Naked Edge

by Pamela Clare

  No sooner had the detective walked away when Sophie strolled over to Kat's desk. "I'm sorry you're going through this, Kat. Those calls sound really terrifying. If you don't mind, I'm going to tell Marc about this."

  Kat had known Sophie was going to say that. "I'm not sure there's much he can do, but thanks, Sophie."

  Then Sophie lowered her voice and smiled. "Is this, um ... the same ranger who rescued you last summer, the one who intervened when the sweat lodge was raided, the ranger Marc met?"

  "Yes, but it's not what you think. He and I ... we're just friends."

  "Ah." The smile on Sophie's face as she walked back to her desk told Kat that Sophie didn't believe her.

  And then came the moment Kat had been dreading. She forced herself to read through Grandpa Red Crow's autopsy report, trying to steel herself against her own emotions and failing. Seeing him reduced to a collection of body parts--a brain that had been weighed, genitals that had been examined, subcutaneous body fat that had been measured--seemed to dehumanize him. But worse than that were the toxicology tests that showed him to have alcohol in his stomach--and a blood-alcohol level just below the legal limit for drunk driving.

  She didn't want to believe it, couldn't believe it. She'd never once smelled alcohol on his breath, and she'd certainly never seen him under the influence. Yet the proof was right there in black and white. The disappointment she'd felt had been so overwhelming she'd spent a half hour in the women's room crying and the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how she was going to do her job as a journalist without betraying the memory of someone she loved.

  SHE WAS STILL struggling to pull herself together when it was time to make the trip to Boulder and Mesa Butte. She arrived to find Gabe waiting for her at the top of the access road. Still in uniform, he met her at the tailgate, his gun holstered against his hip, the wind ruffling his hair.

  He frowned at her from behind his sunglasses. "You okay?"

  She shook her head, feeling tears prick her eyes, but willing herself not to cry. "I read the autopsy report, but I ... I really don't want to talk about it."

  "I'm sorry." He reached out, took her hand, held it in the warmth of his own. "Did you contact the police about those calls?"

  "Yes."

  For a moment, he said nothing, as if expecting her to tell him more. "So what exactly are we looking for?"

  Kat tucked her keys and digital camera in her pocket. "Looters leave little holes and trenches. You can see them all over the rez--small pits dug with trowels or shovels. Looters usually don't waste time trying to cover up what they've done. They just grab whatever they find and take off."

  "Rape and run."

  Kat drew her hair back and tucked it into her coat to keep the wind from blowing it in her face, then looked about, trying to put aside her unsettled emotions and get her bearings. The sun hung over the mountains, a thin layer of cirrus cloud stretched in ripples across the sky. A handful of crows played in the gale, one moment struggling forward against the current, then tumbling backward, beak over tail feathers like airborne acrobats. To the west, the distant peaks gleamed white in the autumn sunshine.

  Thankfully, there seemed to be no one else at the butte, her truck and Gabe's SUV the only vehicles in sight. Even so, a sense of uneasiness had come over her. Maybe it was the sight of the sweat lodge standing cold and empty. Or maybe it was the fact that Grandpa Red Crow had died here.

  She shivered, drew her jacket tighter around her shoulders, her gaze coming to rest on the place where Grandpa Red Crow's pickup had last stood, an ache swelling inside her chest. She turned away, swallowing the lump in her throat. "I ... I've never seen any signs of looting when I've been here, but then it's always been dark."

  She felt Gabe's hand on her shoulder, as if he knew what she was feeling. "Well, looting wouldn't happen up here would it?"

  Kat looked over at him. "What do you mean?"

  "If ceremonies were traditionally held up here, Nativepeople wouldn't have lived here because it's sacred. That means they wouldn't have made pots or hunted or had their trash dumps up here, either, so the artifacts wouldn't be here."

  "Oh. You're right." Kat couldn't help wondering why she hadn't thought of that. She was the Indian, after all.

  A grin tugged at Gabe's lips. "Hey, I paid attention during my cultural-resource training. The actual butte is on the far west end of the Mesa Butte property. Any encampments would've been east of here--on the plains."

  GABE LED KAT around to the east side of the butte. In contrast to the west side, which was a sheer cliff, the east side sloped steeply downward until it leveled out into xeric tall-grass prairie. He was glad to see most of the snow had melted.

  Even so, the hillside was steep enough that he was afraid Kat might slip and reinjure her leg. Wearing a long denim skirt and cowboy boots, she wasn't exactly dressed for this kind of terrain. "Watch your step. The grass is slick. I don't want you to fall and hurt--"

  She gasped, her feet sliding out from beneath her.

  "I've got you." He caught her before she could fall, helping her regain her balance. Then he turned her so that her left side faced downhill. "Walk sideways like this. Let your left leg do all the work."

  He sidestepped down the steepest part of the hillside, keeping one hand on her waist just in case, his gaze on their surroundings. If there was any chance that looters were operating here, he didn't want to be taken by surprise. But there was no one else as far as the eye could see. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement--a lone coyote loping its way south at the base of the hill below them.

  Beside him, Kat froze, her body suddenly rigid, her gaze fixed on the coyote, an unmistakable look of fear on her face.

  "It won't bother us. Coyotes are pretty shy around people."

  But she didn't seem to hear him. Her hand found his, held it tight. Then she whispered something, words he didn't understand, her gaze still fixed on the coyote.

  "Easy, Kat. I won't let it hurt you."

  "I left my corn pollen in my truck," she said at last. "If we cross its path without making an offering, it could bring bad luck."

  "Bad luck?" They hadn't covered Native myths or superstitions in their training. "I've got a loaded Glock forty-five semiauto that's guaranteed to reverse most bad luck with a pull of the trigger. But if you want to turn back--"

  Her chin came up, her gaze meeting his. "No."

  GABE WATCHED AS Kat knelt down beside the plundered earth, rage on slow boil in his gut. She traced her fingers over the deep tread of frozen tire tracks, a stricken look on her sweet face. The tracks came from the east and ended at this spot, where a trench perhaps two feet deep and ten feet long had been gouged in the soil, earth heaped up carelessly on both sides. And it wasn't the only trench. Several more had been dug nearby, some deeper and longer than this one.

  "How could anyone do this?" Kat's voice quavered. She reached out, picked up a small potsherd that Gabe hadn't noticed, turned it over in her palm. "They're so desperate to get to the artifacts that they're destroying things."

  He squatted down beside her, looked down at other tracks frozen in the mud, their treads farther apart. "Whoever they are, they're using machinery, probably a compact excavator like a Bobcat. This sure as hell wasn't dug with a shovel."

  Farther into the trench, they found several more potsherds, as well as a clump of fibers woven together in what looked like a flattened bit of basket, part of a beaded cradleboard, and a small broken shaft of wood that Gabe couldn't identify, but which clearly meant something to Kat.

  She held it reverently, turned it over, tears spilling onto her cheeks. "Chanupasinte. A pipestem."

  He watched as she set the broken artifact carefully back where she'd found it, then moved to the next trench and the next, where the situation was much the same--the ground strewn with potsherds and pieces of things too old and broken to identify, each of them made by a human hand long ago.

  "Son of a bitch! Dammit!" Gabe had know
n that Mesa Butte was rich in artifacts, but he'd had no idea how rich. There was a fortune buried here--enough to make someone very wealthy.

  Was it enough to make someone kill?

  "This isn't just looting. It's industrial-scale larceny." He squatted down and picked up a tattered bit of buckskin decorated with what looked like very old and worn porcupine quills--a remnant of someone's clothing. He put it back, stood, and glanced around them, feeling more than a little uneasy. "Time to go. I need to get you the hell away from here and report this."

  "I need to get pictures first." She sniffed, wiped the tears from her face, then drew a small silver point-and-shoot camera out of her pocket. "I have to be able to prove this is happening."

  And then it hit him. "You're planning to write an article about this."

  "Yes." She held up the camera.

  "I can't let you do that." He reached out, took the camera from her, and stepped back out of her reach.

  "What are you--?"

  "I know you're just doing your job, but if you tell the public what's here, this place will be swarming with assholes carrying shovels and buckets. If you care about this place, you're going to have to keep what you've seen here to yourself, at least for now."

  "This isn't just about my job. It's about Grandpa Red Crow." She reached for the camera. "If he--"

  Gabe heard the rifle's report and had no time to do anything but react. He threw Kat to the ground beneath him as two more shots rang out, hitting the frozen earth beside them and sending up a spray of dirt and bullet fragments.

  An AR-15 with .223 rounds, maybe three hundred yards away.

  Shit!

  Silence.

  Kat stared up at him through wide, terrified eyes, obviously in pain and struggling to breathe.

  Dread caught in his chest. Oh, Christ! "Are you hit?"

  She shook her head. "You ... knocked ... the breath ..."

  Relief, sweet and pure, rushed through him. But it wasn't over yet.

  "Hang on." Knowing he might have only seconds before the shooter took a new position and sighted on them again, Gabe slipped his arm beneath Kat and, holding her tight against him, dragged her deeper into the trench.

  "Stay down!" He rolled off her, drew his gun and his cell phone, tossing the phone to her, then racking the slide on the Glock. "Press nine and hold it for dispatch."

  Leaving it to her to call for backup, he dragged himself on his elbows to the edge of the trench and looked back toward the butte where the shots had originated, but saw no one. The shooter was probably firing from the cover of the trees high on the butte itself, which meant that he stood between them and their vehicles. He had greater range and God only knew how much ammo, while Gabe had only what was already in his pistol and one spare service magazine--twenty--six rounds. Worse, with the shooter holding the high ground, there was no place for them to run.

  The moment they left the cover of the trench, they'd be dead.

  CHAPTER 12

  SOMEONE HAD FIRED at them. Someone was trying to kill them.

  Kat held the phone to her ear with hands that refused to stop shaking. Then, over the thrum of her own heartbeat, she heard a woman's voice. She cut in. "Hello, dispatch? There's shooting at Mesa Butte! There's shooting at--"

  She gasped as three more shots tore through the air, the woman on the phone firing questions at her that she didn't hear.

  Beside her, Gabe ducked back inside the trench, gun in hand, his dark brows drawn together in a look of focused determination. "Tell dispatch it's one shooter with a high-powered rifle positioned somewhere near the top of the access road. Tell them we're about three hundred yards east of the butte. Tell them you're calling on behalf of sixty-forty-five, off duty."

  Kat repeated his words into the phone, doing her best to answer the dispatcher's questions and fighting not to scream as two more shots whined overhead. "No, no one's hurt, but he keeps shooting at us!"

  She thought she heard dispatch say help was on the way, then Gabe swore.

  "Goddamn it! Tell dispatch I'm returning fire!"

  "He's returning--"

  Bam!Bam!Bam!

  Kat instinctively squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears against the deafening sound as Gabe shot back, the cell phone falling into the dirt. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself lying on her side, looking at Gabe's profile. Beads of sweat trickled down his temple, and he seemed to be listening, his breathing deep and even, a look of focused concentration on his face.

  How could he be so steady when she was shaking like a leaf? He seemed more angry than afraid. And then she saw.

  Blood.

  It had soaked through the right side of Gabe's coat near his collar, a large hole torn in the black fabric, white fiber batting stained dark red.

  "You've been shot!" She crawled over to him, only one thought on her mind--to help him.

  He shook his head. "Get down, dammit! Leave it! It's nothing--just a graze. Now listen to me! Whoever this bastard is, he's probably realized he can't hit us as long as we're down here. The only chance he has of getting us before the good guys get him is to come down here. If he tries, I'll do my best take him out. But if anything happens to me, take the Glock and--"

  The distant wail of sirens.

  "Hear that? The bastard who's shooting at us hears it, too, and is probably high-tailing it away from here. It's going to be okay." Gabe took her hand with his, gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Stay down until I say it's clear. Understand?"

  Kat nodded.

  "Good." He pressed a quick kiss to her lips, then turned away from her onto his side and peeked carefully around the pile of earth that shielded them.

  The next two minutes passed like an eternity. Even as the sirens drew nearer, Kat couldn't shake the feeling someone was watching them, perhaps getting closer to them, waiting for his chance. She closed her eyes, kept her head down, and prayed.

  Wailing sirens. Barking dogs. Men's shouts as Mesa Butte and the surrounding land were cordoned off and searched. And finally the sight of two men in Mountain Parks uniforms, guns drawn.

  "Hey, Chief, Hatfield. I can't tell you how glad I am to see your ugly faces." Gabe stood, gun in hand.

  The ranger Kat recognized as Hatfield looked around at the battered landscape, a look of shock on his face. "Holy fuck!"

  Chief Ranger Webb turned in a slow circle, his gaze on the trenches, his face red with rage. "Son of a bitch! What the fuck is going on out here, Rossiter?"

  "Isn't that obvious? Someone has turned Mesa Butte into his own private archaeological dig." Gabe took Kat's hands, helped her to her feet, then drew her into his arms, holding her tight. "Are you okay, honey?"

  She held on to him, still shaky. "Y-yes, I think so."

  He kissed her hair. "Let's get you out of here."

  As he helped her climb out of the trench, Kat looked beyond him and saw the butte swarming with law enforcement--park rangers, police, sheriff's deputies. There, not twenty feet away, stood Officer Daniels talking with another cop.

  And he was watching her.

  "WHAT WERE YOU doing there?"

  Gabe looked from Police Chief Barker to Chief Ranger Webb and back again. "I already explained all of this--twice. Wait a minute ... Am I a suspect or something?"

  He'd been at police headquarters for three hours now, filling out paperwork, answering question after question, wanting nothing more than to find Kat and get the hell out of this place. She'd been badly shaken up by the shooting, and he didn't want to leave her alone any longer than necessary. She didn't know it yet, but either she was going to stay at his house again tonight or he would stay at hers. No way was he going to leave her unprotected, not after what had happened today.

  "This is just a standard debriefing, Rossiter." Webb gave him a bored look. "Someone shot at you, and you fired back. Just answer the damned questions so we can all go home."

  Gabe could tell Webb's patience was worn as thin as his own. "As I told you, she wanted to check Me
sa Butte for signs of looting, and I asked her to wait until I got off work at four because I didn't want her going there by herself. If looters were to blame for the old man's death--"

  Barker frowned. "Red Crow's death was ruled an accident. You know that."

  "Yes, but she doesn't believe it, and after what happened this afternoon, neither do I." How could anyone? It seemed obvious now that Red Crow's death had something to do with looting. "Someone is stripping the place of artifacts and was willing to blow our heads off to conceal that fact. You all saw what's going on there. The investigation into Red Crow's death needs to be reopened."

  "We'll make that decision." Barker spoke the words casually, but there was an edge to his voice that said he didn't like taking suggestions from a park ranger.

  "Did you see anyone?" Webb tossed a few Turns in his mouth and chewed.

  Gabe shook his head. "No. My decision to fire was strategic. I wanted the attacker to know I was armed so that he would think twice before moving in on us. I hoped to buy us a little time so backup could arrive. And it worked. Once I fired, he quit shooting."

  Webb nodded. "There's no doubt that you made the right decision."

  Barker looked up from his notes. "How many rounds did you fire?"

  "Three." They'd already taken Gabe's service weapon and his spare magazine and probably knew the answer to this themselves.

  Barker glanced back down at his notes, his brows drawn together in a frown. "What I don't understand is how Ms. James knew to look for looting in the first place. Can you shed any light on that?"

  And Gabe realized he was fucked. If he told the truth, he'd lose his job. He took a breath, steeled himself, wondering if the rock gym would hire him. "She--"

  Webb cut him off. "She was at the crime scene, remember? She saw the potsherds next to Red Crow's body. That's what she claims at any rate."

  For a moment Gabe thought he'd gotten lucky. And then it hit him. "You're questioning her?"

  "Of course we're questioning her." Barker glared at Gabe, his voice filling the small room. "Every time we've been called to Mesa Butte, she's been there. Is it too hard to imagine that she's mixed up in this somehow? Maybe the whole lot of them are doing it together--stealing artifacts and selling them, using their ceremonies as a pretext for looting the place and then pretending the shit belonged to their great-grandfathers or some damned thing."