She looked up into those dark, inscrutable eyes … eyes she had seen wild with lust and need and satisfaction. “What are you doing here?”
His smooth tones held an undercurrent of amusement. “I was out for a pleasure cruise through the scenic Olympic Mountains and came upon this scene, and like any good citizen I thought I should offer assistance.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, you got me. I was listening on the police scanner and decided I wanted in on the fun.”
She judged that was bullshit, too. Stag Denali wasn’t one of those guys who needed to join a police chase for his jollies. He’d already had plenty of excitement in his life. “Citizens who impede police action are a pain in the rear.”
“I impeded nothing. Just tagged along and avoided the collision.” He led her toward a gorgeous sedan. Really gorgeous. A Tesla … Expensive, too. He stopped beside the passenger door. “Here we are.”
Stag’s car, like the Terrances’, was low-slung, fast and black, but where theirs had silver glitter in the paint, his was smooth with an undertone of dark, dark green that seemed to reflect the cool depths of the forest. “Nice,” she mumbled. “New?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t drive it on gravel roads.”
“Today I got a chip in the windshield.” He opened the passenger door and supported her as she lowered herself onto the seat. He lifted her feet inside, took her walking stick and shut the door. As he walked around the hood, she watched and thought it was one of God’s little ironies to build a Native American into the living embodiment of John Wayne, all long legs, narrow hips, broad shoulders and calm confidence.
Stag opened the driver’s door and suavely slid in.
Could the action of getting your butt into a car be described as suave?
Probably not. But Stag made it work for him. Maybe he was a mashup of John Wayne and James Bond …
She must be getting punchy from heat, pain and loss of blood. She pressed her hand hard against her ribs. Hot. Inflamed. That couldn’t be good.
“Take this,” he said.
She opened her eyes to see him holding a pill in the palm of one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
“What is it?”
“Percocet for the pain.”
“Percocet is a prescription drug. How did you get it?”
“I strained a groin muscle lifting my girlfriend up against the door so I could bang her brains out.” He stared meaningfully at her. “She’s a tall woman, I’d guess five-eleven.”
She plucked the pill out of his palm. “Not since the hip replacements. Now I’m maybe five-nine.” She swallowed the pill with a long drink of water. “The strained muscle? Was it worth it?”
“Yes.” He lowered her seat all the way back. “If you weren’t bleeding and looking like a ghost, I would lift you up on the hood and do it again, strained muscle or no.”
The guy might be a crook. But damn, he was charming. If only she didn’t have this ugly suspicion floating in the back of her mind …
Since the day Stag had strolled into Virtue Falls, he had been surrounded by a firestorm of gossip. Gossip about his past, about the casino, and inevitably, gossip about them.
They’d slept together. Which was nobody’s business but their own—except at the time, she had been running for office and that made it everyone’s business. In a small town where prejudice ran deep, electing a female sheriff had been a huge step. Electing a Native American female sheriff had been groundbreaking. Electing a woman who slept with the guy, also Native American, in charge of building a casino on the reservation … from here she could see beacon fires of indignation blazing all up and down the coast.
But none of that was why she felt conflicted about Stag Denali.
He pulled a blanket out of the duffel bag in the back and wrapped it around her. “Going to ask me why I carry a blanket?” He sounded testy.
“Emergency kit?”
He placed his index finger on her nose. “Right you are.”
She should ask him what he’d been doing outside the window of the Oceanview Café at the time of the drive-by. Why, before the shooting started, he dove toward the ground. Why, although bullets riddled the pavement, the sidewalk, the trees in the park and the building, he hadn’t been hit.
Virtue Falls was a small town. Gossip ran rife. Yet no one seemed to think anything suspicious about Stag Denali’s miraculous escape. Except Kateri.
And she was the last person who should be having doubts.
CHAPTER FOUR
“What’s wrong? You look funny. Are you going to vomit?” Stag looked around at his wonderfully glossy, polished wood interior. “Because this is a new car with all-leather seats and I can open the door in a hurry.”
Clearly a man who kept his priorities straight. The breeze of the air conditioner grabbed her, and Kateri shivered. “I’m cold.”
He touched her forehead. “You’re clammy.” He started the car and flipped on her seat heater. “You were in a wreck. You’re in shock.”
“None of the other officers are in shock.” Testy. She was testy.
“No one else was shot four days ago.”
She put her hand on her side. “It’s nothing.”
“I’ve been shot. It’s never nothing.” He put the car in reverse, made an efficient three-point turn and headed toward town. “It’ll take us about an hour, hour and a half to get to the hospital, so close your eyes and try to get some sleep.”
“I want to know what’s happening.” She sounded like a fretful child.
One hand on the wheel, he reached around and clicked a switch. The police scanner blared to life, then faded, then blared, then faded, but from the jumble of voices, the news didn’t sound good. “In these mountains, it’ll be in and out, mostly out.” He reached back again and clicked it off.
“Why do you have a police scanner?”
“I like to keep track of my girlfriend.”
Her mind clicked along to the next thought. “John Terrance has a police scanner, doesn’t he?”
“Most likely.”
“We could … do something with that information. Something … sneaky. Fill the scanner with misinformation.”
“Isn’t that as likely to confuse your men as John Terrance?”
“We have a secure channel … you didn’t hear that.” She took a couple of breaths and felt herself relax.
“John Terrance will likely figure out what you’re doing.”
“Yes, but maybe that’ll help us catch him and even if it doesn’t, won’t he be frustrated?”
Stag laughed, warm and deep.
She had a plan. A stupidly obvious easy plan, and Stag had helped her figure it out. “Remind me later to tell my cops.”
“I will. I’ll even make up some fake stories for you.”
“That would be lovely.” She looked at his profile and appreciated how intently he concentrated. He drove well, not like Moen on the chase, but smoothly, competently, speeding around corners as fast as he could without tossing her from side to side.
The car’s interior was nice. Really nice, with a computer console that looked vaguely like a Star Trek Enterprise control panel. From the latest movie. The new-car scent made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the bleeding. Or maybe it was Stag’s scent. Whew. She closed her eyes. She thought she dozed.
John Terrance and his son … bullies, the kind who liked to harass women on the street, to fight when they were the only ones with firearms. Worse, they made meth, sold it all over Western Washington, were responsible for all the misery that addiction caused … and made a fortune. They owned the fast car, they owned the speedy boat, they escaped … but now John Jr. was dead. No one would mourn him except his father, and his father would mourn. His father would wage war on her and her men …
Kateri had a vision of John Terrance Sr., skinny, dirty, leering, eyes aflame, screaming he would come after her, rape her, hurt her, make her sorry. She heard his voice in her head … “I
’ll leave you more deformed than you already are!”
She came awake on the whiplash of that nightmare.
Stag must have been watching, because he asked, “How is Rainbow?”
Kateri breathed to calm her racing heart.
He repeated, “How’s Rainbow?”
“Rainbow?” Kateri tensed, fought the drug, then inevitably relaxed again. “Dying. She’s dying.” Oh, God. Percocet helped the pain in her ribs. It did nothing for the pain in her heart.
He glanced at her. “The story I heard is that since meeting the frog god, you can bring people back from the brink.”
Because Stag was Native American, she was comfortable talking with him about the gifts the frog god had forced upon her. “With her, I can’t. There’s no elegant way to do it. I have to blast life into a dying body. I’ve only done it a couple of times—once was my dog—and only when it was almost too late. If I blasted life into Rainbow, I’m afraid it’ll be like blowing too hard on a dying flame. It will flicker out.”
“You’re afraid to try.”
“Don’t accuse me. Try to understand—I can’t take the chance I’ll kill her. She brought me into this world.”
He’d been kind of guiding the conversation, giving her something to think about besides pain and worry. Now he was clearly riveted. “What?”
“Rainbow delivered me. She arrived in Virtue Falls, a kid with a backpack and a woven blanket and nothing else to her name, and of course my mother took her in. My mother was always taking in strays…”
“Including your father?” Stag slowed the car.
She felt the gentle bump as the wheels hit the pavement. “Yes. Perhaps. But that was like offering to carry the scorpion across the river. When she had helped him, loved him, adored him, given him everything of herself … When he had sucked all the life and youth out of her … he walked away. She never recovered.” Her mind wandered to memories of her mother, of the smiles, the love, the time spent together … the well-hidden unhappiness, the slow disintegration into alcoholism, the broken body and soul.
In a gentle voice, Stag said, “You were telling me about your mother and how Rainbow delivered you.”
Kateri focused. “Right. They went out to dig clams by the full moon. Mom was pretty pregnant—her due date had been the week before…”
“Good God. It was night? She was overdue? And they went out to the beach to dig clams?”
“Once I asked Rainbow what they were thinking and she said Mom was fat and uncomfortable and depressed about my father.”
“How old was your mother?”
“Eighteen when she met him.”
“And he was…?”
“I don’t know. In his thirties, I guess, visiting Virtue Falls for the game fishing. Of course she fell in love and gave up her V-card to him because she thought he was going to marry her. He romanced her for a couple of weeks, then when she asked about the wedding…” She looked up and out the window at the tops of the evergreens and the fringe of the sky. “He didn’t stay.”
“Jesus.” Even Stag, who had probably seen plenty of brutality, sounded shocked.
“He wasn’t about to sully his precious eastern white heritage with a short, black-haired, red-skinned Indian wife. What with being a blue blood and being married to a blue blood and having a pure blue blood kid.” Why was Kateri confessing her darkest, most painful secrets to Stag Denali? She never told anyone about her screwed-up heritage … must be the Percocet. Or maybe the experience of lying back in a warm, soft leather seat knowing someone was in charge and she didn’t have to tell him where to go or what to do or worry that Stag would blab her confessions to the world.
The side of his mouth was drawn up in a cynical crease. “What did this guy say when she told him she was pregnant?”
“She didn’t tell him.”
“Your father doesn’t know you exist?” Stag was shocked again.
“Do you want me to finish this story or not?” Snarling was unpleasant, although sometimes necessary.
“Right. One thing at a time. So your mom was overdue and depressed…”
“And nineteen years old and Rainbow was seventeen, and everyone told them the first baby always took hours of labor … so they headed out in Mom’s crummy old pickup down to Grenouille Beach—”
“Rough road.” He clenched the steering wheel hard.
“Right. They hit enough washboard to knock the teeth out of a woodpecker.”
“Woodpeckers don’t have…” He caught himself. “Never mind. What happened?”
“Once they got there, they made a fire out of driftwood and started digging clams. They planned a picnic, a feast in the moonlight. Mom always said the best clamming was in that place where the waves and the currents intersect, so that’s where she was digging. Rainbow was up the beach by the cliff and she said the waves were backing and forthing, as they do, and she was digging, and all of a sudden she realized it was quiet.” Kateri had heard the story so many times she could see it in her mind. “Deadly quiet. She looked up and saw this giant wave rise up over the top of my mother.” She lifted her hands and let them hover. “Rainbow screamed. Mom looked up in time to be slammed down to the sand. She disappeared. Just disappeared. The water rushed up the beach. Rainbow ran toward the spot where she had been. To hear Rainbow tell it, it was long minutes before my mother washed up at the tip of the wave.” Kateri allowed her hands to wilt down onto her chest. “When she crawled out, she was in labor.”
“What did Rainbow do?”
“Delivered me. I came fast. They’d brought a knife and a blanket. For the picnic. They used the knife to cut the cord and the blanket to keep me warm by the fire.”
Stag whistled softly. “I’ll bet when the elders heard that story, they made some interesting predictions about you.”
“As far back as I can remember, there was talk that I had been marked by the frog god. Like I wasn’t already marked enough for being half-white on the reservation and half-Indian in the Virtue Falls schools.”
Stag laughed, not like he thought it was funny, but like he understood all too well. “Get beat up a lot?”
“Conflict is a half-breed’s lot in life.” She managed the balance between pitiful and sarcastic very well. Years of practice had perfected the art.
Stag slowed, turned, hit a couple of speed bumps.
Lights flashed in her eyes; the car stopped and she could see the sign that proclaimed EMERGENCY ROOM in bright white and red.
He raised her seat back. “Ready to go in?” he asked.
“They’re going to yell at me. Then they’re going to hurt me.”
“That’s the price you pay for being a half-breed sheriff marked by the frog god.” He managed the balance between pitiful and sarcastic pretty well himself. “I’ll get the wheelchair.” He got out and leaned back in to say, “I liked that story, but someday you’ll tell me how you met your father.”
“I didn’t say I had met him.”
“Sometimes, Kateri, what you don’t say speaks as loudly as what you do.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WELCOME TO VIRTUE FALLS
FOUNDED 1902
YOUR VACATION DESTINATION ON THE WASHINGTON COAST
HOME OF THE WORLD FAMOUS VIRTUE FALLS CANYON
POPULATION 2487
For a sweaty hour and a half, Merida Falcon had been sitting on the hood of her recently acquired Kia Soul, on a side road underneath the WELCOME TO VIRTUE FALLS sign, waiting for the roadblock to clear. She was first in a line of seven cars. She kept herself entertained by reading the latest Bill Bryson travel memoir on her iPad—on the cruise ship, the very superior Professor Dawkins Cipre and his equally condescending wife, Elsa, had characterized Bryson’s books as puerile. Merida considered that a recommendation.
“There she goes,” said the law enforcement officer in charge.
Merida looked up to see a black Tesla whip past. She raised her eyebrows at the officer.
“Not too much longer to wait
.” The name tag above his badge read SEAN WESTON. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thirtyish with sandy brown hair, a nice tan, good teeth and a superior opinion of himself. He had been glancing at her with greater and greater frequency; now he made his move. “The police chase is headed in the opposite direction.” He waved a hand toward the mountains. “That car was carrying our new sheriff.”
Merida nodded.
He took that as encouragement. “Stag Denali’s driving. He’s her boyfriend. He’s taking her to the hospital.”
So far Merida had managed to get along with smiles and nods, but this required a greater response. Reaching into her canvas shoulder bag, she pulled out her computer tablet, switched it on, typed a few commands and passed it to him.
As he read, his lips moved. “My name is Merida Falcon. I am mute. I AM NOT DEAF. PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT!”
Of course he raised his voice. “Is that why you haven’t said a word? I guess that makes you the perfect woman.” He laughed.
She didn’t. It wasn’t funny the first time she’d heard it, and it wasn’t funny now.
Removing her sunglasses, she turned her icy blue eyes on Officer Weston and smiled with her teeth clenched tight. Retrieving her tablet, she briskly typed, “Something about being without the faculty of speech makes some people think I’m mentally impaired. This seems to free them from the most elementary of common courtesies. I certainly hope you, a public servant, are not one of those people?” She also typed in excess of one hundred words a minute, far faster than the average person could read, but she didn’t feel the need to slap him upside the head with that information … yet. She passed the tablet.
He read what she wrote. “No! I didn’t mean that you … Or that anyone…” He was smart enough to shut his mouth before he dug himself even deeper. “Um, sorry.”
She retrieved the computer, inclined her head and typed, “Why is Mr. Denali taking Sheriff Kwinault to the hospital?” She turned the tablet for Officer Weston to read.
“She got all shook up in the high-speed car chase.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and hitched up his pants. “I worked for a female sheriff on my last position. She used to cry in her office. Women can’t handle the stresses of the job.”