Stormwalker (30 page)

I started to wind my arms around Mick’s neck again, ready for him to take me home. He’d carry me back to the hotel, undress me, and wash me, then we’d fall together onto the bed.

Instead, someone wrenched first my right wrist, then my left, behind me, and I felt the unmistakable chill of handcuffs against my flesh. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’ll warn you again, Begay. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

“Nash,” I said. “I really, really hate you.”

Lopez came to get me not long later, after I’d tried to scrub my face in the paltry stream of water and use the rather disgusting toilet. He gave me coffee, which I tried not to heave up again, and took me to an interview room.

Not long later, Nash Jones faced me across a cold table, a folder open in front of him. Once again, he was clean, shaved, and neatly dressed, while I looked and felt like hell.

“Haven’t we done this before?” I asked him.

“This won’t take long. I need a statement from you.”

“I state that I hate all sheriffs named Nash Jones.”

“Very funny.” Nash touched the paper in the folder with a clean finger. He must scrub under his fingernails every hour, they looked so pristine. “I witnessed you committing assault with a deadly weapon against Amy McGuire. Amy will live, but that doesn’t exonerate you.”

Amy was in the hospital, Lopez had told me when he’d brought me coffee. She was weak but expected to make a full recovery. Her parents were with her, confused by what I’d done, but glad that their daughter would be all right.

“Amy went after Maya with a knife, if you remember,” I said. “She would have killed Maya, and Amy might have died too. My mother was controlling her; she could have made Amy turn the knife on herself. I’m sorry Amy got hurt, but I really had no choice.”

Nash glanced at the report again, and when he looked up, his expression had changed to that of a man facing something new and uncomfortable. “Three weeks ago, I would have said you were talking pure bullshit.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know what to think.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, then I asked in a quiet voice, “Has Amy asked to see you?”

Nash sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “No. McGuire says she wants to go back to the convent.”

“I’m sorry.” I was sorry; Nash could be a pain in the ass, but he hadn’t deserved my mother pretty much wrecking his life.

“So that’s that,” he said. He looked resigned, but I could see in his eyes what this last year had cost him.

“What about Maya?” I asked. “You and Maya, I mean.”

His cold look returned. “None of your business.” Personal revelations over. Nash shut the folder with his usual brusqueness. “I’m charging you with illegally discharging a firearm and with destruction to a police vehicle. I’m letting the bigger charge of assault go because Amy did attack Maya, and you were trying to stop her. I’ve also decided to overlook your assault on me, because Mick has convinced me you were not in control of your actions at the time.”

A nice way of saying,
possessed by a crazy goddess who tried to have sex with the sheriff so she could make a messed-up demon child with him.
“Believe me, I never would have touched you if I could have helped it,” I said.

“I’ll be watching to make sure you turn up on your court date. If the judge is reasonable, you’ll probably only get community service.”

I brought my fists together and leaned my head on them. “You’re such a softie, Jones.”

“I witnessed the shooting; I can’t let you off completely. I’m not the kind of sheriff who gives favoritism to my friends.”

I raised my head, regarded him with aching eyes. “Are we friends? Aw, that’s sweet.”

Nash rose, picking up his folder. “Get out of here, Janet. Go home, clean up, and show up on your court date.”

“You’re all heart, Sheriff.”

He said nothing, only walked out the door, taking his folder. He left the door open, and I lost no time obeying his order to get the hell out of there.

“There’s one mystery you haven’t solved,” Jamison said to me as he stood back and admired the setting.

“What mystery is that?”

Maya was helping Fremont hang more of my photos, and I sensed them listening. Technically their jobs with me were finished, but they’d taken to dropping by to see how things were going. They’d chat, help out, have a beer with me. By tacit agreement, Maya and I steered clear of tequila.

“How Sherry Beaumont came to be stashed in your basement,” Jamison said.

Mick looked up from behind the lobby counter, his blue eyes meeting mine. Mick had been sticking around lately, no unexplained trips. The dragons hadn’t swooped down to fry him, or me either, but I remembered the look he’d given Coyote when he’d said he wasn’t sure what the dragons would do to him. I still didn’t like that.

“Fremont,” I said. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Fremont dropped his hammer, the clatter echoing through the lobby. “What are you talking about?”

“You found Sherry dead in the desert and worried that people would think you killed her,” I said. “So you brought her into a building you thought would never be used again. She could be hidden behind the basement wall until she crumbled to dust.”

Fremont’s mouth hung open. Mick leaned on his elbows, listening. A casual observer might think him relaxed, but I knew he could vault over the counter and grab Fremont the instant he thought he needed to.

“I told you,” Fremont stammered. “I thought Sherry had gone home. I never saw her again.”

“I bet it scared you, stumbling across her body while you went for your usual walk.”

“I swear to you, Janet, I never touched her. I never knew she was dead.”

“Would you swear that to Chief McGuire? Or Sheriff Jones?”

“Dios mío.”
Maya didn’t drop her hammer; she threw it. It skittered across the floor until it hit the reception counter. “Leave Fremont alone. He doesn’t know anything about it.
I
put Sherry Beaumont in the basement.”

“I know,” I said softly.

“Then why the hell were you going on at Fremont about it? Just when I think maybe you aren’t a bitch—”

“To get you to admit it,” I interrupted. “You found her, and you thought Nash killed her.”

“Yes.” Maya gave me a look of defiance. “I thought he’d had one of his episodes. Maybe he thought she was Amy and killed her for running away from him. Or maybe he just didn’t know what he was doing. He wouldn’t have killed her on purpose.”

Mick cut in. “But she had no signs of violence on her. Why did you think she’d been killed?”

“How could I know? I’m not police or a doctor. Even if there was no obvious sign, if her body was found, Nash would be suspected. Look how fast everyone suspected him when Amy disappeared. He’d be arrested and sent to prison—or to a psychiatric ward. I’d never see him again.” Maya’s voice was thick with tears.

“And here was my hotel, empty and derelict,” I finished. “No wonder you hated me when I moved in.”

“I hated you for dredging up things that should have been left alone,” Maya said. “But I had to come work for you. I had to be the one to find her. That way, if my fingerprints were still on the panels, no one would think it strange, because I had to pull them off to get to the wiring.” She folded her arms. “What will you do now, run to Nash and tell him?”

“No, I think you should tell him yourself.”

Maya scowled, but I could tell that she realized she’d have to. “Have I mentioned lately how much I hate you?”

“Only every couple of days. Maybe we’ll get community service together. Nothing so bonding as working side by side in a soup kitchen.”

“Oh, please.”

I grinned at her. Maya didn’t smile back, but our friendship had moved forward in these last few weeks. By inches, maybe, but the very best friendships take time.

The judge was a little more severe on Maya, because she’d covered up a death and caused trauma to Sherry Beaumont’s family. I thought maybe John Beaumont would sue her, but Fremont had filed a complaint against him for threatening us with a gun, and the man was persuaded to go home and be quiet.

I never had learned the identity of the crow that still hung around my parking lot. She showed up with a hunk of tail feathers missing after the big battle with my mother but otherwise looked none the worse for wear.

I had grave suspicions, though, and walked up to her one day as she sat in the twisted juniper tree. “Tell Dad I love him,” I said. “I appreciate you looking out for me, but he needs taking care of more than I do.”

The crow bent her head and took on the annoyed expression my grandmother reserved especially for me. I stared right back without blinking. Giving me another look of annoyance, she launched into the sky and floated away north.

I watched her go, wondering if she’d return. But she’d be home in Many Farms anytime I wanted to talk to her. I had the feeling the relationship between myself and my grandmother was going to become complex, though perhaps not in a bad way.

Maya and I did work in a soup kitchen together, and we got the joy of cleaning the entire shelter together too. But every night, I got to go home to Mick.

On a moonlit night in early July, I lay in his arms, reveling in the beauty and the silence. The hotel would open the next morning, and the silence would be gone.

Mick kissed my neck, sensing I was awake. “Can’t sleep?”

“Thinking of the future.”

“I’m thinking five minutes into the future.” He grinned. “Wondering whether we need to reinforce those Tantric spells we did a while ago.”

I smiled, releasing my thoughts. “That might not be a bad idea.” I didn’t move to put it into practice. Not yet. “We haven’t talked about this mate thing. You’ve been avoiding the subject.”

Mick kissed the tip of my nose. “I claimed you as mate in the dragon way. It doesn’t mean anything in human terms, but to dragons, the bond is sacrosanct. It means they’ll leave you alone.”

“But you said you didn’t know what they’d do to you.”

“They’re angry at me, true.” Mick brushed my hair back from my face with a soft touch. “They won’t let it go. I know that.”

I felt chilled and moved closer to him. “It would be nice if they realized we were on the same side. I could use their help in case my mother finds another way out. She isn’t dead, just sealed in.”

“I know. And I know I’ll have to face the dragons sooner or later. But not right now.”

“No,” I agreed. I ran my hands down his arms, tracing the dragon tattoos. “Not just now.”

“Right now, we need to work on those spells.” Mick smiled down at me, his black curls straggling across his face. “Can’t let the hotel go unprotected if it’s going to open tomorrow, can we?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Now, how did that go?” Mick nuzzled me. “Mmm, it’s all coming back to me.”

I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him down to me. There were things we needed to talk about, things we needed to take care of, but for now, I let it all go. I opened myself to him and let Mick make love to me in his usual wicked ways.

Far out over the empty desert, the wild, laughing yips of a coyote drifted on the night.