Words of Conviction

by Linda J White

  Her mind turned to Crow, to his dark looks, his confidence, his demeanor, and then she tried tracking it back to when and why, perhaps, it had changed. She thought about him growing up without parents, about being an only child, like her, and about how he ended up all the way back here, in the East, so far away from everyone. And then she began to wonder: Why had he joined the FBI? Why not the Navajo police, which would allow him to live on the Reservation? Why did he seem so thoughtful, so deep, and yet so volatile?

  Kenzie saw a meteor blaze across the sky. She found the Big Dipper, the North Star, and the Little Dipper. She gazed at the vast wonder of the universe and felt something stir inside. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “what does it all mean?”

  Then she heard the sound of a car door shutting in the alley. She stood up quickly and backed up to the porch, her hand on her gun, her senses on high alert. Who was coming? The gate at the rear of the Grables’ garden opened and shut, then one of the automatic lights Scott had ordered installed flicked on.

  Crow. He walked down the path toward the house, his gait confident, assertive, athletic. She watched him for a minute, watched the light play on his black leather jacket, saw the shadows on his face, the set of his shoulders. She felt those hot-and-cold, confused feelings rise up once again. And then, to keep him from being alarmed, she stepped forward and said, “Hi.”

  Crow stopped. The floodlight temporarily blinded him and he shaded his eyes. “Kenzie?”

  “What’s up?” She kept her voice neutral.

  He looked around. “You out here by yourself?”

  She bristled. “My bodyguard quit.”

  He blew out a breath, aware, perhaps, of the foolishness of his statement. They were close now, close enough for Kenzie to see the light in his eyes, to hear the creak of his jacket, to feel the rush of emotion he engendered in her. Close enough for her to begin testing the waters.

  “How did things go at Talmadge’s?” she asked.

  “I took a look inside. It’s clean.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “No, I got permission.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I used my best Indian technique: I walked up, rang the doorbell, and asked.” He smiled at her.

  She almost smiled back. Almost.

  “Humor is a Navajo principle,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “I didn’t know that,” she admitted. He looked good, there in the light. Confident and strong. And he seemed friendly again. Why?

  “Talmadge was very cooperative. Inside, I saw a bunch of inebriated white people.”

  “Beth?”

  “No Beth. She’d left, Talmadge said.”

  “He didn’t mind you coming in?”

  “I think he was happy to have us take a look.”

  “You must have charmed him.”

  “I acted straight with him. Told him what we wanted. Treated him with respect. He responded to that.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “I thought you guys just staked people over anthills.”

  Crow laughed softly. “You’re thinking of the Apaches. Besides, how easy is it to find an anthill on Capitol Hill in the dark? So, I used one of those interviewing techniques you folks teach at the Academy instead.”

  Was that a bone, thrown to her for the purposes of reconciliation? A flutter ran through her. “Good choice.”

  Her father had always taught her to address problems straight on. To confront. Clear the air. It’s the way men do it, he told her. She took a deep breath and set her jaw. Then, looking straight into Crow’s eyes, she voiced her complaint: “The next time you have a problem with me, I wish you’d come to me.” Her voice sounded tight, even to her, and she realized she felt nervous. “Scott said you expressed concerns about my fitness. I don’t like it when people talk behind my back, or when they try to undercut me.” She waited, like a cat with her back arched, for his response.

  He cleared his throat and glanced down. “In Navajo culture, we have a principle of community I don’t find common in the white man. If one person starts to go off track, or if he runs ahead of the rest of the clan or starts becoming a lone wolf, the elders bring him back to restore the balance. I think it must have helped my people survive, out there in the desert.”

  Kenzie’s mouth tightened into a straight line. Her heart beat hard. Were Crow’s words an explanation or an apology? “You think I was running off?”

  “You were not protecting yourself.”

  She studied him carefully, observing the tilt of his head, the skin around his eyes, the thrust of his chin. She thought about the way she felt when he walked in a room, the interest she had in the way he moved, and in his thinking, about the chill that ran down her spine when his hand accidentally brushed hers. How long it had been—how very, very long it had been—since she had allowed any of those kinds of feelings to gain traction in her conscious mind.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said. “I admit, I’ve been tense. And I acted more aggressive than I should have. I just . . .” he stopped.

  “What?”

  He shook his head, looked away, and refused to answer.

  Behind Crow, she saw a light streak across the dark sky. Another meteor. She took a deep breath. Time to take a risk; time to act on the ideas she’d been developing in her head. On her theories. “What was her name?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The woman you lost in Iraq.”

  Crow reacted viscerally, his whole body jumping, his hands jerking out of his pockets as if preparing for a fight. “What did Scott tell you?” he demanded.

  “Nothing!” Kenzie said. “Nothing about her. Just that I shouldn’t take your anger personally.” She rubbed her arms. The tension had produced goosebumps on her flesh. “We were fine, you and I, until someone assaulted me. Then suddenly, I was your enemy. I felt so confused. I couldn’t understand why you’d changed so suddenly. I’ve had time now, time to think it out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said, throwing up his hands.

  She looked straight at him. In the past, her instincts had not let her down. “Yes, you do. When I came back from the hospital, you were telling me how wrong I’d been to go off by myself. You were quizzing me, but you used expressions like ‘turkey peek’ and ‘battle buddy.’ You said I shouldn’t have gone off without a battle buddy. It’s not an FBI term . . . it’s military jargon. Specifically, from Iraq.” She paused and took a deep breath. “And so, the thought occurred to me that somehow, my getting hurt brought back some strong feelings for you. What else would explain your shift in mood? And I’m guessing, just guessing, you lost someone you loved, a woman, in the war.”

  “Who are you?” Crow said, incredulous. He turned away from her, his shoulders hunched. Then he sat down on the bench, dropped his head in his hands. The moonlight reflected off his hair, and Kenzie had to stop herself from stroking his head. Her heart was drumming, her mind flashing ahead to his possible responses. Had she offended him? Ignited his anger? Would he open up? Her stomach tightened.

  When he finally began speaking, he kept his voice soft, so soft she could barely hear him. “This time of year on the Reservation, a thunderstorm miles away can send a wall of water racing down an arroyo. I walked down one, looking for a lamb, and suddenly I got hit by one of those flash floods. Before I knew it, I was fighting for my life.” He reached down, plucked some grass out of a crack in the paving stones, and began throwing it, blade by blade, back onto the patio. “When I saw you lying injured on the ground, I felt just like that. All these emotions came rushing at me. I didn’t expect it. They came out of nowhere.”

  Kenzie sat down on the bench next to him. Her shoulder touched his, very lightly. He didn’t move away. Overhead, a sky full of stars bore a silent witness to this moment. Her heart beat so hard she wondered if he could hear it. “I know what it is to lose someone you love,” she said. “My father dropped dead right in front of
me. Just like that, the person I loved most in life was gone.” She waited for his response, but he remained quiet. She continued, “I know it’s not exactly the same, but I know something of what you’ve gone through. So now I’m asking you: Who was she? The woman you lost?”

  She felt like she could almost see the stars bending low to listen. Sitting still, waiting for this man to speak, the pregnant silence engulfed them, the universe surrounded them. She’d learned to be patient over the years, patient with her mother, patient with the subjects of her studies, patient with her life, and she rested on that patience now, like a woman rocking, rocking, waiting for a baby to be born.

  His hand shook. “Her name was Julie Tyree,” Crow said finally in a barely audible voice. “Born to the Bitter Water clan, the Tódích’íi’nii, born for the Corn Pollen People, the Taadiin Dine’é.” It sounded like he was singing the words. He stopped and shook his head, and for a minute, Kenzie wondered if he would continue.

  “We grew up together. She was beautiful. She had long, dark hair that she wore in a braid and a broad, open face. She was smart—very smart, and her eyelashes,” he hesitated, “her eyelashes were as long as a doe’s.

  “In high school we fell in love. Soon, we were like this.” He held up two fingers side-by-side. “At night, under the stars, out there in the desert, we began dreaming of the future. One day we would go to college. I’d become a physician’s assistant; Julie, a nurse. We’d get married, and then we’d come back to the Rez and help our people. And we’d have children, lots of little Navajo children. Julie said God gave us those dreams.

  “Our families didn’t have any money, but we both got ROTC scholarships at Arizona State. She studied nursing; I majored in bio. I wanted to get married when we graduated, but Julie’s mother got sick—breast cancer—and she wanted to wait until her mom got through the chemo.

  “That first year, both of us got sent to Iraq, Julie with the Army in southern Iraq, me with the Marines in Anbar Province. Julie was one month from the end of her deployment—one month from going home—when I got word,” he stopped and cleared his throat, “I got word that she’d been killed.”

  Kenzie felt a shudder run through his body. Her heart twisted. “John, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  Moments ticked by. He swallowed, hard. “They were operating on a wounded soldier when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the tent. She had no chance. She never saw it coming.”

  “That’s horrible. You must have been in shock.”

  “I didn’t sleep or eat for three days. I kept working, kept going through the motions, but honestly, I felt paralyzed emotionally. Trapped, like a bug in a spider’s web, you know? I kept seeing her, imagining the explosion, imagining her body flying apart . . . and I couldn’t get to her, I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t save her. Some guy in my unit tried talking to me about it, but I told him to go away. The last thing I wanted to hear was how God loves us.”

  He stood up, rubbed his hands down the sides of his pants, and looked up into the night sky. “Because we weren’t married, I couldn’t get leave to return to the States for Julie’s funeral. All I had were some pictures—her casket, covered with an American flag, and the military honor guard—and what Grandfather had told me in an e-mail someone helped him send.”

  Crow’s eyes were shining. “I lost my taste for medicine after that. I wondered what had happened to the God who gave us those dreams. The Reservation seemed empty. Someone I knew from Flagstaff began talking to me about the FBI. And here I am. Here I am, working with a white, East Coast city girl, and . . .”

  What was he saying? Kenzie’s breathing was shallow.

  “. . . suddenly I’m attracted to her. And then, she gets attacked, and I realize how vulnerable she is, and how I can’t protect her, either.”

  Kenzie heard the yip-yip-yip and the howl she’d heard before.

  Crow laughed softly, incongruously. He rubbed his hand over his face. “You know what that is?” he said.

  “A dog?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s a coyote. There’s a bunch of them now, living in Rock Creek Park. I leave the desert, but they follow me.” He looked at her, a slight smile on his face. “I think that coyote’s laughing at me. I think he’s saying, you tried to run away from life, and from loss, and you came all the way to the East to avoid it, but you can’t outrun your heart. You can’t do it.”

  Kenzie shivered at his words. She got up from the bench and began pacing. “I felt devastated when my dad died.” She turned quickly and looked at Crow. “I know it’s not the same, not exactly, but it was still horrible. My mother scores very high on the narcissism scale. When my dad died, all the joy went out of my life. Even that young, I learned quickly to submerge myself in work.”

  Crow blew out a breath and smiled softly. “Scott calls you the girl genius. He says you got your PhD before most of us learn to feed ourselves.”

  “When I first met Scott, he used to try to fix me up with single agents. When I turned him down for the fifth time, he said to me, ‘Kenzie, perfect died when you were twelve. Are you going to spend your whole life as a nun?’ Of course, I felt angry. I also didn’t know what he meant.” A crape myrtle bush grew at the end of the bench. She walked over to it, broke off a dead twig, and began snapping pieces off. “I’ve been thinking . . . and I wonder, now, if I’ve just been blocking my own happiness. Getting God back for taking my dad by refusing to love again.” She let those words sink in before she turned and sat back down on the bench. “It sounds so immature.”

  Crow blew out a breath softly. “My grandfather says my work with the Bureau is just me living in my anger—I am called to be a healer, but I am resisting.” Crow shook his head. “My grandfather is not someone whose words I take lightly.”

  Kenzie looked up. Was the sky always this dark? And the stars so white? Did the night air always seem so enveloping? She opened her mouth to speak again when she heard the back door squeak.

  “Kenzie!” Scott cried. They both turned around. He looked from one to the other, obviously aware he had interrupted something.

  “What?” Kenzie asked, rising to her feet.

  “We need you. Jackson’s back online.”

  She looked back at Crow, one more long, lingering time, and went inside.

  20

  Pretty clever of me, Grayson thought. He had cruised down Rock Creek Parkway and pulled into the area around George Washington University. College kids are always up. Surely, there’d be some coffee shop with free wireless open around the GW campus, he’d reasoned.

  And there was. What’s more, he fit right in, with his jeans and fake ponytail. All the way down to D.C., he’d rehearsed what he would write. But he felt anxious. Would Grable still be up? Would he be watching the board?

  Someone would, he presumed, and that someone would get Grable. He had to count on it. The Feds were in it now, so he just had to assume they’d be there. No matter. He’d set up the deal. It would be up to Grable to complete it.

  He had it all figured out. Once the money had been transferred to his new Cayman Islands account, he would drop Sandy and Zoe off at a park in Fairfax. He would tell Sandy to leave the little girl in the play area and then walk back out. He would pick her up on the other side. Only of course, he wouldn’t. No way would he share his two million with that broad. What had she done to earn it?

  Grayson sipped his macchiato. Two coeds were talking about some guy, discussing his body. Women these days were just as coarse as men, he thought. They deserved whatever they got.

  He booted up his laptop, smiling inwardly. He had signed on now from an entirely different location. Even if the Bureau traced his messages, they’d still never catch up to him.

  Satisfied, he turned his attention to the High Stakes message board. He went back to his last message, read it and the responses, and then picked up the thread. The time on his computer read 11:37.

  Kenzie raced into the dining room, her head still focused on her
conversation with Crow. She looked over Alicia’s shoulder at the computer.

  Jackson had written, Lost power for a while. Back now. I’m headed back to the chat room.

  Quickly, Alicia made the switch.

  “Have there been thunderstorms? Find out where the power has been out,” Kenzie said.

  “Got it,” Scott responded.

  Jackson423’s message sprawled across the board: What I was saying was that if CISU confirmed the message through Joie’s father, then they would know the mastermind of the plot was on the up and up. It shouldn’t be any problem for them to collect $2 million. CISU seems to throw money around like crazy. But how would they deliver it? It would be wired to the Out Islands Bank in the Cayman Islands, to a numbered account. Maybe her name in code. Once the transaction was made, then Joie would be safe. She is, in fact, her father’s life.

  “Look at that!” Alicia exclaimed. “ ‘Life’. That’s ‘Zoe’ in Greek!”

  “Good job,” Kenzie responded.

  “What’s the rest of it mean?”

  Kenzie focused. She didn’t like to do a snap analysis. But she had to, because she had to respond. “The question is how would they deliver it? How would CISU deliver the ransom money?” she told Alicia. “The answer is, they would wire it to the Out Islands Bank in the Cayman Islands. And there’s a key to the account number in the name.”

  “So, like a code,” Alicia responded.

  “That’s right.”

  “Maybe just the simple number code . . . A is one, B is two, and so on.”

  Crow came in. Kenzie glanced at him, and he met her eyes. Her heart skipped a beat. She refocused on the computer screen.

  “Look at this,” Alicia said, pointing to the message. “Any idea how we could decode it?”

  Crow reached for a notepad. “Let me try.”

  Kenzie took a deep breath. She had a decision to make. “Do you all think Big Dog should respond right away?”

  “If we do, he’ll know we’re monitoring it,” Alicia said.