Follow the Sun

by Deborah Smith

  James eyed his partner warily. “Like the time you left me in the girls’ dorm with thirty pairs of panties stuffed under my shirt?”

  “Hah. We’re gonna trap us some carpenter ants of the human variety. And we’re gonna put their carpenter-ant butts in the D.C. pokey.”

  James propped his feet on Stephen’s custom-made teakwòod desk and sipped a glass of brandy. “Does this have anything to do with the property downtown?”

  “Our lovely block of vacant lot, yessir. I got me a tip from an inside source. Gonna have a carpenter-ant problem there tonight.”

  “Same kind as before?”

  “Ants named Nemesis. Yessir.”

  James frowned into his glass. Nemesis was a coalition of architecture students who sneaked onto downtown property to build huts for homeless people. They had a slick game plan: in twenty minutes they could erect a cozy ten-by-ten hut complete with window and door.

  The huts gave shelter and security to the saddest of the homeless cases—chronic outcasts who’d fallen through the cracks of the system—and Nemesis thumbed its collective nose at that system for being so heartless. He’d approved of the gang’s tactics as long as it built huts on public property, but when the members grew bold about trespassing on private lots he lost sympathy.

  “What’s the deal tonight?” he asked.

  Stephen chortled. “Gonna hide and wait, pal. Got me some private security boys lined up. I’m goin’ along for the excitement. Thought you’d like to come too.”

  “What the hell. Sure.”

  James downed his brandy. What the hell. He had a limited amount of sympathy to go around, and he saved it for his own kind.

  THE FIRST HUT went up without incident. Twenty well-coordinated gang members, wearing dark clothes and ski masks, hammered and sawed, and christened the tiny dwelling with their victory cry, “Home, Sweet Home!”

  Erica tugged at her hot, itchy mask and almost decided to pull it off—after all, Nemesis had been building huts for a year now without ever being caught. It was two A.M. and this part of D.C. wasn’t exactly hopping with people.

  But caution made her keep the mask in place, so she wiped sweaty palms on the legs of her overalls, rolled up the black sleeves of her work shirt, and helped hoist a prebuilt base into place for the second hut.

  Suddenly the group was flooded by blinding light. “Do not move,” a voice boomed over a speaker. “You are trespassing on and defacing private property. The police have been called. You are surrounded by security guards from Stephen B. Murray Developers. Do not move.”

  For a second there was tense stillness. Then T.K. yelled, “Plan B!”

  Everyone dropped everything and scattered wildly. Erica raced into the darkness and dodged two uniformed guards of rather tubby proportions. Her heart threatened to knock a dent in her chest.

  Erica Alice Gallatin, fugitive. Oh, Lord. First the incident with James Tall Wolf, and now this. Her staid self-image had undergone some bizarre changes in the past two days.

  “Get the tall guy!” someone yelled. “He’s heading for the street!”

  Tall guy heading for the street? Erica faltered. They were after her.

  She quickly recouped and ran faster, glad that she’d been a distance runner on the women’s track team at Georgia Tech. The way adrenaline was pouring into her blood just then, she thought she’d come to a halt somewhere around Vermont.

  She hit the two-lane street and aimed for an alley on the opposite side. If she were lucky it wouldn’t be a dead end.

  But then she heard feet on the pavement behind her, closing fast and taking long, forceful strides that made the patter of her own feet sound childish.

  Frantic, Erica zipped into the alley, jumped a low pile of paint cans, and tripped on a soggy cardboard box, Who had they sent after her—the Incredible Hulk? The thing was right behind her, and suddenly it pounced.

  She thought her back would break as two big hands grabbed her waist. Smashing into another stack of boxes, she fell on her stomach, with the thing on top of her.

  Her breath exploded in a pained yelp. Erica imagined two popped balloons where her lungs had been; she figured her breasts looked like fried eggs.

  She couldn’t move; she couldn’t inhale; she gasped like a beached fish as the thing rolled off her and took her wrists in an iron grip.

  The thing had a voice. “Sorry it had to be this way,” it said, breathing with disgusting ease. “I didn’t want to tackle you, but you’ve got a helluva stride. Get up on your knees, kid, and puke if you need to.”

  She managed to get her knees under her and crouched amidst the boxes, coughing. He—it—patted her shoulder. “Okay, kid?”

  Erica nodded. The thing clamped a hand on the back of her overalls and helped her up. Her ski mask was askew, and she weakly tugged it back into place.

  The thing snorted. “No need to keep the yarn face, kid.”

  He was laughing at her, and she suddenly realized that she had a lot more aggression in her Boston-bred soul than she’d realized. Erica lifted her head and croaked, “Kiss—”

  The thing was. James Tall Wolf.

  SHE SAT IN a circle of her comrades, her arms locked with theirs, bathed in the lights of the television crews that had just arrived.

  Erica’s stomach felt like a knotted rope. Someone had not only squealed on Nemesis to Stephen Murray and associate—the victorious James Tall Wolf, who now stood on the perimeter, watching nonchalantly—but someone had also called the media. She suspected T.K., who was a known glory hound.

  “Keep your masks on,” T.K. called. “And go limp when they try to carry you off the lot! It’s an old protest technique.”

  Erica peered out of her ski mask at Tall Wolf and was extremely glad that he didn’t know whom he’d captured so easily. Anger tore at her. A man with his heritage ought to be sensitive to human suffering, yet he just stood there heartlessly, his expression shuttered.

  She heard shouts of anger and jerked her head to the left. A tall, craggy-faced blond man in chinos and a sports shirt was moving along the circle of gang members, grinning merrily and pulling their masks off. He jauntily tossed each mask over his shoulder.

  “Lookee here,” he drawled. “Carpenter ants, Lord have mercy. Boys and girls. Right ugly bunch.”

  “Don’t unlock your arms!” T.K. shouted. “Murray, you’re an SOB.”

  “Been called that so much, I had it embossed on my checks.”

  Erica and her neighbors locked arms more tightly as Murray continued removing ski masks. She glared at James, whose troubled expression showed that he either had indigestion or didn’t like what his partner was doing. Probably had indigestion.

  “Whoo, here’s a big ol’ skinny ant,” Murray said when he got to her.

  The humiliation was too much for Erica. She was already a criminal, so she might as well go all the way, she decided. When Stephen Murray grabbed her ski mask, she kicked him in the shins with the hard-soled heels of her work boots.

  “A fighter!” He grunted in pain and stumbled back, his mouth open in shock, her ski mask hanging in his hand. “A she-fighter!”

  Erica glared up at him and shook her matted hair free. “Touch me again and I’ll kick you so hard, your knees will bend in the opposite direction.”

  James ran over and halted by his injured partner. He stared down at her in astonishment. “You.”

  “You,” she muttered back.

  He dropped to his heels in front of her, his eyes riveted to her face. Erica felt the color rise in her cheeks as she gazed at him, resenting his easy power and the way the television lights shimmered around him like a silver aura.

  He shook his head. “You wasted time and resources tonight. Are you hurt?”

  His concern caught her by surprise. “What?”

  “Did I hurt you in the alley?”

  “Ah. Yes!”

  He rammed a hand through his hair. “Dammit, I thought Nemesis was a bunch of young college guys.”

&nb
sp; “No, we old alumni women take part too.”

  He gazed at her as if meeting her anew. “You don’t look like the type.”

  She looked at him reproachfully. “Frumpy women, unite.”

  His expression hardened. “Be nice to me and I’ll keep you out of jail.”

  “Forget it.”

  Police officers moved in then. James rose and stepped back, where Stephen Murray stood eyeing the group balefully, and her in particular.

  “Have fun, y’all,” Murray said in disgust. He turned and limped past James toward a limousine waiting on the street. “You need a lift back to the hotel, Jim?”

  “In a second.”

  Burly policemen grabbed Erica’s neighbors and dragged them away from her. “Passive resistance,” T.K. yelled. Erica kept her solemn gaze directly on James Tall Wolf’s frowning face.

  “Get up, ma’am,” an officer told her. Erica glanced around. Members of Nemesis were being forced to their feet.

  “No.”

  “Ma’am, if you don’t get up voluntarily I’ll have to make you get up.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Thick fingers dug into the pressure point on one side of her neck. Sharp pain zigzagged down her back, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  Erica couldn’t help biting her lip when the officer twisted her arm behind her and pushed upward. “No,” she said raspily.

  “Get up, ma’am.” He began pulling her up by her twisted arm. The pain made her back arch, but she refused to give in.

  Two new hands latched under her armpits and lifted her to her feet. “Stop it,” James said in a low, growling tone.

  Startled, she stared up into his eyes. “This is my fight.”

  “I’ll handle this, sir,” the officer interjected tautly. “Walk, ma’am.”

  “Don’t do it, Ricky!” T.K. called.

  Erica cried out without meaning to when the officer pinched her neck harder.

  “Let her go,” James said abruptly.

  She gazed at him in astonishment. “Mr. Tall Wolf—”

  “She’s in custody,” the officer warned him. He twisted her arm. “Walk.”

  “You’re hurting her. That’s not necessary.”

  The officer was angry now. “Back off, sir.” He called over his shoulder. “Reece, gimme some help here!” Another officer trotted over. “Grab her legs.”

  Erica fumed helplessly as the two officers carried her to the van like a human hammock. She looked at James with a mixture of anger and gratitude. She wouldn’t have been caught if it hadn’t been for him and his superjock speed, but if anything could have made her cry just then, it would have been his unexpected concern.

  And she was shocked when an officer pushed him but he refused to move. He stood with his fists clenched, his mouth a grim line, his dark eyes watching her until the door of the police van closed her away from his sight.

  THE MEDIA LOVED the colorful, combative Nemesis Gang. Local television stations gave big coverage to the arrests on their early-morning newscasts. Erica only heard about them because she didn’t get up until nine. She’d left the D.C. jail at four A.M.

  Gritty-eyed, she drove to a residential site to meet with her carpentry crew. Then she called the office to check for messages.

  “Call George Gibson,” Marie said in a troubled tone. “He’s upset about the Nemesis thing.”

  Erica waited until she got back to the office. Then, her mouth dry, she phoned the developer, one of the most prestigious in the D.C. area. Ten minutes later she walked into the spartan room that served as Marie’s office and the company’s reception area.

  Erica sat down and stared numbly at the floor. “He withdrew the contract.”

  Marie groaned sympathetically. “Oh, Ricky, no.”

  “I was supposed to sign it tomorrow. Five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of business down the drain. Two houses in the best new development in D.C.” Erica swallowed hard. “We would have grossed over a million dollars this year.”

  “We’ll do it next year, boss.”

  “Gibson detests Nemesis. Of course, he didn’t know I was a member until he saw the newspaper this morning.”

  “And your response was—”

  “Sorry you feel that way, Georgie. Go hire a builder who’ll let you run her private life.”

  “Oh, boss, I’m proud of you.”

  “Work’s going to be kind of sparse around here for a month or two.”

  “Why don’t you take a vacation? You haven’t had one in years. You’ve got a good office manager and a good construction foreman. The jobs we’re working on now don’t need your supervision.”

  Erica leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes. Idly she fiddled with the gold medallion hanging around her neck. For some reason she’d felt compelled to put Dove Gallatin’s gift on a chain and wear it that morning.

  Gallatins. Cherokees. James Tall Wolf. If it hadn’t been for him she would have escaped last night. It was his fault she’d lost half a million dollars that day.

  He’d said she didn’t know anything about being a Cherokee. Well, she’d learn, and she’d be a better Cherokee than he was.

  Erica stood up, filled with grim resolve. “Marie, get me a plane ticket to North Carolina.”

  “What’s in North Carolina?”

  Erica lifted the medallion and looked at it thoughtfully. “My tribe.”

  CHAPTER 3

  ERICA HADN’T HAD a clear-cut mental image of Dove Gallatin’s house; she had even wondered if Dove had a house, because Dove’s lawyer, T. Lucas Brown, hadn’t mentioned a home or personal belongings in the will.

  But here it was, perched halfway up a mountain in a little grove of oaks and maples, a small log-and-clapboard structure with a front porch so big that it looked like a jutting chin on an otherwise well-proportioned face.

  She left her rental car under an enormous oak in the yard and walked around, eyeing the weedy ground for snakes. There was an old barn nearby, still in good condition; there was a concrete pad where a fuel-oil tank had once sat; there was an overgrown garden plot and a black mound, where decades of household trash had been burned.

  The home’s windows and doors were boarded over with new two-by-sixes; whoever had done the care-taking had wanted to make certain no one got inside. But the place looked solid enough to withstand almost anything; and that fact alone made her like it immediately.

  Erica discovered a small back porch with a concrete well in one corner. The well was boarded over, but an old electric pump was still in place atop it. Charmed, she studied it with an engineer’s interest in quaint gadgets.

  Then she returned to the big front porch and stood gazing in awe at a panorama of rounded blue-green mountains so vibrant that a painter might have just finished giving them their spring coat. Delicate white clouds hugged the tops of the taller ones, and low in the valleys a late-afternoon fog was already gathering.

  Erica shivered with delight. She understood now why these were called the Smokies: Mists shrouded them as if preserving ancient secrets. These mountains were older than the Rockies, more gentle in their grandeur, more hospitable. And the Cherokees had loved them for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.

  She squinted at a hawk gliding overhead and took a deep breath of air so clean, it made her feel fresh inside. Yes, she understood why people would fight to stay there. A friendly meowing sound caught her ear, and she looked down to find a fat calico cat walking toward her across the porch.

  “Hello, kitty.” She knelt to pat it. “Are you a Cherokee elf in a cat’s body?”

  The distant crunch of wheels on gravel made her look up anxiously. Dove’s driveway was nearly a quarter-mile long; it occurred to Erica that she was effectively trapped at the end of it.

  She stood, watching closely as a police car rounded the last bend, then sighed with relief as she noted that the car belonged to the tribal authorities. She studied the tall man who climbed out, and a puzzling sense of recognition tugged at her.

>   Dressed in neat slacks and a short-sleeved shirt bearing official emblems, he might have been an officer from any small-town police force, except that he was Cherokee. Suddenly she understood. He looked like an older, more solemn version of James, full of the same controlled power and easy self-confidence.

  Nodding to her, he strolled to the foot of the porch steps and stopped. “Ma’am, you lookin’ for someone in particular?” he asked in a gravelly drawl.

  Erica smiled. “Word travels fast around here.”

  He nodded again. “I heard at the motel that you’d asked about this place. And the neighbors called when they saw you go up the driveway.”

  She puzzled over that. “What neighbors? I didn’t see another driveway near here.”

  “Boy was on his way back from a fishing trip. Saw you from the woods.”

  Erica’s spine tingled. The forest suddenly seemed alive with watchful eyes. “I’m a relative of Dove Gallatin’s. I just wanted to see her house. I thought I’d talk to the new owners, but I see that there aren’t any.”

  “A relative of Dove’s?” His voice showed his surprise.

  Erica explained the family history, and as she did, his face took on a pleased expression. He really was a handsome man, and he reminded her more and more of James.

  “So I’ve come down for about a week to learn about my Cherokee history,” she said in conclusion. “And I’d like to know what became of Dove Gallatin’s possessions—particularly anything that has to do with the family, such as diaries or a Bible.”

  The officer held out a hand. “Let me introduce myself. I’m the reservation’s director of community services—fire, police, and sanitation. And I’m the U.S. deputy marshall around here. Name’s Travis Tall Wolf.”

  Erica clenched his big paw so fiercely that he frowned at her in discomfort. “Do you have a brother named James?”

  An odd wariness gleamed in his eyes. “Yes.”