, oh my God…You’re shot. He shot you. You need to sit down.” She started rifling through Dieter’s car, looking for his cell phone. She found it on the console and ran back to John’s side. “I’ll call for an ambulance. Oh…wait…I don’t know this address. What do I say?”

The pain in John’s leg had subsided to a dull throb. He pushed himself up from the car, took the phone from her hand and laid it on the hood, then grabbed her by the shoulders. “Stop. Look at me. I’m okay, see?”

“You’re not okay. You’re bleeding.” She yanked at his shirt, pulling it back so she could see the wound more clearly.

John gritted his teeth. Now it would come. He pulled away from her grasp, but she was still staring, her mouth agape.

Alicia could see where the bullet had gone in. Although the flesh looked red and swollen, the tear was almost shut. It didn’t make sense. She kept looking from the wound to John’s face and back to the wound again. Then he moved, and as he did, he put himself directly between her and the sun. Within seconds, Alicia’s view of him changed. All she could see was a dark silhouette, backlit by a halo of light. The skin on the back of her neck began to crawl as the thought went through her mind that John Nightwalker wasn’t human.

It was the only thing that made sense of what she had seen. He’d been shot. She’d seen him fall. The coppery scent of his blood was still strong in her nose, but the hole in his shoulder was almost closed. She looked down at his leg. The bloodstain on his jeans had quit spreading, too.

“How…?”

“It’s complicated.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and then took an unsteady step backward, staring at him in disbelief.