by Kylie Brant
The Last Warrior
Kylie Brant
Tribal police investigator Joe Youngblood had the heart of an ancient warrior and the raw beauty of the Navajo Nations land he called home. And to photojournalist Delaney Carson, he was more of a threat than the flashback-induced nightmares of Iraqi gunfire and dying colleagues that had ruled her life for the past two years-or the unknown assailant who wanted to silence her.
Because Joe Youngblood made her believe in tomorrow. And forever. Most frightening of all, he made her believe in love.
Kylie Brant
The Last Warrior
© 2006
For my first grandbaby, Rylan Jace, who already holds my heart in his sweet little hands.
Acknowledgements:
Special thanks go to Norman Koren, photographer extraordinaire, who is always endlessly patient with the photography-challenged; and to Larry DiLucchio, for his wonderfully factual Web site, and his generosity of time in answering questions about Navajo culture. Any errors in the story are undoubtedly due to my not asking the right questions!
Chapter 1
“You need to get laid.”
Joe Youngblood shot a narrowed look at Arnie Benally as they crossed the Navajo Tribal Police parking lot toward their cars. Correctly interpreting the danger in his colleague’s glare, Arnie held up his hand placatingly. “Okay, hear me out. All I’m saying is this whole disagreement with your grandfather isn’t like you. Most of us don’t like the Tribal Council’s decision to bring in a belagana to write this book on Navajo culture, but is it really worth being at odds with Charley over? You have different opinions. End of story.”
“And this involves a woman…how?”
“You’re too tightly wound, man.” They paused beside Joe’s unmarked blue Jeep, and Arnie winked. “What you need is a night of hot, mind-numbing sex with some sweet young thing to clear your head. Sex relieves stress. There’s research.”
“That’s charming,” Joe said drily. He dug in the pocket of his jeans for the keys. “Now I can see how you convinced Brenda to marry you. You’ve got the heart of a poet.”
“Brenda would agree with me.” But Arnie cast a quick glance over his shoulder, as if half expecting to see his short plump wife behind him. “She’s even mentioned fixing you up sometime. She’s got a friend who’s…” Meeting Joe’s gaze again, his words trailed off.
But the only sign of Joe’s temper was the tightness with which he clenched the keys in his fist. His voice when he spoke was mild. “I’m capable of finding my own woman. And I’ll take your other suggestion…under advisement.”
“Sure.” Arnie shrugged, and started edging toward his own vehicle. “I-we-just want the best for you, Joe. You know.”
“Yeah. I know.” Opening the driver’s door of his Jeep, Joe slid inside. He slammed the door with a bit more force than necessary, but he wasn’t really angry with Arnie. They’d known each other too long to stay annoyed every time the other man’s mouth ran ahead of his brain.
But the thought of anyone, even his friends, discussing his private life made Joe wince. His separation last year had started the public speculation; the final divorce decree four months ago had fueled it. The Navajo Nation lands encompassed an area the size of West Virginia. But its grapevine was as reliable as Mayberry’s.
He started the car and drove off the lot. He wondered if it was the gossip that had driven Heather, his ex, to move out of Tuba City a few weeks ago. But such conjecture was useless. If he hadn’t been able to figure out what she was thinking in the last few months of their marriage, he sure wasn’t going to be any more successful now. He was long past the point of caring, at any rate.
The only thing he did care about was that she’d taken his son with her.
The familiar burn settled in his chest, spreading. Having joint custody abruptly reduced to every other weekend wasn’t something he planned on accepting. But until the new hearing date arrived, Heather had effectively limited his options.
He smiled grimly, remembering Arnie’s earlier words. The man had been correct about one thing. It was time to make peace with his grandfather. Their relationship had always been too close to let a minor disagreement come between them.
But as for the rest of Arnie’s advice…Joe shook his head. It was a female who’d caused all his problems. The last thing he needed was another woman in his life. For any reason.
It was nearly dusk when Joe pulled up to his grandfather’s log hogan just outside Tuba City. Noticing the single light on inside, he abruptly remembered that tonight was Monday, Charley Youngblood’s poker night. If Joe’s grandfather followed his usual routine, he wouldn’t be back until nearly midnight, after doing his best to fleece those he called his closest friends. Joe may as well head for home. Fence-mending was going to have to wait until tomorrow.
But as he drove away, Joe found the thought of home particularly unappealing. The house always seemed emptier following one of his weekends with Jonny. It seemed filled with the hollow echoes of his son’s voice. His constant questions. His high-pitched squeals and shouts of triumph when he beat Joe, as he was all too apt to do, in a video game. The clever arguments he came up with to avoid bedtime, which showed a devious ingenuity beyond his five years.
Those echoes could ambush a man when exhaustion had lowered his defenses. Could play on his deepest fears and fan them into full-blown panic. Joe wasn’t going to be a weekend father permanently. Some days, clinging to that belief was the only thing that kept him sane.
But it was the threat of those echoes that now had him avoiding home. Rather than taking the turn that would eventually carry him to his house, he veered west, deliberately blanking his mind.
He and Arnie, part of a multiagency task force, were close to an arrest in the crystal meth case they were working and they’d worked later than usual. Dusk was already settling over the area, constructing shadows out of the cottonwoods and juniper trees that posted sentry in the vast space between houses. Housing developments were becoming more common on Navajo lands, but many of the people, including himself, valued a more isolated existence.
He drove nearly ten minutes without passing another vehicle. Lights winked in the distance, and he frowned, slowing. Charley Youngblood owned a handful of rental properties in and around Tuba City. The place ahead belonged to Charley, but Joe knew that it should have been empty. He’d personally escorted the former tenants off the property himself after they’d failed for months to pay rent.
His grandfather had a weakness for sob stories and false promises, but after twelve years on the job, Joe was far more cynical. Either the former tenants had sneaked back in or someone else had decided to take advantage of a vacant building in a remote area.
Joe eased off the road several hundred yards from the house, and cut the lights. Switching off the ignition, he got out and jogged up to the property. There wasn’t a vehicle out front, so he continued around the house. He didn’t find one in back, either.
Silently climbing the porch steps, he peered in the window. He had a partial view into the kitchen, which appeared empty.
Retracing his steps, he circled around the front and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he pounded again, this time with restrained force.
Still no answer.
Joe smiled grimly. If the unlawful occupant inside meant to ignore him, he or she had a very big surprise in store for them. He reached up for the porch roof overhang. Finding the extra key always kept there, within moments he had the door swinging open.
Delaney Carson was lost in a world of her own making, seventies rock screaming through the headphones of her iPod, a computer screen full of images, and her mind flooded with half-formed ideas. Each new project was like this, an exciting, gut-
clenching anticipation of possibilities. But this one represented her return to the land of the living, after existing for far too long in a self-induced numbed haze.
After two years, it was about damn time.
She’d been afraid accepting the job would be a mistake. That she wasn’t ready. Or capable. A myriad of fears had festered in the last twenty-four months, sly fingers of torment that clawed through every ounce of confidence. She hadn’t conquered all the fears, but she’d conquered the addiction that fed them, and she wanted-needed-to step forward. This had been the step she’d chosen.
The memory card on her digital camera had been full by the time she arrived, and it was those images she sorted through now, already considering a possible organizational format for the book.
Sting was pleading with Roxanne as Delaney peered more closely at the screen. Since her hips were firmly planted in the chair, she moved her shoulders in rhythm to the music as she selected and docked photos. Pursing her lips, she was considering whether to trash a photo with poor light quality when she found herself in the dark. Literally.
Force of habit had her pressing the save command on the computer, heaving a sigh of relief when it did so successfully. Obviously the electricity wasn’t off. Maybe the overhead bulb needed to be replaced. She pushed her chair back and rose, half turning toward the door. Then jumped back, her heart slamming into her throat.
Looming in the doorway of her makeshift office was the shadow of a man. Big. Broad. Powerful. Her mind made the observations in short staccato succession. But it was the gun nestled beneath one muscled bicep that held her attention.
Oh, God. She ripped off the headphones, stumbling a little as she backed away, stopped short by the desk. Her hands searched the surface behind her as she tried to recall if she’d unpacked anything that could be used as a weapon. With a sinking feeling she realized just as quickly that she’d focused on getting her computer and equipment up and running. Her cameras unloaded. Although a knife or pickax would come in handy right now, the most lethal thing on her desk was a bundle of unsharpened pencils.
“You’re in the wrong house,” she said clearly, as she inched her way along the desk. Her camera tripods were in the corner. Short of heaving the computer monitor at him, they were the heaviest objects in the room. Maybe she could hit him with one and bolt through the doorway.
Maybe he’d shoot her before she lifted a finger.
“Are you drunk? Lost?” She prayed her desperation didn’t sound in her voice. Rivers of fear snaked down her spine to pool at the base. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Shrouded in shadows, he appeared only half-human. “You’ll have to leave. You don’t belong here.”
“Now that’s real funny.” His humorless words could have been chipped from ice. “That’s exactly what I was going to say to you.”
He flipped the switch and the room was flooded with light. Her concentration abruptly splintered. The music pouring through her headphones had masked his entrance, so he’d gotten her attention the only way he could. On the heels of that realization came another: the light did little to allay her fear.
He was dressed in jeans, a snug navy T-shirt, boots and an attitude. His eyes were very nearly as black as his hair. Penetrating. Merciless. His expression was as unyielding as the sandstone bluffs that dotted the desert.
She’d been to more of the world’s trouble spots than she liked to recall. Had photographed wild-eyed fanatics, zealots willing to die for a cause, power-hungry warlords. None of those men had scared her as much as the one standing in front of her. She’d known what motivated them, and the lengths they’d go to get it.
It was impossible to tell what this man was capable of.
Recognition of that fact had her moving again. Gracelessly she stumbled toward the corner, grasped the sturdiest of the tripods and hefted it threateningly. “Get out.” Panic morphed abruptly to anger. She’d spent too much time in the last two years being afraid. And she wasn’t going to give him that kind of control over her. “Unless you want to be nursing a smashed skull, get the hell out of here. Now.”
His gaze lingered on the puny weapon she was wielding, flicked to the corner, then to the heap of camera cases piled next to the desk. Taking two long strides to the computer, he stared hard at the images on the screen.
His voice was as sharp as a rifle shot. “You’re Delaney Carson.”
The words were couched as an accusation. His glare was condemning. Neither was reassuring enough to make Delaney set down her makeshift weapon. She shifted her stance, readiness in every muscle. “More to the point, who are you? And what are you doing in my house?”
His lips twisted. “You mean my grandfather’s house, don’t you? Charley Youngblood?”
He didn’t look much like the tribal elder who had picked her up at the Tuba City airport that afternoon. But then, that man had at least five decades on the one standing in front of her. That man had been reserved but charming. That man hadn’t worn a gun.
“Let’s see some ID.”
“Grandfather never mentioned that you’d be staying here.”
It wasn’t an apology. Not even close. It barely qualified as an explanation. The tripod was starting to get heavy, so she repositioned it and repeated firmly, “ID.”
His hand went to his hip pocket. Extracting a slim leather case, he flipped it open and held it out to her. She had to inch closer to read the name above the unsmiling picture that was an accurate depiction of the man before her. But it was the gold star below the photo that captured her attention.
“Criminal Investigation?” Giving this man-Joseph Youngblood-a shield and a gun had to be redundant. He exuded threat without either. “What are you investigating?”
“My grandfather never told me he’d be putting you up. I saw the light and thought there might be trouble. It’s isolated out here.” He tucked away the ID and in one continuous movement reached out to take the tripod away from her. Striding over to the corner, he rested it against the others before returning to survey her from the doorway.
Neither of them spoke. It was all she could do to keep from fidgeting under his impassive stare. Delaney was all too aware of her bare feet, the brief shorts and top she’d changed into after she’d showered. The shirt’s narrow straps hadn’t allowed for a bra, and that had been fine with her. The temperature had neared one hundred that afternoon, and she hadn’t planned on seeing anyone this evening. But now she felt naked, exposed in a way that had her skin tingling and her pulse chugging. She was at a distinct disadvantage, and the sensation was unwelcome.
“Unless you’re planning to charge me with unlawfully accepting a place to live, you’re done here, aren’t you?”
He leaned one shoulder against the door frame, folded his arms across his very impressive chest. “Am I?”
She measured the space between him and the doorway with her gaze. The only way through was to squeeze by all that hard sinew and smoldering animosity. Deciding to stay put, she backed up to rest a hip against the desk corner. “How’d you get in?”
He held out a key. “We keep a spare outside. You’ll want to put it somewhere safe. This place doesn’t have more than a standard dead bolt to secure the doors and like I said, it’s pretty isolated.”
“I like isolated.” But she took the key and slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. “I’ll be fine.”
“There wasn’t a vehicle out front. Or in back.”
Her gaze narrowed as comprehension dawned. “How long were you lurking around outside before you decided to invite yourself into the house?”
He didn’t answer her question, a fact that didn’t escape her. “I knocked. But you wouldn’t have noticed if I’d driven a truck through the place with those things on.” He pursed his lips, twisted them to the side in the direction of her discarded headphones, an act she’d already learned was uniquely Native American. The gesture drew her attention to his mouth, to the chiseled lips and the uncompromising chin, and a crazy little spiral of heat a
rrowed through her.
Delaney placed her hands on the desk on either side of her hips and clutched the surface, hard. If this was her long-dormant femininity stirring awake, it had lousy timing. And taste in men.
Navajo Nation President Frank Taos had warned her when she’d agreed to this project that some tribal members were opposed to her hiring. It went without saying that Joseph Youngblood was one of them. He couldn’t have made it more obvious that he didn’t want her here.
“So what are you going to do about that?”
She blinked. “What?”
“You’re going to need a vehicle to get around in, aren’t you?”
Oh. That. She moistened her lips. “I’ve got a dealership delivering an SUV tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
He lifted a brow sardonically. Considering it was the first real emotion she’d read on his face, it was too bad it made her want to smack him.
“Okay, so you waltzed in here unnoticed,” she conceded. “But unless you have more keys stashed outside, I should be safe now.”
He said nothing, just surveyed her with an implacable stare that had heat crawling across her skin. After a long moment he gave a curt nod. “Lock the door after me.” And with a few long strides he was gone, the door closing quietly behind him.
She let out a slow shaky breath. Movements strangely wooden, she lurched to the door to lock it and secure the dead bolt.
She turned back to the small living area. The whole episode had rattled her. She could admit that without feeling weak. But there was a lingering sense of vulnerability that was as unwelcome as the man who’d just left. And that wasn’t acceptable at all.
Delaney rubbed her arms with her hands, resolutely heading back to the office. It wasn’t Youngblood’s hostility that bothered her. She’d been covering bloody conflicts in countries all over the world for far too long to shy away from one man’s displeasure. It was Youngblood himself that gave her pause.