Turquoise Guardian

by Jenna Kernan

  Amber didn’t like the sound of that.

  “What were the priors?” asked Carter.

  “Different things. Escalating. Worst was manslaughter,” said Forrest.

  “So why is he walking around loose?” asked Carter.

  “Witness, uh, failed to make an ID.”

  “You mean somebody got to the witness.”

  “Probably. Eli, we think.”

  “Who did Orson kill?” asked Carter.

  “Car dealership night cleaning person. Orson Casey is alleged to have burned down the dealership.”

  “Why?” asked Carter.

  “Member of WOLF, and they object to gas guzzling cars.”

  “Like this one?” asked Amber.

  “Quiet now, we’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “Boundary to your reservation.”

  They continued to speed along the road. Amber looked up and out the window.

  “Going dark,” said the agent driving. The headlights flicked off with the dash lights.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  Carter held her tighter.

  The stars were clear through the large window, pinpoints of blue through the tinted glass. Then something large came up beside them. They swerved to make room and then bumped along the opposite shoulder, slowing, turning, leaving the road.

  They came to a stop.

  “We left the convoy?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Sending a decoy in our place,” said Forrest.

  “That’s dangerous,” said Amber.

  Carter chuckled. “You weren’t worried when it was us in there.”

  “No. I was worried.”

  “Sit tight,” said Forrest. “We’ve got an army out here with us. You can’t see them, but they’re here. And if anything is going to happen to the convoy, it will be soon.”

  Amber nestled against Carter who toyed with her hair. When his fingers brushed her neck, she let the tingle of pleasure slip over her skin. Electricity, she thought, every time he touched her.

  The radio in the dash crackled. “Shots fired.”

  Silence again.

  “In pursuit.”

  Amber felt the helicopter that passed overhead. But she didn’t see it. The vibrations thudded through her chest nearly as hard as her own heart.

  “Suspect spotted,” said another voice.

  “In pursuit.”

  “One suspect in custody,” came the newest update.

  “How many are there?” said Forrest under his breath.

  “Second suspect is down.”

  The driver cursed. “They better not have killed him.”

  It was a long silent stretch of dead air before they heard that they had apprehended Orson Casey. His brother, Officer Eli Casey, was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Amber was so tired she was weaving on her feet by the time they arrived in the Phoenix federal building where an FBI field office was located. There she identified Orson Casey from a lineup. Carter made his selection afterward, and they were told they both fingered the same person.

  So Orson Casey was the driver of the van in Lilac she saw on the loading dock and the driver of the Subaru impersonating an FBI officer. She also identified Orson as the man in the unmarked car who had shot Carter.

  Amber had been shown a photo of Eli Casey, and her skin when icy at the sight. It was the detective at the station in Darabee, the one who had come searching for her during the shooting and who Carter had chased off.

  “He was there to kill me, wasn’t he?” she asked Carter.

  “I think so,” said Carter.

  She had asked Agent Forrest about the man at the station with the black eye.

  “Got him. We’ll have you try to identify him pretty quick here.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Name is Jessie Gillroy, and he is also with Darabee PD. A detective. Works with Eli Casey. Or he did. He’s now in federal custody, and Eli is dead. Jessie’s a match for the inside man at Lilac. Opened the doors for Sanchez. We think he and Orson Casey might help us discover who is funding this operation and where to find those missing explosives.”

  “Eli Casey and Jessie Gillroy both worked in Darabee?” Was that why Gillroy had looked familiar? Had he been there with Eli Casey and the others at the Darabee police department when she had arrived from Lilac with Carter via air ambulance? She clutched her arms about herself as a cold chill took hold.

  Forrest nodded. “Rowe has some crooked officers up there. They’ve been taking payoffs from someone for information.”

  “Is that how they knew where to find us?”

  Forrest nodded.

  Amber wondered how Darabee detectives had gotten hold of a state police vehicle and known their whereabouts when they had been in the custody of US Marshals. She wanted to ask Carter about that because she didn’t think a police officer could get ahold of that kind of information, which meant that someone else was involved. Someone higher up.

  Plus, the man who had tried to coax her into that Subaru was still at large, and she was growing more certain he had been at the police station tonight.

  She supposed that was for the FBI to unravel, and she was too fuzzy-headed to work anything else out. Still it bothered her. Something about it just felt wrong. Why go to so much trouble to kill her? The FBI was already investigating the supply chain at Lilac. What was the point of chasing after her? She didn’t know anything.

  Unless she did. She rubbed her tired eyes trying to think; she reviewed the sequence of events that had transpired as she’d done repeatedly since the shooting. She had told Ibsen about the overage in the delivery. He had seemed both distracted and upset. He’d told her he would take care of it and then shown her out. That was the last she’d seen him, wasn’t it? Something nagged at her; she just couldn’t think.

  Agent Forrest sat with her in the cubicle where she’d been told to wait. This guy had about as much to say as his desk lamp, and he made her uncomfortable. But Carter trusted him. It was enough for her.

  Forrest told her that the convoy with the decoy Hummer had been attacked by riflemen who took out both windows behind which she and Carter should have been seated. They’d used a caliber of bullet that went through protective glass. But they’d revealed their location, and the FBI had caught them. If they had not made the switch, Amber and Carter would both be lying beside Eli Casey in the morgue in Darabee.

  “Why did they say their names were Muir and Leopold?” she asked. “Those are the names of famous environmentalists. Aren’t they?”

  “Very good. Muir founded the Sierra Club and Leopold founded the Wilderness Society.”

  She shook her head, bewildered. Why choose names of such men?

  “So, did Orson tell you who Leopold really is?”

  “Not yet.” Forrest went quiet again, watching her. “We believe evidence will show that the man claiming to be Muir was actually Gillroy.”

  “And the men who came after them. Two men, Jack told me. And I heard one say, ‘get my brother.’ So was that Eli Casey?”

  “Yes. The other man is yet unidentified. Soon we hope.”

  “Who is Warren Cushing? That’s what I read on the ID I found in his wallet when I was searching for the handcuff key.”

  “Cushing ran a tourist outfit in Sedona. Crimson Hummer Excursions. They take guests on off-road tours of the canyons and rock formations. He died two years ago. He’d just received permits for expansion and was murdered at his offices.”

  “How did he get Cushing’s ID?”

  “Trophy maybe. We are looking into that.”

  Then she remembered. A fire. Sedona. Off-road
trips.

  “I saw that on the news. It was arson. That fire, and the news said—” she reached back into her memory for the information “—some group claimed responsibility.”

  “WOLF,” said Forrest, his whiskey eyes studying her.

  Amber sat back. “The other FBI agents, the real ones who questioned me, they asked me about WOLF and BEAR.”

  “Yes, we thought you were affiliated.”

  She wasn’t and had only attended the PAN rally because her uncle had invited her along.

  Her uncle was the head of his medicine society, the one that Carter belonged to, and Carter had some special role there, Tribal Thunder, he said. That wasn’t a part of these eco-extremists.

  Amber rubbed her arms.

  “Cold, Ms. Kitcheyan?”

  She shook her head, her mouth now firmly sealed. What did her uncle have to do with all this?

  She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that Carter was not tied up in this mess. That his interest in her was genuine and not because he was a part of some vigilante environmental army.

  Amber was suddenly terrified that Forrest would mention her uncle’s name as a suspect.

  “Did they ever catch the arsonists?” asked Amber.

  Forrest kept his gaze pinned on her as he shook his head.

  She wanted to ask about her uncle, but she did not fully trust Forrest. He was Apache, but not of her tribe.

  “Was it those people, the WOLF group, who attacked my office?”

  “We believe it was BEAR. WOLF generally tries to avoid loss of life. BEAR makes no such allowances. They believe in the preservation of the environment at the expense of human life.”

  The mine shooting. She pressed both palms together and lifted them to her lips.

  “They did it?”

  Forrest nodded. “Yes, we do believe so. Ovidio Natal Sanchez is a known member of BEAR.”

  Was Carter involved? He’d been there and so fast. The coincidence seemed too unbelievable. Or was it her uncle who was involved or...or both?”

  “Would you like some water?” he asked.

  Amber turned to him. “We aren’t waiting for Carter, are we?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “This is an interrogation.”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Where’s Carter?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything. The door opened, and Agent Rose stepped in. His expression was like a guest in the receiving line at a funeral. Amber wrapped her arms around herself and rose to her feet.

  “Where’s Carter?”

  “Amber, I think you should sit down,” said Agent Rose. What was wrong with his lip? It looked split open.

  She shook her head. Whatever he was going to tell her, it was bad. Really, bad.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yes. Please, sit.”

  She shook her head, refusing his request a second time. “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve released him,” said Agent Forrest.

  “Released?” Her knees went wobbly.

  Agent Rose got a hold of her and guided her to the chair he had tried to get her into.

  “I—I don’t understand,” she said. Her ears were buzzing because she did understand. “We’re in danger.”

  Forrest shook his head.

  “He identified the shooter and that man is dead,” said Forrest. “He identified the driver who abducted you, and that man is also dead.”

  “Leopold,” she said.

  “Not after him.”

  “But the extremist groups,” she said.

  “He seems to know nothing about that, and at present we have no reason to detain him. Chief Tinnin was insistent. He obtained a court order, and so we were compelled to release him.”

  Yet here she sat. Her skin went icy cold.

  Her brain was trying to tell her something, but the fear and panic kept nosing it away, and she couldn’t grab hold.

  “But there might be more of them. They might hurt him.”

  “Very likely. But Mr. Bear Den appears to be no threat to anyone.”

  “He needs protection,” she insisted. “Do you have men guarding him?”

  “Watching him. Not guarding.”

  Rose dabbed at his oozing lip with a clean cloth.

  “They shot him,” she said, not liking the hysterical note in her voice.

  “We believe you were the target,” said Rose.

  “And that you remain a threat to BEAR,” said Forrest.

  “How am I a threat?”

  “That is why we are sitting here. You know something or saw something.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Forrest shrugged. “We’ll come round to it sooner or later.”

  Rose smiled, and his lower lip cracked open and began to bleed again.

  Had Carter given him that fat lip?

  Forrest spoke again. “For now you are a protected federal witness.”

  She shook her head in denial because she now realized that she was the target of all this. She was the last survivor from her office. The one who had spotted the discrepancy, seen the Lilac Mine shooter and at least three of the men who had been hunting her ever since. One remained at large. The pickup man with Eli Casey. Who was he? Where was he? And how many more were out there?

  Amber stared from Rose to Forrest. She had never felt more alone in all her life. Rose offered her a paper cup of water, and she gulped down a few swallows before setting aside the cup that trembled in her hands.

  “And now you need to come with us,” said Rose.

  She didn’t want to but couldn’t think of anything else to do. She didn’t feel safe with them. She felt safe with Carter, and he was gone. Would she see him again?

  “For how long?” she asked, rising to her feet. The men exchanged looks and tight expressions.

  Witness protection. She knew it because they did not know who was in the extremist group called BEAR. They didn’t know if the group would retaliate because of Eli Casey’s death. They’d been willing to assassinate the Lilac shooter to prevent him from talking.

  Amber had been cast out of her tribe many years ago. But she had still had her family. Now she was about to lose them and everything she was. She was about to become invisible.

  Amber had lost control of her life once more, and yet now, as they led her away, she did not long for her mother or sisters. She longed for Carter Bear Den. She admitted to herself that she loved him still and that he was much safer without her.

  * * *

  CARTER GROWLED AT KURT. He’d already socked two FBI agents in the face, and Jack said he was lucky they didn’t press charges. That only made him want to punch Jack, too, especially after his brother had bum-rushed him into the waiting police unit, but no one punched Jack unless they needed the exercise.

  Amber was back there in Phoenix, and when she returned from identifying the surviving Casey brother, she’d be upset, and he would not be there to comfort her. If Jack was right, the next and last time he would see Amber was at Orson Casey’s trial.

  “Almost home,” said Jack.

  Jack had navigated the switchbacks up the mountain and the long stretches beside the reservoirs until they had nearly reached the stretch of river and canyon that was theirs by federal treaty.

  He was positive that the Casey boys had some serious help from someone, possibly more than one person in Darabee. Eli Casey had been a cop there, and Carter just knew there were more men involved. How else had they allowed a civilian into the station with a pistol and close enough to their shooting suspect to gun down Ovidio Natal Sanchez right there in front of the television cameras?

  Sanchez’s killer, their very own Karl Hutton Hooke, was an unemployed widower from Turquoise
Ridge, the smallest of the Turquoise Canyon communities, and full-blood Apache. Carter felt sick over that. He wondered about the accomplice at the mine. The one who let the shooter in at the loading dock.

  “Not Apache, thank the Lord,” said Jack. “They found Ann-Marie Glenn’s key card in Orson Casey’s apartment. But he was the driver for Sanchez. Who let Sanchez in at the loading dock?”

  Jack shrugged. “Eli or Jessie Gillroy, likely.”

  Carter sat back in his seat. That was for the FBI to untangle. Forrest had been very clear on that.

  Jack had filled him in on a few missing details about the convoy attack and apprehension of the Casey boys.

  Carter stared out Jack’s cruiser as the light from the rising sun crept down the canyon wall, turning the rock face orange. Saturday morning, he realized, less than a week since he’d driven down to Lilac to deliver a message.

  Was his truck still down there parked beside the helicopter pad?

  He thought of Kenshaw Little Falcon and Forrest’s implication that Amber’s uncle might be involved in more than spiritual leadership of his tribe and their medicine society. Carter rubbed the tattoo on his right arm, bandaged now and the stitches were beginning to itch.

  What was the purpose of Tribal Thunder? he wondered. To protect their land, of course. But how far was Little Falcon prepared to go to do that?

  Forrest had told him last night that they didn’t need him until the trial. Tribal leadership had involved their attorneys, who’d gained Carter’s release because of the tribe’s sovereign status; the FBI had agreed to release Carter if the tribe agreed not to get into a public pissing match over their star witness, Amber Kitcheyan. Who was fighting for her? Not her parents or her tribe. Nobody, that was who.

  Carter had told them she had applied for reinstatement. Kurt had delivered the paperwork, but the tribal leadership had not yet readmitted her. And now they might never do so.

  “But I’ll see her at the trial.”

  Jack startled at the break in the long stretch of silence.

  “I don’t know.”

  His shoulder was throbbing, and the stitches tugged. He realized he’d forgotten to take his antibiotics. He fished in his pocket for the capsules Kurt had given him and downed one dry. It stuck in his throat.