Graywolf looked away, turning his gaze back to the faint trail in the sand. He didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to see the fear and frustration in her eyes. He knew she was frightened for her sister, knew she was tired and uncomfortable from the long drive, and yet he’d been particularly hard on her today. He’d been angry at her for forcing the issue, angry at her for insisting on coming with him. But mostly he’d been angry at himself for giving in, for allowing her to come. He’d purposely pushed on, purposely kept on driving despite the fact that his muscles ached and his eyes burned with fatigue. He’d wanted to punish her, wanted to make sure it was unpleasant.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, feeling awkward and contrite. He slowly eased his foot off the gas pedal.
“Why are we stopping?” Mallory asked, sitting up suddenly. She glanced up at Graywolf. “Do you see something?”
Graywolf shook his head. “I could use a break,” he said, turning to her. “How about you?”
Mallory sighed, feeling almost giddy. “Yes,” she said, nodding with a small smile. “Oh, yes.”
Graywolf brought the Jeep to a stop in the meek shadow of a small cluster of dry, twisted brush. When he turned the key, the engine sputtered, then fell silent. He slowly opened the door, the creak of metal against metal sounding loud and intrusive in the sudden quiet of the desert. A flutter of wind rose up, sending a small cloud of dust flying, but the afternoon sun felt pleasant and warm.
Graywolf stepped out onto the dry, hard ground, and every muscle seemed to protest the move. After a few stiff steps, he turned to Mallory. “Little girl’s room is over there.”
He pointed to a small gully just beyond the road as he trotted off in the opposite direction. Mallory watched as he disappeared behind the brush, then stepped gingerly out of the Jeep.
She groaned as her sore muscles stretched and elongated, but it was such a sweet agony. Standing up, she was suddenly aware of just how heavily the cup of coffee she’d had hours earlier rested against her bladder, and she hobbled off in the direction he had indicated.
By the time she’d seen to her most immediate needs, the muscles in her legs felt almost normal again. She traversed the short distance back to the Jeep with a little jog. She slowed to a walk, however, when she spotted Graywolf, squatting in front of the Jeep and studying the rutted road before them.
“See anything?” she asked, walking up behind him.
He shook his head and rose to his feet. “Not really.”
She tried to read him, tried to decipher those dark eyes and that stern expression, but it was impossible. “Do...do you still think this is right? I mean, do you still think Marissa came this way?”
He turned and started back for the Jeep. “I think so.”
Mallory stared out across the endless expanse of desert and mountains. What would Marissa be doing out here? What would have caused her to come so far off the highway and into such a desolate wilderness—or whom?
A cold chill traveled down her spine, and she shivered violently. That awful panic threatened to seize her again, the terrible gut-wrenching fear that told her that her sister was in trouble and needed help. She struggled to bank it down, struggled to keep the lid on her fear.
She turned and glanced back at Graywolf, who was busy digging around in the supplies stored in the back of the Jeep. She hoped he was right about all this, hoped that this desolate trail to nowhere would eventually lead them to Marissa. But it all still seemed so crazy to her, it seemed to make no sense. Yet there was something about Benjamin Graywolf, something in his manner, something in his infuriating silence and guarded answers, that gave her assurance, that made her believe, and that made her trust him.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she watched him pull bedrolls and lanterns from the back of the truck.
“Setting up camp,” he said simply.
She blinked, surprised. “We’re staying here tonight?”
He tossed the bedrolls down. “I warned you we’d be roughing it.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” she said.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“No, n-nothing, no problem,” Mallory stammered. “It just seemed so...early.”
“Is it?” He glanced up at the sky. “It’s after four, and we’re going to lose the light soon.”
Mallory’s eyes widened and followed the line of his vision to the yellow sun hanging heavy in the sky. “That’s amazing. You can tell that just by looking at the sun?”
Graywolf looked back at her and smiled. “I can tell that from looking at my watch.”
Mallory’s shoulders dropped, and she gave him an apologetic look. “I guess that was pretty stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, lifting a duffel bag from the back of the Jeep.
“Do you get a lot of that?” she asked, thinking of the powwow and some of the issues she’d researched for the assignment. She picked up the bedrolls and began to slowly untie them. “Just because you’re an Indian, people expect you to have some kind of special kinship with the wilderness—attuned to nature, and all that stuff?”
“You get used to it,” he told her, lifting a small tent from the duffel bag and carefully unfolding it. “Unfortunately, most people’s image of us still comes from the old television stereotypes—war paint, feathers—stuff like that. You’d be surprised how many people ask if I wear a loincloth.”
She thought for a moment, thinking about the leather leggings he’d worn that first day they’d met. “Do you?”
He gave her a deliberate look, seeing in her face the impish smile of that ten-year-old in the picture that he’d taken from her room. “One correction, though. I’m Navajo.”
“What?”
“You called me an Indian. I’m Navajo.”
Mallory grimaced a little. “Indian is a mistake?”
He laughed, reaching for the tent poles and snapping them together. “Let’s just say it’s no longer politically correct.”
“I thought the politically correct term was Native American?”
“That’s acceptable,” he conceded. “But that covers a lot of territory—Hopi, Zuni, Cree, Apache, Comanche, Cherokee.”
“And you’re Navajo.”
Threading the poles through the loops on the tent, he smiled. “Now you’re getting it.”
“You know,” she mused, nosing through the box of canned goods he’d set out. “I’ve often wondered. If Columbus had thought he’d found...oh, I don’t know, say...China instead of a new route to India, would we have been calling you Chinese all this time?”
He laughed out loud. “Interesting concept. I guess I should be glad he didn’t think he’d stumbled across Turkey.”
She smiled. His joking, and the sound of his laughter, surprised her. He seemed so sober, almost too serious to find much of anything amusing, but obviously that wasn’t the case. She’d heard him laugh only once before, during that humiliating episode at Barney’s. But there had been nothing pleasant or humorous about the sound of his laughter then. It had just been a kind of mocking, sneering sound. This was entirely different. This sounded genuine, and real, and...warm.
“SpaghettiOs,” she shrieked, spotting the familiar colored can in the box and lifting it out. “I love these.”
“You’re kidding,” Graywolf said, glancing up from the tent and wishing now he’d paid more attention to what Hosteen Johnny had packed for supplies. He stared at her standing there, hair falling loose and free around her face and her eyes as dark as the sea. Again he saw traces of the child Mallory Wakefield had once been—animated and full of life. “What else is in there?”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head. “I was in a hurry last night. My grandfather packed the supplies.”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, searching through the carton again. “We have two cans of baked beans, three cans of fruit cocktail and...one, two, three, four, five corned beef hash.”
“And one
SpaghettiOs,” he added dryly.
“Dibs!” Mallory said, shooting him a quick smile.
“Be my guest,” he murmured, feeling strangely winded. A sudden, unpleasant tightness in his chest made it difficult to breathe, and he quickly looked away. He finished assembling the small tent and began searching the area for firewood.
The wind had come up, and despite the afternoon sun, there was a definite chill in the air. Mallory walked back to the Jeep and reached for a sweater. It was Marissa’s sweater—just like the jeans and the boots she wore. The early spring weather was mild and pleasant, but Graywolf had cautioned that the temperatures in the desert could fall rapidly at night and had insisted that she bring along warm clothes.
Slipping into the bulky, shawl-collared sweater and pulling it snugly around her, Mallory was glad now that she had. She turned around, staring at the small tent and wondering exactly what the sleeping arrangements were going to be. When she’d been safe in her sister’s house in Sedona, the idea of “roughing it” in the desert hadn’t sounded so bad. But standing here, with the shadows growing long and the cold wind buffeting her, it felt lonely and desolate.
She turned and watched as Graywolf arranged wood for a camp fire, a feeling of apprehension building in her stomach. Did he expect the two of them to sleep together in that tiny tent? It hardly seemed appropriate, and yet this wasn’t exactly the time or the place to be worried about propriety or appearance. She’d gone into this thing with her eyes open and, if the truth be known, if it meant saving her sister’s life, she was willing to deal with the devil.
Mallory studied Graywolf’s face, the setting sun throwing him into shadow and making him look ominous, almost sinister. Was he a devil—diabolic and dangerous? They were alone out here in the middle of nowhere, and whether she liked it or not she was at his mercy. If he decided to behave less than...honorably, she’d have her hands full trying to talk him out of it.
And yet he wouldn’t. She watched as he coaxed the camp fire to life, wondering again what it was that made her trust him. She was no closer to an answer now than she was that night at Barney’s, but it no longer mattered. She trusted Graywolf—with her chastity as well as her sister’s life.
She glanced back again to the small tent near the fire circle, and felt her apprehension increase. Still the thought of sharing the small enclosure with him made her uncomfortable. It seemed such an indelicate intimacy for two strangers.
Graywolf watched the tension stiffen her expression as she stared across their small encampment to the pup tent behind him. He knew very little about her—almost nothing outside her relationship with her sister. He knew she was a reporter, and that she was from D.C., but other than that, she’d said very little about herself.
Looking at the small tent with the bedroll inside, was she fighting some of her own stereotypes now? Was she wondering just how much “savage” was left in him? A part of him wanted to shock her, wanted to shake her up and disturb her the way she disturbed him, but that only made him think about that stupid stunt of his at Barney’s. He remembered the fear in her eyes then, and the vulnerability.
“You might want to get a jacket,” he said, arranging a large piece of manzanita in the flames. “The temperature’s dropping pretty quick.”
Mallory nodded with a shiver, walking back again to the Jeep and finding Marissa’s heavy down jacket. She slipped it on over the sweater, immediately feeling its protection from the cold gusts of wind. The sun was disappearing quickly, and the sky was streaked dark with burgundy and purple. She walked back to the fire, thinking of Marissa, and wondered if she were cold right now. Mallory hugged the jacket to her, wishing her sister had the jacket with her—wherever she might be.
“You’re thinking of your sister,” Graywolf said quietly, recognizing the strain on her face.
She looked up at him suspiciously. “How...did you know?”
He smiled. “Relax. I told you, I don’t read minds.” He poked at the fire. “Lucky guess, that’s all.”
“Well, I almost wish you could,” she said with a heavy sigh, lowering herself to the ground and sitting before the fire, Indian-style. “Then you could tell me where she is, tell me what she’s thinking and why she can’t come back.” She brushed a hand along her warm down jacket. “This is hers. I was thinking that if she is out there somewhere...” She stopped and gestured to the darkening horizon, blinking back tears. “Is she cold? Is she hungry?”
Graywolf didn’t have to feel her pain, he could see it in every move that she made. “You and your sister have something special between you. It’s easy to see.” She looked up, gazing at him from across the camp fire. “Relax for a minute,” he said. “Close your eyes and concentrate. Think about Marissa. Focus all your thoughts on her. What do you feel?”
Something in his quiet tone touched her, made her think he understood. She felt awkward and self-conscious, but she took a breath and closed her eyes. She tried to block out the wind, block out the desert and all the questions and fears she had. She thought of Marissa—of her smiling face, of the places they’d gone together, of the things they’d done as kids.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, lost in her thoughts. She forgot about the tears that stung her eyes, about the darkness that surrounded their small camp. She’d been completely absorbed in thoughts of her sister, and of the two of them together. But the touch of Graywolf’s hand on her shoulder sent her thoughts scattering, and reality came rushing back.
“You okay?” Graywolf asked, kneeling down beside her.
She blinked, shaking off a moment of confusion. “I—I’m fine.” She looked into his dark eyes, seeing the light of the fire reflected in them. “It’s unbelievable. I feel...I feel as though she’s afraid.” In her excitement, she reached out and touched his arm. “But I think she’s okay. Mostly there’s a lot of tension, a lot of frustration and anxiety. She needs help. I know it, I can feel it, but I don’t think she’s badly hurt.”
Graywolf looked at her, watching some of the tension and worry slip from her beautiful face. He shook his head slowly, a slow smile stretching across his face. “Amazing.”
Mallory’s mind reeled with the experience. She glanced down, seeing her hand on his arm, and felt a pressure building in her chest. He was so close, and it was so dark and quiet in the desert. He didn’t look nearly so threatening now, his black eyes not nearly so cold and unfeeling. In the firelight, his dark skin glowed, and the pressure grew in her chest when she thought of his skin touching hers.
“Is that how it is for you?” she murmured, awkwardly moving her hand away.
She looked soft, almost guileless in the faint light, and he felt himself grow uneasy. It had been amazing to watch her, to watch the play of emotions cross her face as she “tuned in” to her sister. He’d felt like a voyeur, like he was watching something very private, very personal—pure love in action.
It was so different with him—his visions and intuitions came in disjointed, unconnected bursts. For so much of his life he’d tried to ignore what it was he felt, to disregard and overlook his hunches and feelings. For a time, when he’d believed his life was with Susan and as far from the reservation as he could get, he’d thought he might actually be able to bury all those feelings and instincts for good. But then, that had been before that awful night in D.C., and the suffocating feeling of being buried alive.
“Not really,” he said, slowly coming to his feet and reaching for another piece of wood for the fire. He stood and stared down into the flames. “It’s more like premonitions, forewarnings.” He shrugged carelessly, tossing a twig into the fire. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it much.”
She watched his eyes in the firelight, watched them shadow and grow wary. “Is that the way it happened with the boy?”
Chapter 5
His entire body went cold, despite the warmth of the fire. “You know about that?”
“I read something about it,” she lied, thinking of the stack of p
apers Glen had faxed to her only the morning before.
“That’s right, you’re a reporter,” he said, making it sound more like an accusation than a simple fact. “I forgot. Tell me, which angle did you take—the mysterious medicine man, or the savage soothsayer?”
“I never reported on the story,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t even in D.C. when it happened.”
“But it’s what brought you looking for me,” he said, wondering which of the sensationalized headlines had gotten to her.
“I came looking for you because Sam Begay was the only person who was willing to listen, and he told me you might be able to help.”
“Well don’t expect any magic,” he told her caustically. “I don’t have a crystal ball.”
Mallory just sat and looked up at him. His face was rigid with anger. It was hard to imagine this was the same man who only moments ago had looked at her with such compassion, such emotion. “All I asked for was help.”
Graywolf closed his eyes, knowing he was overreacting, knowing he was taking out his anger on her. He’d never talked about whatever it was that gave him his insights and visions. It was a very private thing, something not everyone understood, or accepted. He’d preferred to keep it to himself, especially after what had happened in D.C. Except for the police, he’d never talked to anyone about what had happened then—no one except Susan. He’d confided in her because he’d trusted her, because he thought she loved him, and would understand how personal it was for him. Alone in their bed when he’d confessed to her in the darkness the truth about his visions, he’d never expected to see his own words spread out across the tabloid press two days later.
He could almost have forgiven Susan her vanity and poor judgment, for getting caught up in the moment and succumbing to the temptation and attention of the media. She hadn’t taken any of what he’d told her seriously. Talking to the press had been little more than a lark, a hoot, a joke. But what he hadn’t been able to forgive was the betrayal. He’d trusted her with his deepest secrets, and she’d let him down.
Tears of the Shaman Page 6