Eli swore under his breath. “That old bastard lied to me,” he said, swiping at the bead of sweat on his brow. Fever. He’d assumed it was the residual effect of the sweat lodge or his body’s way of purging all the toxins he’d put into it. But now he was beginning to suspect his uncle of spiking the water Joseph had slipped him before guiding Eli on the “going up on the hill” aspect of his journey.
His goddamn uncle had tricked him. Eli could only remember bits and pieces of what happened after the sweat lodge, but when he’d woken up this morning in a crappy sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere, fully dressed but shivering so hard his teeth were clattering, Eli knew he’d been the victim of his own stupidity. Whatever made him trust his father’s brother—an alcoholic who claimed to hear the voice of the Great Spirit—proved how messed up he was.
“I knew it,” he cried, not caring that he was probably scaring the shit out of the woman across from him. He pounded his fist on the glass countertop, making the book she’d been reading bounce off. It landed at his feet, along with half a dozen cheap plastic trinkets. The kind of crap every tourist trap in the state carried. Fake Indian stuff.
That felt like another betrayal, and what little control he still possessed evaporated. He grabbed a wooden stick that was leaning against the counter and swung it overhead. He wasn’t planning to hurt the woman but he sure as hell was going to do some damage. He’d take his frustration out on the made-in-China junk peddled for a worthless society that didn’t honor vows or truth or—
“Drop the talking stick or I’ll shoot.”
He’d forgotten the woman with the strange hair was still there. When he spotted the gun in her hand, he froze.
“You don’t recognize me, do you, Eli?”
She knew him? Shit.
“I’m not surprised. It’s been a long time. Pierre High. I was a freshman when you were a senior.”
He’d gone to Pierre instead of a reservation school because of his basketball ability. His father’s dream had been for Eli to parlay that skill into a full ride at a Big-10 college until…yeah, well, until everything changed.
“What kind of gun is that?”
“A Lugar. Hollow point bullets. The kind that will chop you up inside at close range. So put the talking stick down. Libby would kill me if you broke it.”
He lowered his hands, glancing at the gnarled hunk of wood. He knew what a talking stick was and normally would have shown someone’s spiritual icons more consideration. At the moment, he was tempted to break the limb over his knee. The only thing stopping him was the fear he’d embarrass himself by not being strong enough to crack it. “Who’s Libby?”
“None of your business,” she answered saucily. “That’s right. Set it down carefully. Now, leave before I have to tie you up and call the police.”
He didn’t believe her…about the gun. It wasn’t a Lugar. And he didn’t think she’d shoot him. Women weren’t as quick to pull the trigger as men were when faced with the same option. Fourteen years with the tribal police had taught him that. But the way his luck was running at the moment the last thing he should do was test the odds.
“I…Who are you? What’s wrong with your hair?”
She put one hand to her head self-consciously. “Nothing. I like color. It’s my statement.”
“It says you’re odd.”
“You got that right, but I’m not the one trying to rob a store in the middle of the day. With no weapon and no getaway car. There’s odd and then there’s dumb.”
Dumb. Stupid. Insane. His life had been turned upside down and inside out from the moment his wife tossed him the results of a DNA test and left. Right, wrong. Good, honorable. Truth, reality. Son, not-your-son. None of the words made sense anymore. Which was how Joseph got to him. He’d played on Eli’s weakness and sent him off on this foolish journey to nowhere.
Wrong. The minute he’d spotted this place, he recalled Joseph’s last words to him, muttered in that strange, singsong tone his uncle used when he was trying to act like a medicine man. “Follow the spirit path to the big white teepee in the shadow of Paha Sapa.” The Black Hills.
Eli had thumbed a ride from a guy headed north. He’d planned to track down his uncle, who supposedly had a lady friend living near Sturgis. He’d completely blanked out the part about the white teepee until the guy pulled into the parking lot, telling him, “This is as far north as I’m going.” The guy had been blathering for miles about meeting his fiancée at a little girl’s birthday party in Sentinel Pass. Like Eli gave a shit about anybody else’s kids. His were probably messed up for life and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Eli had managed to mumble some sort of “Thanks” before getting out of the truck. Normally he had better manners. He would have given the guy his card and offered to return the favor if the man was ever stranded in the middle of the state. Unfortunately that was before Eli’s life turned upside down and he grabbed at the damn, spiritual straws his uncle had held out. As if the answer to his problems could be revealed in a hellhole filled with hot rocks and sweaty men at a ranch somewhere on the Pine Ridge reservation.
For a moment there, in the blackness, he thought he’d glimpsed something—someone—that might hold the answer to how his life had gotten so far off track. But the elusive image had fluttered out of sight, like a wild bird, and he’d agreed to give the quest one more try—on a bitterly cold hilltop in the Badlands, where Eli spent one of the worst nights of his life.
He’d awoken that morning, curled in a ball, shivering like a drug addict in need of a fix. No uncle. No car. No money or credit cards in his billfold. Bankrupt in every sense of the word. So desperate he’d stooped to taking what he needed—even though he planned to pay it back someday. And the person keeping him from going on with his journey was someone who knew him.
He looked at her again. There was something familiar about her. She reminded him of the little bird in his sweat-lodge-slash-hallucinogenic induced dream.
“Who did you say you are?”
“Charlene Jones. My aunt was a nurse-practitioner in Pierre. The last time I saw you your cousin, Robert, dropped you off at her place after your bachelor party. You were getting married the next day.”
He touched his finger to a little scar mostly hidden by his eyebrow. “Your aunt saved my butt.”
She made a scoffing sound. “My aunt wasn’t there. She was working at the hospital that night. I stitched your cut. You were my first—and only—patient.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why was I the only one?”
She looked at the book that had fallen on the floor, then made an impatient gesture with the gun. “Just go. Now. My assistant will be here in a—”
From the corner of his eye, he spotted a movement on the screen of the surveillance monitor. A white compact pulled to a stop, and a young woman got out.
Crap. Someone else to witness his fall from grace. He reacted without thinking. He vaulted across the counter and quickly, efficiently disarmed her so she couldn’t shoot him in the back as he made his getaway. He was about to dash for the exit that he’d scoped out earlier when the little bell over the door tinkled.
“Goodbye again, Eli.”
He froze. He knew that voice. He’d heard it before. But where? He turned and looked at her hard. A hint of memory filtered through the haze in his mind. A gawky girl with pretty, intelligent eyes who hid her voluptuous body beneath funky clothes, her wild hair tucked beneath a crocheted beret.
“Boobs?” he croaked.
Charlene “Boobs” Jones had been a popular source of fantasy for his pals on the basketball team. Eli had had his hands full with Bobbi by that time, but he was honest enough to admit that he might have imagined Boobs naked, once or twice, when he was making out with his less-generously endowed girlfriend and eventual wife.
Her initial look of surprise turned to hurt. “Oh, sure, that you remember. Why am I surprised?”
H
e didn’t recall anything else about her. Why would he? She’d been several years behind him. Her family was odd—to say the least. Plus, she belonged to a past he’d mostly managed to forget. High school went from a stepping stone in a life filled with promise to the high point in a life filled with reality. His dad’s hopes and dreams of glory for his only son wound up turning to dust as gritty and choking as dried gumbo—the quicksandlike clay that turned a normal road into a mire of no return. A metaphor that fit his life all too well.
He didn’t need any more memories dogging his heels. This whole stupid vision quest was about exorcising the past so he could start over. Start new. Start right. “Well, listen, Boo—um…Charlene, I’m really sorry about this, but I need to borrow some money. Whatever you can spare. I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
He put out his hand, intending to return the gun and take whatever handout she might offer in exchange.
A sudden, shrill, heart-stopping scream filled the store.
“Damn.” He didn’t need a degree in law enforcement to know how incriminating this looked to the young woman standing a few feet away, swaying as if she might pass out.
Charlene let out a low groan and shook her head from side to side. He was probably going to go to jail, which meant he wouldn’t be able to complete the task his uncle had laid out for him. According to Joseph, if Eli didn’t do this right, his kids—his two daughters and the son he’d loved and raised as his own—would never know the man he might have been.
Boobs, er, Charlene suddenly grabbed his shoulders and gave him a little shake. “Go. Out the back door. My car is unlocked, but the key’s in my purse so don’t think about stealing it. I’ll handle Pia.”
“I’m not a car thief.”
“Good,” she muttered. “Here. Take these.” She pried the gun out of his hand—a freakin’ pellet gun, he realized—and exchanged it for a wad of pink ribbons with balloons attached. “Lose even one and I’ll shoot you myself. Now, go.”
He was a good cop. He knew how to take orders. He’d never ridden herd on a bouquet of floating balloons, but he’d figure it out as he went. Pretty much the way he did everything in life.
CHAR KNEW THERE WAS NO such thing as coincidence. She’d witnessed enough strange and unbelievable touches of grace in her life and in the lives of her friends to know that Eli Robideaux hadn’t stumbled into her store by accident. He was here for a reason, just as he’d landed in her hands that night so many years earlier.
She didn’t know what his presence meant or foretold, but he obviously needed her help. And she couldn’t say no, any more than she’d been able to avoid what happened between them that night in Pierre.
And you need him, too, chickadee.
She ignored the voice.
“Pia,” she said, returning the unloaded pellet gun to its hiding spot. “Deep breaths. Slow and steady. That wasn’t what you think.”
“He…but…you…I saw…He’s an Indian,” Pia whispered.
Char didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with this young woman’s probably deeply ingrained bigotry. Native American tribes and whites in the Black Hills had a long, turbulent history, and while Char did her best to help break down preconceived notions and assumptions, she couldn’t dictate her personnel’s fears—irrational though they might be.
“Eli’s an old friend and I was showing him my gun when you came in.”
She hurried around the counter, pausing to grab the folding step stool from the corner. “Here,” she said, pushing the two-foot ladder into Pia’s hands. “One of Megan’s balloons got away. Would you mind catching it while I get my things together?”
Pia hesitated. “You know him? For sure? He looked like a homeless person.”
Char snatched her purse from under the cash register and double-checked to make sure her keys were inside.
“We were in school together,” Char said, stooping to pick up her journal, which had fallen on the wrong side of the counter when Eli threw his little hissy fit. She stuffed it in her purse and cleared the distance between them. “Eli was Homecoming King when I was a freshman.”
Pia didn’t look impressed but she did open the stool, march up the steps and grab the wayward balloon’s lifeline. She leaned down to hand it to Char. “Here.”
Pia, who was in her early twenties and worked at Native Arts solely to flirt with male travelers and earn enough money to fund her shoe addiction, glanced toward the door once more. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the cops?”
“He is a cop, Pia. On the reservation.” The last she’d heard anyway. “He’s on some kind of spiritual quest. I’m going to give him a lift into town after I deliver the balloons to Megan’s party. You can handle things here, right?”
Pia shrugged off her trendy, black and gold South Pole jacket. She was a pretty girl with shoulder-length blond hair that behaved like a well-trained show dog. Char’s hair belonged in the circus—hence her decision to hide its imperfections with color.
“Is it true Mac McGannon is dating Cooper Lindstrom’s ex-wife?” Pia asked, in that breathless tone Char associated with celebrity watching—a popular new sport in this area. More than once Pia had expressed a desire to go to Hollywood and give acting a try. But since she lacked any obvious talent besides her pretty smile and straight teeth, she hadn’t gotten far.
Char returned to the cash register and hit the open key. She pulled out the spare key and held it up for Pia to see. “Can you close up for me? I’ll probably be back in time, but I’d rather have this covered in case I have to give Eli a lift home. I’ll pay you overtime.”
Pia brightened. “Really? Cool. Is it okay if I call my friend Molly to come in? It gets dark so early…and, well…you know.”
Pia had complained more than once that closing gave her the creeps because the wind blowing across the open hole in the teepee made eerie, moaning sounds.
“Sure. No problem.” Char set the key on the counter then removed three twenty-dollar bills from the slot. Normally she would have written a note documenting the cash dispersal, but she knew she wouldn’t forget where this money was going. Plus, how would her accountant write off guilt money?
After double-checking to make sure the safe was locked, she grabbed her coat. “I’ve got my cell phone, if you need anything. Thanks. Oh, and…let’s keep this little misunderstanding between us. Eli’s one of the good guys.” I hope.
She wasn’t banking on her clerk’s discretion, but she’d learned a long time ago that she had no control over gossip. Her family had been the focus of all sorts of talk when she’d been growing up—very little of it good.
Ain’t that the truth, chickadee. And here you go again. Makin’ up for lost time.
Char ignored the comment as she focused on what she needed to do. First, she had to deliver Megan’s balloons. Because a promise to a child was not something she’d ever willingly break.
Willingly. Now, that’s a word for you. You gonna tell Eli about your promise?
“Eli,” she cried with a bit more volume than needed as she dropped into the driver’s seat of her Honda sedan. She had a small tussle with the errant balloon, wedging it between her bosom and the steering wheel. “Here. A promise is a promise. I told Megan I was bringing a dozen.”
He was slumped down, the hood of his sweatshirt bunched around his neck. Pia was right. He did look like a homeless person. This certainly wasn’t how Char had pictured him over the years. She felt a strong emotion well up in her chest. Disappointment? Sadness? The end of the dream? No. She hadn’t dreamed about him.
Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.
“Do you mind?” she asked, yanking on the balloon’s ribbon.
The fuchsia-colored orb smacked him in the face.
He swiped at it with such quick reflexes she didn’t realize he had control of the string until she felt it slip through her fingers. The sensation made a tingle race up her spine then quickly radiate through her extremities.
“Brr,” she said, tryi
ng to explain her shiver.
She turned on the engine and adjusted the heater fan.
“Are the police coming?” he asked, his tone hollow and resigned.
“No.”
“Are you taking me to them?”
“I’m going to deliver these balloons to my best friend’s niece’s birthday party. You can wait in the car while I go in. If you’re still here when I come out, I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”
His chin came up and he looked at her. “Why are you being so nice? I tried to rob you.”
“Let’s mark it down to old times’ sake.”
She backed around the corner of the building then crossed diagonally through the parking lot to the Sentinel Pass highway. A quick glance in both directions told her the road was as empty as her shop had been all day. “Are you hitchhiking?” she asked.
“Yeah. My uncle has my car. I hope,” he added under his breath. “I caught a ride with some guy from Denver who talked the whole way. Like I asked to hear his life story.”
Jack, she thought, finally placing the truck. “Did he say he was an orthodontist?”
“Yeah. And he’s getting married next month. He seemed practically giddy about the idea.”
She snickered. “Yep. That would be Jack Treadwell. He’s marrying my friend Kat.”
The car picked up speed once they’d breached the summit. He put out his hand on the dashboard. She couldn’t help noticing the unusual tattoo—an unfinished spiderweb—in the triangular webbing between his thumb and index finger.
“What’s that mean?”
“Hell if I know. The old man who gave it to me mumbled something about connecting the dots of my life. I was messed up at the time. Didn’t even feel it until the next morning.”
“Messed up? You mean like peyote? Cops aren’t supposed to do drugs.”
He brushed his hand through his thick black hair. Some Native American men of her acquaintance let their hair grow long. Eli’s was a slightly shaggy military cut. The hint of silver at his temple was new. And sexy.
Oh, chickadee, are you sure you wanna go down that road again?
Finding Their Son Page 3