Kiss of the Bees

“And her home village?” Judge Juan asked.

“Ban Thak—Coyote Sitting,” he answered. “That is Rita’s home village. It would be hers as well.”

“Be it so ordered,” Judge Juan said, whacking her desk with the gavel. “Next case.”

13

Then all the people near the village of Gurli Put Vo—Dead Man’s Pond—were told to come to a council so they could arrange for the protection of their fields. Everything that flies and all the animals came with the Indians to the council. And everybody promised to watch carefully so that the Bad People of the south should not again surprise them.

When PaDaj O’othham had eaten all the corn which they had stolen, they were soon hungry again. So they began once more to think of the nice fields of the Desert People. They began to wish they could steal the harvest, but they did not know how to accomplish this because, as you know, the Indians and their friends, the Flying People and all the animals, were on guard.

Then a wise old bad man told PaDaj O’othham what to do.

Now when the Desert People held that council to arrange for the protection of their fields, they were so excited that they called only the people who live aboveground. So this wise old bad man told PaDaj O’othham to call all the people who live under the ground: Ko’owi—the Snakes, Nanakshel—the Scorpions, Hiani—the Tarantulas, Jewho—the Gophers, Chichdag—the Gila Monsters, and Chuk—the Jackrabbits. The Bad People said they would give all these people who live under the ground good food and beautiful clothes if they would go through the ground to the fields of the Desert People and fight the Tohono O’othham while the Bad People stole the crops.

Chuk—Jackrabbit—did not like this plan. The Indians had always been good to Chuk, and he did not want to fight them. But Jackrabbit did not know what to do.

Some bumblebees were sitting in a nearby tree. Hu’udagi—the Bumblebees—told Chuk to run with all his speed to the Desert People and tell them how PaDaj O’othham were planning to steal their harvest. The Bumblebees said they would tell U’uwhig—the Birds.

So Jackrabbit ran. He went in such a hurry that he took longer and longer jumps. As he jumped longer and longer, his legs grew longer and longer. That is why, my friend, even to this day, Jackrabbit’s legs are so much longer than the legs of his brother rabbit, Tohbi—the Cottontail.

Lani awakened in the dark. She was hot. Salt, leached from her sweat-stained shirt, had seeped into the raw wound on her breast. The smoldering pain from that was what had wakened her, and it seemed to expand with every breath, filling her eyes with tears. Her whole body was stiff. Her back ached from lying on what seemed to be uneven grooves in the floor beneath her.

While she had been asleep, she had been dreaming again, dreaming about Nana Dahd. In the dream Lani had been a child again. She and Rita had been walking together somewhere, walking and talking, although that was impossible. By the time Lani first knew Rita Antone, Nana Dahd was already confined to a wheelchair.

Lani emerged from Rita’s comforting presence in the dream, and she longed to return there, but this time when she wakened, she didn’t seem to emerge gradually. There was no lingering fog of confusion the way there had been before. She knew at once that she was a prisoner and that she had been drugged. Perhaps the man named Vega had given her a much smaller dose this time, or perhaps some of the effect had been evacuated out of her system—sweated out of her pores by the perspiration that soaked her clothing.

Lani felt around her, trying to assess the hot, dark cage in which she was imprisoned—a huge wooden crate from the feel of it. Her searching fingers reached out and touched sturdy walls a foot or so on either side of her. They refused to give or even so much as creak when she tried pushing against them. Then she pounded on the wood until her knuckles bled, but if anyone heard, no one came to her aid.

The darkness around her at first seemed absolute, but at last she noticed rays of yellow light penetrating the darkness. The light, as if from street lights, told her that it was still night. She was near a road. She could hear the muffled roar of traffic—the sounds of heavy trucks, anyway. Periodically the box shook with what had to be the earth-shaking rumble of a nearby passing train.

For a while Lani tried yelling for help, but the heavy wooden box swallowed the sound, locking the noise inside with her. Her shouting, like the pounding that had preceded it, brought no help. No one would come, she realized at last. Rescue, if it came at all, would have to come from inside, from Lani herself. Otherwise, she would simply lie in this overheated box until the heat got to her or until she died of thirst or starvation.

As she had done countless times in the past, she reached up to her throat to touch her kushpo ho’oma—her hair charm—only to discover it was missing. At first, when her fingertips touched only the naked gold chain, she thought she had lost the medallion and she was bereft. Seconds later, though, she remembered taking it off and putting it in her pocket—hiding it there in hopes of keeping it out of the hands of the evil man who had hurt her so badly.

It was still there in her pocket, exactly where she had hidden it. That reassured her. At least Vega hadn’t stripped off her clothes again, hadn’t discovered where she had hidden the charm, so perhaps, this time, he had left her alone.

She had no idea how long she had been asleep. From that moment early in the morning—some morning—when she sat down on the rock for him to begin sketching her until now could have been one day or several, for all she knew. For one thing, she had been out of it long enough for him to draw that second picture. Just thinking about that—about lying there naked in front of him all that time, for what must have been hours—made her wince with shame. And if Lani didn’t remember any of that, there might be other things the man had done to her that she didn’t remember, either.

She lay very still and tried to sense the condition of her body. Other than the damaged breast and what felt like a series of splinters in her back, she seemed to be intact. If he had raped her, she would feel it, wouldn’t she? There was a sudden feeling of relief that deserted her a moment later. Of course he hadn’t raped her. Not yet. That was why she was still here. That was what awaited her once he came back—that and more.

In that moment, Lani saw it all with appalling clarity. Of course Vega would return for her. He had no intention of her staying in the box forever until she died of heat prostration or thirst or starvation. He had locked her in the crate for a reason—so she would be available to him, helpless and waiting, when it was time for whatever came next.

Sooner or later, Vega would come back for her. Closing her eyes in the darkness, she saw him again, with an almost gleeful smile on his face, standing over her with the overheated tongs in his hand. Vega was a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. When he came back, Lani knew full well that he would hurt her again.

Had she been standing upright, that awful realization might have tumbled her to the ground. As a child Lani had heard the stories of Ohbsgam Ho’ok—Apachelike Monster—who lived around Rattlesnake Skull and who carried young girls away with him, never to be seen again. Vega was like Ohbsgam Ho’ok. They were different only in that Vega was real. He was a bully—strong and mean and powerful. Lani was alone and helpless.

“The best thing to do with a bully is to ignore him,” Davy had told Lani once. After yet another run-in with Danny Jenkins at school, she had turned to her older brother for advice.

“Those guys thrive on attention,” Davy had continued. “That’s usually all they want. If you treat ’em like they don’t exist, eventually they melt into the woodwork. The only way to get the best of them is to try to understand them, to figure out what their weaknesses are. Then, the next time they come after you, you’ll know what to do.”

Following Davy’s suggestions, Lani had made a show of ignoring Danny Jenkins all the while she studied him. It didn’t take long for her to realize that he was desperately afraid of not being accepted, of not fitting in. Bullying was his sole defense, his weapon against being bullied himself. Once Lani understood all that, she had been able to use that knowledge to turn Danny Jenkins into a friend.

But how could she understand someone like Mr. Vega? And did she want to? How was it possible to comprehend a person who was capable of such cruelty? Trying to find a more comfortable position for her aching back, she settled herself on the rough floor and pulled the cloth of the shirt away from the singed skin of her breast. Then she closed her eyes and tried to think.

Just like Danny Jenkins, Vega thrived on power and on other people’s pain. He had hurt her, yes, and he would do so again, but hurting her wasn’t the real point, or, at least, not the only one. She sensed that what he had done and would do to her constituted a means to an end rather than an end in itself. His real purpose was to hurt her parents. She didn’t understand the why of that, but she knew it to be true. Vega wasn’t Andrew Carlisle, but there was some connection, some bond between them. Vega was fueled by the same kind of rage and lust for revenge that had caused the evil Ohb to invade the house in Gates Pass long before Lani was born.

So that was most of what she knew. Vega was angry and cruel and hot-tempered. Bagwwul—one easily angered. That word, which Rita had taught her, seemed to come to Lani through the coils of the basket pressed tightly in the palm of her hand. She remembered Vega’s fierce anger when she had slapped away the cup he was holding out to her; how he had yanked her hair back as he forced her to drink the second one.

Anger was one of Vega’s weak spots. He demanded obedience but had to enforce that obedience with either drugs or some other form of restraints. That meant he was also chu ehbiththam—a coward. Only cowards attacked their enemies when they were helpless and unable to fight back. His outrageous physical assault on Lani had been staged when she was tied hand and foot, when she could do nothing to defend herself.

Obedience. Lani’s thoughts strayed back to that word and stayed there. And once again, out of the past or out of the basket, Lani heard Rita’s voice, singing to her:

“Listen to what I sing to you,

Little Olhoni. Listen to what I sing.

Be careful not to look at me

But do exactly as I say.”

Do exactly as I say.

Lani hadn’t even been born on the day of the battle with the evil Ohb, but she heard the words to that life-saving war chant as clearly as if she herself had been locked in the long-ago darkness of that root cellar along with Rita and Davy and Father John.

Perhaps the two darknesses—the one in the root cellar and the one here inside Vega’s stifling wooden crate—were exactly the same thing.

“That dollhouse looks just like my dad’s,” Quentin said, taking a confused look around as they pulled up the long curving driveway of the Gates Pass house. “What are we doing here?”

“Dropping off your sister’s bicycle,” Mitch told him.

Lani Walker’s knapsack had yielded a garage-door opener and a door key as well. “Take a look in that paper bag over there,” he said. “The gate-opener-door and house key are both inside. Get ’em out, would you?”

Quentin seemed dazed and stupefied. His fumbling movements were maddeningly slow, but he did as he was told. “How’d you get these?” he asked, holding up both the key and the opener once he had finally succeeded in retrieving them.

“I already told you. Lani gave them to me so we could bring the bike back,” Mitch answered. “What did you think, that I stole them? And don’t just sit there holding the damn thing. Press the button, would you?”

Obligingly, Quentin pressed the button, and the wrought-iron electronic gate swung open. Quentin started to hand the opener over to Mitch. “Keep it,” Mitch told him. “We’ll need it again on the way out. Now drag the bike out of the back. Where does it go, do you know?”

Quentin shrugged. “Right here in the carport, as far as I know.”

By the time Quentin finally managed to unlock the back door, Mitch Johnson was fairly dancing with anticipation—like a little kid who has waited too long to go to the bathroom. After watching the house for weeks, Mitch Johnson was ready to be inside. He had always planned on invading Brandon’s home turf as part of the operation. As the door finally opened, Mitch felt almost giddy. All those years he had been moldering in prison, Brandon Walker had been living here in what he believed to be a safe haven. Well, it wasn’t safe anymore.

Carrying the bag with its few remaining goodies, it didn’t take long to distribute them. Mitch directed Quentin to leave the tongs in the kitchen sink and the cassette tape under his stepmother’s pillow.

Quentin seemed puzzled. He held the tape up to the light and examined it. “What’s this for?” he asked.

“It’s just a little something Lani wants your dad and stepmom to have. It’s their anniversary pretty soon, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Quentin agreed. “So how do you know Lani?”

“We met at her job,” Mitch said. “At the museum.”

Mitch couldn’t help being a little in awe of Quentin’s capacity. Based on how much booze he had probably drunk, that little bit of scopolamine should have laid the guy low. As it was, Quentin Walker’s mental faculties were noticeably dim, but he was still walking and talking.

“Why are we doing all this?” Quentin asked, leaning up against the doorway to steady himself. “And why’s it so hot?”

“I already told you,” Mitch said. “It’s a favor for your sister.”

“Oh,” said Quentin.

The last room they entered was Brandon Walker’s study. Quentin had told Mitch that was where Brandon Walker kept his guns, and that was what they went looking for—Brandon’s gun cabinet. While Quentin pawed through the top desk drawer, searching for the key to the locked cabinet, Mitch Johnson surveyed the room. He was fine until he saw the framed plaque hanging on the wall along with any number of other awards.

The 1976 Detective of the Year award had been presented to Detective Brandon Walker by Parade Magazine as a result of his having solved a homicide case, one in which two men were murdered and another was severely injured.

The plaque on the wall didn’t say that, didn’t reveal all those details. It didn’t have to. Mitch knew them by heart. This was the award—the recognition—that had come to Brandon Walker for arresting Mitch Johnson himself. For arresting a man who was engaged in the wholly honorable pursuit of protecting God and country from the invading hordes. Those wetbacks had been illegal trespassers on U.S. soil, intent on taking jobs away from real Americans who were out of work. Mitch was the one who should have been given a medal for getting rid of that kind of scum—a medal, not a jail sentence.

The rage that hit Mitch Johnson on seeing that framed award went far beyond anything he had ever imagined. Years of pent-up frustration boiled over when he saw it. That was the worst part of the whole operation, the moment of his greatest temptation.

Years ago, in similar circumstances, Andy had simply fallen victim to Diana’s body, losing his focus and purpose both, in satisfying his biological cravings. By resisting the pull of Lani’s tight little body, by not tearing into her when it would have been so easy, Mitch Johnson had already proved to himself that he was a better man than his mentor. Seeing that plaque sitting smugly on the wall was far worse for Mitch than merely wanting to be inside some stupid woman’s hot little twat.

What Mitch wanted to do in that moment was take a gun—any gun would do, but preferably an automatic—and mow through every picture in the place. It would have been easy. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Quentin Walker was in the process of handing Mitch a Colt .357 that would have blasted the whole room to pieces. And brought cops raining down on them from miles away.

Taking a deep, calming breath, Mitch caught himself just in time. He dropped the weapon into his pocket. “What’s all this shit?” he said, gesturing.

“What?” Quentin asked. “The stuff on the wall?”

Mitch nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“Dad used to call it his Wall of Honor.”

“Knock it down,” Mitch said. “Knock that crap down and break it.”

“All of it?” Quentin asked, staring from frame to frame.

“Why not?” Mitch told him. “Your father never did anything for you, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” Quentin agreed, reaching for the first piece, a framed diploma from the University of Arizona. “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”

Raising the diploma over his head, Quentin smashed it to pieces in a spray of glass in the middle of the floor. While Quentin worked his way down the wall, Mitch took the Detective of the Year Award off the wall. He studied it for a moment with his fingers itching to do the job, but that wouldn’t have worked. Quentin’s prints wouldn’t have been on the frame.

“Do this one next,” Mitch said, handing it over. Even as he watched the piece smash to pieces on the tiled floor, he gave himself full credit and gloated over the victory. His was the triumph of rational thought over base emotions.

Had Quentin Walker’s mental faculties been a little less impaired, he might have noticed that from the moment they climbed inside his newly purchased Bronco, Mitch Johnson had been wearing latex gloves. Quentin wasn’t.

He didn’t notice; didn’t even question it. To Mitch’s way of thinking, that made all the difference.

Do exactly as I say, Lani was thinking.

As the phrase spun through her mind, she suddenly realized that the words to Nana Dahd’s war chant, the ones she had sung to Davy so long ago in order to save his life, were also important to Lani—to save her life as well.

She remembered Mr. Vega’s instant fury the moment she had disobeyed him. Obviously whatever drug he had given her—both earlier on the mountain and later at his house—was something that produced compliance, that made her do whatever he said. If Lani was going to save herself—and it was unlikely anyone else would—then she had to make sure that he didn’t give her any more of it. She would have to watch for a chance to get away. If the opportunity presented itself, she would be able to take advantage of it only so long as she remained clear-headed.

That was the moment when she heard the tailgate of the Subaru swing open. A moment later she heard someone fiddling with the outside of the crate, as though they were opening a padlock hasp. Lani had been lying with the tiny people-hair medallion clutched in her hand, gleaning as much comfort as she could from the tightly woven coils. Now, though, before Vega opened the door on the crate, she stuffed the tiny basket back into the pocket of her jeans. Then she forced herself to lie still, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing. By the time the door swung open, Lani Walker appeared to be sound asleep.

“Come on, sweetheart, rise and shine,” Vega said, grabbing her by the ankle and dragging her once again across the rough, splintery floor of the crate. “Wake up. We’re going for another little ride.”

Yanked upright, Lani found herself standing between the Subaru and an idling sport utility vehicle, an old Bronco. A sleeping man was slumped against the rider’s side door. “Come on around to the other side,” Vega ordered. “Can you walk on your own, or am I going to have to carry you?”

Lani, planning on acting dazed, didn’t have to fake stumbling. Her legs felt rubbery beneath her—rubbery and strangely disconnected from her brain and will. When she staggered and almost fell, Vega grabbed her hair, hard, and held her up with that. The pull was vicious enough that tears came to her eyes, but it also helped clear her head. In a moment of quiet, she heard a readily identifiable squeak and realized that the fist knotted in her hair was encased in a rubber glove.

Desperate to get away, she looked around. They were standing in one corner of a large gravel parking lot. There were no other people visible anywhere. The only other vehicles were parked next to the darkened hulk of a building half a block away—too far to try running there for help.

After a moment, Vega slammed shut the tailgate of the Subaru, twisting the key to lock it once more. Lani considered screaming, but just as they started around the back of the Bronco, with Lani’s hair still knotted painfully in Vega’s gloved fist, another train rumbled past on the track that bordered the edge of the lot. With all that noise, there was no point in attempting to scream for help, not even out in the open. Over the racket of the train, no one would have heard her anyway.

Vega wrenched open the driver’s door to the Bronco and shoved her inside. “There you go,” he said. “You sit in the middle. That way I’ll be able to keep an eye on you.”

The unexpected push sent her piling across the bench seat and rammed the tender flesh of her already throbbing breast against the steering wheel of the car. Another intense jolt of pain shot through her body. She managed to suppress a shriek. Even so, a yelp of pain escaped her lips. On the far side of the car, the sleeping man stirred and looked at her.

“Hey, what’s this?” he mumbled sleepily. “What’s going on?”

Quentin! What was he doing here?

“It’s too soon, Quentin,” Vega said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll let you know when it’s time to wake up.”

With his head dropping back to his chin, Quentin did as he was told.

The odor of beer was thick in the car, and Quentin was snoring softly. A hundred questions whirled through Lani’s mind, but she asked none of them. Asking questions or showing too much interest in what was going on around her was probably an invitation to another drink of whatever Vega had given her earlier. Maybe he had fed some of the same stuff to Quentin.

“I suppose you’re a little surprised to see him, aren’t you?” Vega said, climbing in behind Lani and shifting the Bronco into gear. “We’re just having a little family reunion tonight. Your brother helped me drop off a few presents for your parents. Now the three of us are going for a ride. We have some errands to run.”

Vega’s earlier ugly mood seemed to have lifted. He was in high spirits, whistling under his breath as he drove out of the lot onto Grant and from there onto eastbound I-10. Whatever had happened during the interval while Lani had been locked in the car seemed to have left him feeling particularly happy.

“Your brother’s here,” Vega said, instinctively answering Lani’s unasked question, “because Quentin’s a good friend of mine.”

Assuming from the way he made the statement that no reply was necessary, Lani kept quiet. Seconds later, however, an iron grip clamped shut on her leg, just above her left knee. As the muscular fingers dug into her flesh, she squirmed under the punishing grip but resisted the urge to cry out.

“Did you hear me, little lady?” he demanded. “I said Quentin’s a good friend of mine.”

“Yes,” Lani said. “I heard.”

“But don’t put too much store in it,” he added. “Because I’ll kill the son of a bitch in a second if you don’t behave. Do you understand me? Whether Quentin lives or dies is up to you. If you try to run, or if you make any trouble at all, I’ll kill him, no questions asked. Do you understand?”

Lani nodded her head. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I understand.”

And she did, too. If Vega said he would kill Quentin, then he would, friend or not.

“I don’t make idle threats, you see.”

“No,” Lani said. “I know you don’t.”

Once again, Nana Dahd’s war chant came whirling into Lani Walker’s heart out of the darkness of that locked, long-ago root cellar.

“Listen to what I sing to you,

Little Olhoni. Listen to what I sing.

Be careful not to look at me

But do exactly as I say.”

For a moment it seemed to Lani that Rita herself was riding in the truck with them, telling Lani what she had to do to survive. Lani realized then that she was right. The two sets of darkness and the two evil Ohbs were somehow merging into one. And the advice Nana Dahd had once given Davy Ladd was the same advice Rita was giving Lani now in the Bronco.

“I’ll do it,” Lani said quietly. “I’ll do exactly what you say.”

It might have sounded to Vega as though she were speaking to him, answering him, but in Lani Walker’s heart and in her mind’s eye, she was actually speaking to Nana Dahd.

The words formed clearly enough in her head, but when it came time actually to speak them, they came out fuzzy and disjointed. Like her rubberized legs earlier when she had struggled to walk, the lingering effects of the drug still interfered with Lani’s ability to use her tongue. That was evidently exactly what Vega expected.

He loosened his clawlike grip around her leg and gave the top of her thigh a possessive pat. It was all Lani could do not to dodge away under his touch.

“Good girl,” Vega said. “Your mother told me you were smart. I’m glad to see some evidence that it’s true.”

Vega had spoken to Lani’s mother, to Diana? When? How? Lani wondered. And what was it he had said earlier about dropping something off at the house? Something about presents? What presents?

Lani cringed then, thinking about the terrible picture she had seen on his easel, the one he had drawn of her, the one with her body naked and with her legs spread open to the world. What if he had taken that one to her parents? Or else, what if he had done something to them? Her heart quailed at the thought.

“Why did you go to my house?” she asked.

Vega reached in his pocket and pulled out a key, one Lani recognized. “Why wouldn’t I?” he said. “You gave your brother your key so he could return your bike for you.”

By then the Bronco was on I-19 and starting off at the exit to Ajo Way. It seemed to Lani that they were headed for the reservation while off to the right, hidden behind a single barrier of rugged mountain, lay Gates Pass and home. Or whatever was left of home.

“You didn’t hurt my parents, did you?” she asked at last.

Vega frowned. “You’re awfully full of questions at the moment.”

“Did you?” Lani insisted.

He turned his face toward her, his face glowing ghostlike in the reflected headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

“I haven’t hurt them yet,” he said. “But then, it’s probably a little too early. Don’t worry, though, they’ll be getting your message before long.”

“What message?” Lani asked.

“Don’t you remember? You made it yourself, a very special tape for both your mother and father.”

A tape? Lani could remember nothing about a tape, nothing at all. “I don’t remember any tape,” she said.

Vega grinned and patted her again. “It’s all right if you don’t remember,” he said. “But what I can tell you is that once they hear it, neither one of your parents is ever going to forget it, not as long as they live.”

The patrol car, lights flashing, had barely stopped at the end of the driveway when the Walkers’ telephone started to ring. While Brandon went to meet the deputy, Diana raced for the phone, hoping beyond hope that the caller would be Lani. It wasn’t.

Jessica Carpenter’s mother, Rochelle, was on the phone. “I got your message,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my calling this late. We saw the emergency lights as I was bringing Jessie home from the concert. Lani’s all right, isn’t she?”

“Lani seems to be missing,” Diana said, fighting to force the words out around the barrier of a huge lump that threatened to block her throat. “Jessie hasn’t seen her then?”

“Not all day,” Rochelle Carpenter said. “The last time they talked was last night. Jessie said Lani was all excited about something she was doing for you this morning before work, something about an anniversary present.”

Diana caught her breath at the thought that maybe this was a clue, something that might lead them to Lani or at least tell them where to start looking. “Could I talk to Jessie?” Diana asked. “If we could find out what that was, maybe it would help us find her.”

Moments later, a subdued Jessica Carpenter came on the phone. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Walker. I hope Lani’s going to be okay.”

“Just tell me what you know about what Lani was doing earlier this morning.”

“What if it ruins a surprise?”

“Please,” Diana said. “That’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

“It was something about a picture. Lani said she had met a man who was going to paint a picture of her to give to you and Mr. Walker for your anniversary. When we talked last night, she was all excited and asked me what I thought she should wear.”

“Did she tell you what she decided?” Diana Walker asked.

“What she wore in February when she was one of the rodeo princesses. That pretty flowered shirt, her cowboy hat, her boots. I don’t know for sure if that’s what she wore, but she said she was going to.”

The phone trembled in Diana’s hand. She was listening to Jessie Carpenter’s voice but she was thinking about Fat Crack’s warning about the danger from Shadow of Death, the warning Diana had laughed off and dismissed without a thought. Was Lani’s mysterious disappearance somehow connected to that?

“Her rodeo clothes?” Diana managed to mumble in return. “Did she say why she chose those?”

“Something about the man, the artist, wanting her to look like an Indian.”

The doorbell rang. “I’d better go. Someone’s at the door,” Diana said hurriedly. “Thank you, Jess. I’ll pass this information along to the deputy.”

But Jessie Carpenter wasn’t quite ready to be off the phone. “You don’t think anything bad has happened to Lani, do you, Mrs. Walker?”

Hot tears stung the corners of Diana’s eyes. “I hope to God nothing has,” she said.

By the time Diana put down the phone in the kitchen and headed for the living room, Brandon was already escorting Detective Ford Myers into the house, leading him to the same couch where Deputy Garrett was already seated with his notebook in hand.

Diana’s heart fell as soon as she saw Detective Myers. Why him? she wondered.

Ford Myers had gotten himself crosswise of Brandon very early in the course of their professional lives. The two of them had gone head-to-head on more than one occasion over the years, but once elected sheriff, the civil service protections Brandon himself had instituted had made getting rid of Myers tough. As a result, Myers had stayed on, growing more and more disgruntled.

During that critical election campaign, when Brandon had been running against Bill Forsythe in the aftermath of the Quentin Walker protection-racket allegations, Detective Myers had been one of several members of the department who had been openly critical of Brandon Walker’s administration.

“What seems to be the problem?” Myers was saying as Diana walked into the room.

“It’s our daughter,” Brandon answered. “Her name is Lani. Full name Dolores Lanita Walker. She’s sixteen. She left for work on her bike around six o’clock this morning and never arrived. Tonight she was supposed to go to a concert with a friend of hers from up the street. Lani didn’t show for that, either.”

“That’s the last time you saw her?” Myers asked. “This morning?”

“We didn’t actually see her then,” Brandon answered. “She left us a note. We didn’t worry about her all day because we thought she had gone to work at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. This evening, though, when we came back from dinner, her supervisor from work had called and left a message. Mrs. Allison said on the phone that when she was going to miss a shift like she did today that she needed to call in.”

“You’ve spoken to this Mrs. Allison?”

Brandon shook his head, but plucked the Post-it note with Lani’s handwritten message on it and handed it over to the detective. “Not yet,” Brandon said, as the detective perused the note. “As you can see, she had plans to go to a concert this evening.”

“What kind?” Myers asked. “One of those rock concerts?”

“I doubt it. She goes in more for country western. You could talk to her friend, Jessica Carpenter. She could tell you what kind of concert it was.”

“And you said Lani rides her bike to work?”

“That’s right. She could drive one of the cars, but she prefers the bike. When my wife and I came home a little while ago, though, the bike was back home, lying in the middle of the carport. Her bike was here, but Lani wasn’t. Every light in the house was on.”

The detective glanced at Deputy Garrett. “A break-in then?” Myers asked.

Garrett shook his head. “I haven’t been able to find any sign of it so far. Either the doors were left unlocked—”

“They weren’t,” Brandon interrupted.

“Or whoever it was let themselves in with a key. Other than a gun—a Colt .357—nothing else seems to be missing, although there is some glass breakage in Sheriff Walker’s study.”

“Where was the Colt?” Myers asked.

“Locked in my gun cabinet,” Brandon answered.

“And was that broken into?”

Garrett shook his head. “Again, whoever it was must have used a key,” the deputy said.

“The key was in my desk drawer,” Brandon said.

Ford Myers raised his eyebrow. “So whoever it was knew where to look. You said something about breakage, Deputy Garrett? What’s that all about?”

“Plaques, diplomas, and framed certificates,” Garrett answered. “That kind of thing.”

“Anything else missing besides the gun?” Myers continued. “Money? Jewelry?”

Brandon shook his head. “We haven’t really checked that yet,” he said. “We called for a deputy before we went snooping around.”

Myers nodded. “I see,” he said. “Now, tell me,” he continued, “have you two been having any trouble with your daughter recently?”

“Trouble?” Diana asked, interjecting herself into the conversation for the first time. “What do you mean, trouble?”

“Boy trouble, for instance,” Myers said with a casual shrug of the shoulders. “Hanging out with the wrong crowd. Problems with drugs or alcohol.”

Diana was shaking her head long before he finished. “No,” she declared. “Absolutely not! Nothing like that. Lani’s a fine kid. An honors student. She’s never given us a bit of trouble.”

Myers stuffed his notebook into his pocket and then glanced at Deputy Garrett. “How about if I have the deputy here show me the damage in your office.”

Brandon’s face was tight with suppressed anger. “Sure,” he said. “That’ll be fine.”

As the two officers started out of the room, Diana made as if to follow them, but Brandon stopped her. “We’ll wait here,” he said.

As soon as Garrett and Myers were out of earshot, a furious Diana Walker turned on her husband. “What the hell does he mean, hanging out with the wrong crowd?”

“Hush. Don’t let him hear you,” Brandon said. “You know where the SOB is going with all that, don’t you? I do. I’ll bet he’s going to call this a family disturbance. He’ll say Lani’s a runaway. He’s not going to lift a finger until he has to. He’ll go by the book on this one, one hundred percent. Guaranteed.”

Diana was outraged. “Not lift a finger? What do you mean?”

“Hide and watch,” Brandon told her. “I’ve seen it before. Nobody plays the official rules game better than Ford Myers. I think maybe he invented it.”

They were sitting waiting in grim silence a few minutes later when Myers sauntered back into the room. “If you have any jewelry or cash in the house, you might want to check it,” he suggested.

“We don’t keep cash around,” Brandon said. “And not that much jewelry. But I’m sure Diana will be glad to check.”

Wordlessly, Diana got up and walked into the bedroom. Nothing appeared to be out of place. Her jewelry box was where it belonged and nothing seemed to be missing. Fighting back tears, she walked on down the hall and checked Lani’s bedroom. Jessica was right. The flowered cowboy shirt, Lani’s Stetson, and Tony Lama boots were all gone from the closet. Diana returned to the living room just as Myers was getting ready to leave.

“I checked,” she said. “Everything is here, except for the outfit Jessica said Lani was planning to wear. That one is gone.”

“Good enough, Mrs. Walker,” Myers said. “Deputy Garrett and I will be shoving off for the time being. If you still haven’t heard anything from Lani by tomorrow morning, call in after six and we’ll go ahead with the Missing Persons report at that time.”

“I can tell you what clothes Lani was wearing when she left the house,” Diana said. “In case you’re interested, that is.”

“That information should go into the Missing Persons report when you make it.” Myers smiled. “Chances are, though, it won’t even be necessary. Most of the time, these kids turn up long before the twenty-four-hour deadline. I’m sure your husband can tell you how it works, Mrs. Walker. By allowing that day’s worth of grace time, we can cut down on unnecessary paperwork. Right, Mr. Walker?”

“Right,” Brandon said.

“And as far as the gun theft and the vandalism is concerned, on a low-priority residential robbery like this, I won’t be able to schedule someone to come out and lift prints until regular work hours next week. And besides, that may not prove necessary, either.”

“What do you mean?” Diana asked. “Why wouldn’t it be necessary?”

Myers shrugged. “What if the whole thing turns out to be a family prank of some kind? If your daughter took the gun herself on a lark, just to do a little unauthorized target practice, it might be better not to have those prints on file, don’t you think?”

“But Lani wouldn’t—” Diana began.

“Sure,” Brandon said, urging Detective Myers and the deputy out the door. “I see what you mean. Thanks for all your help.”

Diana was fuming when Brandon turned to face her. “Why did you let him off the hook like that?” she demanded. “Lani doesn’t even like guns. She would never—”

“I let Detective Myers off the hook because he has no intention of doing anything, and I do.” With that, Brandon Walker stalked toward the kitchen, with Diana right on his heels.

“What?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I could lift prints myself, but that might screw up some prosecutor’s chain of evidence,” Brandon said, picking up the phone. “So instead, I’m going to make a few calls. There are some people in this world who owe me. It’s time to call in a few of my markers.”

Fingerprints were Alvin Miller’s life. From the time an ink pad showed up as a birthday present for his sixth birthday party, he had found fingerprints endlessly fascinating. He had left a trail of indelible red marks across the face of his mother’s new Harvest Gold refrigerator and dishwasher. His mother had confiscated the damn thing after that and thrown it in the garbage.

By the time Alvin was sixteen, he had turned an Eagle Scout project into a volunteer position as an aide in the latent fingerprint lab for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Upon high school graduation, he had transformed his volunteer work into a paying job. Now, at age thirty-four and without benefit of more than a few college credits, he was the youngest and least formally educated person in the country to be placed in charge of a fully automated fingerprint identification system.

The civil service protections former sheriff Brandon Walker had instituted over the years kept his successor from doing politically based wholesale firings, but Bill Forsythe wasn’t above finding other ways of unloading what he considered deadwood. One of the people he wanted out most was Alvin Miller. To have some of the best, most up-to-date equipment in the Southwest in the hands of an “uneducated kid” was more than Forsythe could stand. He wanted somebody in that position with the proper credentials—somebody people around the country could look up to, somebody about whom they would say, “Now there’s a guy who knows what he’s doing.”

Since his election, Sheriff Forsythe had hit Alvin Miller where it hurt the worst—in the budget department, chopping both money and staff. The “automated” part of AFIS sounds good, but the part that precedes the automation—enhancing the prints so the computer can actually scan and analyze them—is a labor-intensive, manual process. Forsythe had cut so far back on staffing the fingerprint lab that it should have been impossible for it to function—would have been impossible—had the lab been left in any hands less capable or dedicated than those of Alvin Miller.

He worked night and day. He put in his eight hours on the clock and another eight or so besides almost every day, Saturdays and Sundays included. Only forty hours a week went on the clock; a whole lot more than forty were freebies.

Because Alvin had so much hands-on practice, he was incredibly quick at manually enhancing those prints. He could read volumes into what looked like—to everyone else’s untrained eyes—indecipherable circles and smudges. When it came to fingerprints, Alvin found each was as unique as he’d always heard snowflakes were supposed to be. And once he had dealt with a print, he remembered much of what he saw. Twice now, he had managed to make a hit—fingering a current resident in the Pima County Jail for another unrelated crime before feeding the information into the computer.

When Carley Fielding, Pima County’s weekend lab tech, called earlier that evening to see what she should do with the three boxes of bones Detective Leggett wanted printed, Alvin Miller happened to be in and working. Lifting fingerprints off human bones was nothing Alvin had ever done before. The prospect was interesting enough to take him away from whatever he had been working on before.

It turned out that bones were easy to process. It didn’t take long for Alvin to figure out that more than one person had handled the bones. Some had done so with gloves on, but only one had handled them bare-handed. Alvin sorted through one set of dusted prints after another until he was convinced that he had found the best possible one.

That was where he was when his phone rang. “Al?” a familiar voice asked. “What the hell are you still doing there working at this time of night?”

“Sheriff Walker!” Alvin Miller exclaimed. A pleased smile spread over his face as he recognized his former boss’s voice. “How’s it going?”

“Not all that good. I need some help.”

“Hey, if there’s something I can do,” Al Miller told him, “you’ve got it.”

“I know,” Brandon Walker said. “And as it turns out, there is something you can do, Al, because I just happen to have a houseful of fingerprints that need to be lifted.”

“What house?” Alvin Miller asked.

“Mine.”

“The same one you lived in before? The one out in Gates Pass?”

“That’s it. But I don’t want to get you in trouble with your new boss by taking you away from something important.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alvin Miller said with a grin. “My new boss isn’t going to say a word. As far as Bill Forsythe and his damned time clock are concerned, I’m not even working tonight. That being the case, I can come and go as I damned well please. See you in twenty minutes or so, give or take.”

Once Brandon was off the phone with Alvin Miller, Diana took her turn and tried dialing the number Davy had left on his message. She was surprised when a faraway desk clerk told her that she had dialed the Ritz-Carlton. She was even more surprised when the voice of a sleep-dulled young woman answered the phone. Moments later Davy’s voice came through the receiver as well.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. “How’s it going?”

Just hearing her son speak brought Diana close to tears. She had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could answer. “Not all that well at the moment,” she said. “Lani’s missing.”

“What?” Davy asked.

“Lani’s gone,” Diana said bleakly.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean she’s not here. She never showed for that concert with Jessica, and she didn’t show up for work today, either.”

“Maybe she went to visit somebody else. Have you checked with her other friends?”

“We’re checking,” Diana said, “but I thought you’d want to know what was going on.”

“You don’t think she’s been kidnapped, or something, do you?” Davy demanded. “Shouldn’t somebody contact the FBI?”

“Brandon is handling it.”

“What can I do to help?” Davy asked urgently.

“Nothing much, for right now,” Diana answered. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Are you and Dad going to be all right?”

Diana felt herself choking on the phone. “We’ll be okay,” she said. “But hurry home. Hurry as fast as you can. And call every night so we can keep you posted.”

“I will,” Davy said. “I promise.”

A stricken David Ladd handed the phone over to Candace. “I was right,” he said. “Something awful has happened. Lani’s gone.”

Candace was the one who put the phone back in its cradle and switched on the light. “Gone where?” she asked.

Davy shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

“Your parents think she’s been kidnapped?”

“Maybe, but they’re not sure. Candace, I’ve never heard my mother this upset. She never even asked who you were.” While he spoke, Davy had crawled out of bed and was starting toward the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Candace asked.

“I’m going to shower and get dressed.”

“But why?”

“So I can leave. You heard me. I told Mom I’d be there as soon as I can. If I go right now, I can be halfway to Bloomington before morning rush hour starts.”

“We,” Candace said pointedly. “If we leave right now. Besides, it’s Sunday; there isn’t going to be a rush hour.”

David nodded. “I meant we,” he said.

“Doesn’t that seem like a stupid thing to do?” Candace asked.

“Stupid? Didn’t you hear what I said? This is a crisis, Candace. My family needs me.”

“I didn’t say going was stupid. Driving is. Why not fly?” Candace asked. “We can put the tickets on my AmEx. If we take a plane, we can be in Tucson by noon. Driving, that’s about as long as it would take us to make it to the Iowa state line.”

“What about the car? What about all my stuff?”

“I’ll call Bridget,” Candace said decisively. “She works only a few blocks from here. If we leave the parking claim ticket at the desk, she can come over on Monday after work, pick up the car, and take it home with her. She and Larry can keep it with them until we can make arrangements to come back and get it later. In the meantime, we can take a cab to the airport. That’s a lot less trouble than fighting the parking-garage wars.”

Candace wrestled a city phone book out of the nightstand drawer and started looking through it.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“Calling the airlines to find the earliest plane and get us a reservation.”

David looked at her wonderingly. “You’d do this for me? Go to all this trouble?”

She looked at him in mock exasperation as the “all lines are busy” message played out in her ear. “David,” Candace said, “we’re a team. I’ve been telling you for months now that I love you. If there’s a crisis in your life, then there’s a crisis in mine, too.”

Just then a live person somewhere in the airline industry must have come on the phone. “What’s your earliest flight from Chicago to Tucson?” she asked. There was a long pause. “Six A.M.?” she said a moment later.

Looking at the clock on the nightstand, Candace groaned. “Not much time for sleep, is there? But that’s the one we need. Two seats, together, if you have them.” There was a pause. “The return flight?” She glanced questioningly in David’s direction. “I don’t know about that. I guess we’d better just leave the return trip open for now.”

After making arrangements to pay for the tickets at the counter, Candace put down the phone. “Don’t you think we ought to try to sleep for another hour or so? We don’t want to get there and be so shot from lack of sleep that we can’t help out.”

Obligingly, Davy lay back down on the bed, but he didn’t crawl back under the sheets because he didn’t expect to fall asleep again. He did, though. The next thing he knew, the alarm in the clock radio next to his head was going off. It was four-thirty.

From the light leaking out of the bathroom and from the sound of running water, he could tell that Candace was already up and in the shower. Moments later, David Ladd was, too.

He was standing under the steaming spray of water when he remembered his dream from the day before—the dream and Lani’s horrifying scream.

Rocked by a terrible sense of foreboding, Davy braced himself against the shower wall to keep from falling. He knew now that the scream could mean only one thing.

Dolores Lanita Walker was already dead.

14

When the Indians heard the bad news—that PaDaj O’othham were coming again to steal their crops—they held another council. Everybody came. U’uwhig—the Birds—told their friends the Indians about a mountain which was not far from their village and quite near their fields. The people went to this mountain, and on the side of it they built three big walls of rock.

Those walls of rock are there, even to this day.

Then all the women and children went up on top of the mountain, behind the walls of rock. But the men stayed down to protect the fields.

Soon the Bad People of the South came once again.

The Wasps, the Scorpions, and Snakes were leading them. But Nuhwi—the Buzzards—and Chuk U’uwhig—the Blackbirds—and all the larger birds were on guard. Nuhwi—Buzzard—would catch Ko’owi—Snake—and break his back. Tatdai—Roadrunner—watched for the Scorpions, and Pa-nahl—the Bees—fought Wihpsh—the Wasps.

So at last the Bad People were driven away. The Desert People returned to their village and their fields. They built houses and were very happy. A great many of the Bad People had been killed in this fight, so it was a long time before they felt strong enough to fight again. But after a while they were very hungry. And Wihpsh—the Wasps—carried word to them that the Indian women were once again filling their ollas and grain baskets with corn and beans and honey.

This time PaDaj O’othham waited until it was very dry and hot. Then they started north.

This time Shoh’o—Grasshopper—had listened to the plans of the Bad People. Shoh’o started to jump to reach his friends, the Desert People, and warn them. The harder and faster Grasshopper jumped, the longer grew his hind legs. Still he could not go fast enough. So he took two leaves and fastened them on and flew. Before he arrived, he wore out one pair of leaves and put on another pair. To this day Shoh’o—Grasshopper—still carries one large thin pair of wings, and another thin small green pair.

One minute Deputy Fellows was wide awake, staring at the doors to the ICU waiting room. The next minute, Gabe Ortiz was shaking him awake.

“Brian?”

Brian’s eyes flicked open. It took a moment for the face in front of his to register. “Fat Crack!” he exclaimed. “How the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

“Delia Cachora, Manny Chavez’s daughter, works with me out on the reservation. When we heard about her father, I offered to drive her into town.”

Brian glanced around the waiting room. No one else was there. “Where is she?” he asked.

“A nurse took Delia in to see him,” Fat Crack said. “How does it look?”

Brian shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “It’s his back. Broken.”

“How did it happen?” Gabe Ortiz asked. “I heard it had something to do with Rattlesnake Skull.”

Brian nodded. “At the charco. It sounds as though he came across someone—an Anglo—digging up bones there by the water hole. We think Mr. Chavez thought the guy was digging up ancient artifacts and tried to stop him. The guy attacked Mr. Chavez with a shovel.”

Fat Crack was shaking his head when an Indian woman in her mid- to late thirties emerged from behind the doors to the ICU. “He’s still unconscious,” she said, addressing Gabe Ortiz. “No one knows when he’ll come out from under the anesthetic. His condition is serious enough that somebody had a priest come around and deliver last rites. The nurse said he was really bent out of shape about that. My father stopped being a Catholic a long time ago.”

Blushing, Brian stood up. “You must be Delia Cachora. I’m Deputy Fellows,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid the priest business is all my fault. When we found your father, he was saying something over and over in Tohono O’othham. I thought he was calling for a priest—pahl. It turns out he was saying pahla.”

“Shovel,” Fat Crack supplied.

Brian Fellows nodded. “That’s right. Shovel. I’m sorry if the priest upset him.”

Delia Chavez Cachora gave him a puzzled glance. “Where did you learn to speak Tohono O’othham?” she asked.

“From a friend of mine,” he answered. “Davy Ladd.”

Delia’s reaction was instantaneous. Without a word, she turned away from both men and stalked from the waiting room. Brian turned to Gabe.

“I’m really sorry about all the confusion. I guess she’s upset. The problem is, I’m supposed to try to talk to her. The detective left me the job of asking her some questions, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work. Was it the priest stuff?” Brian asked. “Or do you think it was something I said?”

Gabe Ortiz smiled and eased himself into the chair next to the one where Brian had been sitting earlier. He folded his arms across his broad chest and closed his eyes.

“No, Brian,” Gabe replied. “I believe it was something I said. Sit down and take a load off. Delia’s upset at the moment, but if we just sit here and wait, eventually she’ll come around.”

Quentin had told Mitch to wake him up as soon as they got to the turnoff to Coleman Road. It bothered Mitch a little that where they were going was so damned close to where the Bounder was parked. He had chosen that particular spot because there, on the edge of the reservation, was about as far from town as he could get. But it was natural that the edge of the reservation, rather than the middle of it, was where Quentin would have discovered his treasure trove of Native American pots.

Still, as long as Mitch played his cards right, it didn’t matter that much. He glanced toward Lani. Obviously he had measured out a better dosage this time. The amount of drug Mitch had used, combined with his threat to kill Quentin, was working well enough. Lani Walker was docile without being comatose. That might prove beneficial. If the terrain was as rough as Quentin claimed it would be, Mitch would probably need Lani to be able to climb on her own power rather than being carried or dragged.

Quentin himself was Mitch’s biggest concern as they drove west toward the reservation. Would he be able to rouse Quentin enough when the time came to get him to do what was needed? If not, he might have to do an on-the-fly revision of his plan and let the pots go. They had been gravy all along—an extra added attraction. What was not optional was how he left Quentin and Lani once Mitch was ready to walk away. He would arrange the bodies artfully.

Lani would be found right alongside the remains of her killer. The scenario would be plain for all to see. After murdering and mutilating his sister, the record would show that Quentin Walker had taken his own life.

How do you suppose you’ll like them apples, Mr. Brandon Walker? Mitch Johnson grinned to himself. It should give you something to think about for the rest of your goddamned natural life.

The turnoff was coming up. “Okay now,” Mitch said to Lani. “Nap time’s over. Wake him up so he can give me directions.”

Lani turned to Quentin. “Wake up,” she said. He didn’t stir.

“Come on, girl,” Mitch said, once again grasping her lower thigh. “I know you can do better than that!” He didn’t bother to tighten his grip. He didn’t have to. Obviously, Lani Walker had learned how to take orders.

“Come on, Quentin,” she said, shaking her brother’s shoulder. “You have to wake up now.”

Quentin tried to dodge the commanding voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He was enjoying his sleep. There was no reason for him not to. And who the hell was this woman who was so damned determined to wake him up?

He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the face hovering in front of his. When the world spun on its axis, Quentin shut his eyes immediately. He tried to shut his ears as well.

“Quentin!” Another voice this time. A male voice. “Wake the hell up and get busy!”

Mitch. Mitch Johnson, and he sounded pissed. Quentin struggled to open his eyes. “Where are we, Mitch?” Quentin mumbled, not quite able to make his tongue and mouth work in any kind of harmony. “Whazza problem?”

“The problem is we’re almost to Coleman Road, and I don’t know what the hell to do next.”

“Doan worry ‘bout a thing,” Quentin murmured, closing his eyes once more. “Just lemme sleep a little longer.”

“Wake him up!” Mitch demanded. “Slap him around if you have to, but get his eyes open.”

Quentin felt a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He opened his eyes once more.

A woman’s face—a girl’s, really—hovered anxiously over him. It took a matter of seconds for the dark hair and eyes to arrange themselves into a recognizable creature. As soon as that happened, Quentin could barely believe it. Lani! The shock of recognition stunned him and brought him out of his stupor, although as soon as he tried to sit up, a fierce attack of vertigo once again sent the interior of the Bronco whirling around him.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Quentin demanded. “I said I’d take you to the cave. Bringing someone else along wasn’t part of the bargain, especially not her.”

Quentin didn’t like being around his sister. Lani was almost as weird as that old Indian hag named Rita who used to take care of her when she was little. Lani had funny ways about her, ways of knowing things that she maybe shouldn’t have, just like Rita. If Quentin had been able to, he would have climbed in the backseat right then, just to put some distance between them.

“She’s your sister, isn’t she?” Mitch returned mildly. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought her along for the ride.”

“Mitch,” Quentin said, speaking slowly, trying to make his lips and brain work in conjunction, trying to make it sound as though his objection were more general and less personal. “Don’t you understand anything? She may be my stepsister, but she’s also an Indian. Once the tribe hears about my pots, they’ll raise all kinds of hell.”

“Lani’s not going to say anything to anybody, are you, Lani?”

Once again, Vega’s warning fingers caressed the top of her leg. Dreading his viselike grip, Lani flinched under the pressure of his hand and shook her head.

“No,” she said at once. “I won’t tell anybody. I promise.”

The turnoff to Coleman Road was coming up fast. Mitch Johnson switched on his signal. “Now what?”

“Go about half a mile up. There’s a road off to the left. A few yards beyond that, there’s a wash off to the right. Turn there.”

“Up the wash?”

“Right,” Quentin said, grateful that his tongue and lips seemed to be working better now, although he felt like hell. This was one of the worst hangovers he’d ever encountered.

“Before we turn off, though,” he continued, “you’ll need to stop and let me drive. The trail isn’t marked. You won’t know where to go.”

Mitch glanced dubiously across the seat. “You’re sure you can drive?”

“What do you think I am, drunk or something?” Quentin asked irritably.

“Definitely or something,” Mitch Johnson whispered under his breath.

Lani sat quietly between the two men—between her brother and the man Quentin had just called Mitch. At least she now knew what the M stood for in Vega’s signature. Mitch.

As the Bronco’s heavy-duty tires whined down the pavement, Lani looked up at the shadow of mountain looming above them. Ioligam’s stately dark flanks were silhouetted against a starry sky.

They were going after pots. If they had been found here on the reservation, they were actually Tohono O’othham pots that might have been hidden inside the mountain for hundreds of years. Perhaps they had remained hidden from view in one of the sacred caves on I’itoi’s second favorite mountain.

She remembered once listening to Davy and Brian Fellows talking about the day Tommy and Quentin Walker had found a big limestone cave out on the reservation.

“They didn’t go inside, did they?” Lani had asked.

Davy shrugged. “Of course they did.”

“But that’s against the rules,” Lani had objected indignantly. “Nobody’s supposed to go inside those caves. They’re sacred. You should have stopped them.”

Davy and Brian had both laughed at her. “What’s so funny?” she had demanded. “Why are you two laughing?”

“Fortunately, you’re much too young to remember growing up with Quentin and Tommy. When we were all kids, those two were a pair of holy terrors. As far as they were concerned, rules were made to be broken.”

“So what happened?”

“As far as I know, they went there just that once,” Brian said. “It wasn’t long after that when Tommy ran away. If Quentin went back out to the reservation to go exploring the cave by himself, he never mentioned it.”

“If they went inside the cave, maybe that’s what happened to Tommy.”

“What?” Brian asked.

“Maybe I’itoi got him,” Lani said.

Brian shook his head. When he spoke, the laughter had gone out of his voice. “Don’t ever say anything about this to your dad,” he said seriously, “but from the rumors I heard, I’d say drug-dealing is what got Tommy. What I’ve never been able to understand is why it didn’t get Quentin, too.”

As they turned up Coleman Road, Lani felt a growing certainty that the place where they were going was the same cave Brian and Davy had talked about. Off to the left was the dirt track that led off to Rattlesnake Skull charco, the place they used to go every year to redecorate the shrine dedicated to Nana Dahd’s murdered granddaughter.

“We shouldn’t go there,” Lani said softly, unable to keep herself from issuing the warning. Even someone as cruel as Mitch Vega deserved to be warned away from danger.

“See there?” Quentin yelped angrily, glaring at her. “I knew you shouldn’t have brought her.”

“Shut up, Lani,” Mitch said.

Lani closed her eyes and tried to hear Rita’s words. Listen to me and do exactly as I say.

Alvin Miller was a talented guy who was able to do his work in a seemingly focused fashion, all the while carrying on a reasonably intelligent conversation with whoever happened to be within earshot.

In this case, as he carried his gear into Brandon and Diana Walker’s house in Gates Pass, Brandon was giving Alvin an earful. He had responded to former Sheriff Walker’s call for help without asking for any specific details on the situation. Now, though, Brandon was venting his frustration over the way Detective Ford Myers was—or rather was not—handling the disappearance of Brandon’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Lani.

Other than having been one once, Alvin wasn’t especially wise to the ways of teenagers. Nonetheless, he did see some merit to Detective Ford’s inclination to go slow and not push panic buttons. Although Alvin sympathized with his former boss, he could see that the whole thing might very well turn out to be nothing but a headstrong teenager pulling a stunt on her too-trusting parents. After all, armed or not, most missing kids did turn up back home eventually.

So Alvin listened and nodded. Betweentimes, he went to work. “What all would you like me to check for prints?” he asked.

“Lani’s bicycle,” Brandon answered. “That’s outside in the carport. There’s a pair of rubber-handled tongs in the kitchen sink. And back in my study, somebody went to the trouble of breaking up a couple thousand bucks’ worth of custom-framing.”

For comparison purposes, Alvin took prints from both Brandon and Diana Walker as well as prints from places in the daughter’s room that would most likely prove to belong to Lani herself. He packed up the tongs, the bicycle, and the better part of the picture-frame display. Alvin knew he’d be better off dusting those in the privacy of his lab. What he couldn’t take back to the department with him was the house itself and furniture that was too big to move.

“Where did you say you kept the key to the gun cabinet?”

“In the desk.” Brandon had been following Alvin from room to room, watching the process with intent interest. As Alvin settled down to dust the desktop, Brandon left the room. The print—one with a distinctive diagonal slash across the face of it—leaped out at Alvin the moment he delicately brushed the graphite across the smooth oak surface.

Alvin Miller could barely believe his eyes. He knew he had seen that same print, or else one very much like it, on the wallet Dan Leggett had brought in earlier and on several of the bones in the detective’s boxed collection. For a moment, Alvin was too flustered to know what to do.

He was here in Brandon Walker’s home collecting prints as an unofficial favor to an old friend. The problem was, if he was right, if this print and the other one were identical, then Alvin Miller had stumbled across something that would link the newly discovered bones with the break-in here at the Gates Pass house. Not only that, connecting those two sets of dots could put him in the middle of a potentially career-killing cross fire between two dueling detectives—Dan Leggett and Ford Myers.

In addition, if Lani Walker was somehow involved in an assault and a possible homicide, the chances of her disappearance being nothing but ordinary teenaged rebellion went way down. Whatever was going on with her was most likely a whole lot more serious than that. The same went for Brandon Walker’s missing .357.

Feeling as though he’d just blundered into a hive of killer bees, Alvin considered his next move. For the time being, saying anything to Brandon Walker was out, certainly until Alvin actually had a chance to compare those two distinctive prints. In the meantime, he took several more reasonably good prints off the desktop and drawer.

“Getting any good ones?” Brandon Walker asked, reappearing in the door to his study.

“Some,” Alvin Miller allowed, “but my pager just went off.” That was an outright lie, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. “I’ll stop here for now. I’ll come back tomorrow sometime. Just don’t touch anything until I do. The stuff I’ve already picked up I’ll work on in the lab.”

“Sure thing, Al,” Brandon Walker said. “I appreciate it.”

Alvin Miller drove straight back to the department. There, after simply eyeballing the two dusted prints, he picked up the phone and dialed Dan Leggett’s home phone number. “Who’s calling?” Leggett’s wife asked in a tone that indicated she wasn’t pleased with this work-related, late Saturday-evening phone call.

“It’s Alvin Miller. Tell him I’m calling about the prints.”

“So there were some?” Leggett asked, coming on the phone. “Did you get a hit?”

“Not yet. I haven’t had a chance to run them yet, but there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Dan Leggett asked.

“How well do you get along with Detective Myers?”

“He’s a jerk, why?”

“Because I’ve got a match between one of your prints and prints on a case he’s working. Actually, a case he hasn’t quite gotten around to working on yet.”

“This is beginning to sound complicated.”

“It is. The matching print came from the top of the desk in Brandon Walker’s study in his home office. Somebody broke into the place, smashed up some of his stuff, and stole a gun. But the real kicker is that Lani Walker, Sheriff Walker’s sixteen-year-old daughter, is among the missing and has been since early this morning. Myers refused to take the MP report because of the twenty-four-hour wait. Claimed it was probably just kid bullshit. But with the matching print . . .”

“You think her disappearance may be linked to our assault case from this afternoon?”

“Don’t you?” Alvin asked. “It’s sure as hell linked to your bones and wallet.”

Detective Leggett considered for a moment. “So how did you get dragged into all this? Into the Walker thing, I mean?”

“Myers told Brandon Walker that the soonest anybody could come check for prints was Monday, and Walker called to see if I could do it any earlier. I couldn’t very well turn the man down, now could I?”

“Ford Myers is going to be ripped when he finds out,” Leggett said. “He’ll be gunning for you.”

Alvin Miller laughed. “That’s nothing new. He already is.”

“So what are you going to do with the prints you have?”

“Get them ready, scan them into the computer, and run them.”

“Tonight? How long will it take you?”

“An hour or so to get them ready. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting for the computer to do its thing. Do you want me to give you a call later on if I get a hit?”

“You’d better,” Dan Leggett said. “But do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t tell Ford Myers until I give you the word.”

“Don’t worry,” Alvin Miller said. “Why should I? After all, he isn’t expecting fingerprint results before Monday morning. Do you want me to call you there and let you know what I find?”

“Don’t bother. I’m heading back out.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back over to the hospital to see if Brian Fellows has had a chance to talk to Mr. Chavez.”

A few yards beyond the turnoff to the Rattlesnake Skull charco, Mitch swung the wheel sharply to the right. Pulling over to the side, he stopped. “Time to switch into four-wheel drive,” he said.

Quentin reached for the door handle. “How’d you know this was it?” he asked.

“I can see your tracks heading off across the wash, dummy,” Mitch Johnson replied. “And if I can see them, so can the rest of the world.”

Lani was dismayed to see that once on his feet, Quentin could barely stand upright. She stayed in the car while Quentin struggled with the hubs. Finally Mitch ordered Quentin back into the truck, the backseat this time.

“You come with me,” he said to Lani. Once she was on her feet, he handed her a branch he had broken off a nearby mesquite. “I want you to follow behind the truck,” he said. “Brush out the tire tracks, and yours, too. Do you understand?”

Lani nodded.

“And if you do anything off the wall, if you try to run, not only will I shoot your brother with his father’s own gun, I’ll come get you, too. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

Lani watched Mitch climb back into the truck, knowing that he was wrong about that. Quentin Walker was Brandon Walker’s son, her father’s son, but as far as Lani was concerned, Davy Ladd was her only brother. Still, she couldn’t stand the thought that some action of hers, even an action that might save her own life, could cost Quentin his. She didn’t like him much and she owed him nothing. And had she turned and fled into the desert right then, she might very well have managed to hide well enough and long enough to get away.

But how would she feel when she heard the report of gunfire, a shot that would come from her father’s own gun, one that would snuff out Quentin’s life? It didn’t matter if he was drugged or just drunk. Either way, he was almost as incapable of defending himself against Mitch as Lani had been earlier.

While Mitch backed up and turned the Bronco to head off across the wash, that was Lani’s dilemma—to run and try to save herself or to stay and try to save Quentin’s life as well as her own. There was a part of her that already knew Mitch’s real intention was to kill them both. He had no reason not to.

The Bronco bounced across the wash and then paused on the far side. “Come on,” Mitch yelled out the window. “Hurry it up.”

The moment Lani Walker heard his voice, shouting at her over the idling rumble of the Bronco, she made up her mind. Brother or not, she would try to be Quentin’s keeper. If they both lived, she might once again be able to tell her parents in person that she loved them. If not, if she and Quentin were both doomed and if seeing her parents again was impossible, then she was determined to leave some word for them, some farewell message. Slipping one hand into the pocket of her jeans, Lani pulled out her precious O’othham basket. Resisting the temptation to press its reassuring presence into her palm once more, she dropped it, allowing it to fall atop the small hump of rocky gravel that formed the shoulder of the road.

If someone happened to find the basket and was good enough to give it to Lani’s parents, then perhaps Diana and Brandon Walker would understand that it was a last loving message sent from Lani to them. If not—even if the carefully woven hair charm came to no other end than to grace Wosho koson’s—Pack Rat’s—burrow—Lani could be assured the sacred symbol of the Tohono O’othham, the maze, would not be defiled by Mitch’s evil Ohb touch. He might manage to claim other trophies, including some ancient Indian pots, but Lani’s basket would never be his.

Fighting back tears, Lani bent herself to her assigned task, wielding the makeshift broom. As she scraped the tire tracks out of the sand, Lani realized that with every stroke she was also erasing any hope that some rescuer might find them in time.

That meant she and Quentin would most likely die. If it came down to a fight between her and Mitch, there could be little doubt of the outcome. He would win. Lani and Quentin would die, but the terrible pain in her breast told her that in the hands of someone like Mitch Vega, there might be far worse things than death.

That awful knowledge came over Lani in a mind-clearing rush, calming her fears rather than adding to them. Perhaps she would not be able to save either Quentin’s life or her own from this new evil Ohb, but by leaving the basket behind, she had at least saved that.

As long as those few strands of black and yellow hair stayed woven together, then some remnant of Lani’s own life would remain as well, for she had woven her own spirit into that basket—her own spirit and Jessica’s and Nana Dahd’s as well.

No matter what he did, Mitch would never be able to touch that.

For some time after Alvin Miller left, Brandon and Diana simply sat in the living room together, sharing many of the same thoughts, but for minutes at a time, neither of them spoke.

“Should we call Fat Crack?” Diana asked at last.

“I don’t see what good that would do,” Brandon said.

“But what if . . .”

“If what?”

Diana paused for a moment before she answered. “What if he’s right and this is what he meant yesterday when he was talking about the evil coming from my book?”

“How could it be?” Brandon returned. “I don’t see how Lani’s disappearance now can have anything to do with Andrew Carlisle showing up here twenty-one years ago.”

“I don’t either,” Diana said. “Forget I even mentioned it.”

Again they were quiet. “What if we’ve lost her forever, Brandon? What if we never see her again?”

Swallowing hard, Brandon Walker leaned back and rested his head on the chair. He had already lived through this agony once when they lost Tommy. It had never occurred to him that he might lose a second child.

“Don’t say that,” he said. “We’ll find her. I know we’ll find her.”

But even as he said the words, Brandon’s own heart was drowning in despair. He had heard those same platitudes spoken by other grieving parents about other missing children, some of whom had never been heard from again.

“At six o’clock sharp, I’m going to be on the phone to the department, raising hell. Ford Myers may not be the one who comes out here to take the Missing Persons report, but someone sure as hell will be, or I’ll know the reason why!”

Diana glanced at her watch. It was ten of one. “Maybe we should go to bed. Even if we can’t sleep, it would probably do our bodies some good if we lay down for a while.”

Brandon looked at Diana. Other than having kicked off her shoes, she was still wearing the dress she had worn to the banquet, but she looked bedraggled. Her hair had come adrift. Brandon was startled by the dark shadows under her eyes and by the bone-weary strain showing around the corners of her mouth.

“You’re right,” he said quickly, standing up and helping her to rise as well. “If there’s a phone call, we can take it in the bedroom just as easily as we can take it here.”

They walked into the bedroom together. Brandon stripped to his shorts while Diana undressed and hung up her dress. The bed was still in disarray as a result of their afternoon lovemaking. As Brandon set about straightening the covers, a plastic cassette tape slid out from under Diana’s pillow.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking it up. Other than the manufacturer’s label, there was no marking on it of any kind. “Did you leave this tape here, Di?” he asked.

Diana, dressed in a nightgown, came out of her walk-in closet. “What tape?” she asked.

“This one,” Brandon said, holding it up so she could see it. “I found it under your pillow.”

Diana Ladd Walker swayed on her feet and groped for the door-jamb to keep from falling. Her face turned deathly pale. “Where did that come from?” she whispered.

“I told you. I found it under your pillow. Maybe it’s a message from Lani.”

“No,” Diana said. Shivering, she looked at the tape and shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”

But Brandon’s mind was made up. “She probably decided to leave us a tape instead of a note,” he said.

Tape in hand, Brandon was already on his way to the living room, headed for the stereo deck with the built-in cassette player. Diana came after him. “It’s not from Lani, Brandon. Don’t play it.”

The brittle note of warning in her voice was enough to cause him to turn and look at her in alarm. “Why not?” he asked.

“Don’t play it,” she said again. “Please don’t.”

Brandon looked at his wife impatiently. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.

“The tape isn’t from Lani,” Diana said. “It’s from Andrew Carlisle. I know it is.”

Disgusted and impatient, Brandon turned to the stereo. As he inserted the tape into the player, he glanced back at his wife. “You and Fat Crack,” he said. “Dead men don’t do tapes. How could he?”

Hunching her shoulders and doubling over as if in pain, Diana Walker sank down on the couch. “Brandon, listen to me. It is from Carlisle. You don’t want to play it.”

“Diana, if there’s a chance this is going to help us locate Lani, of course we’re going to play it,” he said.

As the sound filled the room, they both recognized Lani’s voice almost at once, but it was muffled and difficult to understand, as if it had been recorded from a great distance. Pressing the remote volume control, Brandon turned it up several notches.

“What was that?” he said, frowning with concentration. “Didn’t it sound as though she said something about Quentin?”

Still bent over and staring at the floor, Diana shook her head and said nothing. Brandon hit the “stop” button, rewound the tape a few rotations, and then hit “play” once more.

And he was right. It was Lani’s voice, louder now, but still fuzzy and indistinct, saying her brother’s name over and over. “Quentin,” she was saying. “Quentin, Quentin, Quentin.”

“What the hell does Quentin have to do with all this?” Brandon asked.

Almost like a sleepwalker, Diana got up off the couch and walked over to where Brandon was kneeling in front of the stereo. “Shut it off,” she begged, leaning against him, putting both hands on his shoulders. “Please, Brandon. Don’t listen to any more of it. You don’t understand. I can’t stand to listen to any more.”

“Diana,” Brandon said curtly. “This is bound to help us find Lani. We’ve got to listen to all of it—every single word. Be quiet now for a minute so I can hear what they’re saying.”

Trying to decipher the tape over Diana’s continuing objections, Brandon punched the volume control one more time. And that was where it was when the unearthly scream came tearing through the speakers.

The sound ripped into Diana’s whole being, robbing her legs of the strength needed to stand upright. Her beseeching hands went limp on Brandon’s shoulders and slid down his back. While Brandon stared uncomprehendingly at the now silent speaker, Diana dropped to her knees, leaning against him.

“Oh, my God,” she sobbed. “He’s killed her. I know Andrew Carlisle’s killed her.”

Slowly, an ashen Brandon Walker turned around to face her. Grasping his wife by the shoulders, he shook her. “You knew what was coming, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t want me to play the tape. How did you know?”

It was a question, but the way he said the words turned it into an accusation. At first Diana didn’t answer. “How?” he demanded again.

“We’ve got to call Fat Crack,” she murmured. “He’s the only one who can help us now.”

She reached out then as if to cling to him, but he moved away from her. The sudden fury rising in Brandon Walker’s soul was so overwhelming that he no longer dared allow himself to touch her.

“It’s got nothing to do with Andrew Carlisle!” he snarled back at her. “You heard what she said. Quentin was the one who was with her. Whatever happened just then, Quentin is the one who did it, the little son of a bitch. And once I lay hands on him . . .”

The rest of the uncompleted threat hung in the air as Brandon got to his feet and headed for the kitchen. Diana was still sitting there when he returned. Without another word, he ejected the tape from the player and then put both it and the carrying case into a paper bag.

When he headed for the kitchen once again, Diana got up and followed him. “Where are you going?” she asked, when he took his car keys down from the Peg-Board.

“I’m going to take these to the department so Alvin Miller can check them for prints. Then I’m going to ask him to run Quentin’s prints as a comparison.”

“Lani’s dead, isn’t she?” Diana said.

Brandon Walker bit his lip and nodded. The agony in that scream left him little else to hope for.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose so.”

For a moment husband and wife stood looking at each other. The fury Brandon had felt earlier was gone. “You knew what was coming, didn’t you?” Diana nodded wordlessly. “How?”

“There were others.”

“Others?”

Diana looked away then, refusing to meet his eyes. “Other tapes,” she answered.

“Of other murders?”

“Yes.”

“But you never mentioned anything about it.”

Diana shook her head, still refusing to meet her husband’s probing gaze. “They were so awful, I never told anyone about them, not even you. I didn’t want anybody else to know or to have to listen.”

“You mean like snuff films, only on audio?” Brandon’s voice trembled as he asked the question. He felt suddenly slack-jawed. “You mean you’ve heard them?”

“Yes.” Diana took a deep breath. “Two of them. There was one of Gina Antone’s death. The other was about that costume designer that he killed in downtown Tucson. This one makes three.”

“But that’s Andrew Carlisle. Lani was talking to Quentin. To my son.”

“Quentin and Carlisle were in prison together,” Diana suggested quietly, in a voice still choked with emotion. “Carlisle had an almost hypnotic effect on Gary Ladd. He was there with Gina when she died, and I’m sure that’s why he killed himself. Maybe Carlisle did the same thing to Quentin.”

The anger that had been holding Brandon upright collapsed inside him and sent him lurching drunkenly into Diana’s arms. Still holding the paper bag in one hand, he used his other arm to pull Diana against his chest while he buried his head in her hair.

“We’re going to need help,” he murmured. “Go get dressed now, Diana,” he said, pushing her away. “I’ll start the car and we’ll go do whatever it is we have to do. We’ll take this thing to the department. We’ll take it to the FBI Missing and Exploited Children unit. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to find Quentin and put him away.”

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not nearly as sorry as I am,” he murmured back, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Not nearly.”

The ICU waiting room Dan Leggett returned to was far more crowded than when he had left it several hours earlier. Off to one side of the room sat a group of Indians that included an attractive woman in her mid- to late thirties, a solidly built man in his mid- to late forties, and an elderly woman. The three of them were talking together in low voices.

In the middle of the room, Deputy Brian Fellows snoozed in a chair next to another Indian, a portly man somewhere in his sixties, who was also dozing.

Leggett stopped in front of Brian Fellows’s chair. “What’s happening?”

Brian’s chin bounced off his chest. Blinking, he straightened in his chair. “Sorry about that, Detective Leggett. I must have fallen asleep.”

“So I noticed. What’s going on?”

“That’s Delia Cachora over there,” he said. “The younger woman. The older one is Delia’s aunt, Julia Joaquin. And that’s Julia’s son, Wally Joaquin. And this,” Brian added, motioning toward the man seated next to him, “is a friend of mine named Gabe Ortiz.”

Dan Leggett nodded politely and held out his hand. “Any relation to the Tohono O’othham tribal chairman?”

Fat Crack straightened himself in the chair. “I am the tribal chairman,” he said. “Mr. Chavez’s daughter, Delia, works for me,” he added as if to explain his presence. “I gave her a ride into town.”

“Has anyone been able to talk to him yet?”

Brian shook his head. “Not as far as I know, although you might try talking to Ms. Cachora.”

“Let’s do it then,” Dan Leggett said. “Come over and introduce me. There’s no time to lose.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Dan Leggett shook his head. “You’re not going to believe it,” he said. “Lani Walker’s turned up missing, and she may be involved in all this.”

As soon as he made that last statement, Dan noticed that Gabe Ortiz came to attention, but the detective was too focused on Delia Cachora to wonder at the connection. “I’m Detective Dan Leggett from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” he said, stopping in front of the trio of Indians and not waiting for Brian to make introductions. “I’m in charge of investigating the assault against your father. It’s important that we ask him some questions as soon as possible. When’s the last time you tried to speak to him?”

“It was almost an hour ago now. Why? What’s so important?” Delia asked.

“We’re working on what may be a related case. I need to know if there’s anything he can tell us about the attack. We’re wondering if his assailant acted alone or if there was someone else involved.”

“Lani Walker isn’t involved,” Gabe Ortiz declared forcefully. “She couldn’t be. I’ve known her since she was a baby. She would never do anything like this.”

Accustomed to Gabe Ortiz’s usually soft-spoken ways, Delia looked at the tribal chairman in some surprise. “You think a woman is involved in the attack on my father?”

“It’s possible,” Dan said.

Delia stood up and leveled another questioning look in Gabe Ortiz’s direction. “I’ll go check,” she said. “The problem is, even if he’s awake, they probably won’t allow anyone in other than family. Do you want me to ask whether or not a woman was there?”

Dan shook his head. “Don’t put words in his mouth. Just ask if he remembers anything about it, especially whether or not his attacker was operating alone.”

Delia left. The waiting room was silent for a long moment after the doors swung shut behind her. “Lani didn’t do it,” Gabe said again.

Brian Fellows nodded. “I know her, too, Dan. The Lani I know wouldn’t harm a fly.”

Dan Leggett turned to face Gabe. “Mr. Ortiz,” he said, “we have a fingerprint from the bones that matches one found in the Walkers’ house. I said she may have been involved. What I didn’t say is that her involvement may have happened under duress.”

“Duress? What does that mean?”

“It means Lani Walker may have been kidnapped,” Dan Leggett said. “No one has seen her since she left to go to work sometime around six yesterday morning. She didn’t show up for her shift or for a concert date with a friend yesterday evening.”

“Kidnapped?” Brian Fellows echoed.

Delia came to the door and motioned to her elderly aunt. “He’s talking, but in Tohono O’othham. I don’t remember enough of that to be able to understand.”

Again the people left in the waiting room drifted into silence. Gabe Ortiz walked across the room and sat down in a chair, burying his face in his hands. “Mr. Ortiz seems very upset about all this,” Dan Leggett observed. “Is he related to Lani Walker somehow?”

Brian Fellows nodded. “He and his wife are Lani’s godparents.”

“Oh,” Dan Leggett said. “That explains it then.”

A few minutes later, Julia Joaquin emerged from the ICU. Walking stiffly, she passed directly in front of the waiting detective and deputy, going instead to where Gabe Ortiz was sitting. Dan Leggett and Brian Fellows trailed after her.

“Manny only remembers seeing a man, not a woman,” the old woman said, speaking to the tribal chairman, addressing him softly in Tohono O’othham rather than English. “The man was tall and skinny—a Mil-gahn. And he was driving an orange truck of some kind.”

“The girl wasn’t there?” Gabe asked.

Julia Joaquin shook her head. Gabe Ortiz sighed in obvious relief.

“What are they saying?” Dan Leggett asked, and Brian translated as well as he could.

“Manny Chavez’s back is broken and he may be paralyzed,” Julia Joaquin continued, still addressing Gabe Ortiz, rather than any of the others. “Do you know of a medicine man who is good with Turtle Sickness?”

“I do not,” Gabe answered. “But I will find out.”

“Thank you,” Julia said. She turned to the detective just as Brian finished translating once more.

“Turtle Sickness?” Dan Leggett repeated.

Julia Joaquin nodded.

“How can you call it a sickness? Somebody hit him in the back with a shovel!”

“Turtle Sickness—paralysis—comes from being rude,” she explained firmly. “My brother-in-law has always been a very rude man.”

Just then Delia Cachora returned to the waiting room. “Aunt Julia told you what you needed to know?” she asked.

Dan Leggett nodded. “She certainly did,” he said.

Gabe stood up and took Julia Joaquin’s hand in his. “I’m glad the ant-bit child wasn’t there.”

Julia nodded. “I am, too,” she said.

“Ant-bit child?” Delia Cachora asked. “What are we talking about now?” She seemed almost as puzzled about that as Dan Leggett was about Turtle Sickness.

Julia Joaquin turned to her niece. “There was an old blind medicine man, years ago, who was always telling people that an ant-bit child would someday show up on the reservation and that she would grow up to be a powerful medicine woman.”

Delia glanced warily at Detective Leggett. “Aunt Julia,” she cautioned, but Julia Joaquin disregarded the warning.

“Kulani O’oks,” she continued. “She was the woman who was kissed by the bees. Looks At Nothing said the ant-bit child would be just like her, that she would save people, not harm them, not even someone like Manny.”

“Thank you,” Gabe Ortiz said to Julia. “I’m sure you’re right.”

The tribal chairman left then. Dan Leggett handed Delia Cachora a business card. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep us posted on your father’s condition,” he said. “In the meantime, Deputy Fellows and I will head back out to the department to see if there’s anything else we can do.”

The two officers left the waiting room together. Once outside, Dan Leggett stopped long enough to light a cigar. “So Lani Walker’s supposed to be a medicine woman when she grows up,” he said. “That one takes the cake. Have you ever heard anything like it in your life?”

As the cloud of smoke ballooned around Detective Leggett’s head, Brian Fellows realized there was a certain olfactory resemblance between that and wiw—the wild tobacco Looks At Nothing had always used in his evil-smelling, hand-rolled cigarettes. The smell brought back a string of memories, including Rita Antone saying much the same thing Julia Joaquin had just said, that Davy’s new baby sister would one day grow up to be a medicine woman. It came as no surprise to him that Looks At Nothing would have been the original source of that story, and it hardly mattered that the old medicine man had been dead for years before Lani Walker came to live in the house in Gates Pass.

“Actually, I have,” Brian Fellows said. “I’ve heard it before from any number of people.”

“The medicine-woman part?”

Brian nodded.

With the cigar now lit, Dan Leggett waved the flaming match in the air until the fire went out. “And you believe it?” Dan asked.

“As a matter of fact I do,” Brian Fellows said.

With a quizzical frown on his face, Detective Leggett stared hard at the young deputy. “I think you’re all nuts,” he said at last. “From the tribal chairman right on down.”

After laboring up the steep mountainside for what seemed forever, Mitch finally parked the Bronco in a grove of mesquite. By the time Lani reached the truck, Quentin and Mitch were both outside, with Quentin directing Mitch as they placed several pieces of camouflaged canvas from the back of the Bronco over the top of the vehicle.

Quentin was still none too steady on his feet, but he was clearly proud of his ability to plan ahead. “This way, nobody will be able to spot it,” he said. “Not from down below, and not from up above, either.”

“Great,” Mitch said. “Which way now?”

“Up here,” Quentin said. He staggered off across the brush-covered slope, somehow managing to stay upright. “The entrance is hard enough to spot during the daylight, but don’t worry. We’ll find it.”

“You go next,” Mitch ordered, shoving Lani forward behind Quentin. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

For what seemed like a very long time, the three of them clambered single-file on a diagonal up and across the flank of mountain. Mitch and Quentin both carried flashlights, but they opted to leave them off, for fear lights on the mountain might attract unwanted attention. Instead, the trio accomplished the nighttime hike with only the moon to light the path. After half an hour or so, Quentin suddenly disappeared. One moment he was there in front of Lani, the next he was gone. Looking down the side of the mountain, she expected to see him falling to his death. Instead, his unseen hand reached out and grabbed hers.

“In here,” Quentin said, dragging her into what looked like an exceptionally deep shadow. “It’s this way.”

Only when she was right there in front of it was Lani able to see Quentin crouching just inside a three-foot-wide hole in the mountain. “Watch yourself,” he added. “For the next fifteen yards or so we have to do this on hands and knees.”

Plunged into total darkness, Lani crawled forward into the damp heart of the mountain. At first she could feel walls on either side of her, but eventually the space opened up and the rocks underneath gave way to slimy mud. A light flickered behind her and was followed by the scraping of someone else coming through the tunnel. Moments later Mitch emerged, flashlight in hand. Standing up, he shone the light around them. When he did so, Lani was dumbfounded.

They were standing in the middle of a huge, rough-walled limestone cavern with spectacular bubbles of rock surging up from the floor and with curtains of rock flowing down from above. The place was utterly still. Other than their labored breathing, the only sound inside the cavern was the steady drip of water.

Dolores Lanita Walker had grown up hearing stories of Elder Brother and how he spent his summers in the sacred caves on Ioligam. Rita had taught her that the Desert People, sometimes called the People With Two Houses, were called that because they had two homes—a winter one on the flat and a cooler summer one high up in the mountains. It made sense then that I’itoi, the Tohono O’othham’s beloved Elder Brother, would do much the same thing. In the winter he was said to live on Baboquivari—Grandfather Place Mountain. But in the summertime he was said to come to Ioligam—Manzanita Mountain.

Lani had spent all her life being told that caves like this were both dangerous and sacred; that they were places to be avoided. Now, though, looking around at the towering, ghostly walls, lit by the feeble probing of Mitch’s flashlight, Lani Walker felt no fear.

She felt not the slightest doubt that this was a sacred, holy place. And since it was summer, no doubt I’itoi was somewhere nearby. That made this a perfectly good place to die.

By the time David Ladd emerged from the bathroom shaved, showered, and dressed, Candace’s suitcases were zipped shut and stacked beside the door. Candace herself was on the phone with her sister, Bridget.

“Thanks, Bridge,” Candace was saying. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t an emergency. And yes, we’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we know exactly what it is . . . Sure, that’ll work. We’ll leave the parking receipt in an envelope for you at the front desk,” she said. “Just drive the Jeep home. We’ll make arrangements to come get it later.”

While Davy finished throwing the few things he had brought to the room into his small bag, Candace gave him a quick thumbs-up, all the while staying tuned to the telephone conversation.

“Sure I know Mom will kill me,” Candace replied. “But another wedding like yours would kill Dad, so there you are . . . No, we don’t need a ride to O’Hare. I’ve already called for a cab. It’ll be here in a few minutes, so I’d better go. Tell Larry thanks for being so understanding about me waking you up at this ungodly hour.”

“You’d better decide what you’re going to leave and what you’re going to take,” David suggested when Candace put down the phone.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ll take them all. Two checked and two carry-ons. What about you?”

David looked down at his single bag. What he’d brought upstairs for one night wasn’t enough to see him through more than a couple of days. “I’d better go down to the garage and see about repacking,” he said.

“Sure, go ahead,” Candace told him. “I’ll call for a bellman and meet you down in the lobby.”

In the parking garage, Davy hauled out one other suitcase to take, along with the shirt and shaving gear he had taken upstairs. That’ll do, he thought. At least until I can get back here to pick up the rest of my stuff.

He closed and locked the door and started to walk away, then he stopped and went back. Unlocking the cargo door, he rummaged through the boxes until he found the one he was looking for. It was a small wooden chest Astrid Ladd had given him, one that Davy’s father had made in wood shop while he was still in high school and had given to Astrid as a gift. “Happy Mother’s Day, 1954” had been burned into the bottom piece of wood.

Astrid had given Davy the box only three days earlier, and it contained only two items—Rita Antone’s son’s purple heart and Father John’s losalo—his rosary. David Ladd stuffed the purple heart in the outside pocket of his suitcase, then stood for a moment staring down at the olive wood crucifix and the string of black beads. He had been only five years old, but he still remembered the day Father John had taught him to pray.

His mother had opened the front door and discovered Bone staggering around drunkenly outside. She had no idea what was wrong with the animal but Father John, who had come to the house to give Davy his first-ever catechism class, did.

“That dog’s been poisoned,” Father John had told them. “We’ve got to get him to a vet.”

Before they could even lead Bone to the car, the hundred-pound dog collapsed in helpless convulsions. It took both Davy’s mother and the priest to lift him, carry him to the priest’s car, and load him inside. Davy had wanted to go along, but Diana had turned him back, ordering him to stay with Rita.

Worried about the poor dog, Davy was in tears as Father John started the car. Before driving out of the yard, however, the priest stopped the car beside the devastated child.

“Remember how we were talking about prayer a while ago?” the priest asked, rolling down the window. “Would you like me to pray for Bone?”

“Yes,” Davy had whispered. “Please.”

“Heavenly Father,” the priest had said, bowing his head. “We pray that you will grant the blessing of healing to your servant, Bone, that he may return safely to his home. We ask this in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

David Ladd had learned a good deal more about prayer since that fateful day long ago, when God had spared not only his dog but the rest of the family as well. He had learned, too, what Father John meant when he said that the answer to prayer could be either yes or no.

Davy had never forgotten the priest’s powerful lesson, and it came rushing back to him now, out of the distant past. Closing his fist around the smooth crucifix, David Ladd closed his eyes, envisioning as he did so both his parents and his little sister, Lani.

“Heavenly Father,” he whispered. “We pray now for the blessing of healing for your servants Brandon, Diana, and Lani Walker and for Davy Ladd and Candace Waverly. See us all safely through this time of trouble in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Then, putting the rosary in his shirt pocket so he could feel the beads through the thin material of his shirt, David Ladd locked the Jeep Cherokee, picked up his suitcase, and headed home.

15

The people went to the mountain, where they had fought before, but this time Tho’ag—the Mountain—was covered with snakes and scorpions and Bad People.

U’uwhig—the Birds—had all gone away to a distant water hole, so they were not there to help their friends, the Desert People. Many of the Tohono O’othham were killed, among them many women and children.

Tho’ag—the Mountain—felt so bad when so many of his friends were being killed that he opened holes in the rocks so the Desert People could see through. That is why he is called Wuhi Tho’ag—which means Eye Mountain. And you can see the eyes in this mountain today, just as you can see the walls of rock.

At last Wuhi Tho’ag called to his brother mountain, Baboquivari, for help. Baboquivari, who watches over everything, answered. Wind Man, whose home is on Baboquivari, called his brother Cloud Man to help. Cloud Man came down low over the fighting and made cradles for the Indian children, and Wind Man carried the children in the cloud cradles to Baboquivari, where they were safe.

The fighting grew worse, and I’itoi was ashamed of his people.

So Great Spirit spoke. Heavy dark clouds came down over the mountain where they were fighting, so that no one could see.

In these big black clouds Hewel—the Wind—carried many of the Desert People safely to the valley of Baboquivari.

The Tohono O’othham were so bloody from fighting that they stained the clouds and the mountains all red.

That is why, even to this day, about the top of the great mountain peak, Baboquivari, nearly always there are a few clouds. And these clouds are not white, but are colored a little with blood. This, nawoj, you may see for yourself.

Scrabbling across the steep flank of the mountain with only the moon to light the path, Mitch Johnson had twisted his bad knee and almost tumbled down the mountainside himself. Now, crawling through the entryway with his flashlight in hand, a stabbing pain in Mitch’s leg caused beads of sweat to pop out on his forehead. Hurting himself wasn’t something he had counted on, but he wasn’t about to let it stop him, either, not after all the years of planning and waiting.

Mitch had expected a hole in the mountainside, but once he made it into the cavern itself and sent the thin beam of his flashlight probing the distant ceiling and walls, he was awestruck. The cave was huge.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Quentin said as he joined them. “Whatever you do, watch where you step. It’s slicker ‘an snot in here, and there’s a hole over here just to the right that’s a killer. It’ll break your neck if you fall into it. And there’s snakes, too.”

There wasn’t much in life that scared Mitch Johnson, but snakes did. “Rattlers?” he asked.

“That’s right. I killed a diamondback just outside the entrance earlier this afternoon,” Quentin was saying. “It was a big mother, and I threw the body down the side of the mountain. The problem is, where there’s one snake, there’s usually another.”

While Mitch carefully scoured the surrounding area for snakes, Quentin once again took his position at the head of the line, picking his way through the forest of stalagmites that thrust themselves up out of the limestone floor.

“This way,” Quentin said. “There’s sort of a path here.”

If there was a path, Lani couldn’t see it. The rocks were so slippery that she was having some difficulty walking.

“I thought you said somebody lived in here,” Mitch complained as he gingerly negotiated the rough and treacherously slick floor of the cavern. “How could they?”

“Not here,” Quentin said. “In the other room.”

Paying close attention to every twist and turn in the path, Lani listened to everything—not just to the words Quentin and Mitch were exchanging, but to what the mountain was saying as well. There seemed to be other voices there too, and Lani strained to hear them. Maybe this was where the Bad People lived, the PaDaj O’othham who had come time and again to steal the crops from the Desert People and to do battle with I’itoi.

She had thought Mitch Vega to be a messenger of Davy’s Evil Ohb, but maybe the Ohb were really part of the Bad People. Maybe that’s why they had come to this underground place. Maybe the people who said I’itoi lived in Ioligam’s sacred caves were wrong and had been all along.

The thought of being in the presence of the Bad People plunged Lani back into despair. Behind her Mitch heard her sharp intake of breath.

His clawlike fingers clamped shut across the top of her shoulder. “What is it?” he demanded. “What did you see? A snake, maybe? Where?”

He shone the flashlight directly into Lani’s eyes, temporarily blinding her and then turning away as he scanned the ground around him. But something had happened in that moment as his face pressed so close to hers that Lani could feel his hot breath on her skin. She had heard something in his voice that hadn’t been there before and her heart beat fast when she realized what it was—fear. Not a lot of it. No, just the tiniest trace. But still, it was fear, and knowing Mitch Vega was afraid gave Lani something else that hadn’t been there before—hope, and the possibility that maybe somehow, someway, she would survive.

She looked again at Quentin. The walk up the mountain seemed to have sobered him some. At least his movements were steadier. If Mitch had given him some of the drug, perhaps that was wearing off as well. Maybe, between the two of them . . .

The thought that Quentin’s dose of scopolamine might be wearing off too soon was worrisome to Mitch Johnson. He needed the right combination of mobility and control. It was important to have Quentin able to get around under his own steam, but it was also important for his thinking capabilities to be somewhat impaired.

Following Quentin and Lani through the cavern, Mitch was shocked when Quentin suddenly seemed to melt into a solid rock wall, taking Lani with him. Mitch, limping hurriedly after them, had to pause and examine the wall with the beam from his flashlight before discovering a jagged fissure in the rock. After squeezing through the narrow aperture, he found himself in a long narrow shaft that seemed to lead off into the interior of the mountain, away from the much larger cavern behind them. Yards ahead, Mitch could see Lani Walker disappearing around a curve.

As soon as Mitch stepped into the passage, the ground underfoot was different—smoother, but slicker as well. Here, the rocky floor had been painstakingly covered with a layer of dirt that constant moisture kept in a state of goopy muck. It was possible there had once been stalactites and stalagmites, just as there were in the other room. If so, they had been cut down and carted away, making the narrow shaft passable.

Hurrying after the others, Mitch rounded the curve and was suddenly conscious of a slight lifting in the total darkness that had surrounded him before. Now his flashlight probed ahead toward a hazy gray glow. At first Mitch thought that maybe Quentin had lit a lantern of some kind. Instead, as Mitch entered a second, much smaller, chamber, he realized this one was lit—almost brilliantly so—by a shaft of silvery moonlight slanting into the cave from outside, from a narrow crack at the top of a huge pile of debris.

Mitch had thought that the passageway was leading them deeper into the mountain. Instead, they had evidently angled off to the side, to a place where the shell of mountain was very thin.

“There used to be another entrance here,” Quentin was saying, pointing the beam of his light up toward the narrow hole at the top of the debris. “At one time this was probably the main entrance. I figure it used to be larger than the one we came in, but it looks like a landslide pretty well covered it up. All that’s left of it is that little opening way up there.”

Not only was there more light here but, because of the presence of some outside air, the second chamber was also slightly warmer and dryer. Here the texture of the dirt underfoot changed from mud to the caliche-like crust that forms in desert washes after a summertime flood.

“You said you came out here earlier today?” Mitch asked.

Quentin nodded.

“Why? What were you doing?”

“Just checking things out,” Quentin said. “Making sure nothing had happened to any of this stuff since the last time I was here. It turns out nothing did. The pots are all still here. Come take a look.” As Quentin spoke, he aimed the beam from his flashlight at something in the far corner of the room. “What do you think?” he added.

Mitch Johnson thrust Lani aside and hurried past her. There on the floor, half-buried in the dirt, lay the shiny white bones of a human skeleton. And around those bleached bones, spilled onto their sides as though having been investigated by some marauding, hungry beast, lay a whole collection of pots—medium-sized ones for holding corn and piñon nuts, grain and pinole, and larger ones as well—the kind used for carrying water and for cooking meat and beans.

“It doesn’t look like all that much to me,” Mitch said, “but the guy I told you about wants them, so we’d better pack ’em up and get ’em out of here.”

“You can’t,” Lani Walker said. Those were the first words she had spoken since Mitch had dragged her out of the Bronco down by the wash. She hadn’t intended to say anything at all, but the words came choking out of her in spite of her best effort to hold them back.

Mitch swung around and looked at her. “We can’t what?”

“Take the pots,” she answered. “It’s wrong. The spirit of the woman who made them is always trapped inside the pots she makes. That’s why a woman’s pottery is always broken when she dies, so her spirit won’t be trapped. So she can go free.”

“Trapped in her pots? Right!” Mitch scoffed. “If you asked me, it looks more like she was trapped in the mountain, not in her damn pots. Now sit down and shut the hell up,” he added. “I don’t remember anybody asking for your opinion.”

Without a word, Lani sank down and sat cross-legged on the caliche-covered floor. When Mitch looked back at Quentin, he was staring at the girl while a puzzled frown knotted his forehead.

“What’s she doing here anyway?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

“She just came along for the ride, Quentin,” Mitch said jokingly. “For the fun of it. Once we get all these pots out of here, the three of us are going to have a little party.” Mitch paused and patted his shirt pocket. “I brought along a few mood-altering substances, Quentin. When the work’s all done, the three of us can have a blast.”

“You mean Little Miss Perfect here takes drugs, too?” Quentin’s frown dissolved into a grin. “I never would have guessed it. Neither would Dad, I’ll bet. He’ll have a cow if he ever finds out.”

Lani started to reply, but before she could answer, a swift and vicious kick from the toe of Mitch’s hiking boot smashed into her thigh. She said nothing.

“Tripping out is for dessert,” Mitch said quickly. “First let’s worry about the pots.”

“How are we going to carry them out?” Quentin asked.

“In your backpack.”

“But we only have one.”

“You should have thought of that before. I guess you’ll have to do it by yourself then, won’t you?”

“By myself?”

“Sure,” Mitch responded. “You’re the one getting paid for it, aren’t you?”

“But if everybody does their share . . .” Quentin began.

“I said for you to do it,” Mitch said, his voice hardening as he spoke. “If the damned pots don’t get down the mountain to that car of yours, you don’t get your five thousand bucks, understand?”

Obligingly, Quentin slipped off his backpack, went over to the corner, and loaded three of the larger pots into it. “That’s all that’ll fit for right now,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Mitch said. “Make as many trips as you need to. We have all the time in the world.”

As Quentin turned to leave, Mitch breathed a sigh of relief. The drug was still working well enough. With Mitch’s knee acting up, he needed Quentin’s physical strength to haul the pots down the mountain to the car. After that, all bets were off.

As Quentin took flashlight in hand and started back through the passage, Lani sat on the floor of the cave, staring at the bones glowing with an eerie phosphorescence in the indirect haze of moonlight.

Looking at the skeleton, Lani knew immediately that the bones belonged to a woman of some wealth. The pots alone were an indication of that. Most likely there had been baskets once as well, but those, like the woman’s flesh, had long since decayed and melted back into the earth—leaving behind only the harder stuff—the clay pottery and the bones. And one day, Lani’s bones would be found here as well. Unknown and unrelated to one another in life, she and this other woman would be sisters in death. Lani took some small comfort in knowing that she would not be left there alone.

Across from her, Mitch sat down on something hard, something that supported his weight—a rock of some kind. In the moments before he switched off his flashlight, Lani realized he was rubbing his knee, massaging it, as though he had twisted it perhaps. It was a small thing, but nevertheless something to remember.

Sitting cross-legged on the hard ground, Lani reached out one arm, expecting to rest some of her weight on that one hand. Instead of encountering the dirt floor, her hand blundered into one of the remaining pots—one of the smaller ones. As Lani’s exploring fingers strayed silently around the smooth edge of the neck of the pot, a powerful realization shot through her, something that was as much chehchki—dream—as it was understanding.

This pot had once belonged to Oks Gagda—to Betraying Woman. Lani knew the story. She had heard the legend from Nana Dahd and from Davy as well. The legend—the ha’icha ahgidathag—of Betraying Woman—was a cautionary tale that told how a young girl whose birth name had long since disappeared into oblivion had once fallen in love with an Apache—an Ohb. When an enemy war party had attacked her village, the girl had betrayed her people to their dreaded enemy. Much later, the bad girl was brought back home and punished. According to the legend, I’itoi locked her in a cave and then called the mountain down around her, leaving her to die alone and in the dark.

Lani had lived all her life with those beloved I’itoi stories and traditions, but there was a part of her that discounted them. Over the years she had stopped believing in them in much the same way she eventually had stopped believing in Santa Claus. Although legends of Saint Nicholas and the I’itoi stories as well may both have had some distant basis in fact, by age sixteen Lani no longer regarded them as true. The stories and the lessons to be learned from them were part of her culture but not necessarily part of her life.

She had been eight years old when Davy broke the bad news to her, that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Nana Dahd was gone by then, so Lani hadn’t been able to go to her for consolation. For the first time, without Rita there to comfort her, Lani had turned to her mother—to Diana Ladd Walker. And it was in her mother’s arms that she had learned that the wonder and magic of Christmas hadn’t gone out of her life forever.

Feeling the cool, smooth clay under her fingertips, Lani felt the return of another kind of magic. Oks Gagda—Betraying Woman—did exist. She had been locked in a cave by the falling mountain just the way Nana Dahd had said. But now Lani knew something about that story that she had never known before. Betraying Woman had been locked in a cave with two entrances. If she had known about the other entrance, she might have simply walked away, rather than staying to endure her punishment. In a way she would never be able to explain to anyone else, Lani Walker grasped the significance of what had happened. Oks Gagda had willingly chosen to remain where she was, choosing the honor of jehka’ich—of suffering the consequences of her wickedness—rather than taking the coward’s path and running away.

A wave of gooseflesh raced across Lani’s body. She had left her people-hair basket behind, but I’itoi had sent her another talisman to take the basket’s place. Carefully, making as little noise as possible, she lifted the small sturdy pot from where it had sat undisturbed for all those years and placed it, out of sight, in the triangular space formed by her crossed legs.

“What are you doing over there?” Mitch demanded, shining a blinding beam from his flashlight directly in her eyes.

“Nothing,” Lani said. “Just trying to get comfortable.”

“You stay right where you are,” Mitch warned. “No funny business.”

Lani said nothing more. Covering the perfectly round opening of the pot with the palm of her hand, Lani closed her eyes. With the cool rim of clay touching her skin, Lani let the words of Nana Dahd’s long-ago song flow silently through her whole being.

Do not look at me, Little Olhoni

Do not look at me when I sing to you

So this man will not know we are speaking

So this evil man will think he is winning.

Do not look at me when I sing, Little Olhoni,

But listen to what I say. This man is evil.

This man is the enemy. This man is Ohb.

Do not let this frighten you.

Whatever happens, we must not let him win.

I am singing a war song, Little Olhoni.

A hunter’s song, a killer’s song.

I am singing a song to I’itoi, asking him to help us.

Asking him to guide us in the battle

So the evil Ohb does not win.

Do not look at me, Little Olhoni,

Do not look at me when I sing to you.

I must sing this song four times,

For all of nature goes in fours,

But when the trouble starts

You must listen very carefully

And do exactly what I say.

If I tell you to run, you must run,

Run fast, and do not look back.

Whatever happens, Little Olhoni.

You must run and not look back.

Remember in the story how I’itoi made himself a fly

And hid in the smallest crack when Eagleman

Came searching for him. Be like I’itoi,

Little Olhoni. Be like I’itoi and hide yourself

In the smallest crack. Hide yourself somewhere

And do not come out again until the battle is over.

Listen to what I sing to you, Little Olhoni.

Do not look at me but do exactly as I say.

Lani paused sometimes between verses to listen. Outside the cave’s entrance, cool nighttime air rustled through the manzanita, making a sighing sound like people whispering—or like a’ali chum—little children—gossiping and sharing secrets. Maybe it was that sound that brought Betraying Woman back to Lani’s attention. Not only had she been left to die in the cave, her spirit was still there, trapped forever in the prison of her unbroken pots.

“Pots are made to be broken,” Nana Dahd had told her time and again. “Always the pots must be broken.”

And that was why, in Rita’s medicine basket, there had once been a single shard of pottery with the figure of a turtle etched into it. The piece of reddish-brown clay had come from a pot Rita’s grandmother, Oks Amichuda—Understanding Woman—had made when she was a young woman. After Understanding Woman’s death, Rita herself had smashed the pot to pieces, releasing her grandmother’s spirit. The only thing Rita had saved was that one jagged-edged piece.

For just a moment, in that dim gray light, Lani thought she saw the pale figure of a woman glide behind the man who called himself Mitch Vega. Lani saw the figure pause and then move on.

The shadowy shape was there for such a brief moment that at first Lani thought, perhaps, she had made her up. But then, as Lani kept on singing, a strange peace enveloped her. She felt perfectly calm—as though she were being swept along in the untroubled stillness inside a whirlwind. And since Lani understood by then that, like Betraying Woman, she was going to die anyway, there was no longer any reason for her to remain silent.

“Why do you hate them?” she asked.

“Hate who?” Mitch returned.

“My parents,” Lani answered. “That’s why you’ve done all this—drugged me, drugged Quentin, brought us here. That’s the reason you drew that awful picture of me, as well. To get at my parents, but I still don’t understand why.”

“It’s not your parents,” Mitch said agreeably enough. “It’s your father.”

“My father? What did he do to you?”

“Did your father ever mention the name Mitch Johnson to you?”

“Mitch Johnson? I don’t think so. Is that you? I thought your name was Vega.”

“Mitch Whatever. It doesn’t really matter, does it?” He laughed then. The brittle laughter rattled hollowly off the walls of the cave. “That’s a pisser, isn’t it! Brandon Walker cost me my family, my future, and twenty years out of my life, but I’m not important enough for even the smallest mention to Brandon Walker’s nearest and dearest.”

“What did my father do to you?” Lani persisted.

“I’ll tell you what he did. He locked me up, and for no good reason. Those goddamned wetbacks are sucking the lifeblood out of this country. They were wrecking things back then, and it’s worse now. All I was trying to do was stop it.”

The word “wetbacks” brought the story back. “You’re him,” Lani said.

“Him who?”

“The man who shot those poor Mexicans out in the desert.”

“So your father did tell you about me after all. What did he say?”

“He wasn’t talking about you,” Lani answered. “He was talking about the award. I was dusting in his study and I asked him about some of his awards. The Parade Magazine Detective of the Year Award was—”

“He was talking about his damned award?”

Lani heard the change in the tenor of his voice, the sudden surge of anger. The lesson she should have learned when she had slapped the drug-laden cup away from her lips seemed so distant now, so far in the past, that it no longer applied. What difference did it make? He was going to kill her anyway.

“That’s why they gave it to him,” she said quietly. “For sending you to prison. You killed two people and wounded another. I think you got what you deserved.”

“Shut up,” Mitch Vega-Johnson snarled. “Shut the hell up. You don’t know the first goddamned thing about it.”

Listen to me, Little Olhoni, and do exactly as I say.

Once again Nana Dahd’s song came to mind and she began to sing quietly—jupij ne’e. She whispered the strength-giving words, not loud enough for Mitch to hear, but loud enough that they might fall on the ears of Betraying Woman, that they might reach out to that other trapped spirit who had spent so long shut up in the cave.

When Mitch had taken her prisoner and when he had hurt her, he had caught her unawares. Lani had learned enough about him now to realize that he was simply waiting for Quentin to finish loading the pots. When that task was accomplished, Mitch would come after Lani again—after Lani and Quentin both.

Minute by minute, the danger was coming closer, and singing Nana Dahd’s song was the only way Lani knew to prepare for it, to achieve ih’in. This time, when he came after her, she would be ready. Perhaps she would not escape—escape did not seem possible—but with the help of I’itoi and of Betraying Woman, Lani would meet her fate in a way that would make Nana Dahd proud. In the face of whatever Mitch Vega-Johnson had to offer, Lani would be bamustk—unflinching.

That was the other thing Siakam meant—to be a hero, to endure. Nana Dahd had given her that word as part of her name. Dolores Lanita Walker was determined that, no matter what, she would somehow live up to the legend of that other Mualig Siakam, to the other woman from long ago, the one who had been Kissed by the Bees.

Driving to the department, Brandon and Diana Walker said very little. Brandon had always thought that having a child die a violent death had to be a parent’s worst nightmare. But it turned out that wasn’t true, because having one child murdered by another was worse by far. There was no way for him to come to grips with the enormity of the tragedy, so he took refuge in action and drove.

Pulling into the familiar parking lot, he was struck by the difference between then and now, between when he used to park in the slot marked reserved for sheriff. Back then, he would have walked into the building to issue orders and direct the action. Tonight, instead of calling the shots, he was coming in as a family member—as the father of both victim and perpetrator. Instead of being able to tell people what to do, he was going to have to ask, maybe even beg, for someone to help him.

Shaking his head at his own powerlessness, he parked the car in a slot marked visitor.

“What are we going to tell them?” Diana asked, as they headed for the public entrance.

Brandon was still carrying the paper bag that held the cassette tape and plastic case. “Before I tell anybody anything, I’m going to try to get these to Alvin. That way he can start lifting prints. Once he’s done with the tape, we’ll try to get someone to hold still long enough to listen to it.”

“Will they believe it?”

“That depends,” Brandon told her.

“On what?”

“On the luck of the draw,” he answered. “With any kind of luck, Detective Myers will still be home in bed.”

Walking into the reception area, the young clerk recognized Brandon Walker immediately. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Alvin Miller,” Brandon answered.

The clerk frowned. “I doubt he’s here. I’m not showing him on the ‘in’ list.”

“Do me a favor,” Brandon said. “Try calling the fingerprint lab and see if he answers.”

And he did. Within minutes, Alvin Miller had come out to the reception area to escort Brandon and Diana back to the lab. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Brandon handed over the bag. “Do me a favor,” he said. “We need prints lifted off these.”

“All right,” Alvin returned.

“Then I’ll need something else.”

“What’s that?”

“You can call up prints by name, can’t you?”

“Sure,” Alvin answered. “If the prints went into the system with a name, then we can get them out that way, too. Whose name are we looking for?”

“My son’s,” Brandon Walker said, his voice cracking as he spoke.

“Your son’s?”

Brandon nodded. “His name is Quentin—Quentin Addison Walker. He’s only been out of Florence for a matter of months, so his prints should be on file.”

Without another word, Alvin Miller walked over to a computer keyboard and punched in a series of letters. The whole lab was silent except for the air rushing through the cooling ducts and the hum of fans on various pieces of equipment. For the better part of a minute, that sound didn’t change. Then, finally, with a distinctive thunk, a printer snapped into action.

Eventually, the print job was complete. Only when the lab was once again filled with that odd humming silence did Alvin reach out to retrieve the printed sheet from the printer. Preparing to hand it to Brandon, he glanced at it once. As soon as he did so, he snatched it away again and held it closer to study it more closely.

“Holy shit!” Alvin exclaimed.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

“I haven’t run the prints yet,” he said. “I was just about done enhancing them, but I recognize one of these. Has your son been out to visit you recently?”

“My son and I are currently estranged,” Brandon Walker said carefully. “He hasn’t been anywhere near Diana’s and my house since before he was sent to prison. Not as an invited guest,” he added.

“But this print—the one right here on the end,” Alvin said, handing the sheet over to Brandon at last. “That’s the same print I took off the desk in your office and also off one of the pieces of broken frame.”

Brandon looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. The last print, the one in the corner, had a diagonal slice across it. Nodding, he handed the set of prints back to Alvin.

“He almost cut his thumb in half with my pocket knife when he was eight,” Brandon said quietly. “He took my pocket knife outside and was showing off with his little brother when it happened. You’ll probably find the same prints on the tape and tape case as well.”

“You think your son Quentin has something to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

Brandon Walker sighed. In the space of a few minutes’ time, the former sheriff seemed to have aged ten years.

“With my daughter’s murder,” he corrected. “It’s all on the tape, but before you turn it over to a detective, I want it checked for prints. Diana’s and mine are on there along with whatever others there are. You understand, don’t you, Alvin?” he asked. “I need to know for sure.” He glanced in Diana’s direction. “We both need to know.”

“Right,” Alvin said.

He took the bag and carried it over to his lab area, where he carefully dusted both the tape and the case with graphite, bringing out a whole series of prints. Then, using a magnifying glass, he examined the results for several long minutes.

Finally, putting down the glass, he turned back to Brandon and Diana. “It’s here,” he said. “On the case, at least.”

Brandon Walker’s eyes blurred with tears. His legs seemed to splinter beneath him.

“I was afraid it would be,” he said. “We’d better go out front and talk to a detective. I’m sure whoever’s assigned to this case will need to hear that tape as soon as possible.”

“How come?” Alvin Miller asked. “What’s on it?”

Brandon Walker took a deep, despairing breath before he answered. “We believe . . .” he said, fighting unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady, “. . . that this is a recording of our daughter’s murder.”

Together, Diana and Brandon Walker started toward the door. “Ask to talk to Detective Leggett,” Alvin Miller called after him. “He doesn’t know it yet, but it turns out he’s already working this case.”

By the time Davy and Candace picked up their tickets at the counter and then went racing through the terminal to the gate, they were both worn out. Once aboard America West Flight 1, bound for Tucson, Candace fell sound asleep. Davy, although fidgety with a combination of nerves and exhaustion, fought hard to stay awake. They were flying in a 737, and Davy was stuck in one of the cramped middle seats, sandwiched between Candace, sleeping on his left, and a bright-eyed little old lady on the right. The woman was tiny. Her skin was tanned nut-brown. The skin of her lips and cheeks was wrinkled in that distinctive pattern that comes from years of smoking. Rattling the pages, she thumbed impatiently through the in-flight magazine.

David sat there, bolt upright and petrified, worried sick that if he did fall asleep, he would instantly be overtaken by yet another panic attack. If, as the emergency room doctor had insisted, the attacks were stress-induced, then Davy figured he was about due for another one. There was, after all, some stress in his life.

His experience with Candace in the hotel earlier meant that he was no longer quite so concerned about what she would think of him when another attack came along. What would other people think, though? The lady next to him, for instance, or the flight attendants hustling up and down the aisle, dispensing orange juice and coffee, what would they do? He could imagine it all too well. “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of them would intone into the intercom. “We have a medical emergency here. Is there a doctor on board?”

Stress. Part of that came from finishing school and going home and getting a real job without even taking whatever had happened to Lani into consideration. In the years while Davy was attending law school in Chicago, he had held himself at arm’s length from his family back home. Somehow it seemed to him that there wasn’t room enough in his heart for all of them at once—for the Arizona contingent and for the Ladd side of the family in Illinois. To say nothing of Candace.

Looking at her sleeping peacefully beside him, Davy couldn’t quite believe she was there. In his scheme of things, Candace had always been part of his Chicago life, and yet here she was on the plane with him, headed for Tucson. Not only that, she was going there with Astrid Ladd’s amazingly large diamond engagement ring firmly encircling the ring finger on her slender left hand.

Davy hadn’t exactly popped the question. Nevertheless, they were engaged. Candace was planning a quick wedding in Vegas while Davy squirmed with the knowledge that his mother and stepfather had barely heard her name. He hadn’t told them any more about her than he had told them about his other passing romantic fancies. It hadn’t seemed necessary.

Now, given the circumstances, telling was more than necessary. It was essential and tardy and not at all one-sided. Just as he hadn’t talked about Candace to his parents, the reverse was also true. There was a whole lot he hadn’t told Candace, either.

The lush lifestyle in which Candace Waverly had grown up in Oak Park, Illinois, was far different from what prevailed in the comparatively simple house in Gates Pass. And if Candace’s experience was one step removed from the Tucson house, it was forever away from Rita Antone’s one-room adobe house—little more than a shack, really—which had been Nana Dahd’s ancestral home in Ban Thak.

Coyote Sitting, Davy thought. Just the names of the villages were bad enough. Hawani Naggiak—Crow Hanging; Komkch’eD e Wah’osidk—Turtle Wedged; Gogs mek—Burnt Dog. Davy knew them equally well in English and in Tohono O’othham, but what would Candace think when he tried to explain them to her?

Conflicting geography was one thing. What about when he started dealing in the crossed wires of personalities? There had been no particular need to tell Candace much about being raised by Rita Antone, who in turn had been raised by her own grandmother, Understanding Woman. Over time Davy had mentioned a few things, of course, but only the simple, straightforward parts, not any of what Richard Waverly, Candace’s father, would derisively call the woo-woo stuff.

Davy had never mentioned Looks At Nothing’s Peace Smoke, for instance. He hadn’t told Candace or any of her family how the blind old medicine man from his childhood would light his foul-smelling wild tobacco with a flame sparked by his faithful Zippo lighter. He hadn’t told them about Looks At Nothing’s spooky way of knowing things before they happened or of the blind man telling others what he had “seen” in his divining crystals.

How would Candace and her family react to a discussion of medicine men and divining crystals—and medicine baskets, for that matter? Or try scalp bundles on for size. The one from Rita’s medicine basket—an Ohb scalp bundle, no doubt—was the main reason Rita’s medicine basket was still sitting in his parents’ safety deposit box eleven years after Rita’s death.

Davy was sure now that the scalp bundle had been the primary reason Rita had insisted that it be kept out of Lani’s hands until she was old enough to handle it with proper respect. Davy cringed at the idea of sitting down and trying to explain to Richard Waverly how improper handling of a scalp-bundle could bring on a bout of Enemy Sickness, the best cure for which was a medicine man singing scalp-bundle songs at night.

Old Man Waverly will just love that one, Davy thought.

And yet, those things—which he could imagine Candace and her family not quite understanding—were far too much a part of Davy’s life and experience for him to dismiss them. The stories about I’itoi and Earth Medicine Man were as deeply woven into Davy’s background as Aesop’s Fables and the Brothers Grimm were into Candace’s. How would somebody raised on watered-down versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella respond to having her son or daughter hear about how I’itoi chopped the head off the monster Eagleman’s baby?

Almost without realizing what he was doing, Davy reached into his pocket and pulled out Father John’s rosary. At age twenty-seven, David Ladd closed his eyes and saw in his mind’s eye those three aged adults who had played such important roles in his childhood—Rita, Looks At Nothing, and Father John. They were all so very different and yet, despite those differences, they had drawn a healing circle of love around him—a little half-orphaned Anglo boy—and held him safe inside it.

How had they done that? And if, from the vantage point of being that well-loved child, Davy himself couldn’t answer that question, how in God’s name would he ever be able to explain it to anyone else, including Candace Waverly?

By then the beads were laid out across his palm. He began slowly, one bead at a time, silently moving his lips as he recited the words. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Halfway through the process, probably somewhere over Colorado, someone tapped on his right arm. Startled, he looked up. The lady next to him was smiling a benignly cheery smile.

“I know just how you feel,” she said. “I used to be afraid of flying, too, young man. But they have classes for that kind of thing these days. I took one at Pima Community College a few years back. You might look into taking one yourself. Those classes don’t cost very much, and they help. They really do.”

Blushing furiously, Davy dropped Father John’s losalo back into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to look into it as soon as I have a chance.”

Leaving the hospital, Fat Crack Ortiz stopped by the Walker house in Gates Pass long enough to see that no one was home. After that he headed the Crown Victoria toward Sells. No doubt the dance was still going strong, but he didn’t even pause at the Little Tucson turnoff. Instead, he drove on home.

When he had warned Brandon Walker of danger the day before, it hadn’t occurred to him that the danger in question, the evil emanating from Diana’s book, might fall on Lani. He had expected Diana herself to be the target, never Lani.

Once he reached the house, he was grateful to discover that Wanda still wasn’t home. Although she tolerated his medicine-man status, she certainly wasn’t thrilled by it. Gabe went straight to the wooden desk and retrieved Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch. Then he went outside. Using a stick of mesquite, he stood in the middle of the dirt-floored patio and used the stick to draw a circle around himself. Then he eased himself down on the hard ground in exactly the way the old blind medicine man would have prescribed.

With the porch light providing the only light, he opened the pouch and took out a rolled cigarette made from wiw—wild tobacco—that Fat Crack had carefully gathered and rolled into the ceremonial cigarettes. Digging further, he located Looks At Nothing’s old Zippo lighter, which had become almost as much a part of the duajida—the nighttime divination ceremony—as the billowing smoke itself. Then, opening a second, smaller bag made of some soft, chamois-like material, Fat Crack peered inside at the crystals he knew were there.

In all the years Fat Crack Ortiz had been in possession of the medicine pouch, he had seldom touched the crystals or taken them out of their protective bag. But if any occasion called for the use of Looks At Nothing’s most powerful medicine, this was it. Lani Walker was in danger. The old medicine man had been dead long before Rita Antone’s ant-kissed child had been born. Nonetheless, his influence, even from the grave, had directed almost every aspect of Lani’s young life, from her unusual adoption to the things she had been taught by the people who had been placed in charge of caring for her.

The responsibility of caring for the child had been left to a number of people, but Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch had been entrusted to Fat Crack alone. The treasured pouch had come to him with the understanding that the Medicine Man with the Tow Truck would save it for Looks At Nothing’s real successor. For a time, while the children were young, Fat Crack had fooled himself into believing that the mantle would fall to one or the other of his own two sons—to either Richard or Leo. And then, when Rita had insisted on taking Clemencia Escalante to raise, she had told her nephew that perhaps the ant-marked baby was the one Looks At Nothing had told them about. Over the years, Fat Crack had come to believe that was true.

Carefully, patiently, Fat Crack unknotted the drawstring that held the chamois bag closed. Holding out an upturned hand, he dumped the collection of crystals into his palm. There were four of them in all. As soon as Fat Crack saw the four of them winking back the reflected glow of the porch light, he had to smile. Four crystals made sense. After all, as everyone knows, all things in nature go in fours.

Arranging them side by side, Fat Crack laid the crystals and the cigarette and lighter out on the spread leather surface of the pouch, then he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. Carefully he thumbed through the school pictures of his own children and grandchildren until he found the one Lani had given him the year before at Christmas.

He lit the cigarette and let the smoke swirl around him in the late-night breeze. There was no one sitting in the circle with him, but Fat Crack raised the cigarette and blew a puff of smoke in each of the four directions, just as Looks At Nothing had taught him, saying “Nawoj” as he did so.

While the cigarette still glowed in his fingertips, Fat Crack lifted up the first crystal and held it over Lani’s picture. Nothing happened. It was the same with the second crystal and with the third as well.

The sky was gradually lightening in the east and Fat Crack was already thinking how foolish he must look sitting there on the ground when he picked up the fourth crystal and held it over the picture. What happened then was something he could never explain. It simply was. The picture on the paper changed ever so slightly until something else superimposed itself over Lani’s smiling face.

At first Fat Crack thought he was seeing the head of a rattlesnake, its jaws open wide to swallow something, its fangs fully exposed. This was not a snake’s head. It was, in fact, a snake’s skull—ko’oi koshwa. Then, as Fat Crack leaned down to examine the picture more closely, he realized the picture underneath the skull seemed changed as well. In the slowly eddying smoke, he saw that Lani’s eyes were missing. Instead of eyes smiling back at him, there were only empty sockets.

The message from the divining crystals was clear. If Lani Walker wasn’t already dead, she soon would be.

Fat Crack’s hands shook as he carefully returned the crystals and lighter to the medicine pouch. He was just closing it and trying to decide what to do with this newfound, awful knowledge when the headlights from Richard Ortiz’s tow truck flashed across the yard. With an agility that surprised Fat Crack even as he did it, he heaved his hefty frame up off the ground and hurried toward the truck. He reached the rider’s door just as Wanda climbed out and turned to tell Richard good-bye.

“Oi g hihm,” Fat Crack said to his son, hoisting himself up into the seat Wanda had just vacated. Literally translated, oi g hihm means “Let’s walk.” In the everyday language of the reservation, however, it means “Let’s get in the pickup and go.”

“Where are you going?” Wanda demanded, catching the door before Gabe had a chance to close it.

“To Rattlesnake Skull Charco,” he said. “Call Brandon Walker and tell him to meet me there. Tell him that’s where we’ll find Lani. Tell him to hurry before it’s too late.”

“What’s wrong with Lani?” Wanda Ortiz asked in alarm. “Is she hurt, sick? What’s going on?”

“She’s been kidnapped,” Fat Crack answered without hesitation. “I believe she’s been taken by someone connected to the evil Ohb. If we don’t find her soon, that person is going to kill her, if he hasn’t already.”

Wanda nodded and stepped back from the truck. “I’ll call the Walkers right away,” she said.

Richard Ortiz shifted the tow truck into reverse. “We’re not talking more of that old medicine-man nonsense, are we?” he asked dubiously.

This was no time for a philosophical discussion. “Shut up and drive, Baby,” Fat Crack told his son. “And while you’re at it, put the flashers on.”

“You think it’s that serious?”

“You bet,” Fat Crack told him. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Quentin had come back to the cavern, picked up the second load of pottery, and had gone to carry it back down the mountain. Soon he would be back for the third and last load. Lani knew that was when Mitch Johnson would make his move. That was when he would kill them.

But even with death looming closer, Lani no longer felt frightened. The whispered words of Nana Dahd’s war chant were helping Lani to remain calm in the face of whatever was to come. And the pot was helping her as well. Still undetected by either Quentin or Mitch, it lay nestled between her legs. Stroking the cool, hard clay seemed to offer as much comfort as Nana Dahd’s song. The presence of the pot seemed to take up where the people-hair basket had left off.

Across the darkened cave, Mitch Johnson was talking, his voice droning on and on, as much to himself as to Lani. When she finally started paying attention, he was talking about Quentin’s reaction to the drug. “Scopolamine’s interesting stuff, isn’t it? Sort of like a combination of drug and hypnosis. I guess those guys down in Colombia aren’t so stupid after all.”

“That’s what you used on us?” Lani asked.

“Andy claimed that scopolamine poisoning makes ’em hot as hell, red as a beet, mad as a hatter, and blind as a bat.”

In that throwaway remark Lani almost missed the crucial name—Andy. Her heart lurched inside her chest. All night long she had been forging spiritual links between this man and the evil Ohb. Now, though, for the first time, there was some outside confirmation that connections between Andrew Carlisle of old and this new evil Ohb did exist. Lani had to know for sure.

“Who’s Andy?” she asked, swallowing an entirely new lump of fear that rose dangerously in her throat.

“Did you say ‘Who’s Andy?’ ” Mitch Johnson asked in mock disbelief. “You mean here you are, smart enough to go to University High School, but you’re not smart enough to figure all this out for yourself?”

“Who’s Andy?” Lani repeated.

“A friend of mine,” Mitch Johnson told her. “It turns out he was a friend of your mother’s as well. If you’ve read your mother’s book, then you know a whole lot about him. His name was Carlisle. Andrew Philip Carlisle. Ever heard of him?”

Sitting there in the dark, Lani’s body was covered by another wave of gooseflesh. She felt sick to her stomach. It was true, then. She was shut up in the darkened cave with a man named Mitch Johnson, but she was there with Andrew Carlisle as well, with the vengeful spirit of the evil Ohb who had raped and tortured her mother.

“That’s why you burned me, isn’t it?” she said. Her voice seemed very small. In the emptiness of the darkened cave, it was hardly more than a whisper. “You did it for him.”

“So maybe you aren’t so dumb after all. This way your mother is bound to make the connection, but there won’t be any tooth impressions for someone to take to court the way there were with Andy.”

Andy. It was hard for her to comprehend that word. How could a person who was “Andy” to Mitch Johnson also be Andrew Carlisle, the monster who had frequented the stories of Lani Walker’s childhood? She had spent long winter evenings, snuggled in Rita’s lap, hearing the story again and again. Lani had loved hearing how two women, the priest, the boy, and the dog had overcome the wicked Mil-gahn man. Again and again Nana Dahd had told the powerful tale of how I’itoi had helped them defeat the enemy who was, at the same time, both Apachelike and not-Apache.

“I don’t suppose you ever met him,” Mitch continued. “You’re much too young. He was already in prison for the second time long before you were born, but if you had met him, I think you would have been impressed. To put it in terms you might understand—the Indian vernacular, as it were—I’d say he was a very powerful medicine man.”

Lani knew something about medicine men—especially about Looks At Nothing, who had been a friend of Rita’s. And Fat Crack Ortiz was a medicine man as well. Whatever powers they had weren’t used for evil or for hurting people. Mitch Johnson’s sarcastic remark burned through Lani’s fear and changed it to anger, like a powerful magnifying glass focusing the rays of the sun to ignite a piece of paper.

“You can call him a medicine man if you like,” she said softly. “I call him ho’ok.”

“Ho’ok,” Mitch Johnson repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Monster,” Lani replied.

For a moment after she said it, there was no sound in the dark stillness of the cave, then there was a short hiccup followed by a hoot of raucous laughter.

Except it didn’t sound like laughter to Lani Walker. In the dark it reminded her of something else—of the rasping, unearthly, bone rattling sound a cornered javelina makes when it gnashes its teeth.

16

Now this is all that is known of Mualig Siakam. She was one of the greatest of all the medicine women in all the Land of the Desert People. She lived to be very, very old. And she taught some of her songs to a few men.

Some women tried to learn the songs, but the buzzing of the bees joined with the song in the heads of the women and made them afraid. Because they were afraid, the women would not let sleep come. Sleep was necessary in order to know all the powers which one does not see, and which are used in healing.

The Indians would take a new baby many miles to see Great Medicine Woman, and Mualig Siakam would sing over the baby. She would sing over it with the white feathers of goodness which would help guard its spirit from meanness. And she would feed the baby a little of the very fine white meal which would make its body strong.

But sometimes Great Medicine Woman would refuse to sing. Then the people knew there was no hope for the child.

If the people grew angry and tried to make Mualig Siakam sing over such a child, Great Medicine Woman would scold. She would ask them what right they had over Tash—the Sun—and Jeweth—the Earth—and all of I’itoi’s gifts. Then she would go into the dark inner room of her house, and the Pa-nahl—the bees—would begin to roar with anger.

When that happened, all the people—even Old Limping Man—would go away.

Alvin Miller wasn’t used to doing his work in front of a live audience, but that night the lab was jammed with onlookers. The Walkers were there along with Deputy Fellows and both detectives on the case, Leggett and Myers. At the last moment Sheriff Forsythe even showed up, probably summoned by Detective Myers.

“All right,” Forsythe said, looking around the room. “What exactly’s going on here?”

Brandon Walker looked at the man who had replaced him. “My daughter’s missing,” he said. “We’re afraid she may have been kidnapped.”

Forsythe glowered at Detective Myers. “Kidnapped. I thought you said this was a Missing Persons case. And what’s all this about bones?”

Miller came across the room and handed the papers over to the sheriff. “This set of prints matches individual prints we took off the collection of bones Deputy Fellows discovered out near the reservation yesterday afternoon as well as items from the break-in at the Walker residence last night that Detective Myers was called to investigate.”

Slipping on a pair of reading glasses, Bill Forsythe studied the report. “Quentin Walker,” he read aloud. Then he looked up at Brandon. “Your son?”

Brandon nodded. “I want you to call in the FBI,” he said.

“The FBI!” Forsythe exclaimed. “For a little domestic thing like this? Not on your life. Chances are your son and daughter were drinking or something, just the way Detective Myers said . . .”

Brandon turned to Alvin. “Do you still have that tape recorder here?”

Miller nodded. “Yes.”

“I want you to play the tape,” Brandon said.

“But I haven’t finished lifting—”

“Play it,” Brandon ordered. “That’s the only way they’re going to believe what we’re up against.”

A few seconds later, Lani Walker’s voice was playing to all the people crowded into the lab. “Quentin,” she was saying. “Quentin, Quentin, Quentin.”

“Your daughter?” Forsythe asked.

Brandon Walker nodded. By the time the scream tore through the room, Diana Walker was sobbing quietly into her hands.

“You’re right,” Sheriff Forsythe said, when Alvin Miller finally switched off the tape player. “It’s time to pull out the stops.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Brandon Walker reached out and squeezed Diana’s hand.

Quentin Walker had deposited his second load of pottery in the back of the Bronco and was on his way back to the cave for the third and last one when he saw the flashing red lights turn off Highway 86 onto Coleman Road.

Climbing up and down was hard physical labor. His head was far clearer now than it had been when he started out. Even though there was no chance of the people in the police car seeing him, he froze where he was and waited for it to go past. But it didn’t. Instead, it slowed and turned left, heading for the charco.

Blind panic descended on Quentin Walker. Someone’s found Tommy, he thought. And now the cops are coming for me.

For the space of thirty seconds, he stood paralyzed by fear and indecision. And then, without a thought for the other people in the cave—without even recalling their existence, to say nothing of the third batch of pottery—he turned and ran back down to the Bronco. There was a single car key in his pocket. Sweeping the camouflage cover off the top, Quentin clambered into the vehicle and shoved the key home in the ignition.

Switching on the engine, he gunned it, testing the power, trying to remember exactly how he had come to be here on the mountain. Dimly he remembered driving up here, but it had seemed lighter then. In the dark, he was hard-pressed to remember how to reverse course and get back down.

He began trying to turn the Bronco around. There was little room for maneuvering inside that little clump of mesquite trees, especially when he didn’t dare turn on the headlights. Those would certainly attract the attention of the cops with their flashing red lights. Even now, the cop car was headed straight for the charco.

Realizing that’s where the cops were heading drove Quentin into a frenzy. The next time he backed up, he high-centered on a boulder he hadn’t been able to see in the rearview mirror. Even with four-wheel drive, the Bronco didn’t come loose the first two times he tried to go forward. The third time, he really goosed it, slamming the accelerator all the way to the floor, giving the Bronco every bit of power he had.

And it worked. Too well.

With a roar and a spray of pebble-sized rocks, the Bronco shot forward—through the grove of mesquite and right over the edge of a limestone cliff that had lain, shrouded in darkness, just beyond the sheltering trees.

Quentin mashed desperately on the brakes, trying to stop, but by then it was too late. The Bronco was already airborne. It came to earth the first time twenty yards from where it had taken off. It landed nose-first and then bounced end for end. With the screech of tortured metal and to the accompaniment of breaking glass, it turned over and over. The battered remains finally came to rest, roof down, in the soft sand of the wash that skirted the bottom of the mountain. There was no fire, no explosion, only a cloud of dust that rose up into the nighttime sky and then silently dispersed.

Not having fastened his seat belt, Quentin Walker was thrown clear the first time the Bronco rebounded off the unforgiving mountainside. He flew through the air like a rag doll and then landed with a bone-jarring thump into a sturdy thicket of low-lying manzanita.

Quentin never saw Mitch Johnson come scrambling up over the landslide debris and out the crack of that second entrance, never heard him yelling into the gradually graying nighttime sky.

“Come back here, you rotten son of a bitch!”

Lani heard the engine turn over and stutter to life. The sound was faint but distinct. Other than the Bronco, there was no vehicle within hearing distance.

Mitch Johnson roared out his dismay. “Goddamn it! What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Moments later, Johnson hurtled himself toward the pile of debris that blocked the second entrance. As he scrambled up it toward the crack at the top, loose rocks and pebbles rained down. A few of them smashed into Lani’s legs and arms. Grabbing the pot, she scrambled to safety, stopping only when her body was pressed against the far side of the cave.

She could hear Mitch Johnson shouting at Quentin. For a moment, until the rocks quit falling, Lani stayed where she was. She might have remained there longer, but something outside herself urged her to action.

Now’s your chance. Run!

Responding to that silent command, Lani stood and tried to walk. Her feet had fallen asleep. When she tried to stand on them, they were unfeeling boards beneath her. Seconds later they were alive with a thousand needles and pins.

Halfway across the floor of the cavern, she realized what she was doing and stopped cold. She had been trapped there in the cave with Mitch Johnson as surely as the spirit of Betraying Woman had been caught in her unbroken pottery. Now Lani had a chance to escape, but if the pots remained, so would Oks Gagda, imprisoned in her pottery long after the debt for betraying her people had been repaid.

Turning back toward the half-buried skeleton and her cache of pots, Lani was determined that the spirit of Betraying Woman would at last be set free.

Lani fell to her knees and felt around the dirt surface until she located the last half dozen pots—the ones Quentin hadn’t been able to fit into either his first or second trips to the Bronco. Setting the one little pot aside, reserving it in case she needed to use it as a weapon, Lani set about breaking the other pots. One at a time, she heaved them against the rock wall, hearing them splinter to pieces.

At last only the little one remained. Lani reached down and picked it up. She started to take it with her, but reconsidered. If even one pot remained, Betraying Woman would still be trapped. Hating to do it, but knowing she had to, Lani raised her arm high overhead and smashed that pot as well.

There were tears in her eyes as Lani turned back toward the interior of the cave. She was truly alone now. Her first instinct was to follow Mitch Johnson up over the pile of debris, but what if he was still out there? What if she came out on the other side only to run straight into him. No, her only chance was to find the passage that led into the outer cavern.

In a sudden panic, she realized she had lost track of the exact location of the opening of the passage.

The moon had long crossed the peak of the mountain, leaving the cave in total darkness. There was no light—at least there shouldn’t have been. But as Lani searched the darkness for which way to go, a light did appear. Not a ray of light, and not a beam either. It looked more like a shadow glowing in the dark. It seemed to hover there on the far side of the cave before disappearing into nothing.

Some people have claimed that what Lani saw was little more than a cloud of dust set loose by Mitch’s scrambling feet. But for Lani, for someone steeped in the ancient legends of I’itoi and in the traditions of the Tohono O’othham, there was no doubt about what she had seen.

The phosphorescent cloud came from the pots, all right, but not from dust. Freed now from her clay prison, Oks Gagda herself had come to show Lani the way.

Setting off across the dirt floor of the cave once again with more confidence than the darkness warranted, Lani walked to the place where it seemed to her the cloud had disappeared. She held one arm in front of her to keep from running into the rock wall, but that wasn’t necessary. At the very spot where the cloud had disappeared, the passageway into the outer cavern opened up before her.

She paused there for a moment, wondering. If Betraying Woman had deceived her own people, could her guidance now be trusted? But there were no other options. One step at a time, Lani set off down the passage. Any moment, Mitch Johnson might return to the cave to find her, bringing the spirit of his friend, Andrew Carlisle, with him, but Lani Walker was no longer alone. Elder Brother himself was with her and so was Betraying Woman.

Lani had reached the point in the passage where she felt rather than saw the walls open out around her. She was just congratulating herself on getting that far when she heard cursing and scraping coming from the front entrance of the cave. Mitch Johnson was coming back. For one heart-stopping moment, she froze. There was nothing more she could do. Mitch had her trapped in the cave. Now he would surely kill her. Or worse. Either way, she had come to the end of her endurance.

Out of the depths of Lani’s despair, Nana Dahd’s comforting words returned to the girl once more:

“Remember in the story how I’itoi made himself a fly

And hid in the smallest crack when Eagleman

Came searching for him. Be like I’itoi,

Little Olhoni. Be like I’itoi and hide yourself

In the smallest crack. Hide yourself somewhere

And do not come out again until the battle is over.

Listen to what I sing to you, Little Olhoni.

Do not look at me but do exactly as I say.”

Lani Walker was already inside a crack in the mountain; already in a cave very much like Eagleman’s cave, with a pile of bones moldering in the far corner just the way the bones of the people Eagleman had eaten had moldered in the corner of his cave. And there were cracks inside this crack. The curtains of falling stalactites and the growing mounds of stalagmites that she had glimpsed with Quentin’s flashlight earlier all offered places where I’itoi could possibly have hidden and where Lani might hide herself as well.

Lani Walker had grown up in two worlds, understanding much of each. She knew instinctively that the Mil-gahn, Mitch, might look at the pile of debris and immediately assume that she had followed him out, climbing up and out. It might not occur to him that she would stay inside the mountain; that without benefit of a light she would have nerve enough to trust herself to I’itoi’s power and move into the enveloping darkness rather than away from it.

With him scrabbling through the one passage and with Lani trapped in the other, there wasn’t a moment to lose. Halfway down the passage, the man-made earthen covering yielded once more to bare, jagged rocks. She could feel the sharp edges under the soles of her boots. She remembered that just before Quentin had ducked into the passage, she had glimpsed the walls of the huge cavern receding far into the mountain.

Clinging to the dank, wet wall and using it as a guide, she turned left from the mouth of the passage and fled along the side of the cavern, into the heart of the mountain.

Into the heart of I’itoi’s sacred mountain, she told herself. That is where I am going. Either I will be safe there, or that is where I will die.

Hardly daring to breathe, she scraped along, still clinging to the wall, testing each tentative stepping place before she put her weight down. She came to the first break in the wall. Feeling around it with both arms, she realized it was a stalagmite, one three feet wide and about that tall, rising up from the floor of the cave. It wasn’t large, but perhaps it was large enough to hide her. She ducked behind it just as the first jagged beams from Mitch’s flashlight flickered into the cave and then slid across the otherworldly surface of the far wall.

Lani pressed herself against the sheltering stalagmite and held her breath. She didn’t dare peek out for fear the beam from the light might reveal her face glowing white in the darkness. She marked his progress by watching the bouncing ray of his flashlight as he came across the room and by the curses and moans that accompanied his every step. She couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but every once in a while the word “knee” surfaced and there was something about “cops.”

Perhaps, in clambering up and over the debris, he had reinjured the knee that had been bothering him earlier. That would explain the knee part. As for the cops, Lani couldn’t imagine what he meant. It didn’t seem possible that there would be police officers outside looking for her. How could there be? How would anyone know where to look?

After what seemed an eternity, Mitch disappeared into the second passageway. Lani was tempted to stay where she was, but since this was the first hiding place she had found and the one nearest the opening to the second cavern, it was also most likely the first place Mitch Johnson would look when he came searching for her again. She would have to do better than that.

Hoping the noise of his own movements would mask hers, she crept on, trying to suppress the ragged breaths that threatened to catch in her throat and ignoring the sweat that trickled down the back of her neck. Two steps farther, her foot slipped off a sharp edge into a pool of icy water. The splash sounded like an explosion in her pounding ears, but when she stopped still and waited, there was no answering sound from the other room. Perhaps he hadn’t heard it.

Barely able to breathe, she moved on. A dozen more steps into the mountain, she found a gap between two stalagmites and burrowed her way into that, stopping only when she came up against solid rock.

Closing her eyes against the darkness, she let Nana Dahd’s comforting words spill over her soul:

Be like I’itoi, Little Olhoni.

Be like I’itoi and hide yourself

In the smallest crack. Hide yourself somewhere

And do not come out again until the battle is over.

Listen to what I sing to you, Little Olhoni.

Do not look at me but do exactly as I say.

Trying to obey Nana Dahd’s instructions, Lani pressed herself even deeper into the crack in the wall. She had just eased her way down into a reasonably comfortable sitting position on another low-slung stalagmite when she heard the roar of rage in the other room. She cringed. Now it’s coming, she thought.

Now the evil Ohb knows I’m gone.

Summoned by Sheriff Bill Forsythe, a loose coalition of officers from several jurisdictions converged on the Walker home in Gates Pass. They were just starting to work when the doorbell rang and Brandon went to answer it. Standing there was FBI Agent in Charge, Brock Kendall. After years of working together, Kendall and Brandon Walker had gone from being colleagues to becoming friends.

Kendall held out his hand. “I heard you were having some trouble,” he said. “How does that old saying go? I’m from Washington and I’m here to help.”

Brandon Walker’s face cracked into a pained grin. “Thanks, Brock,” he said. “Come on in.”

“How bad is it?”

Walker shook his head. “The worst,” he said. “About as bad as it can get.”

“And the perpetrator may be Quentin, your own son?”

As a father, Brandon could barely stand to answer that question. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the way it looks.”

Even with Brian Fellows and Dan Leggett doing the briefings, it still took precious time to bring all the players up to speed. Brandon Walker tolerated the seemingly interminable interviews as best he could because he knew they were necessary. And he understood that a meticulous crime scene investigation conducted by FBI-trained personnel was equally essential. Even so, it was hard not to fall prey to the thought that nothing much was happening.

At six o’clock in the morning he went into the bedroom. Diana, fully dressed, lay on the bed, staring dry-eyed up at the ceiling. “What’s happening?” she asked.

“Brock Kendall is here, on an unofficial basis, of course, unless it starts looking like someone crossed state lines or until he can clear the way under missing and exploited children. Detective Leggett just sent out for a search warrant for Quentin’s apartment over on Grant. Dan’s a thorough kind of guy. He isn’t going to make a move until he has all his ducks in a row.”

“If Lani’s already dead, what difference will being thorough make?” Diana asked despairingly.

“Don’t say that,” Brandon returned. “Don’t even think it.”

“You heard the tape,” Diana said. “What else is there to think? And why would Quentin do such a thing? What did Lani ever do to him? Is it jealousy? Is that what this is all about? We would have done exactly the same things for Tommy and Quentin that we did for Davy and Lani if they had ever shown the slightest interest. And every time we tried to do something, Janie was right there saying it wasn’t good enough for them. No matter what we did, it wasn’t enough.”

“Shhhh,” Brandon said, laying a finger on Diana’s lips. They were as parched and dry as if she had been running a fever. “It isn’t Janie’s fault that Quentin’s gone off his rocker,” Brandon said. “Don’t waste your time blaming her, and don’t blame us either.”

“That’s what you’re saying then? Quentin’s gone crazy and what’s happened has no connection to the book? Nothing tonight has anything to do with the danger Fat Crack warned us about?”

Brandon slumped wearily against the headboard on his side of the bed. “I can’t see what the connection would be,” he said. “Insanity is the only thing that makes sense.”

Just then there was a tap on the door. A young deputy poked his head inside the room. “Brock Kendall was trying to use your phone a few minutes ago. He said there’s evidently a message on your answering machine. He said you should probably listen to it just in case it happens to be a ransom demand. We’re in the process of setting a trap on your line. This call must have come in before that.”

Brandon played back the message. Using the speaker phone, they both listened to Wanda Ortiz’s voice.

“Gabe and Baby just left for Rattlesnake Skull Charco,” Wanda said. “He wants you to meet him there. He says that’s where you’ll find Lani.”

By the time the message ended, Brandon had already slipped his shoes back on and was bent over tying them. “What are you going to do?” Diana asked.

“You heard Wanda. Fat Crack wants me to meet him at Rattlesnake Skull Charco, and that’s where I’m going.”

Diana started to slide off the bed. “If that’s where she is, I’m going too.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why not?” Diana demanded, slipping on her own shoes. “Why the hell shouldn’t I? Lani’s my daughter, too.”

Brandon didn’t want to say the real reason, that he was afraid of what they would find at Rattlesnake Skull Charco—afraid of what they would see. He couldn’t seem to do much, but at least he could spare Diana that.

“One of us needs to be here to answer the phone,” he said. “What if a ransom call does come in?”

Diana’s voice rose, verging on hysteria. “There’s not going to be any ransom call. You know that. You just—”

“Please, Diana,” Brandon said huskily. He reached out and touched her, letting his fingers graze gently down the curving line of her cheek. “Please stay here. I can’t order you to stay, but do it because I need you to, Di. Because I’m asking.”

Diana sank back down on the bed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll stay.”

“Thank you,” Brandon said. He started toward the door.

“You’ll take the cell phone?”

“It’s already in my pocket.”

“Call the moment you hear anything,” Diana added. “The moment you find her. Promise me you’ll call, no matter how bad it is.”

Brandon stopped at the door and looked back at his wife. “I promise,” he said. “No matter how bad.”

Leaving Diana alone, he hurried out into the living room. “What’s up?” Brock Kendall asked.

“Hitch up the wagons. We need to go out to the place where they found those bones yesterday afternoon. According to Gabe Ortiz, that’s where we’ll find Lani—at Rattlesnake Skull Charco.”

Brian Fellows leaped to his feet. “I can take you there,” he offered. “It’s not easy to find but—”

“I’ve been there before,” Brandon Walker said. “It’s the same place where we found Gina Antone all those years ago. Besides, Brian, I want you to stay here.”

Disappointment washed over the young deputy’s face. He started to argue. “But I—”

“Most of the other officers here are strangers, Brian,” Brandon Walker said. “You’re family. I’d like you to be here to be with Diana just in case. To give her some emotional backup. I only pray she won’t need it.”

“All right, Mr. Walker,” Brian said. “If that’s what you want me to do, I’ll be glad to stay.”

Brandon had left the Suburban parked out in front of the house. “Gabe Ortiz,” Brock Kendall was saying as they climbed in. “That name sounds familiar. Who is he again?”

“A friend of the family,” Brandon answered. “He’s also the Tohono O’othham tribal chairman.”

“But what does he have to do with all this, and how would he know that’s where Lani might be?”

“He’s a medicine man,” Brandon answered, heading for the door. “He knows stuff. Don’t ask me how, but he does.”

Sitting in the mouth of the cave, watching the flashing red lights in the desert below, Mitch Johnson fought his way through an initial attack of panic. He was convinced that the lights had nothing to do with him. What he couldn’t understand was why the hell they didn’t finish up whatever it was they were doing and go away. The little Indian slut was still missing, but he was beginning to think that maybe she hadn’t made it out of the cave after all.

He couldn’t believe he had screwed up that badly, but there was no one to blame but himself. He had counted too heavily on the drugs to control Quentin. He had kept the Bronco’s ignition key in his pocket, but Quentin must have had a spare. He had raced out of the cave in a rage when he heard the Bronco start up without taking the precaution of securing the girl first. When he first discovered that Lani was missing, he had figured she had simply followed his own path up and over the landslide debris in the smaller cavern and out to the steep surface of the mountain.

Now, though, he wondered if that was true. Had she gone that way, she, too, would have seen the lights. If she had gone straight there, hoping to be rescued, wouldn’t her appearance have provoked an almost instantaneous reaction? By now the mountainside would have been crawling with cops ready to use Mitch Johnson for some high-tech nighttime target practice. No doubt a bunch of eager-beaver searchers would have combed every inch of the surrounding terrain. One of them was bound to have stumbled across the crumpled hulk of Quentin Walker’s Bronco.

No, as the still night slid into early morning, as the sky brightened in the east, and as the flashing red lights stayed right where they were, Mitch grew more and more convinced that Lani Walker was still somewhere inside the cave and probably freezing her cute little tush off as well.

He had already decided on a backup plan of action. All he had to do was make it to the Bounder. Even with his knee acting up again, he could walk that far. Then, if he drove into town, hooked on to the Subaru, he could drive off into the sunset and no one would be the wiser. He understood, however, that a plan like that would work only so long as Lani Walker wasn’t alive to point an accusing finger in his direction.

Which meant that, inside the cave or out of it, Mitch Johnson had to find her first.

Had time not been an issue, he could simply have settled into the passage and waited. Eventually Lani would be faced with two simple courses of action: she would either have to come out or starve to death.

Mitch’s real difficulty lay in the fact that time was an issue. By now the Walkers knew something was up and had probably called for reinforcements. And so, after checking the flashing lights one last time, Mitch Johnson turned back into the first passageway. He did so with only one purpose in mind—to find Lani Walker and kill her.

Somewhere over southeastern Colorado, Davy Ladd finally did fall asleep. The next panic attack hit while the Boeing 737 was cruising over central New Mexico. An observant flight attendant realized something was wrong and quickly moved the little old lady out of the way to an empty seat several rows forward.

As the dream started, it was similar to the others. The evil Ohb was there once again, armed with a knife, and chasing Lani and Davy through miles of mazelike tunnels. Once again he was awakened, gasping and sweating, by Lani’s chilling scream.

“Something’s happening,” David said when he could finally speak again as he sat mopping rivulets of sweat off his face with a fistful of napkins the flight attendant had provided.

“What do you mean?” Candace asked.

“Something’s happening, and it’s happening now,” Davy declared.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know how I know, I just do.”

Candace reached in her purse, pulled out a credit card, and removed the air-to-ground phone from its holder in the seat ahead of them. “Call,” she said, running the magnetic strip through the slot to activate the phone. “Call and find out.”

“Hello?” Diana answered. Her voice wasn’t as strong or as clear as it usually was on the phone. Whether that stemmed from nerves or weariness, Davy couldn’t tell. “Mom? It’s Davy.”

“Where are you?” she asked. “Still in the hotel?”

“No,” he answered. “We’re on a plane somewhere over New Mexico. Maybe even Arizona by now. What’s happening?”

“All hell has broken loose. There are investigators all over the house tearing the place apart. They’ve been here for hours and—” Diana stopped. “You’re flying?” she asked as what Davy had said finally penetrated.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be here soon?”

“Yes. The plane should be on the ground in about half an hour. We’ll rent a car and—”

“Oh, Davy!” Diana whispered into the phone. “Thank you. I can’t believe it. This is an answer to a prayer. But don’t rent a car. Brian’s here with me right now. I’ll have him come to the airport and meet you at the gate. What flight?”

“America West, flight number one, from Chicago. And, Mom?” he added. “I’m not alone.”

“You’re not?”

“No. My fiancée is with me,” David Ladd said, reaching out and taking Candace’s hand. “Her name is Candace, Mom. You’re going to love her.”

The unrelenting cold of the larger cavern had crept into Lani’s body, bringing with it a strange lethargy that robbed her of purpose—of the will to fight as well as of the will to live. The first time Mitch had gone cursing through to the outside in search of her, she had tried leaving one hiding place in favor of a better one.

She had barely ventured beyond the sheltering cover of the stalagmite when she lost her footing and fell. She came to a stop with one leg hanging out over a void. Unable to tell how deep the hole was, she broke off a small splinter of icicle-shaped rock and dropped it over the edge. It fell for a long, long time before finally coming to rest.

Shaken, Lani had crawled back into her original hiding place and there she stayed. At first she tried to maintain her connection to Nana Dahd’s song, but gradually the cold robbed her of that as well. The words slipped away from her. She could no longer remember them. She had almost drifted off to sleep when Mitch Johnson returned to the cave once more.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called. “You can’t hide from me forever.”

The sound of Mitch Johnson’s voice jarred Lani to alert consciousness. She had hoped to convince him that she had left the cavern. Now, however, as the beam from his flashlight began flickering here and there across the far wall of the cavern, probing one shadowy hollow after another, she realized that wasn’t true. With the light moving ever closer, Mitch was searching for her—searching systematically. Fortunately for Lani, he had started on the far side of the cave, but gradually he was working his way closer. It was only a matter of time before the revealing light found its way into Lani’s shallow hiding place.

In this unequal contest where one opponent had light and the other did not, Lani knew there was no hope. And it wasn’t just the light either. He had other advantages as well—a gun for sure and probably even a knife. Once Mitch found her, it would all be over. There would be no further possibility of escape. If only there were some way . . .

No longer able to summon Nana Dahd’s war song, Lani shrank back against the wall, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. As she did so, she felt something brush against the back of her neck. A bat! It was all she could do to keep from screaming as the invisible wings ruffled her hair and fluttered across the skin of her cheek.

Possibly the bat was as startled by Lani’s presence as she was by the wings fluttering past her. Soaring on across the chamber, the disoriented creature must have swooped past the man as well.

“What the hell!” Mitch Johnson exclaimed while, at the same time, the flashlight fell to the rocky floor, rolled, flickered briefly, and then went out.

“Damn it anyway!” Mitch bellowed. “Where the hell did it go?”

Lani Walker closed her eyes in prayer, although the darkness both inside and outside her head remained the same.

“Thank you, little Nanakumal,” she said silently to the bat, wishing that she, like the Mualig Siakam of old, could speak I’itoi’s language well enough so the animal could understand her. “Thank you for stealing the evil Ohb’s light.”

With her heart pounding gratefully in her chest, she waited to see if Mitch Johnson was carrying a spare flashlight. She could hear him scuttling around in the dark. And then, just when she was beginning to think she was safe, she heard a distinctive scraping. Suddenly a match flared.

Mitch’s fall had taken him several yards from where he had been before. The flame of the match flickered in a part of the cave where Lani hadn’t expected to see it. Not only that, in her eagerness to return to her hiding place, she had gone too far. Instead of being completely sheltered by the stalagmite, she had moved a few critical inches to the other side.

“Why, there you are, little darling,” he said. “Come to Daddy.”

And then the match went out.

Brian was waiting at the gate when Candace and Davy finally stepped off the plane. He grinned when he saw Davy. “You guys must have been at the very back of the bus.”

“Close,” Davy said. “Candace, this is Brian Fellows, my best friend. Brian, this is Candace Waverly. We’re engaged.”

Suppressing a blink of surprise, Brian nodded again, taking charge of one of Candace’s bags while she carried the other. “Your mother mentioned something to that effect, but things are so chaotic right now, I’m not sure the information’s really penetrated.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s a very long story,” Brian said. “And if you don’t mind, I think I’ll wait until we’re in the car before I tell it to you.”