2000 Kisses

by Christina Skye

  This was not mocking, she realized. There was truth in his words and in his trembling touch.

  It was what she had prayed to hear him ask—and also what she had feared, for this question meant the end of the life she had known since she was a child. It would mean many words, much arguing. In the end, it would mean leaving this valley she loved.

  “My father would never allow it. We are field people, you are of the mountains. All around the fires I hear the grumbling that your tribe has used the river waters, which are lower this year. We cannot live without water.” She drew a painful breath. “He would never allow me to go, not to a man he considers his enemy.”

  “I can give him many furs. Parrot feathers traded from the south and carved stone from the mountains to the north. Even your father does not have such things as this.”

  It might be possible, she thought. But it would take much time, much discussion and persuasion. She sensed that they did not have time, that already change stalked them in the gathering twilight. “Perhaps. I cannot be certain.”

  His lips curved, his face strong and beloved in the shadows. “Then come here to me. I will show you what we can be certain of. Remember this now and as long as the sun shall rise.”

  With the brush of his lips, she forgot about her father’s power and all her uncertainty in the future.

  The drums did not still. The sun burned beyond the mountains and stars came to light the darkness of the sky. The pounding throb of the skins continued, calling all of the tribe from the fields and canyons.

  “I must go.” She pulled away, feeling an ache in all her muscles, which had been well used in this peaceful glade.

  He slid his fingers into hers. “Stay. One more hand span of light. Just until the moon is mid-heaven.”

  She was painfully tempted. But staying would bring greater danger—especially if she had been followed. She pushed away, slipped on her tunic, and found her deerskin bag. “Do not ask this.”

  “Then I will ask to come with you. I will speak to your father tonight and convince him that you honor us in joining our people.”

  No.” Her voice was strained with her panic. “He is old, set as the rocks in his ways. I must talk to him first and soften his surprise. I am his only daughter,” she explained.

  “And you will be my only wife,” her warrior said. “Tomorrow I will come for you, bringing feathers and dressed skins.”

  Her heart yearned, but she shook her head. “Not tomorrow. Not the day after,” she whispered.

  She turned, moving gracefully over the rocks. “Do not follow me. It is not safe for either of us.”

  “Then I will watch you. Every step. Feel me as I stand here behind you, and know that I will protect you always.”

  It was as he said. She felt the burn of his eyes upon her all the way down the path, through the forest of piñon back to the canyon floor. And leaving him brought clawing pain to her heart as she walked into the deep shadows of the cliffs.

  Tess was alone. She was thirsty and hot and confused. She looked around her, seeing but not seeing, remembering things that were no longer there. As she moved from sunlight to shadow, her hat fell and was forgotten. Even the water bottle slid unnoticed to the dry rocks. She was lost in remembering, caught in sounds that were muffled, locked in a fragile past. Only the shadows saw, gathering around the red boulders.

  Only the coyote watched, still on the highest rock.

  14

  Mae’s café was nearly empty at the end of the lunch shift. Only a couple of booths and tables were occupied. T.J. looked around but didn’t see Mae or Tess, so he headed for the backroom. He called out and received a muffled reply.

  He found Mae at the refrigerator, wiping flour from her hands.

  “Where’s Tess?” he asked, a chill beginning to ripple upward from the base of his spine. He’d seen Tess walk from the library to the café earlier. She should have been here.

  Mae continued to work her dough. “Tess took my car up to the ruins in the foothills.”

  T.J. hooked his hands on his belt as the chill spread. “When did she leave?” he asked tightly.

  “About two hours ago.”

  Two hours. Tess alone in the hills, in isolated and completely unfamiliar country.

  A muscle twitched at his jaw. “The damned fool. What has she done?”

  “Relax, McCall. She’s just doing a little sightseeing.” A frown creased Mae’s face. “She’ll be fine. She’s got water and a hat and I drew her a map.”

  “I told her not to leave here.” T.J. stared stiffly at the jagged peaks to the north. “She’s in danger, Mae. That’s why she came to Almost. I can’t give you the details, but there are men who might be looking for her. There are about a thousand good reasons why she shouldn’t go wandering off.” He shoved his hat down hard on his head. “And I’m going to see that she learns those reasons right now, even if the irresponsible woman can’t sit down for a week.”

  He heard the grating in his voice, the rage in his threat, yet all he felt was panic. He chose the rage instead. It would serve him better than panic.

  He stalked from the café without another word, planning his next move, refusing to acknowledge the images of Tess hurt—Tess lost.

  Dear God, Tess captive, at the mercy of criminals.

  When he found her, he’d lock her in a damned cell if that’s what it took to keep her out of trouble.

  It was easy to follow her tire tracks over the deserted dirt road. T.J. was relieved to see there was no sound of any other cars as he roared up into the foothills. But there was no way of knowing if she had been followed from another direction—or even, God help them, if someone had been camped out up there, watching her every move. There were enough damned cults who’d gone to ground in these back-of-beyond canyons. With the right preparation and food and water, a man could hide here for weeks without being seen.

  And a woman could be lost up here forever.

  The thought sent fresh fear digging into his chest.

  He pushed the Blazer hard, banging over boulders and slamming over dry washes, following her trail with cold precision.

  He stopped the Blazer as a form appeared high on a ledge to the left of the ruins. It was Tess’s silhouette against the sky. Above her on a different ledge stood another form—a coyote, watchful and still.

  How in heaven’s name had she gotten up there? T.J. knew three trails up to the cliff, but none of them led that far up.

  He felt a prickling at his neck, almost like a warning.

  He gunned the motor and shrugged off this odd sense of premonition. He didn’t have time for anything but finding a way to get her down. There was at least fifty feet of treacherous slip rock beneath her and no path to be seen anywhere. How was he going to talk her down to a place of safety?

  He cupped his hands and called her name, the sound booming off the canyon walls. She tilted her head, standing rigid, her arms crossed over her chest.

  She looked down at him—and then right through him.

  Dear God, not now, T.J. thought. Not this odd disorientation of hers now, when a single misstep might send her tumbling down to the desert floor.

  He jumped from the Blazer and sprinted over the rocky slope, already planning where he would climb up to join her. He dug his way over a wall of fallen boulders and hitched one arm across a gnarled piñon growing out of the cliff face.

  He was only twenty feet below her now. He saw her face, pale and blank, as if she weren’t really there, as if her body was simply holding her place as she stared down at the valley toward Almost. But her stance was too rigid, and she was making small, keening sounds that made the hair rise at the back of his neck.

  The chill took him over completely. T.J. clamped down hard, driving away all emotion and letting instinct guide him upward with silent steps to keep from startling her.

  Only ten feet to go. He could almost reach her, almost touch her.

  Something skittered on the ledge above her. The sound of f
alling rocks split the silence, crashing down the cliff walls. She gave a startled cry at the same moment that he lunged for her.

  But he found only air as she lost her balance, her body spinning sideways and tumbling down the treacherous slip rock slope.

  Dimly, Tess heard the sound of gravel flying past her head.

  She twisted, fighting branches that slapped and clawed at her as she tumbled down blindly. A shout rang through the air.

  Tears ran down her cheeks and dirt blurred her vision. There was a ragged line of boulders before her. Then trees and sky bled together as she was thrown headlong down the cliff.

  She awoke to splitting pain sometime later. One arm was crumpled beneath her side and her ankle was burning. She whimpered as something dug into her neck.

  “Easy there.”

  Opening her eyes, she saw a stranger beside her. Yet there was a gruff tenderness in his voice and something almost familiar in the glint of his startling blue eyes.

  Dimly, she realized she was still on the ground. “Do I know you?” she rasped.

  “You sure as hell do. You must have taken a real bang on your head.” Frowning, he gently ran his hands along her legs and arms. “Tell me where it hurts.”

  “There.” She winced as he brushed her ankle.

  “Anywhere else?”

  “My shoulder.” She had to fight to understand his words. They almost seemed to come in a different tongue.

  “You’re not bleeding. Thank God, you missed landing headfirst. Can you raise your arm?”

  Gritting her teeth, she did as he asked, though cold sweat formed at the effort.

  He caught her hand and eased it down onto her chest. “Enough gymnastics for now. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Fingers?”

  He wiped her face with a bandanna soaked in water from his canteen. It felt delicious on her hot skin. He held up his hand. “It works well enough as a general indicator of trauma. Now give me an answer.”

  She closed her eyes. “Four.” A very soft, very blurry four.

  He ran his hand along her spine and under her neck. “Any pain there?”

  “Just below my shoulder. A dull ache. Who are you?”

  He made a flat sound of anger. “You’ll remember soon enough. I don’t think anything is broken, but I’m not inclined to take chances.”

  Bits and pieces of her memory began to return, more a mixture of sound and colors than lucid memories. And no matter how she concentrated, the picture pieces didn’t match, as if they came from two different palettes.

  The man with the metal badge pushed to his feet, and she saw him scan the slope to the south. “Did you hear anything before you fell?”

  Had there been a cry of a bird or the sound of slipping rocks? Maybe something that moved in the brush? “I’m not sure. Everything happened all at once.”

  He stood for a moment, watching the clouds shadow the mountains. “I’m going to get my phone. Try not to move.”

  She blinked as his face seemed to come into focus. “I know you. You live here.”

  He gave a tight smile. “Glad to see your memory’s coming back, Duchess.” He fingered his hat, looking anxious. “Your leg looks pretty cut up. It hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

  She blinked, tears rushing to her eyes at the tenderness in his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to have some more water, would you?” She closed her eyes, fighting back a whimper as a fresh wave of pain shot up through her hip.

  She heard the sound of his boots, then the creak of leather. Things were blurring again, and she decided all she wanted to do was sleep.

  Water brushed her lips. “Drink some of this. And I want you to stay awake, so talk to me.”

  “About what?” she murmured.

  “Anything. Start with why the hell you came up here alone,” he said grimly.

  “I didn’t think I’d be long. And the mountains kept calling.” She blinked at the sound of her own words. “That sounds crazy.”

  “How did you get up so high?”

  Something kept her from explaining the strange vision that had begun the moment she’d set foot beneath the ancient piñon tree. “Just a guess.”

  “Duchess, I’ve walked these rocks about a thousand times and I never found a trail that runs up that side of the cliff. If that was a guess, then I’m the living, breathing backside of a mule.”

  She turned away, hesitant to say more. How could she explain the dream that drifted still, with the low throb of drums and the faint memory of a man’s face. To distract him, she turned to her side, looking dizzily up at the shadowed ruins. “I fell from all the way up there?”

  “You should have been in Sports Illustrated,” T.J. said grimly. “A few more feet to the left and you’d have plunged straight to the bottom of the rocks.”

  “That bad,” she whispered, shivering.

  T.J. wanted to rail at her, but the sight of her white, drawn face cut off his words. He had to get her down to the Blazer, but he hesitated to move her yet.

  Tess stared up the slope of slip rock beneath the shadow of high sandstone walls. She seemed mesmerized by the cave tucked into the cliff and the ruined stone walls that climbed in high, square towers. “Tell me about this place,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

  T.J. didn’t like the urgency in her voice or the way her hands worked back and forth over her arms.

  “Please.” She looked at him, as if driven to ask, to understand.

  T.J. bit back a protest. “It’s probably early Mogollon culture.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He wasn’t surprised at her ignorance. “Almost everyone has heard about the Anasazi, Hopi, and Navajo. But as early as AD 200, the people archaeologists term Mogollon had flourished in half-buried pit houses in the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Their ceremonial areas were imposing, but rectangular rather than the circular Anasazi type.”

  T.J. offered her a drink from his canteen. “By 1200 the Anasazi and the Mogollon were living nearby and sharing their techniques.”

  “What happened to the people who lived here?”

  “Everything changed around 1300. In Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the villages of Utah, the cliff dwellings were empty. No one knows why, even now.” He stared off over the rows of smoke-blue mountains. “Maybe it was overpopulation and degradation of resources. Maybe sickness and drought. We might never have the final answer.”

  T.J. felt the loss personally. As a boy he had stood in the shadows of this cliff, yearning to know exactly what had happened to the mysterious civilization that had clung to the narrow cliff walls.

  “Those holes are where the roof timbers used to be.” He pointed up, all the time scanning the slopes for any sign of movement. “Except for a few scraps here and there, the wood is long gone.”

  Tess looked at the worn remains of steps carved into the rock face. “How many people lived here?”

  “Four or five families, probably. They knew about rudimentary irrigation and raised corn, beans, and squash. Possibly even native cotton.”

  “Can people go into the ruins?”

  He shook his head. “Too dangerous. The walls are unstable. Until proper excavations can be completed, no one should go up there.”

  Tess raised her eyes to the crown of the cliff and blinked dizzily.

  “Take it easy,” he muttered.

  To Tess the words seemed to come from a great distance. Something had drawn her there, demanding answers. Even now it held her with relentless force.

  She took a deep breath, trying to pull away from the beauty of its dark magic. But when Tess looked up, it was to the man beside her. Strong. Honorable. Infuriating but decent. She remembered all that now.

  She wasn’t sure what she wanted from T.J. McCall or from this mysterious, beautiful country she’d wandered into. Here it was easy to forget the outside world and her own problem with a million dollars that shouldn’t be in her account.

  Too easy to forget everyth
ing but the land … and the man beside her.

  Layers of clouds sailed over the valley, touched with color. Far to the south she could see thunderheads rising, their bases purple and heavy with rain. For a moment Tess experienced the dizzying sensation that she was flying, soaring over the valley, so clear was the view. From this vantage point, the cliff dwellers could see strangers coming from miles away, an excellent tactical advantage.

  Had there been danger here then, too?

  Had strangers approached in stealth, avoiding signal fires?

  Up the slope Tess saw that small, dried corncobs littered the rocks. Close by were two deeply indented stones, which might have been used for grinding the precious meal. She blinked, locked in a sense of past, remembering the handprint on the rock wall high above her.

  She caught her breath, gripped by an ineffable connection to this ancient place and the lives that had passed here. Women had ground corn, woven their native cotton.

  They had laughed and worried and waited for their men to return from the fields or the high mountains to north and east, where game would be plentiful.

  What had happened when the warriors returned? Was there singing and dancing before towering fires? Were there lingering glances, the brush of hands, and the hammering of hearts in the darkness?

  At that moment, the mystery of the place became painfully personal, almost overwhelming. Tess could feel the hypnotic pull of the shadows slipping into her thoughts.

  She turned to find T.J. staring at her. “Is it always like this? Is the sense of history always so close?”