Tears of the Shaman

by Rebecca Daniels

  Graywolf scanned the remaining contents in the folder rapidly, and finding nothing else of interest, tossed it back into the chest. He gazed around the room, trying to imagine Marissa Wakefield living there.

  “This is how you found the room?” he asked Mallory suddenly, spotting the thin, lacy nightie on the bed and the sheer lingerie spilling out from a drawer of the nightstand. “Just how your sister left it?”

  “Well, no,” Mallory said uneasily, following his line of vision. Marissa was as neat as a pin. Mallory was the one who left her things scattered everywhere. She rushed across the room and quickly began to tidy up, stuffing the clothing into the drawer and shutting it tight. “Actually, I’ve been staying here at the house.” She purposely kept her eyes diverted from his, feeling her cheeks fill with heat. “I’ve slept in here.”

  An image flashed instantly in Graywolf’s mind—one that had nothing to do with extrasensory powers or second sight. He saw Mallory on the bed, in the thin, translucent gown—her tall, slender body showing golden through a sea of white lace.

  His hands clutched into fists, and he quickly looked away. What was the matter with him? He didn’t want this woman—he didn’t even particularly like her. She was from a world that had no understanding of his, a culture that viewed the Indian as less than human.

  “There’s nothing more I can do here,” he said in a flat, unemotional voice. The small room had suddenly become stifling, suffocating. He needed air. He needed space. And he needed to be as far away from Mallory Wakefield as he could get.

  “So where do we go from here?” Mallory asked, following him out of the bedroom, through the living room and into the small foyer.

  “We don’t go anywhere,” he told her, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm in his voice. “I’m going to try and retrace your sister’s steps.”

  “But how can you trace her steps when we don’t know where she went?”

  At the door he stopped and turned to her. “We know she left work Friday afternoon, and she planned to go to the reservation Saturday morning to tutor. You found schoolbooks on the table from her classroom, so let’s assume she made it home from work. Her car is gone, so I’d be willing to bet she left for the reservation.”

  “So that’s where we’ll look? The reservation?”

  “And the route there.”

  Mallory thought for a moment. “That seems so easy.”

  “There’s a lot of highway between here and there,” he pointed out.

  “I’m going, too.”

  “I told you, not this time. I’ll keep you informed.”

  “Not good enough,” Mallory said, her hands resting defiantly at her hips. “I want to be there—with you. I want to help.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  Mallory glared up at him, biting back her frustration. Did he honestly think she could just sit back and do nothing? “I have to come with you.”

  “Where I’m going, you can’t come,” he insisted, reaching for the door.

  “But I have to.”

  He took a deep breath and regarded her for a moment. “Why don’t you just let me do the job you paid me for?”

  “I hired you to help me find my sister,” she pointed out. “Not to leave me behind.”

  “You’ll just get in the way.”

  Mallory grabbed his arm. “I don’t care. I’m going with you.”

  He saw the determination in her face, and the stubbornness and the fear. “Look,” he said, trying his best to be reasonable. “I don’t know exactly where I’m going, or what I’m going to find. I could be gone for a couple of hours, or days—sleeping on the ground, camping out. It wouldn’t be very pleasant.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mallory insisted. “I want to come with you.”

  “I work better alone,” he said, turning to leave.

  “Graywolf,” she whispered. “Please.”

  She didn’t touch him. She didn’t grab at him and try to force the issue. She didn’t rant or rave, or even stamp her foot. She simply looked up at him, her soft blue eyes filled with tears, her velvety voice barely above a murmur.

  Benjamin Graywolf hated himself just then, hated the fact that he reacted to her, hated the fact that she could get to him. He was Navajo, and he liked to think of himself as immune to the white man’s woman, especially after the way Susan had treated him. He’d convinced himself since leaving D.C. that he’d been inoculated against ever falling victim to the wiles of a white woman again.

  He glared down at Mallory. This woman was the epitome of what he didn’t want. And in that one, precise instant he knew he was in trouble—the worst kind of trouble he’d ever been in in his life.

  Chapter 4

  “What is it?” Mallory felt the Jeep begin to slow abruptly and she sat up in her seat.

  “There,” Graywolf said absently, pointing to a small stand of bent and withered cottonwoods off the road at the bottom of a small ravine.

  “Where?” Mallory said, her eyes frantically searching the brush. “I don’t see anything.”

  Graywolf pulled off the highway, bringing the Jeep to a stop. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen himself—a hint of color through the trees, a flash of light...a feeling. He opened the car door.

  “Stay here,” he ordered, stepping out onto the dry, hard ground.

  “But I want to go with you,” Mallory protested, but it was too late. Graywolf was already gone, carefully making his way toward the trees.

  He stopped suddenly, kneeling down to stare at the ground. It was hard and flat, but the carpet of dry dust that lay atop it was a mass of footprints and tire tracks. They were too tangled and too fragmented to be of any good, but it was obvious there had been some activity in the area recently.

  Rising slowly, he continued down the dusty ravine. As he drew closer to the trees, he saw patches of gray and faded blue through the brush. Clearing the undergrowth, he saw a worn and battered pickup, sitting deserted and alone—its doors open wide, and its hood up.

  Graywolf knelt again, surveying the lay of the land. Footprints were everywhere here, too, and a maze of tire tracks had left their intricate patterns in the dirt. It had rained in the area only three days before—just a drizzle, but enough to have left its mark in the dust.

  Graywolf studied the prints again. Most of them had been made since the rain, well after Marissa Wakefield had disappeared.

  “It’s a truck.”

  “I thought I’d told you to wait in the Jeep,” Graywolf said, annoyed. He stopped her from going any closer with a hand on her arm.

  “But how in the world did you ever see this from the highway?”

  Graywolf didn’t answer, just dropped his hold on her arm and walked slowly to the truck. He peered inside. Colorful wires dangled from beneath the dashboard, and an ugly, gaping hole was left where a radio had once been. Walking around the front end, Graywolf surveyed the engine compartment. It hadn’t fared much better. The battery was missing, the carburetor had been removed, and it looked as though the radiator had been used for target practice.

  “Do you think it was just abandoned here?” Mallory asked, peering over Graywolf’s shoulder into the pilfered engine compartment.

  “Or stolen,” Graywolf said, stepping away from her. Despite the fact that she was dressed in jeans and rugged hiking boots, he couldn’t seem to escape the smell of her perfume. He walked to the fuel tank, removed the cap and sniffed the rim. “Empty.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “Not much.”

  Mallory watched as he walked past the trees. He knelt down and studied the ground again, then climbed to the top of a huge boulder and stared out across the desert. She tried to follow his line of vision, scanning what she could see of the panorama, but saw nothing of any particular interest. What was he staring at? What did he see?

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, restless. He looked lost in thought, preoccupied, and she was reluctant to disturb him. Yet she
was curious. What was there about this old junk heap that had him so interested? Was there something here that could help them find Marissa, or was he just being a weirdo and acting strange?

  She watched him as he stood, his rugged profile showing dark and classic against the brilliance of the clear morning sky. He looked nothing like a lawyer now. He was pure Indian, a modern picture of the noble savage with his long hair flowing and wearing a weathered denim jacket and jeans.

  Yesterday, when he’d finally agreed to let her help with the search, she’d had no idea what she’d gotten herself into. He’d shown up at Marissa’s house this morning at dawn, his Jeep laden with bedrolls and supplies. He’d warned her that she would have to keep up, that he wasn’t going to allow her to slow him down or interfere in any way, and he’d lectured her long and hard that she was to do what he told her, and not argue.

  She’d climbed into his Jeep, feeling a little like a kid who’d been allowed to go with the adults for the first time, and they’d been driving in sullen silence ever since. He’d stopped at a number of small outposts since they’d left civilization and entered the vast expanse of desert—gas stations, modest café’s, small general stores—chatting with the owners, asking about Marissa, about her car and if they’d seen it. Mallory had dutifully waited in the Jeep at each stop, as he’d ordered, sitting on pins and needles until he’d returned. She would ask him excitedly if there was any news of her sister, but he would merely shake his head no. Saying that he’d spotted the abandoned truck was literally the first thing he’d said to her that wasn’t a terse, one-word order since leaving Sedona.

  She fidgeted with her hair, wishing he’d quit staring out into space and tell her what he was thinking. But he didn’t, he just stood and stared, and her impatience grew. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the waiting any longer, she started up the boulder after him.

  “So, what do you think?” she asked, trying again to see what it was he found so interesting out in the desert.

  He turned around and looked at her, trying not to notice how blue her eyes looked in the morning sun. He could see no trace of green in them now. “I think someone ran out of gas up there on the highway and left the truck.”

  Mallory glanced back at the pickup, trying to suppress her annoyance. Was that what he’d been thinking about all this time, that damn truck? “But if you’d just run out of gas, why would you walk away and leave it?” She turned around and looked up at him again. “Wouldn’t you want to come back for it?”

  “Of course you would. But not if somebody pushed it back here behind the trees and helped themselves to what they wanted.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  Graywolf turned back and gazed out across the desert. “Come here.”

  Mallory felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she climbed up to where he stood. “What?”

  “See that?” he asked, pointing in the distance.

  Mallory squinted in the direction he indicated. “I don’t see anything, except a dirt path of some kind.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  She looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”

  He turned back around and pointed to the ground near the pickup. “See where the tracks end, how different the ground looks.” Mallory nodded her head. “It rained three nights ago— nothing much, just a sprinkle. All those tracks by the truck have been made since the rain. But those.” He pointed again. “Those are tire tracks, made before the rain.” He turned his head to look at her. “I think they’re from your sister’s car.”

  Mallory felt a chill travel the length of her spine. “B-but how,” she stammered, astounded as to how he could have concluded such a thing. “Why? Why would Marissa leave the highway?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled, shaking his head. He pointed to the tracks, his finger following the two shallow ruts barely visible along the desert floor until they disappeared in the distance. “But we go that way.”

  She looked up at him, wondering at that moment if he were a mystic, or a madman. “How do you know? I mean, how could you possibly know?”

  He gazed down at her, skepticism clouding the blue of her eyes. “It just feels right.”

  * * *

  Mallory stared out the window at the endless horizon. She’d read about the vastness of the Southwest, seen pictures and watched movies. But none of those things came close to preparing her for the reality of it. The desert seemed to go on forever, mile after endless mile.

  They’d been driving for hours, and yet little had changed in the landscape. The mountains seemed permanently painted on the horizon, looming up out of the earth like jagged shadows against the sky. To her, the road had all but disappeared, but that didn’t seem to bother Graywolf. He was intent on its course. She began to wonder if their path was only visible to those gifted with a special sight to see it at all.

  The silence wore on her, drained her of her strength just as surely as if she’d been running the interminable miles through the desert. Add to that her overwhelming feelings of restlessness and uneasiness, and it did not make for a pleasant ride.

  There had been nothing to break the monotonous drone of the engine, nothing to interfere with the unchanging scenery and ever-constant sun. The slant of her shadow against the dashboard was the only testament she had to its fiery movement across the sky. Otherwise, the tedium might have convinced her she had happened upon a window in the cosmos, a place where time stood still and the moments stretched on into eternity.

  Graywolf seemed to have forgotten she was there at all. He sat almost perfectly still, making only those small movements that were needed to keep the Jeep on its route. His dark eyes stared out across the vastness of the desert, slightly squinted and seeming to concentrate on something that eluded her.

  Mallory stared at his profile, seeing an entire history in its classic facade. She thought again of the newspaper articles and tabloid accounts she’d read about him. The glaring headlines and tabloid sensationalism had fed on his Native American heritage and his “special” talents. They’d played up the fact that he was Navajo, blown out of proportion the fact that he was descended from a long tradition of shamans. The whole thing had been unfortunate, not only because they had fueled old stereotypes, but because it had taken attention from the real truth. Benjamin Graywolf had saved the life of a child. He had led police to the kidnappers and had found where they had buried their young hostage alive. He had been a true hero, and all the lurid headlines and crazy distortions had only served to overshadow his heroic actions.

  She studied him, trying to imagine what it was that went on in his head. What was behind those dark eyes and that angry scowl? What did he see when he looked at her? What kind of “feelings” did he have? Were they anything like the “vibes” she shared with Marissa, or could he see much more than that?

  She twisted uneasily in her seat, thinking of the rows of silver moons and stars in his workshop. It had never occurred to her before, but just what did he pick up from her? Were her thoughts her own, or could he tap into them, as well?

  “Didn’t your mother teach you it wasn’t polite to stare?”

  Mallory jumped violently, knocking her knee against the console. “I—I’m sorry,” she mumbled, rubbing at the painful spot. “I didn’t realize.”

  He looked at her. “Bored?”

  Her gaze collided with his. How had he known that? What else did he know? In a panic, she tried to remember what she’d been thinking. “How did you know?”

  He smiled, glancing back to the road. “We’ve been at this awhile. It wasn’t difficult to figure out.”

  “I haven’t complained, have I?” she asked, unable to hide the defensiveness in her voice.

  “No, you haven’t,” he admitted. He turned and looked at her again, a satisfied expression on his face.

  Mallory quickly looked away. His dark eyes made her uncomfortable, made her feel oddly exposed.

  “You know, you d
on’t have to worry,” he said, her uneasiness making him smile.

  She gave him a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t read minds.”

  She squinted skeptically. “Then how did you know what I was thinking?”

  He laughed out loud. “Lucky guess?”

  Mallory saw nothing amusing, and her eyes narrowed. “This is all pretty funny to you, isn’t it?” she said in a chilly voice, settling back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. “Just one big joke.”

  The smile faded slowly from his lips. “Is that what you think?”

  “You’re the mind reader,” she said caustically. “You tell me.”

  He gave her a cool look. If she thought she could bait him, she had another think coming. “I’m no mind reader.”

  “No? Then what is it with you?” she asked, glaring up at him. She was angry, but the fiery emotion felt good after so many long hours of unrelenting silence. “I mean, what are we doing out here? We’re in the middle of nowhere. What makes you think Marissa even came this way?”

  “I don’t know,” Graywolf admitted honestly, but purposely he kept a glib tone. He controlled his anger, held it inside. He refused to give in to it, refused to give her the satisfaction of knowing she could rankle him. Getting angry was only admitting that the woman mattered, and she didn’t—he wasn’t going to let her. He didn’t care about her, so what did he care what she thought? Let her believe he was a mind reader, a sideshow freak. What difference did it make to him? “A hunch?”

  Mallory closed her eyes, pulling in a shaky breath. What was she doing? She wanted to hate him for his flippancy, wanted to rage at him for not taking her seriously, but instead she let her anger fade. The fact was he did take her seriously—he was the only one who had. She wasn’t angry, she was frightened—frightened that they might not find Marissa, and frightened of what they might find if they did. She was scared and exhausted, and it felt as though they’d been driving forever.

  “I’m...” She shook her head, and looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why...” Her voice faded, and she shook her head again.