Shotgun Daddy

by Harper Allen

  Emily began to cry. Caro’s gaze flew to the animal, now lying motionless in the yard.

  “Stay here while I take care of the body,” Del muttered. “Where are my gloves?”

  Setting the rifle down, he slapped the back pocket of his jeans. Caro, attempting to soothe Emily, shook her head.

  “You didn’t have them when you came from the barn.” She wasn’t surprised to hear the quaver in her voice.

  “Must have left them there.” His glance lit on an oil-stained scrap of leather that MacLeish had earlier used to wipe the rifle’s stock. Grabbing it up along with his cane, he made his way down the porch steps.

  The episode, although quickly over, had been upsetting, Caro admitted to herself. And it could have turned out much more tragically if Tess’s nine-year-old Joey had been playing nearby with his puppy and inseparable companion, Chorrie. Feeling suddenly limp with reaction, she dropped a fiercely thankful kiss on the top of Emily’s silky hair.

  “Hell!”

  Del’s unexpected oath jerked her attention back to him, and she looked up just in time to see him take a quick step backward. The dog’s foaming jaws snapped on empty air, its neck stretched rigidly back, and then its head fell to the dirt again. It shuddered once, and was still.

  “Of all the greenhorn stunts to pull.” This time it was Del’s voice that wasn’t entirely steady. He grimaced at the bleeding gash on his wrist. “He’s dead now, but he had one last bite in him, dammit. I should have known better than to handle him without gloves.”

  “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.” Her concern for him overriding her nervousness, Caro pushed open the screen door and descended the porch steps. “Emily’s infant seat is in Greta’s four-by-four. I’ll drive.”

  “I’ll be okay until Mac or Daniel or one of the women return.” Under Del’s tan, his face was gray. “I’d better find something to bind this—”

  “Lieutenant Hawkins, you’re seeing a medic and that’s final,” she ordered. “Not only do you need a rabies shot, but that bite’s too ragged to heal properly unless it’s stitched. Isn’t there a doctor in Last Chance?”

  “Gabe didn’t want you going into town. Too open. Too public,” he said between gritted teeth. “But you’re right, I should get this seen to. The closest medical facility is Joanna Tahe’s clinic. I’ll give you directions on the way.”

  His grin was wan. “I guess Emily’s going to have her first brush with the other half of her heritage, honey. Joanna’s Dineh, and her clinic’s on the Dinetah—the Navajo Nation, where Gabe’s ancestors on his mother’s side came from.”

  “DEL’S STUBBORN, but I’m used to dealing with stubborn patients.” Joanna Tahe entered the clinic’s reception area where Caro, a sleepy Emily in her arms, was waiting. “Admittedly most of them don’t use cuss words while I’m giving them a needle, but that’s probably because their vocabularies are still too limited.”

  Caro mustered a smile. “Even if Del hadn’t told me this was a clinic for new mothers and their babies, I would have guessed from the decor.” She nodded at the wallpaper frieze of bunnies that ran along the top of the wall. “How’s he doing, Joanna?”

  The trim, dark-haired woman had insisted Caro call her by her first name within moments of their meeting, but her lack of formality hadn’t overshadowed her crisp professionalism as she’d taken charge of Del. Over his protests, she’d whisked him into her examination room—normally occupied by her usual kind of patient, she’d explained briefly, but since this was the hour she usually caught up on her paperwork, luckily it and the waiting room were empty.

  “The bite was deeper than it looked, but I did a tidy embroidery job on it, if I do say so myself.” Joanna smiled. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. Anti-rabies treatment has come a long way from the old days, but I want him to rest before making the drive home, so I gave him a mild sedative that will help him drift off for a while. That works out well for what I’m about to suggest, actually.”

  She held out her arms for Emily. “May I?”

  Without hesitation Caro deposited the little girl into the other woman’s arms. Joanna Tahe was a naturally mothering type, Caro thought as the nurse bent her head to Emily’s with a soft murmur. It explained her choice of profession and the success she’d made of it.

  “Nali has been asking me to arrange for you to see her.” Joanna lifted her gaze from the baby in her arms and met Caro’s questioning glance. “Sorry. Nali is the Dineh word for grandmother, and although Alice Tahe’s my great-grandmother, I grew up calling her that. She’s a very old lady—and stubborn,” she added dryly.

  “Your cousin Joseph works as security on the Double B, right?” As the nurse nodded, Caro went on. “I’ve talked with him once or twice when he’s come up to the house. He’s told me about her. She sounds like a wonderful person.”

  “Wonderful but with a will of iron. And she holds firmly to the old beliefs,” Joanna added. “News travels fast on the Dinetah. When she learns you were here, she’s going to ask why I didn’t insist you stop by to take tea with her. Apparently she has something important she wants to tell you.”

  Her lips turned down ruefully. “Please don’t feel you have to, Caro. I just wanted to be able to tell her with a clear conscience that I’d passed on her message to you.” She shook her head. “I have an idea of what it is she thinks you need to hear from her. Over the past few months she’s been buttonholing everyone she can who has a connection to the Double B and trying to convince them there’s a—”

  She paused. Caro frowned in polite inquiry.

  “That there’s a what?” she asked.

  Joanna didn’t answer her directly. “You couldn’t be any more Belacana if you tried, could you.” Her tone was teasing, but not unkindly so. “Non-Navajo, I mean. Long blond hair, blue eyes. If it weren’t for this little sweetie pie in my arms, I’d assume you’d never had any connection with our culture and people, and I wouldn’t bother telling you about an old Dineh lady and her beliefs. But Emily makes me think you might understand.”

  Her voice softened. “I told you news travels fast here, and I knew Jess well enough to mourn his loss when I heard of his death. Your secrets will remain on the Dinetah—both the fact that you’re hiding out on the Double B while the danger to you is dealt with, and what I as a Dineh woman see in your baby, Caro. The father doesn’t know?”

  “The father can’t know,” Caro said through frozen lips. “Del guessed. Now you have. Is it so obvious?”

  “Dineh babies are my life’s work, so I’m a hard one to fool on the subject. And when you get to know Del better, you’ll learn that those hawk eyes of his see a lot farther than most people’s.” Joanna sighed. “But to get back to Nali. She’s convinced there’s an evil spirit or ghost—she calls it Skinwalker—threatening the Double B. She blames the recent incidents that have happened on this evil, though both times it’s turned out the trouble has been from human sources.”

  “The man who went there to kill Susannah Bird, and the people who were after Tess and young Joey.” Caro nodded, puzzled. “Jess helped out in both instances, and he told me a little about them at the time. But even if your great-grandmother thinks this Skinwalker was involved, why does she want to talk to me?”

  “Probably because you’re the only one she hasn’t told her story to yet.” Joanna’s lips lifted ruefully. “Her hogan—that’s a traditional-style Dineh home—isn’t far, and you can leave Emily here with me…but again, if you’d rather not go—”

  “I don’t mind.” Caro returned her smile. “On our way to your clinic Del told me I’m probably safer on the Dinetah than at the ranch, since strangers stick out like a sore thumb here. And I owe you, Joanna,” she added softly, “not just for looking after Del so well, but for keeping my secret about Emily to yourself. How do I get to Alice Tahe’s hogan?”

  ONE STRAIGHT ROAD. Then two well-marked turns. How hard should that have been? Caro asked herself in frustration half an hour later. Face it, you’re
lost, she thought. And to top everything off, it looks like it’s about to rain.

  No sooner had the thought gone through her mind than the first fat drop splatted against the windshield of the pickup, followed by a second and a third. Almost instantly the downpour came in earnest, rattling on the roof of the truck so loudly that she felt as if she were in a drum.

  “There’s got to be somewhere I can turn around here,” she muttered, peering with difficulty through the streaming windshield and awkwardly shifting the truck into a lower gear. What would really help, she thought, would be another vehicle showing up—preferably one with a driver obliging enough to guide her back to the main road where—

  As if some indulgent genie had heard her request, a pair of headlights appeared in her rearview mirror. With a sigh of relief she slowed the truck even more and started to pull to the side of the road, with the intention of flagging down her benefactor as he drew alongside.

  But that wasn’t going to happen, she realized as she saw the speed at which he was approaching. In fact, if she hadn’t switched on her own lights to cut through the sudden grayness, her main concern right now would have been to make sure he was aware of her presence in time to avoid running into her.

  The lights loomed larger. She wasn’t aware she had been holding her breath until at the last moment the vehicle swung out to pass her and she allowed herself to exhale again.

  “Of all the—” Shaky anger filled her as the pickup pulled level with her. Her hands wrapped around the steering wheel, she darted a furious glance at the driver.

  His features were obscured by a ball cap pulled low on his forehead, but the cap itself was vaguely familiar. Caro switched her attention back to the road with a frown. A gothic-style letter D. Didn’t that stand for—

  The steering wheel was jerked out of her grip as the truck swerved violently into her.

  Chapter Eight

  Caro frowned through half-closed eyes. The cardboard pine tree that hung from the four-by-four’s rearview mirror was dangling the wrong way. There was a tight pressure at the top of her left shoulder and another constriction around her hips. What was going on?

  Her head hurt, and trying to think made it hurt more. Whatever had happened, she could figure it out later, she told herself. Right now she felt like drifting off to sleep again, if only someone would turn down the annoying crackling noise that was coming from outside.

  She closed her eyes. Darkness, warm and comforting, rushed back to claim her. The crackling became louder.

  Panic slammed into her, jolting her out of drowsiness and into cold awareness. She’d been in an accident. A pickup truck had run her off the road. She remembered fighting with the steering wheel, remembered feeling the tires lose traction and seeing the rain-dark horizon rotating crazily in front of the windshield. Then all vision had been cut off by the air bag deploying as the four-by-four had come to a violent and upside-down halt in the ditch by the side of the road.

  How long had she been hanging here, supported by her shoulder and lap belts like some topsy-turvy sky diver with the now-deflated air bag as her parachute? And what was that crackling noise anyway?

  The last of the fogginess clouding her brain cleared. A second later she burst into terrified action, her right hand scrabbling furiously at the latch of her seat belt and the fingers of her left straining for the door handle beside her.

  The engine was on fire. She had to get out now, Caro thought in cold fear. But to get out she had to release the seat belt, and it wasn’t unlatching. What was she doing wrong?

  Nothing, she realized a thudding heartbeat later. The latch was jammed. She was trapped inside a vehicle that could explode into a fiery mass of flames at any moment.

  “Dear God, no.” As the stricken moan came from her throat, hysteria lent a desperate edge to her efforts to free herself. Through the windshield the fugitive flames outlining the edges of the hood were an ominous indication of the conflagration she couldn’t see, but that would be shooting up through the undercarriage of the inverted four-by-four.

  You’re going to die here. You’re never going to touch Emily again, never going to see her grow up. You’ll never be able to tell Gabe how you felt the morning you woke up in his arms. He’ll never know that you fell in love with him—that you died loving him.

  Was that true? Just for a moment her fingers froze into immobility. It was true, Caro thought slowly. It had been true the morning she’d walked out of his life, true throughout those eighteen long months without him, true when she’d found him again and asked for his protection for her and the child they’d created together. And he would never know, just as he would never know from her that Emily was his daughter.

  Maybe knowing how I felt wouldn’t have made any difference to him. What I told Del today was right—if Gabe wanted roots he would have put some down before now. But at least my final moments on this earth wouldn’t be filled with the knowledge that I’d been a coward, too afraid of my emotions to acknowledge them.

  Her hand fell from the seat-belt latch. She squeezed her eyes shut against the stinging smoke now filling the vehicle’s interior, took a shallow breath and felt her lungs revolt against the acrid substitute for oxygen she’d drawn in.

  This was the end, she thought hazily. She’d been run off the road by a maniac who probably hadn’t bothered to look back at the accident he’d caused. She hadn’t even seen his face.

  Her thoughts drifted off into nothingness. Behind her closed eyelids she visualized a dim image of a man’s hand, his wrist banded with gleaming silver, one tanned finger encircled by a baby’s grasp…

  “Wake up, pretty mama. I’d better get you out of here before that long blond hair burns right off your head.”

  The unfamiliar voice barely penetrated her consciousness, but the heavy, open-handed slap that accompanied them did. A second hard slap across her face shocked her into taking a breath—a breath of blessedly fresh air, Caro realized as her lungs greedily pulled in another one, and then a third.

  “I had to kick out the window, so watch out for glass. Hold still while I cut you free.”

  Though the smoke had cleared, it was impossible to see the face of her rescuer, but as he spoke, Caro heard a sound like a knife blade being opened. That was exactly what it was, she realized as something flashed through the gloom and the belt that had been digging into the top of her shoulder suddenly released. The blade flashed again and the bottom half of her body fell free. Immediately she began pushing against the dashboard with her feet in a frenzied attempt to wriggle out of the window, but even as she felt her rescuer pull her toward him, her head jerked painfully backward.

  “My hair,” she croaked. “A piece of my hair’s caught!”

  “Calm down, sweetness.”

  He’d obviously gulped in his share of smoke, too, because his voice was even hoarser than hers. It sounded clogged, as if there were stones grating together in his throat. But what he sounded like didn’t matter. All that was important was that he was drawing her swiftly through the shattered window, having somehow disentangled the strand of hair that had held her back.

  He was enormously strong, she realized. Before she could find her footing she felt herself being slung over a broad shoulder, a muscular arm clamping across the back of her knees to secure her. Even as her gaze took in the flames shooting through the storm-dark gloom from the inverted four-by-four, the man holding her began sprinting at top speed away from the blazing vehicle.

  And not a moment too soon.

  The explosion came with no warning, a towering pillar of orange boiling into the air. From her ignominous vantage point Caro saw the pillar waver, steady, and then collapse upon itself like some predator crouching to spring. Then it did spring.

  A wall of heat and noise rushed at them. With a final effort her unknown rescuer made the other side of the road ahead of the racing curtain of fire and, covering her body with his own, turned his last leap into a tumbling roll. As his dive took them into the op
posite ditch, she felt the searing heat pass over them and then recede.

  “Guess tonight wasn’t your time to die, pretty lady.” The oddly unpleasant voice was only inches away from her ear, but in the shadows he was no more than a dark shape. “Count yourself lucky that I came along.”

  He’d saved her life, Caro told herself. If not for his actions, the four-by-four would have been her funeral pyre. So why was the uppermost desire in her mind an almost hysterical need to put as much distance as possible between her and that terrible, grating whisper?

  “I—I was lucky,” she agreed unevenly. “I can’t thank—”

  Suddenly he was no longer holding her, but instead had pulled away, his head tipped to one side. A moment later she sensed rather than saw him look down at her, and before she realized what he was doing he bent swiftly to her again.

  “Company’s coming.” His mouth was so close to her ear that she could feel his lips moving as he spoke. “Time for me to go. Thanks for the memento, pretty one.”

  “Memento?”

  But already he’d risen fluidly to his feet. Looking toward the road, Caro saw bright headlights speeding closer before she turned her attention back to her rescuer.

  “What do you mean—”

  He was gone as completely as if he had never been there, she saw with a shock. But why had he left so abruptly, and where was his own vehicle?

  She didn’t care, she thought with sudden vehemence. She owed him her life, but she never wanted to see him again—not that she actually had, now that she thought about it.

  “There was something wrong about him,” Caro said out loud. “It wasn’t only the way he spoke to me, although that was part of it. He just seemed…”

  Evil. That was the word she wanted to say, she realized as she got to her feet and took a stumbling step toward the road. The pickup came to a rocking halt behind the four-by-four, and Gabe leapt out.