Fatal Divide (29 page)

“Oh, God, Dylan!” Alex squirmed, pushing at him.

“Alex, I want you,” he muttered.

“Dylan, stop! Think where we are.” Her struggling grew more urgent, until her words connected with his overheated brain.

Dylan’s quick indrawn breath sounded harsh in his ears, as he abruptly sat up and looked at Alex. She was pale, tousled and utterly sexy, with her lips swollen from his kisses. Given his choice, he’d have stripped her and taken her then and there, and from the way she looked at him, she’d have welcomed him.

But what she said finally sunk in. He looked around. They were in Wanda’s living room, and this was no place for it.

SIXTY-FOUR

Alex reached for Dylan’s hand and he pulled her upright.

“Baby, I’m sorry. I... something’s been off for a few days. I know a lot’s been going on, but it feels like you’ve gone away.” Dylan pounded his leg with his free hand. “I mean, like you’re not
with
me anymore. Am I wrong? Please, tell me I’m wrong.” He held his breath as he waited for her answer.

“I know what you mean. I’m sorry, Dylan, you aren’t wrong.” She paused, and Dylan rushed in before she could say more.

“Lexi...”

“Wait, I’m not finished. You take my breath away, and I can’t deny it. I have feelings for you. More than I should, I guess. But, you have other responsibilities, and I can’t compete with them — your brothers, your mom, and now you’re worried about your job. I’m... in the way. I can’t get more involved with you, Dylan, can’t even continue the way we have been. I’m sorry. If I keep on this way, everything’s going to crash. I can’t let that happen.”

Dylan seemed frozen in shock, speechless since she said she was in the way. She hated saying it. She needed him more than ever, now.
Wanted
him more than ever. His silence had allowed her to say things it wouldn’t be easy to back down from. She felt as if she might shatter into a thousand pieces.

“No, no, that’s... that’s not right! You’re not in the way. I need you! I was hoping...” Dylan stopped, then tried again. “You’re going to be finished with school soon. We can work around that. I want you in my life, Lexi. I love you. Please don’t pull away. We can make it work.”

“Make what work, Dylan? What are you saying?”

“Marry me.”

Alex recoiled, pulling out of his arm and jumping to her feet. “
Marry
you? Are you crazy?” How could he think this was the right time to ask it of her?

“I didn’t think so,” he answered, a cool edge to his voice. He sounded offended when he continued. “Is it that far out there, hoping you’d be my wife?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. It’s just... this is hardly the time.” She was making it worse, hurting his feelings more with each thing she said to explain her reaction. If only she’d known what he was about to say. Almost anything else would have been a better reaction. ‘Are you crazy?’ did sound like an unwarranted put-down.

“What do you mean, hardly the time?” he asked. “When
would
be the time? After you’ve stopped playing games with your blogging and your trying to win a Pulitzer at your dad’s little weekly, while dodging the cartel? We could put a stop to all of that right now.” He stood to face her, his fists clenched.

Alex took a step back.
Is that what he thinks of my career aspirations?
“Playing games?” she asked. “
I’m
playing games? I’ll have you know, I feel very strongly about the things I write about,” she spat, losing coherence in her anger. “It sounds like you’d rather have me stay home to babysit while you go out and earn a below-average living. Or maybe you want me barefoot and pregnant, like the squaws on the reservation!” As soon as she said it, Alex knew she’d gone too far.

“You wouldn’t make a good ‘squaw,’” he said, supplying the air-quotes with his hands. “You’re too headstrong, you don’t think before you act, or speak, for that matter. I was wrong about you. I thought you cared about me, about us. But all you care about is your stupid career. I’m glad we didn’t let the boys get attached to you.” He left her standing in the middle of Wanda’s living room, staring after him as he stomped out and slammed the door.
That went well.

Heartsick, Alex gathered her sweater and ever-present hobo bag, and let herself out. She hadn’t meant to break up with Dylan. Neither did she expect him to move that fast. He was gone, and it looked pretty final. She must be extremely talented to get a proposal and be dumped by the same guy within the space of fifteen minutes.

The tears came only after she was back at home, in her room. How could he misunderstand her so badly, to think her career wasn’t important to her? Not only the part about leaving Dodge and getting out from under her dad’s thumb, but the part about bringing enlightenment to a wider audience than she could reach on her own. The excitement of investigating and turning up new evidence to bring bad guys to justice.

In a way, it was the same thing he did, only with the added attraction of the general public knowing what she accomplished. Once she cried herself out and washed her face to hide it, she went into the kitchen to start preparing the dinner meal. Her dad came home while she was getting out pots and pans.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked, for the millionth time since her Nana had left her in charge of meals when she was twelve.

“Fish,” she answered.

“Again?” he mock-whined. At least things were normal here at home. A moment later, Sophia came out of her room, carrying the baby.
Oops, not so normal after all.

“What can I do to help?” Well, that was a good sign.

“I’ll fix dinner, and then if you want, I’ll hold Diego while you clean up. Sound fair?”

After dinner, Alex took the baby from Sophia and went to sit with her dad, who was reading in the living room. “Dad, can I talk to you?” she asked.

“Always. What’s up?” he asked, not looking up from his magazine.

“Dylan asked me to marry him,” she said, watching to see if that got him to look up. It did.

“What? Isn’t that...”

“A little premature? Yes. That’s what I said.” She smiled as her dad visibly slumped in relief. “Well, actually I asked him if he was crazy. We had a fight, and he dumped me.” Her dad stared at her with his mouth open. Yep, definitely had his attention. “So, I need to ask you some career advice. And don’t act like you don’t know I’m not going to stay and work for you at the Times,” she said.

Her dad shut his mouth, and then opened it again to say, “Okay.”

“I’m thinking about applying for scholarships that would let me live on campus. Would you look at my blog and give me an honest opinion of the writing? That’s what I’d use for the application, some of the editorial posts. If they’re good enough.”

“Baby Girl, they all look good to me.”

Alex shook her head. They were back to the Baby Girl nickname. That didn’t bode well for her dad approving her bid to live away from home. Not that he could stop her, but it would be nice if she didn’t have to fight about it.

“If you could just try to look at them objectively, maybe now, while I’m helping Sophia with the baby? I’d like to get started on the applications tonight.”

“Wait, kiddo. What about Dylan? Are you just going to walk away from what you two have?”

“I don’t know what you think we have, Dad. I was already having concerns about all his responsibilities and where I fit in his life. Now that I know how he feels about what I want to do with my life, I have to let him go. He deserves to focus on his brothers, and I deserve respect. It isn’t going to work out.”

Her dad was silent for a few minutes. Alex thought he’d gone back to reading his magazine. She jumped when he spoke again, making the baby shift in her arms. “What I
know
you have is love. The chemistry that pulled you back together after four years, and my best efforts to keep you apart, can’t be denied. I’ll support your decision, but for the record, I think you’re making a mistake.”

A few minutes later Sophia came in and took the baby, bidding the two of them goodnight before retiring to her room. Alex got up and kissed her dad’s cheek. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll give it some more thought.”

In her room, she turned on her seldom-used desktop and navigated to her college’s scholarships page. It was too late for the spring offers, but she could get started on next fall semester. She soon had notes on several that she thought were promising, and filled one out.

Before going to bed, she also did a rough draft of the blog post she wanted to have ready for Friday’s edition. Her growing number of subscribers wouldn’t be ignorant of the situation of the divided O’odham tribe much longer. She had no idea what she wanted the outcome to be, but at least she could raise awareness.

SIXTY-FIVE

Kevin Thurston stood in Wanda Lopez’s hospital room on Monday evening. He’d been discharged earlier in the morning, but spent the day in Sells with the tribal police, getting a better understanding of what they were up against with the cartels running rampant through the reservation. He was now a humbled man.

“I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot,” he said, after explaining what he’d learned from the tribal police.

Wanda seemed a shadow of her former self, but smiled as she asked, “When haven’t you been?”

“All right. I guess I deserved that. I owe you an apology, Wanda. Maybe lot of them. I’m so sorry about Hector.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Does this mean we’re going to be able to get along now?”

Still with the barbs, but if he was going to be effective in his job, he needed to learn when people were teasing.

“I suppose we have to,” he answered. “When are they going to spring you from here? Are you okay? Need a ride home?”

“They wouldn’t release me at first,” she said. “I guess every time I thought about Hector, my heart rhythm went crazy, so they were worried I’d have a heart attack. Your deputies told me about the possibility he was poisoned. If that’s true, it must have been when we were all out in the hall. We were around the corner. Anyone could have gone in without being seen. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Wanda, I’m sorry. My men feel terrible too. They told me that you were saying he wouldn’t have wanted to live like he was.”

“That’s true, but still. For someone to deliberately take his life... no one could have known that he wouldn’t recover. But thank you for coming to offer me some help now, Kevin. We haven’t always been good to each other.”

“We haven’t. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and it probably won’t be easy for me to change. But I’m willing to try. I need to try. I’ve contacted the judge and asked him to quash the arrest warrant.”

“Thank you. And yes, I would like a ride home, just as soon as they process my discharge. I’ve seen enough of these walls to last me a lifetime.”

“I’ll wait. Lt. Wells, from Tucson, is taking over the investigation. He tells me they think your grandfather’s shooter is long gone, across the border. Now they’re concentrating on the crew that took you and Hector, and they think the same ones took me. I’m pretty sure I heard enough to validate that. They’ll find them. Hector’s murderer will get what’s coming to him.”

“I don’t know about that. There’s nothing to keep him from disappearing across the border, too. You say the kid that took you looks just like Dylan, only a few years younger?”

“Yeah.”

“That’ll be Ernesto Chaves, then.”

Thurston’s body jerked. “That’s right! I heard one of them talking to him. He called him Ernesto. But how did you know?”

“He’s another of my young brothers - cousins, you’d call them. I wanted to get him off the reservation before the cartels ruined him. I guess it’s too late.” A slow tear made its way down her cheek, and she dashed it off impatiently.

“Are there any others?”

“Probably, but these two and Dylan are the only ones I know, and the only ones who bear the Chaves name. At least Dylan has found an honorable path. Ironic, isn’t it? The only one who knows nothing of him’dag, and he’s the one who’s following it.”

Thurston was uncomfortable with the talk of him’dag. The only thing he knew about it was that it was some spiritual thing for the O’odam tribe. Wanda was asking him something, and he missed it.

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you were still holding Dylan in jail. That wasn’t okay, Kevin.”

He looked down at his feet, ashamed. “I know. No, Wells cut him loose yesterday. I’ve been here all that time, but I owe him an apology. And the Ward girl, too. A lot of people in town.” In fact, Thurston had been thinking about his misunderstanding of the situation while he waited to be discharged himself. It came as a shock to him to question his own motives and come up with the idea that he had anger issues. Maybe it was time to get some help with that.

A hint of the old mischievous twinkle came into Wanda’s eyes. “Don’t get carried away, Kevin, or they’ll all think you owe them something. We won’t even get any traffic violation revenue.”