Turquoise Guardian. Jenna Kernan

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       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. СКАЧАТЬ