The Devil Colony

Chapter 21

May 31, 9:05 A.M.

San Rafael Swell

Utah

Kai stood on the porch in the shade. She crunched a roasted pi on nut between her teeth, savoring the salty, rich flavor. Iris had gathered the seeds from the native pi on pines growing here. She was still inside shaking her winnowing tray over an open fire, preparing more nuts to be ground into flour.

Iris tried to show her how it was done, how to keep from burning the nuts, but Kai knew the old Hopi woman was only trying to distract her. Instead, Kai stared at a thin pall of dust retreating across the badlands. Painter and the others had wasted no time, gathering gear and flying off in the rented SUV, even taking the dog.

But not her.

Earlier, she'd reined in her anger, knowing it would do her no good. Bitterness still burned like coal in her gut. She'd been here at the start of all of this mess. She deserved to see it through to the end. They kept saying that she had to bear the consequences of her actions like a woman, yet still treated her like a child.

She popped another nut in her mouth, grinding it between her teeth. She was used to being left behind. So why should today be any different? Why should she expect anything more from her uncle?

But deep down, she had.

"That guy's sort of intense."

Kai turned to find Jordan Appawora standing in the doorway. He'd changed out of his suit into cowboy boots, a faded blue T-shirt, and black jeans held up by a belt with a large silver buckle in the shape of a buffalo head.

"So Painter Crowe's your uncle?" he asked.

"Distantly." At the moment she was ready to sever their blood ties entirely.

Jordan stepped onto the porch. He held a cowboy hat in one hand and juggled a small fistful of steaming pi on nuts in the other, trying to cool them. He must have taken them straight from Iris's pan. He noted her attention, flipping one into his mouth.

"They're called toovuts in Paiute," he said as he chewed the kernel. "Do you want to know what they're called in Hopi?"

She shook her head.

"How about in Arapaho or Navajo?" he asked, now grinning. He came closer. "It seems our host is willing to share all she knows about pi on nuts. Did you know the pitch from pi on pine trees was used as chewing gum, or that it also acted as a balm on cuts and wounds? Seems the sticky stuff was both the Trident and Neosporin of the Old World."

She hid a grin, turning away.

"I had to get out of there," he whispered conspiratorially, "before she started teaching me the Hopi rain dance."

"She's only trying to help," Kai scolded, but could not hold back her grin.

"So what do we do now?" Jordan asked, donning his cowboy hat. "We could take a hike to Three Finger Canyon. Or Alvin's grandkids left their mountain bikes... we could take a ride to Black Dragon Wash."

She glanced to him, trying to ascertain his motives. His tanned face, with high cheekbones that made his dark eyes shine, seemed innocent and open. But she suspected there was more to the invitation than exercise and sightseeing. She'd caught him staring a bit too often her way. Even now, she felt a blush heating her cheeks and stepped toward the open doorway. She already had someone interested in her, someone important to her.

She pictured Chayton Shaw back with her friends at WAHYA. It would feel like a betrayal to go out with Jordan. She'd already compromised herself enough. She still stung from the e-mail she'd read earlier. She didn't intend to make things worse.

"I better stick close," she said, heading inside. "In case my uncle calls..."

It was a lame excuse, even to her own ears, but he didn't call her on it, which made it that much harder to turn her back on him and head inside. Still, she glanced over a shoulder, staring at Jordan as he stood silhouetted against the morning's brightness. She couldn't help but compare him to Chay, whose fierce activism was all too often blunted by peyote, mushrooms, or weed. Though she'd known Jordan for less than an hour, there was something purer and more honest about his tribal pride, the way he doted on and supported his grandfather, the way he listened patiently to Iris's teachings.

Seeming to sense her attention, he began to swing around. She hurried away, bumping into the table, almost knocking over a tray of cooling pi on nuts. She headed to the back room, needing some privacy.

She stood in the darkness and covered her burning cheeks with her palms. What am I doing?

Across the room, the closed laptop's idle button glowed like a green cat's eye in the dark. Painter had left the satellite hookup and one of his linked sat-phones, in case he needed to reach them. She was thankful for that.

Needing something to distract her, she crossed to the desk, sat down, and opened the laptop. She feared seeing a second note from John Hawkes, but she had to check. She called up her e-mail account, and after an interminable wait, saw she had no new mail. She reached to close the laptop, but her eyes drifted to the saved note from WAHYA's founder. Scrunching up her face in determination, she opened it again. She wanted to read it once more, maybe as some sort of punishment, maybe to see if it was as bad as she remembered.

As she read it again, she felt no despair as she had felt last time-instead, anger slowly built with each line. Already bitter from Painter's abandonment, she recognized that John Hawkes was trying to do the same. To shuck her off when there was the least bit of trouble.

After all I did... all I risked...

Before she could think otherwise, she hit the reply button. She didn't intend to send the response. She just needed to vent, to get it off her chest. She typed rapidly, unloading her fury through her fingertips. She wrote a long, rambling letter, declaring her innocence and explaining how she was actively clearing her name without any help from WAHYA. She underlined that last part. It felt good to do so. She expressed her disdain for the lack of loyalty and support shown to one of their own. She listed all of her accomplishments and contributions to the cause. She also let John Hawkes know how much WAHYA meant to her, how this betrayal and mistrust of her wounded her to the marrow of her bones.

By the time she typed those last words, tears were welling up in her eyes, blurring the screen. She knew they came from somewhere deep inside, from a wound that would not heal. She wanted to be loved for who she was-for the good, the bad, the noble, and the weak-and not to be tossed aside when her presence grew inconvenient. In the end, she recognized a truth about herself. She wanted to be loved like her father had loved her. She deserved that. She wanted to scream it at the world.

Instead, she stared at the screen, at the letter-and did the next best thing. She reached out, moved the cursor, and allowed her finger to hover. Painter said the Internet connection was vigorously encrypted.

What could be the danger?

Taking back a bit of control over her own life, she hit send.

9:18 A.M.

Salt Lake City, Utah

Rafe smiled as the in-box chimed with new mail. He checked his watch. It was hours earlier than he'd anticipated. Matters were moving forward splendidly. He straightened with a luxurious stretch, wearing a plush hotel robe and slippers, his hair still damp from a shower.

He glanced around the presidential suite, situated at the top of the Grand America Hotel at the heart of Salt Lake City. For the first time since arriving in the States, he almost felt at home, ensconced amid all the European appointments of the room: the handcrafted cherrywood Richelieu furniture, the Carrara marble in the spa bathroom, the seventeenth-century Flemish tapestries. From his perch atop the hotel, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto breathtaking views of the mountains and down to the meticulously tended parterre gardens far below.

A sniffling sob dampened his good mood.

He turned to the scrawny young man, stripped naked and taped to one of the Richelieu dining chairs. Duct tape sealed his mouth. Twin lines of snot ran from his nose. He gasped, struggling for air, eyes wide and glassy like a wounded fox.

But he wasn't a fox.

He was Rafe's hawk... a hawk he'd sent hunting.

The biographical data on Kai Quocheets had listed her affiliations, including her participation in WAHYA, the fierce young wolves fighting for Native American rights. It had taken less than an hour to determine where the organization's leader had squirreled himself away. He'd come to Salt Lake City to be close to the action in the mountains, ready for the exposure that came with such a tragedy. But apparently John Hawkes had other needs, too. Bern had collected him out of a strip club near the airport. Seems the Native American activist liked his women white and blond, with perky fake breasts.

Another whimper rose from the chair.

Rafe held up a finger. "Patience, Mr. Hawkes. We'll get back to you soon enough. You've been most cooperative. But first let's make sure your hunt was successful."

It had not taken much to convert John Hawkes to their cause. Two of his fingers still pointed toward the ceiling. Ashanda had snapped them back as easily as breaking small twigs. Rafe, with his brittle bones, knew that particular exquisite pain. Over the course of his life, he'd broken every one of his fingers and toes.

Not always by accident.

Eventually they won Mr. Hawkes's cooperation, gaining all the necessary insight and personal details about Kai to craft a letter intended to draw out Rafe's little escaped bird. And it had apparently worked.

Much faster than I expected...

In the e- mail sent out, he'd set a noon deadline for her to respond. She wasn't wasting any time. He didn't intend to either.

"Sir, we've succeeded in decrypting the e-mail's text," the team's computer asset informed him.

Rafe turned to the man. The technician went simply by the name TJ-but Rafe had never been curious enough to ask what those initials stood for. He was an American, emaciated, often hyped on stimulants so he could run code for days at a time. The expert stood before a bevy of mini-mainframe/servers, all interconnected by Cat 6 cables and hooked into a T2 broadband line.

Rafe didn't understand a tenth of it. All he cared about were results.

"The text will be coming up on your personal screen in a moment, sir. We're tracking IP addresses, triangulating sat-nodes, sifting server connections, and running a killer algorithm to untangle packet pathways."

"Just find where it was sent from."

"We're working on it."

Rafe rolled his eyes at the use of the word we . TJ was no more than a glorified assistant. The true digital magician sat in the center of the wired nest of equipment. Ashanda's long fingers danced over three keyboards, as swiftly and elegantly as any concert pianist's on a baby grand. In place of sheet music, her gaze swept through lines of flowing code. On another screen, server nodes and gateway protocols splintered into a tangled web that spread across a digital global map. Nothing could stand in her way. Firewalls toppled before her like dominoes.

Satisfied, Rafe crossed to his personal laptop and read the text message on the screen from Kai Quocheets. He tapped a finger against his lower lip as he read through the wash of teenage angst and hurt feelings. A small part of him felt a twinge of sympathy, drawn by her passion, by her raw exposure on the screen. He glanced over to John Hawkes, suddenly feeling like breaking a third finger on the man's hand. Clearly the leader sorely used his fellow members, taking advantage of their youth and exuberance. In the end, he let others suffer the consequences while he took all of the glory.

That was simply poor management practices.

TJ whistled, drawing back Rafe's attention. He leaned over Ashanda's shoulder. "I think she's got it!" he said, his voice rising in pitch. "She's crashing through the last doors!"

Rafe stepped over, nudging TJ to the side. If they were victorious, he wanted to savor the moment with Ashanda.

Standing behind her, he leaned to her ear. "Show me what you can do..."

She gave no sign of acknowledgment. She was lost in her own world, as surely as any artist in the heat of inspiration. This was her medium. It was said that when a person lost one sense, another would grow stronger. This was Ashanda's new sense, a digital extension of herself.

He ran a hand down one of her arms, feeling the old bumps of scarification under her skin. Such scarring was a ritualistic practice among the African tribe to which she had belonged. The bumps had been more prominent when she arrived at the ch teau as a child. Now they could be felt only under the fingertips, like reading Braille.

"She's almost there!" TJ said, breathless.

Ashanda leaned ever so slightly closer to Rafe's cheek. He felt the warmth of her skin across the distance. No one truly understood their relationship. He couldn't put it into words himself, and that was certainly true for her as well. They'd been inseparable since childhood. She was his nanny, his nurse, his sister, his confidante. Throughout his life, she was the silent well into which he could cast his hopes, his fears, his desires. In turn, he offered her security, a life without want-but also love, sometimes even physical, though that was rare. He was impotent, a side effect of his brittle disease. It seemed that even that most intimate of bones was damaged.

He studied her hands as they flew between the keyboards. He remembered how in private moments she would occasionally bend his finger, torturing him between agony and ecstasy until it finally snapped. It wasn't masochism. Rather, there was a kind of purity in that pain that he found freeing. It taught him not to fear his body's weakness but to embrace it, to tap into a primal well of sensation that was unique to him.

She let out the softest sigh.

"She did it!" TJ whooped, lifting his arms high, like a soccer fan after a goal.

Rafe leaned closer to her, allowing his cheek to touch hers. "Well done," he whispered in her ear.

Not moving, he stared at the screen. The digital map had swelled, and glowing green lines converged into a single locus situated in Utah. Rafe noted the location and smiled at the serendipitous sight of his own name on the screen.

"San Rafael, " he said. Amusement lifted his spirits. "Oh, that's just too perfect."

He turned to John Hawkes.

The man's eyes were wide upon him.

"Looks like we won't be needing our hunting hawk any longer," he mumbled.

He crossed toward the naked man, who let out a loud, panicked moan. Rafe believed he owed John Hawkes a small gift for his services-in this case, a lesson in good management practices, something that the man sorely lacked.

Rafe stepped behind him, hooked an arm around his thin throat. It wasn't easy to snap a man's neck, nothing like in the movies. It took him three tries. But it was a good lesson. Sometimes even a leader had to get his hands dirty. It helped maintain morale.

He moved back, wiping a pebbling of well-earned sweat from his brow.

"With that out of the way..." Rafe held forth an arm for Ashanda. "Shall we move on, mon chaton noir ?"