Coyote's Wife (19 page)

“Maybe I can ask Dad.”

Dawn had learned to play one parent against the other, a strategy that often put Kevin and her at odds. These days, every time Ella expressed a financial concern, her daughter
would automatically bring her father into the picture. Wanting to change the subject, Ella decided to try a more emotional tactic.

“You used
to spend most of your free time riding or grooming Wind, but if you’re getting tired of your pony, maybe we should sell Wind before he notices you want to replace him.”

“Mom, I would
never
sell Wind. Forget I said anything about miniature horses, okay?”

“Speaking of riding,” Ella said, grateful to change the subject, “have you thought any more about boarding school?”

Dawn grew somber. “I’d
like to go with my best friend, but I have other friends, too,” she said in a whisper-thin voice, then grew silent.

Ella didn’t press her. Following a trail they’d established in the past, they rode among the low hills and valleys carved by wind and water. Beyond, to the west, was a long escarpment where desert floor met the mesas and the junipers became more than low shrubs.

“Mom, I’m hungry.
Can we stop and eat over there by those boulders?”

Ella laughed. “We’ve barely been gone fifteen minutes!”

“Yeah, but I’m
starved,
Mom. If my stomach gets any louder, Wind might think it’s a mountain lion.” As if on cue, Dawn’s stomach growled.

“How about if we go up the arroyo instead and use the petrified sandbar as our table? We did that once last summer, remember?”

“Okay. There won’t be
any tumbleweeds this time of year, so we won’t have to worry about the horses wanting to stop and chomp them up,” Dawn replied. “Wind is such a pig sometimes,” she said, holding her reins for a moment in her left hand as she patted the pony on his neck. “No offense, boy.”

The pony sighed, and Ella laughed.

She led the way down into a narrow arroyo, which widened ahead into two dry streams with
a small ridge of harder sandstone in the center, like a two-foot-high, miniature mesa. The horses wouldn’t wander here.

Ella dismounted, removed the saddlebags from Chieftain, then looped the reins around the saddle horn so the horse wouldn’t drag them around or step on them. Dawn followed suit, even removing the smaller saddlebags from Wind without help. Together they brought out the contents
Rose had packed away in the saddlebags, using the flat sandbar like a countertop.

Ella had her breakfast burrito, then, while Dawn finished off her second burrito, brought out two apples. Dawn looked at her mother. “Can I give mine to Wind and yours to Chieftain?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Sitting cross-legged in the sand, enjoying the cold early morning air, Ella gathered her thoughts while her daughter
fed the horses.

When Dawn returned, she sat across from Ella, and looked at her mother somberly. “Am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong?”

Ella blinked, and stared at her. “Where did that come from?”

“Mom, you’ve been
way
too quiet all morning, and you have that look on your face. The Long Talk look, you know?”

“We do have to talk, but you haven’t done anything wrong,” Ella said, giving
her daughter a gentle smile.

Dawn nodded, looking relieved, then waited.

“It’s about Roxanne Dixon,” she said. “You know her as

Roxie.”

“Dad’s friend?”

“That’s just it. She’s
not
your dad’s friend or girlfriend anymore. He doesn’t even want to talk to her.”

“What happened? Is he mad at her?”

“No. Sometimes people just find out that they’re wrong for each other. Then they have to let go
and make new friends. But Roxanne hasn’t been able to accept that your father doesn’t want to see her anymore. She’s just not thinking right, and that might make her dangerous. So don’t trust her. And never, ever, let her get you alone, not for any reason.”

Sure she’d made her point, Ella stood up. “Come on. It’s time to get going.”

They retrieved the horses, got back onto their saddles, and
continued up the arroyo. After another hour, Ella realized they’d wandered north toward Rock Ridge, farther than she’d intended to go, and swung back around toward the east in the general direction of home.

“Can Wind and I take the lead?” Dawn said. “I know the way back from here.”

“Go ahead,” Ella said, letting her pass. Chieftain didn’t like taking second place, so she had to rein him in and
turn his head at the last second to keep him from biting the pony’s rear.

They soon reached the same arroyo they’d had their breakfast in earlier, and Dawn led them back down inside. As the wash opened up to a wide, low section, Ella caught the sound of a vehicle a few hundred yards off in the distance, judging from the sound. Since roads out here were few, she wondered if someone had managed
to get lost. Ella considered riding out of the arroyo to take a look, but then the engine sounds stopped.

A trickle of unease ran up her spine, but Ella dismissed it. She had to stop being a cop at least some of the time. Exasperated, and assuring herself it was probably just somebody out for a weekend drive, she focused on what her daughter was saying. Feeling a warm spot on her neck, she
reached
up absently with her left hand and realized her badger fetish was warm. When that happened, danger was often close. Or maybe it was just the morning sun.

“Keep a sharp eye out for snakes,” Ella said, going with the most likely threat, considering she hadn’t seen any humans in the area.

“Okay.”

As Dawn led them back out of the arroyo, Ella heard something moving through the brush ahead. Although
Chieftain was used to the sounds of small animals, this time his head jerked up hard and he started snorting. Ella had to fight to keep him steady. Neck-reining him into a circle and then applying leg pressure, she moved him forward whether he liked it or not.

Ella concentrated on calming the horse by keeping him busy and had to take her focus away from Dawn for a moment. Then, as she completed
her second tight circle, she saw Dawn had stopped Wind and was waiting quietly.

“Maybe it’s a coyote, huh Mom?” Dawn asked, looking around the area cautiously.

“Maybe.” Ella brought Chieftain to a stop. “He’s finally settling down so I—”

Suddenly a hand snaked out of the bushes, tossing something into the air. As it hit the ground in front of Dawn’s pony, smoking and sputtering, Ella realized
instantly what it was. A second later, firecrackers started going off like a badly designed machine gun.

Chieftain whipped around, wanting to run, but Ella neck-reined him hard to the right, applied leg pressure, and spun him into another circle.

“Bail out!” Ella yelled to her daughter, seeing Dawn fighting Wind, too.

Wind reared up, but instead of sliding off the pony, Dawn held on, leaning
forward to keep her balance. Then
Wind came down hard, spun and bucked. Dawn was tossed sideways and fell hard to the ground.

“Mom!” she yelped.

Ella was fighting hard to keep control of her own horse, and continued to spin him in a circle, struggling to keep her feet in the stirrups. If he didn’t start bucking, she knew she could stay on.

The firecrackers stopped exploding on Ella’s fifth
or sixth spin, and finally she brought Chieftain back under control. Furious, Ella slid off her horse, hanging onto the reins, and hurried over to Dawn.

Her daughter had already scrambled up to her feet and was brushing the dust, leaves, and branches from her clothes as she looked around. Wind was nowhere in sight, but Ella could see a dust trail and hear hoof beats to her right, in the opposite
direction of where the firecrackers had gone off.

“That was soooo mean! Who’d do something so dumb?” Dawn demanded, walking toward the bushes. “Julian! Is that you?”

Ella almost laughed with relief. Her daughter wasn’t in tears, nor was she hurt—but she was
furious
.

“Mom, I’m going to find him and kick him where it hurts!”

“No! Stay here. That wasn’t your cousin. Uncle Clifford would never
have allowed him to buy fireworks, much less illegal ones. Go in that direction,” she pointed with her lips, “and see if you can track Wind down. Chieftain and I will find the idiot with the firecrackers.”

Ella barely had both feet in the stirrups when the excited gelding shot forward at a fast gallop. The ground was flat for fifty yards then sloped up a low hill. Ella heard a vehicle door slam
somewhere up there, and urged the panting horse on with a squeeze of her legs. The road was uphill from where they’d been and, despite their breakneck pace,
by the time they reached the top of the hill, a red pickup was already racing off, more than two hundred yards away.

The small pistol with the two-inch barrel tucked away in her boot was the wrong weapon to try and shoot out a tire at this
range. She’d have needed a rifle and a lot of luck.

As she stared at the truck quickly fading from view, outrage and a cold determination filled her. They’d made a big mistake. Coming after her was one thing. She was a police officer and more than ready to tangle with whoever targeted her. But deliberately endangering her daughter—that was something else entirely. She’d catch the dirtbag no matter
how long it took.

Ella rode back down the hill, and, by the time she returned to her daughter’s side, Dawn was already back in the saddle, patting and reassuring Wind with soft praise.

“I heard the car. He got away, huh?” Dawn asked.

“Yeah, for the moment.”

“I guess we’ll have to go home so you can track down the dummy who did this?”

Ella nodded. “I’m so proud of how you handled yourself
today! You’re a terrific kid, and I want you to know that, one way or another, I’ll catch whoever did this to us.”

“You always do. And Mom, when you catch this clod of manure, kick him really hard in the shins for me, okay?”

“Count on it,” Ella said with a tiny smile. Pushing Chieftain forward, she edged past Dawn. “I’ll take the lead the rest of the way back home.” Dawn didn’t argue.

When
Ella used her cell phone to contact the station, she learned that they were on high alert. She was patched through to Big Ed’s office immediately.

“I just spoke to your mother, Ella,” the chief said. “I was about to give you a call.”

“Why the alert? What’s going on?” Ella asked quickly.

“You first. This is just a guess, but did you call in just now because something happened to you?”

Ella
recounted the events concisely and clearly. “I couldn’t get the plates.”

“It looks like someone’s targeted the entire S.I. team, Shorty. Officer Tache had someone shoot holes in all the windows of his personal vehicle, which was parked outside his home. Officer Goodluck also reported an incident. She was at home walking toward her pickup when someone opened fire. Apparently she wasn’t the target,
just her vehicle. The tires and her windshield were shot out.”

“There’s one more team member now, remember? What about Joe Neskahi?” she asked.

“We haven’t been able to make contact, so I sent an officer over to his place.”

“We need to notify Agent Blalock, too,” she said. “He’s local, and also constantly involved with the Special Investigations team. It also wouldn’t hurt if other departments
in the area got a warning. It’s possible that we’re dealing with a sniper, or several individuals who’re targeting law enforcement in general. And maybe Bruce Little. He’s been involved in several cases recently.”

“Good thinking,” Big Ed said. “I’ll take care of that.”

Once finished with the chief, Ella tried to call Joe. She let his cell phone ring and ring. Cell phones lost signals and then
came back on line intermittently sometimes, particularly on the reservation where there were so few cell towers.

Finally, on the eighteenth or nineteenth ring, Joe picked up and identified himself.

Ella filled him in quickly, then asked his location.

“I’m just coming back from my cousin’s house near Lukachukai where I spent the night. I didn’t even have phone service until a minute ago when
I got on the east side of
Buffalo Pass,” he said, breaking up. “Are you still there?” he asked a second or two later, the connection suddenly stronger.

“I’m here,” Ella answered and, after verifying that he’d heard the update on the crisis, added, “Stay sharp.”

“You’ve got it. Is there anything specific you want me to do next?”

“Find out where Arthur Brownhat was. Justine had him tailed so
check with her for the name of the officer on that detail. Then go help the others.”

Ella checked her watch. It was possible, judging from the direction she’d last seen it going in, that the perp’s red truck would eventually go past either her home or her brother’s. She called her mother first, and asked her to stay on the lookout and, if possible, get the plate number. “Also, Mom, if your husband’s
around, tell him to keep his Winchester handy, just in case,” she added, keeping her voice calm.

“In case of what? Something serious has happened, hasn’t it? What aren’t you telling me?”

Ella gave her the highlights. “You would have been proud of the way she handled Wind, Mom,” Ella said, and turned her head to see Dawn smiling broadly.

“Your daughter came into danger because of
your
job,”
Rose said, her voice suddenly hard.

For Dawn’s sake, Ella didn’t react. This wasn’t a conversation she intended to have in front of her daughter. “Ask my brother to stay on the lookout for a red pickup, too,” she said as if she hadn’t heard her. “And tell him to watch his family.”

“I know your daughter is there beside you so you can’t speak freely. But if this doesn’t make you think about leaving
your job, I don’t know what will,” Rose said, then hung up.

Ella knew that learning about the incident had terrified her mother. Rose’s harsh words had come from fear. But Rose
had also made a very good point. It was Ella’s work that had ultimately endangered Dawn. The reality of it stung, and left her stomach in knots.

“
Shimasání
must be upset,” Dawn said, as if she’d heard both sides of the
conversation.