Her Warrior Protector

Carter Bear Den is a proud Apache of the Turquoise Canyon Reservation. The former US Marine is a member of the Turquoise Guardians working to protect his people and their land. When he discovers a grisly mass shooting at the Lilac Copper Mine, Carter’s one thought is to find Amber Kitcheyan.

After breaking her engagement to Carter and relinquishing her membership with the reservation, Amber found work at the mine. Now she is the sole survivor of the shooting—at best a witness, at worst a suspect. But Carter swears to protect the only woman he has ever loved, even if it means losing everything else.

Apache Protectors: Tribal Thunder

She wished they could go back in time, back to those two kids who had fallen in love, and try again.

Tell her younger self to be wise and give Carter another chance. But it was too late now because she could never ask him to leave their tribe and she was too ashamed to stay.

Despite her reservations, her heart hammered in giddy excitement and her skin flushed.

Focus. You’re in real trouble and this man doesn’t want a woman who walked away from her family.

Carter had loved her. But he loved his people and his place among them more. He was not leaving and she was not staying. There was no future for them. Only more pain.

“Thank you for saving us back there,” she said.

“I didn’t get us out. I’d have been cuffed to the handgrip in a smoldering wreck if not for you.”

He’d been the reason they had a chance to get out of that SUV and they both knew it.

Turquoise Guardian

Jenna Kernan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNA KERNAN has penned over two dozen novels and has received two RITA® Award nominations. Jenna is every bit as adventurous as her heroines. Her hobbies include recreational gold prospecting, scuba diving and gem hunting. Jenna grew up in the Catskills and currently lives in the Hudson Valley of New York State with her husband. Follow Jenna on Twitter, @jennakernan, on Facebook or at www.jennakernan.com.

For Ann Leslie Tuttle with many thanks for sharing her expertise, invaluable critical eye and friendship for more than a decade.

And for Jim, always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

The idea of murdering seven innocent people should have sickened Ovidio Natal Sanchez. Instead he felt a grim anticipation. These people were responsible for causing that festering wound on the earth. He only wished he had been given free rein to kill as many as possible. But he was a loyal member of BEAR, and he would carry out his mission, with pleasure. He sat in a nondescript van before the loading dock of the Lilac Copper Mine, holding an automatic weapon with the safety switched off.

His driver’s phone chimed, signaling a text.

“They’re all in,” he said.

“Give them twenty minutes to get to their desks,” said Ovidio.

His driver cast him a look.

“I don’t want to miss one who went for coffee.”

His driver’s sigh was audible, but he said no more, granting Ovidio a few more seconds to savor the moment.

His organization had supplied everything he needed: maps, head shots of each target, transportation and the automatic weapon he would use to kill every living soul in the procurement office of the Lilac Copper Mine. He didn’t know why. He didn’t care why. He just knew when and how.

Today. By his hand.

The twenty minutes ticked by.

A smile curled his lips. The next hole that went in the earth would be for their caskets.

“I’m signaling our man,” said his driver and began texting.

The van was parked at the receiving bays.

Ovidio had worked protection for his boss for years. Even had to kill a few people. But nothing like this. He licked the salt from his upper lip.

In life, he believed, people mostly got what they deserved. Today was the exception. These people deserved worse. If it were up to him, he’d tie the owners of this monstrous mile-deep pit with their own blasting cord and toss them in with the next load of explosives. But his leader said they had bigger fish to fry. This time they’d make a statement that would not be buried on page six. One that the whole world would feel, and know that the earth mattered. That people couldn’t keep assaulting the earth with impunity and that...

“You ready?” asked his driver.

The loading door was opening. He needed to focus.

“There he is,” said his driver and looked expectantly at Ovidio. “Hurry up.”

He wondered if his driver would really be here when he came out or would just leave him. But leaving him was dangerous. He might tell what he knew. He never would, of course. He believed too deeply in their cause. Still, they might kill him. Shoot him the instant he came out that door. He didn’t care. At least his death would matter and they’d never forget him here in this miserable mining town.

Ovidio checked his weapon and slipped from the van. His body tingled as he mounted the five cement stairs that took him from the bright sunlight to the shadows of the loading bay, the sensation reminding him of sexual arousal. Oh, yeah. He was getting off on it because he knew he was on surveillance now. And what would they do with only their rent-a-cops and crappy wire fences for protection?

How long until they spotted him? In the hall? After the first shots?

His conspirator stood holding the door and, as he passed through, relayed a message.

“Ibsen called in sick.”

“Address?”

The man passed him a sheet of paper. Now Ovidio had to get out of here alive to get Ibsen.

Somehow Ovidio thought after he told his commander at BEAR about the discovery made by the new purchasing clerk, Ibsen would know what was coming. Unfortunately it was too late to abort. Besides there was no way of knowing who in the office the clerk had spoken to about her discovery.

Ovidio stalked into the corridor. Today he would write his convictions in blood.

Ovidio continued toward his goal, inhaling the scent of machine oil coming from the automatic rifle heavy in his hands. He thought of the memorials and the anniversaries of the legacy he was about to leave behind. But this wasn’t his legacy. The removal of men who violated the earth—that was his legacy.

Chapter One

“I’ll be back soon.” Amber Kitcheyan stowed the last of the receiving slips she needed signed by her boss in her satchel as she spoke to their receptionist. Then she headed out from the receiving department in the Lilac Copper Mine’s administration building where she was a receiving clerk.

Their squat building sat at ground level perched over the thousand-foot cavity, which was the active open-pit copper mine. Below them, a constant stream of enormous mining dump trucks wove up the precarious roads, hauling ore to the stamp mills in Cherub. The pit covered two-hundred acres and the tailing piles covered even more ground. To Amber, it looked like a crater left by some absent meteor.

Amber always left by the loading dock as it was closer to the parking area. She stopped in the restroom for just a moment. Too much coffee, she thought as she left the stall. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror as she washed her hands, checking that her long black hair was all tucked neatly up in a tight coil. She wore nothing in particular that marked her Apache lineage because her face structure and skin tone did that adequately. The human resources had been happy to tick the box indicating they had hired a minority. She didn’t care. A job was a job and this one paid better than the last.

But she missed her tribe and her sisters. And wished...no, she wasn’t going there. Not today.

Amber tugged at the ill-fitting blazer she’d purchased used with the white blouse she wore twice a week. She slung the stylish satchel on her shoulder and headed out into the hall.

On the loading dock she paused to slip her sunglasses out of her bag and swept a hand over her hair. February in Lilac was a good twenty degrees warmer than the Turquoise Canyon Apache Indian Reservation where she had grown up. She longed for a cool breeze off the river but now wasn’t the time to be feeling homesick. She stopped to find her keys. Amber didn’t like to bother her boss, Mr. Ibsen, at home, especially when he was sick. But as a clerk she couldn’t sign for a delivery this big. So she’d just slip out there, get his signature on the receiving slips and be back before the truck was unloaded.

She had called from the office and got his voice mail and followed up with an email. It worried her that he had not replied to either and that, on the day after she mentioned the problem she’d spotted on the receipts to her boss, he was absent. And he knew they expected another delivery truck today.

She could have them signed by Joseph Minden in finance, but the one time her boss had been absent for a delivery, she’d done just that and her boss had lost it. She’d never seen veins stick out of a man’s neck like that before.

Minden was their CPO, Chief Procurement Officer, and Mr. Ibsen’s supervisor. Later in the day, Mr. Ibsen had explained to her about chain of command and threatened to fire her if she did something like that again.

Then yesterday he had also shouted at her to get back to work. Amber was on shaky ground here, and she needed this job, what with the seemingly endless debt she was trying to pay down.

She couldn’t afford to screw this up.

She’d only been here a month and was still getting used to the copper mine’s policies. But she would not make that mistake twice because she needed this job for at least the next six months. Then the loan would be finished, and she could go home, if she wanted. The pit of her stomach knotted at the thought as mixed emotions flooded in.

“Not now,” she whispered to herself and strode across the loading dock. The Arizona sky glowed a crystal blue, and the sun warmed the concrete pad beneath her feet. The temperature would rise rapidly, she knew, and then drop with the sun.

She glanced at the deep navy van illegally parked before the receiving bay, then back at the sign that indicated parking there was prohibited. The driver had shaggy blond hair poking out from beneath his ball cap like straw. She cast him a disapproving look, and he leaned forward over the wheel to glare right back.

Amber descended the steps in a rapid gait, making a beeline for her vehicle, which was small, ugly, used and paid for. She didn’t do leases. She paid cash or did without.

As she drove out of the lot, Amber glanced back at the van still illegally parked, and then turned onto the road that would lead her through the high chain-link fencing and off the copper mine’s property.

* * *

CARTER BEAR DEN’S first sign of trouble at the mine came in the form of a yelp from the security guard seated at the lobby reception desk. The guard’s eyes were glued to the monitor on his desk, showing a series of images from various security cameras. Carter leaned in to see what had made the man blanch.

Carter had a message to deliver. He didn’t like it, but he was duty bound to see that Amber Kitcheyan received the letter. It had been given to him by Kenshaw Little Falcon, the head of the Turquoise Guardians, his medicine society and a tribal shaman.

Now, standing beside the security desk and the uniformed boy they had hired to check in visitors, Carter looked at the monitor that showed a masked gunman making steady progress along an empty corridor, and he stopped thinking and wondering. This time he saw the face of danger before it was too late.

Amber was in this building.

The security officer stood now, one hand on his pistol grip and the other reaching for the phone seeming uncertain as to which to use.

Carter had no such trouble. As a former US Marine with three tours of duty, he knew what he needed to do. Protect Amber.

The digital feed displayed a view of an office where the masked gunman proceeded past a fallen woman toward the cubbies tucked directly behind the receptionist’s station.

“Where is that?”

“Purchasing,” rasped the guard.

From the security guard’s radio came a call to lock down. On the other monitors people scurried about, fleeing the halls for the closest cover.

Carter retrieved his Tribal ID from the high counter and tucked it in his open wallet as the shooting started, the burring sound of an automatic rifle blast unmistakable and close.

For just an instant, Carter was back there in Iraq with his brother and Ray and Dylan and Hatch. The next instant he was drenched with sweat and running.

Suddenly delivering his message came second to keeping Amber alive. Had Little Falcon known what was about to transpire?

The stabbing fear over Amber’s safety took him by surprise. He’d been so sure he was over her. So why was he running into gunfire?

Although he now moved forward with the stealth of his ancestry bolstered by the training of the US Marines, the stillness in the corridor was unnerving. It had the eerie quiet of a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Everyone was hiding except for him and the killer.

From down the corridor he heard a bang, like the sound of a heavy door slamming shut. He ran toward the sound, the light tread of his cowboy boots a whisper on the carpeted hallway.

He saw the blood trail as soon as he rounded the corner. It led from an office that read Purchasing upon the door. The gunman’s boot prints were there in blood leaving the scene, dark stains on the industrial carpeting.

Amber’s office, he realized. For an instant he was too terrified of what he might find to go inside. Was it the same as Iraq? Was it already too late?

He held his breath and stepped across the threshold. The calm sending his flesh crawling. He moved from one body to the next, checking for signs of life and the face that still visited his dreams.

Everyone in the outer office was dead. He moved to the two private offices. The man in the first was gone, shot cleanly through the forehead. In the next office he was greeted by the sight of dark legs, sprawled at an unnatural angle. One moved.

Carter was at her side in an instant, sweeping away the dark hair that covered her face. She was breathing, but she was not Amber. Her eyes fluttered open and flashed to his.

“Rest. Help is coming,” he said, feeling his gut twist in sympathy.

He could tell by her sadness and the tears in her eyes that she saw death coming.

“Amber?” he whispered.

“She left. When the shooter spotted her empty cubicle, he said he would find her.”

His heart gave a leap and hammered now, hitting his ribs so hard and fast it hurt.

“Where is she?”

“Left. Harvey Ibsen’s home. Paperwork. Oh, it hurts. My kids. Tell them I’m sorry. That I love them.” Her eyes fluttered shut.

Someone entered the office.

“Security!”

“In here,” Carter called.

A moment later a man in a gray uniform shirt and black pants appeared in the doorway. His gun drawn.

Carter lifted his hands. “Unarmed.”

The man aimed his weapon. Carter didn’t have time to get shot.

“EMTs on the way?” he asked.

The man nodded, his face ashen.

“Come put pressure on this.”

He did, tucking away his weapon and kneeling beside Carter before placing a large hand on the folded fabric over the woman’s abdomen.

“You know a guy called Harvey Ibsen?” Carter asked.

“Yeah. He works here.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know. In town, I guess. Who are you?”

“Friend of Amber Kitcheyan.” Friend? Once he had planned to make her his wife.

“Yeah?”

Carter was already on his feet. He pointed at the woman. “She wants her kids to know she’s sorry to leave them and that she loves them.”

The security officer blanched. Carter stepped away.

“Hey, you can’t leave.”

Carter ignored him. If the shooter was after Amber, he had to go. Now.

“She also said that the shooter was looking for Amber. Send police to Ibsen’s home. I think he’s heading there.”

The man’s eyes widened and he lifted his radio.

“Call Amber’s cell. Warn her,” said Carter.

“She doesn’t own a mobile. Or at least that’s what she told me.” The security officer’s eyes slid away.

Carter groaned. Of course she didn’t. That would have made the necessity of him delivering this message superfluous. He headed out, following the ghastly bloody footprints. His phone supplied an address for a Harvey Ibsen, and his maps program gave him the route.

Ibsen didn’t live in Lilac. According to Carter’s search engine, he lived in Epitaph, the tourist town fifteen miles north of here. The name, once a joke for the number of murders committed during the mining town’s heyday, now seemed a grim omen.

Carter swung up behind the wheel of his F-150 pickup. Amber’s boss was out the very day this happened. A coincidence that was just too perfect in timing. Luck. Fate. Or something else?

He didn’t know, but he had a sour taste in his mouth.

Chapter Two

Carter headed out, turning away from the town of Lilac, named not for the color of the rock, but the name of the man who decided to crush the poor-quality copper ore in a stamp mill and make the low-grade ore profitable.

En route to Epitaph, he phoned his twin brother, Jack, a detective with the tribal police back home on Turquoise Canyon Reservation, and filled him in.

“We have no jurisdiction outside of the tribe,” said Jack. “You’re practically in Mexico.”

Actually he was thirty miles from there and heading north.

“See what you can find out. Tell them that Amber is a member of our tribe.”

“She left the tribe, Carter.”

“They don’t know that.” Carter reined himself in. He wouldn’t lose his temper or shout at his brother.

There was a pause.

“Ibsen lives in a small housing development in Epitaph. You need the address?”

“Got it.”

“Okay. I’ll call border patrol. They might have a checkpoint set up along that stretch. What is the shooter driving?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you want me to call the others?”

He meant the members of Tribal Thunder, the warriors of the Turquoise Guardian medicine society. The ones charged with protecting their ancestral land and people from all enemies.

“Call Little Falcon.”

“I’ll call Tommy, as well. He’s down there somewhere. Maybe he can help,” said Jack.

Tommy was their brother. At twenty-six he had scored a spot on the elite all–Native American trackers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as the Shadow Wolves, and had been down there on and off for two years. Carter supposed not all the Bear Dens could be Hot Shots. A Hot Shot was a member of an elite team of firefighters flown into battle forest fires, and the Turquoise Canyon Hot Shot team was one of the most respected and sought after in the nation, a reputation they had earned with hard, dangerous work. He and the other members of his former US Marine outfit all missed the buzz of adrenaline, and so had joined the most dangerous job they could find as a substitute.

“Great. Gotta go.”

“Be careful,” said Jack.

Carter hung up and slipped the phone into his front pocket. Amber still didn’t have a cellular phone. She hadn’t owned one the last time he’d seen her either.

“Please, don’t let that be the last time,” he whispered and pressed the accelerator.

* * *

AMBER HUMMED A tune about being happy as she rolled along. The fifteen mile drive out to Harvey Ibsen’s was uneventful, and the scenery was lovely, so different than Turquoise Canyon. The roads were well maintained and flat as Kansas. She whizzed past dry yellow grass dotted with silver-green yucca and woolly cholla cacti with spines that looked like fur.

There were no cacti up on Turquoise Canyon. Here the planes stretched out wide-open to the snowcapped Huachuca Mountains to her right and the rockier Dragoon Mountains to her left where Apache warrior, Cochise, once kept a stronghold. The mountain ranges here did not look like those near Black Mountain, but at least the Huachucas got snow.

She missed home, still, after all this time. The Turquoise Canyon Apache Indian Reservation gleaned its name from the exposed vein of blue stone on Turquoise Ridge. Her tribe was a conglomeration of many Tonto Apache people, the losers in the wars against the Anglos, relocated twice until finally reclaiming a small portion of their lands. And the Turquoise Canyon Apache tribe had timber, turquoise and decorative red sandstone. They also had the best Hot Shots in the world. She supposed the warrior spirit lived on in the men of her tribe who now flew all over the West to battle forest fires.

Carter was a Hot Shot. Her smile faded, and her heart ached at the thought of the man she’d once loved.

She caught movement behind her and saw a dark vehicle closing fast. She held her steady pace and frowned as she recognized the van a moment before it swerved to the opposite lane and zoomed past her. It was the same illegally parked van at the loading dock, or so she thought. Her brow wrinkled as the vehicle vanished in the distance. How fast had that van been going to make her look like she was driving backward?

Amber continued on but now with a sense of disquiet that niggled at her. She signaled her turn, though there was no one behind her.

She checked the numbers on the houses she passed. She had been here once on a similar mission, but the houses were very alike; her boss’s home had solar panels, so she studied the roofs as she passed. When she arrived at number nineteen, she slowed before the house. Harvey’s hybrid vehicle was parked in the drive. That’s when she saw the familiar blue van was already on the corner. She slipped the car into Park, instead of electing to turn into Harvey’s ample drive. Something felt wrong, and she leaned forward to stare out the passenger window. Something about that van gave her the creeps.

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.”

“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.

We’ll have to come back for her.

Who where they? And why did they need to come back for her? She wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. She had gotten tangled up in something, but she didn’t know what.

She now sat with Carter in Tribal Police Chief Tinnin’s office devouring a sandwich, chips and a cookie provided by the same woman who prepared the meals for the prisoners. Amber was so hungry she barely tasted the food. Carter’s was already gone, and he sat back to finish his third bottle of water.

Some of the powder had settled in his part, clinging to his black hair. He wore a new clean T-shirt courtesy of his brother who had a locker across the hall. He also wore an unbuttoned green-and-white chambray shirt that was obviously Jack’s, because, though Carter was a big man, he had to roll the sleeves.

Carter watched her eat and smiled.

“Wish we had some fry bread,” he said.

Fry bread! She hadn’t had any since she’d visited her sister over the holidays. It was just one of many things she missed. She returned Carter’s smile.

He lifted the water bottle and drank, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with the rhythm of each swallow. Her mouth went dry, and her entire body electrified. Even after all this time he still made her want him without even trying.

She cut her gaze away, refusing to torture herself with the sight of him. But she was too weak, and her eyes found him again. The bottle lay between his two broad hands, tucked between strong thighs. She exhaled.

“Amber. You okay?”

She forced her gaze away from his groin, but it was too late. Now his eyes blazed in return, the sexual awareness crackling between them like static electricity.

“Amber,” he whispered, leaning forward.

She shook her head but moved closer until his fingers brushed over her cheek, leaving heat blazing in their wake.

She wished they could go back in time, back to those two kids who had fallen in love, and try again. Tell her younger self to be wise and give Carter another chance. But it was too late now, because she could never ask him to leave their tribe, and she was too ashamed to stay.

Despite her reservations, her heart hammered in giddy excitement and her skin flushed.

Focus. You’re in real trouble, and this man doesn’t want a woman who walked away from her family.

Carter had loved her. But he loved his people and his place among them more. He was not leaving, and she was not staying. There was no future for them. Only more pain.

“Thank you for saving us back there,” she said.

“I didn’t get us out. I’d have been cuffed to the handgrip in a smoldering wreck if not for you.”

He’d been the reason they had a chance to get out of that SUV, and they both knew it.

Her smile drop away. “Did they find them?” she asked.

“No. Those other two got them out before torching the vehicle. No sign of them since.”

“Oh, Carter. What’s happening?”

He lifted his water. “I was hoping you’d know.”

“I don’t. I can’t even imagine. It’s like a nightmare.”

Carter rubbed his neck. It was a gesture he used when unhappy, but she wondered now if it might stem from pain.

Carter had refused to go to the health clinic but had allowed Kurt to look him over. He declined the neck brace they recommended for the jolt he’d taken during the crash, but took the offered analgesic medication.

“Did you get through to your family?” asked Carter, changing the subject. Did he believe her? She couldn’t tell.

“I did. Your brother let me use his desk phone. I called Kay. She’ll get word to my mom and Ellie.” But not her father. Her father had made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with her ever again. Her stomach ached, and she felt even lower than before.

“Do you ever see them?” he asked. She could see the pain now, there in his tight expression and the watchful eyes. Did he still feel the ache that she carried like a stone in her heart?

“Sometimes. When I can. I see them at Kay’s.” Her younger sister had married at nineteen and moved to the smaller Rez communities of Koun’nde to the north of Pinyon Forks.

Now his eyes held accusation. “But you never came to see me again.”

She hadn’t. Not after that last time.

“Carter. I...” She thought of their last meeting. “I didn’t think you’d want to see a manzana.”

A manzana was Apache for an apple. It meant that she was red on the outside and white at the core.

She used the insult he’d thrown at her when he had been home recovering, and Yeager had still been listed as missing.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You told me to go away, me and my manzana clothing.” She lifted the hem of her ruined blazer to show that she still dressed like an Anglo working in an Anglo world.

His jaw tightened. And the glimmer of desire faded from his eyes, replaced with something hard and cold.

Detective Bear Den poked his head through the open doorway.

“The FBI is here. The real FBI.”

“You find them—the guys that took us or the other two?” asked Carter.

“No.” Jack shifted and rested a hand on his hip. “Vanished like ghosts.” He inclined his head toward the door. “They have some questions.”

Carter nodded and rose.

“Ah.” Jack shifted again. “They want Amber first.”

Carter hesitated, and she thought he might argue.

“You gonna sit in?” asked Carter.

Jack nodded and Carter resumed his seat. Amber stood, and her lunch rolled in her belly. She reminded herself that she had done nothing wrong. But it didn’t quiet her nerves as she trailed behind Detective Bear Den.

She’d had a chance to clean up in the bathroom, but the fine powder still clung to the creases of her dark slacks and jacket, resisting her efforts to beat it away. And the smell of the gasoline and the air bags clung to her like skunk spray, making her head ache.

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