Hallowed Ground (Julie Collins Series #2)

by Lori G. Armstrong

  With his forehead nestled against my neck, he said, “Stay out of exploding buildings.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Christ. That’s reassuring.”

  His breathing was a steady, soothing stream of warmth across my chest. His fingers were entwined in my hair, twisting the sections into long spirals.

  “The memorial service?” I asked.

  “Had it this morning.”

  I listened to the nurses chatting at the kiosk. “I’m sorry. I would’ve gone with you.”

  He raised his head and stared at me. Smiled in that sexy way that sent my pulse tripping.

  I touched his face, let my hand linger. “What are we doing here, Martinez?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “You any good at this relationship stuff?”

  “Not so much.”

  I sighed. “Me either.”

  “Wanna give it a shot and see what happens?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Good.” He turned his head and kissed my palm.

  In that moment did I think about any of the scary things that defined badass businessman Tony Martinez?

  No.

  Did he worry about getting involved with a woman who had more issues than the Sierra Club?

  He didn’t appear to.

  Neither of us was naive; we knew we’d have to address our differences sometime.

  Just not now.

  “Come away with me,” he said softly. “For a couple days, a week.”

  “Where?”

  “A secluded beach.” He paused as my hand drifted down his arm and I felt his muscles tense beneath my fingers. “You interested?”

  I stroked the dragon tattooed on his bicep and pretended to consider it. My mean streak showing? Hell yes. I wouldn’t want El Presidente to think I was easy.

  “Maybe. When you thinking?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I laughed.

  “Seriously. A guy I know has a place in Florida. We could be there by sunset. Surf. Sunshine. It’ll give us time to …”

  He let me fill in the blanks.

  I did. Not with, “Time to figure this out.” Or even, “Time to roll around naked and sweaty.” Though both of those scenarios were likely.

  No. I knew what we both needed more than anything.

  Time to forget. Time to heal a little. Time to just be.

  “I’d like that,” I said. “But not tomorrow, okay? Give me two days? Something I’ve got to do first.”

  Martinez didn’t ask what. He tucked me in, lingered with a good night kiss that left me dreaming of sand, sun, and nothing else for a change.

  Once again Kim signed me out of the hospital. Sensing my melancholy, she hadn’t fussed much.

  I slept the whole day and through the night. I think Martinez checked on me at one point but he hadn’t stuck around.

  The next morning I made prayer pouches with pieces of fabric from my favorite Van Halen T-shirt and tobacco from a crushed pack of cigarettes. When I finished, I realized I hadn’t smoked in three days. A sign it was time to quit?

  Nah.

  Later as I stared at the trailhead I didn’t think it would matter. This climb was a bitch even for crusading nonsmokers.

  In all the years I’d lived in South Dakota, I’d never hiked Bear Butte. Never had the chance to before Ben’s death, didn’t want to afterward.

  First, face your fear head on.

  My mind traveled as I started the ascent.

  I thought about my mother as I tied the first bundle to a small chokecherry bush. It’d been easy to forget her life against my father’s anger over her death.

  Kevin. Donovan. Chloe. Martinez. One each for their grief.

  Kim. For filling a void in my life I hadn’t realized existed.

  Frankie Ducheneaux. Although he was a deadly mix of ego and ideology, he shared a pouch with The Medicine Wheel Holy Society. I hoped their quest to keep this chunk of earth a sacred place wouldn’t get lost in politics and the personal motives some people masqueraded as principles.

  None for Reggie, the Carluccis, Bud Linderman, or Maurice Ashcroft. They didn’t deserve prayers, mine or anyone else’s.

  I tied individual bundles to a large pine. One for Rondelle, Luther, Harvey, and Red.

  Still, I didn’t feel relief as if my load had lightened. Instead, my temper rose. Why was Bear Butte at the root of so many needless deaths?

  Mato Paha was slow in answering.

  I began to scale the beast, slowly, one step at a time.

  The higher I climbed on the twisting path the more urgent my questions seemed. The more intense the pain seemed, both the physical pain from my face-off with Reggie, and the emotional pain I’d been hanging onto for years.

  The chunks of rock and shale lining the path rattled beneath my feet, suggestive of walking on ancient bones. In other places the path gleamed, polished by the footfalls of many. I stopped on a small plateau and watched as two red-tailed hawks dove, then caught an updraft and hovered above me. Weightless and free.

  I wondered what that felt like.

  Heat radiated from the sage plants, releasing a tangy scent. Yucca, cactus, Black Sampson dotted the steep landscape on the front side. On the backside, pine trees charred black from fire stood in a perfect line like a broken-toothed comb. The path leveled in the shade, then began a series of steep switchbacks which led to the top.

  The summit is invisible until you’re there.

  I climbed the last set of wooden steps. After my lungs quit aching and my calves quit burning, I walked the perimeter of the pine deck, able to see all four directions.

  I was unprepared for the impact of the rugged beauty. The wide sky was an endless palette of blues, lavender, and grays, extending above the magnificent sweeping vista where black hills met golden plains.

  Little wonder this majestic place was considered holy.

  How could anyone believe this was nothing?

  Bear Butte had survived fire and floods. Had seen the rise and fall of nations. Would still stand tall and proud through the human cycle of birth and death. Love and hate.

  I clutched the remaining prayer bundle in my fist. The one I’d made for Ben.

  Standing on hallowed ground, I didn’t feel the measure of peace I’d expected. Or experience a sudden realization that my hatred for this sacred place had been misguided.

  There was no catharsis for me. I knew in my heart there wouldn’t be any until I found out who had murdered my brother.

  I studied the bundle. It’d keep until that time when I could truly let go.

  I tucked the pouch in my pocket, turned away from the grandeur spread out before me and began to make my way back down the rocky slope to the bottom.

  THE END

  A Special Presentation of Lori G. Armstrong’s first novel

  from Medallion Press, BLOOD TIES:

  PROLOGUE

  DEATH HAS NIPPED AT MY HEELS like a disobedient dog since I was fourteen.

  A drunk driver killed my mother the autumn of that year. She was hit head on. The extent of her injuries, including massive head trauma, excluded the option of an open casket.

  I felt cheated. I believed then, if I’d touched her hand or stroked her cheek one last time, acceptance of her death might have offered me comfort or closure. It didn’t ease my pain that she didn’t suffer. It didn’t ease my sense of injustice that the drunk also died upon impact. And it didn’t ease my father’s rage that the man responsible was Lakota.

  After my mother’s death, my father’s hatred of Indians deepened, spreading wide as the Missouri River which divides our state. He’d never hidden his prejudice, but in the aftermath, the racial slurs flew from his mean mouth with regularity. Prairie niggers and gut eaters were flung out heedlessly. In those public moments I cringed against his harsh words. In private I fumed against him. I found it puzzling that a man with such a deep-seated loathing for an entire race had sired a son with the same blood.

  Appa
rently my father believed he was absolved of his part in the creation of that life when he signed away paternal rights. The child’s mother believed the boy would never know the truth about his white father.

  They were both wrong.

  My half-brother, Ben Standing Elk, arrived on our doorstep shortly after he’d turned nineteen.

  When my father leveled a look of pure disgust upon the Indian darkening his door, I was horrified, and demanded an explanation for things I didn’t have the ability to understand. His stony silence mocked me. I expected him to yell back. I expected to be grounded for showing disrespect. But the last thing I expected was the hard, stinging slap he delivered across my face.

  We never spoke of that day. By some miracle, probably of my mother’s making, I forged a relationship with my brother.

  Good old Dad was conspicuously absent whenever Ben came around. I’d gone beyond caring. I loved Ben without question. Without boundaries. And without clue to the consequences. With him I found the bond I’d been lacking. A bond I counted on years later when the tenuous one with my father finally snapped.

  Blood ties are strong. But the strands can easily be broken, whether tended with love or ripped apart by hatred. My father chose his means, fate chose mine.

  Fate and death seem to be intertwined in my life. After recent events, I realize nothing about death ever offers closure, regardless if it is accidental or premeditated. I still feel cheated. But I’m older now. Wiser. More determined that justice will be served, even if that justice is a brand of my own making. I won’t blindly give in to acceptance until I know the truth. Even then, I doubt it will bring me peace.

  Ben helped me deal with my mother’s death. I grieve that there is no one to help me deal with his.

  The dog is quiet once again, sated somehow. But I know it won’t last. It never does.

  Three years later …

  CHAPTER ONE

  “ALMOST, JUST A LITTLE LOWER. Right there. Oh, God, yes, that’s it.”

  I’d shamelessly splayed myself over the filing cabinet, but the warm masculine hands caressing my vertebrae froze.

  “Knock it off, Julie. Sheriff hears you moaning like that, he’ll think we’re doing it on your desk.”

  “Al.” I sighed lazily. “If I thought you could find my G-spot as quickly as you zeroed in on that knotted muscle, we would be doing it on my desk.”

  “Smart ass. Don’t know why we put up with you.”

  I twisted, heard the satisfying crack and pop of my spinal column realigning itself. No more sex on the kitchen table for me.

  “You put up with me because I file, but I’m not dedicated enough to devise my own system.”

  My blond, waist-length hair curtained my face as I slipped my heels back on.

  “Besides my pseudo-efficiency, I look a damn sight better manning the phones than Deputy John. Admit it, tiger,” I added with a snapping, sexy growl.

  Al colored a mottled burgundy, a peculiar habit for a forty-five-year-old deputy. He adjusted his gun in a self-conscious gesture, which made me wonder if he’d finger his manhood in front of me as easily. In law enforcement the size of your gun was closely related to the size of, well, your gun. Hmm. Was Al’s private stock an Uzi? Or a peashooter?

  “Regardless,” he continued, unaware of my questioning gaze on his crotch. “If my wife heard me trash-talking with you I’d be sleeping in the den for a month.” I set my hands on his face and slapped his reddened cheeks while I maneuvered around him.

  “I’ve seen your den. And your wife … Wouldn’t be much of a hardship.”

  Light spilled across the mud-crusted carpet when the steel front door blew open. All five-foot-one inch of Missy Brewster, my 4:00 relief, sauntered in.

  My tolerance level for Missy was lower than a stock dam during a drought. She embodied the skate-by-with-a-minimum-amount-of-effort civil servant attitude, versus the work ethic my father had literally pounded into me and which I couldn’t escape, no matter how menial the job. Lazy, whiny, and petty were Missy’s least annoying characteristics.

  I guessed she’d compiled her own list of my irritating quirks: punctuality, humanity, a stubbornness born of desperation.

  Her crocheted handbag thumped on the filing cabinet. She peeled off her NASCAR jacket, and slung the silver satin over the chair with a loving touch before adjusting her cleavage with a slow overhead stretch. A haughty look followed.

  “Hey, Julie. Stud boy is waiting. Said something about you getting your ass out there pronto.”

  I watched Al’s gaze linger on Missy’s mammoth breasts, crammed tightly into a pink t-shirt. My eyes followed his, but I refused to glance down at my own 36C chest in comparison; there was none.

  “Stud boy? You call him that and flash those boobs in his face?”

  Her lips, the color and consistency of candied apples, turned mulish.

  “I didn’t flash him.”

  “But I’ll bet he looked.”

  “Honey, they all look.” With a fake sigh of resignation, she squeezed her big butt in my chair and swiveled toward the computer to clock in.

  She reached for a pencil, deigning to answer the phone on the fifth ring.

  “Bear Butte County Sheriff’s office.” Her tone oozed sweetness. “Hey, Gene.”

  Yuck. I added disinfecting the receiver with Windex to my list of duties for tomorrow.

  “Yeah, I just came on.”

  Missy flicked an irritated glance my direction.

  “No, she’s still here.” Pause. “He’s probably messing with his computer. Want me to ring him?” A minute of silence followed; her false eyelashes batted with apparent panic.

  Al, sensing Missy’s damsel-in-distress signal, stepped forward.

  I stayed put.

  “Well, glad it didn’t happen here.” She muttered a bunch of “uh-huhs” before adding, “No problem. I’ll tell him straight away. Bye, now.”

  “What’s up?” This from Al, the brave, blushing warrior.

  Missy’s shifty gaze wavered between Al and me. “Nothing in our neck of the woods.”

  Skirting the desk, she hustled down the hallway, Al hot on her Ferragamo heels as she rapped daintily on the sheriff’s door.

  I got the distinct impression Missy wanted me to leave. So, naturally, I followed the merry little band into the inner sanctum of Sheriff Tom Richards’ office.

  He didn’t respond immediately to our interruption. His back, roughly the size of a Cadillac hood, greeted us, a constant click clack click clack echoed from the keyboard. The plastic slide-out tray bounced, and although I didn’t see his hands, I knew they fairly danced over the keys. My typing skills are half-assed on a good day. It amazed me thick fingers could be so nimble when it came to office drudgery.

  “Sheriff?”

  His acknowledgement was a harsh grunt.

  “Gene Black called.”

  “Yeah? What did he want?” Tap, tap, tap.

  “They found a floater.”

  His movement stopped; his spine snapped straight as an axel rod. He turned. “When?”

  “This morning. Some fly-fishermen hooked it in Rapid Creek.”

  He scowled at the clock. “He’s just calling me now?”

  Missy’s fleshy shoulder lifted; the gesture a nervous twitch, not a casual shrug. “Wanted to give you a heads up before the media did.”

  “Whereabouts was this?”

  She plucked a loose paperclip teetering on the desk edge. “Up in the Hills, off Rimrock.” Her pudgy fingers twisted the metal into a caricature of modern art.

  “Pennington County claimed jurisdiction, but Rapid City PD was on scene as a courtesy. Then a whole mess of people showed up.”

  The sheriff chugged his coffee, gorilla hands dwarfing the cup.

  Being around him every day makes me forget how immense, how out of proportion he is with the rest of the world. At six-foot nine, he has the distinction of being the biggest sheriff in the state. His arms, legs, and torso are perfectly bal
anced, but his huge head isn’t: It resembles an overgrown honeydew melon with ears.

  His button nose is centered in a grayish face; his coffee-colored eyes withhold any trace of softness. Spikes of black hair protrude from his head and chin, reinforcing the ogre-like image from a fairy tale. The knife scar connecting the right side of his mouth to his jaw line creates a constant scowl and discourages most comments, either about the state of the weather up high, or whether or not he plays basketball.

  “Gene said they weren’t allowed to move the body right away,” Missy continued. “They called in the DCI from Pierre. Which also caught the interest of the Feds.”

  “The Feds and DCI? Why not the NPS, too? Who the hell did they find up there?”

  Don’t go there, my brain warned, but my mouth ignored the plea. “With that much manpower?” I said. “I’ll guarantee it wasn’t another Indian.”

  Ugly silence followed, thick as buffalo stew.

  In the past two years, five transient Lakota males—varying in age from thirty to seventy—had become life-sized bobbers in Rapid Creek, which twists from Pactola Lake and zigzags through Rapid City before dumping into the Cheyenne River. Despite the toxicology reports of the drowning victims, which revealed blood alcohol levels approaching blood poisoning range, cries of outrage among the Sioux Nation and resident supporters fell on deaf ears.

  It seemed neither local law enforcement nor federal agencies were spurred into action, especially the FBI, still smarting from Yellow Thunder Camp in the 1980’s and the controversy surrounding the 1972 siege at Wounded Knee. Not even the appearance of Native American activist/Hollywood actress Renee Brings Plenty, who’d lodged a protest march down Main Street to the Pennington County Courthouse, had changed the status quo.

  The “so-what” local attitude remained: Another dead, drunken, dirty Indian out of the gutter and off the welfare rolls.

  Who cared?

  I did.

  Three years had crawled past since the discovery of my brother Ben’s body in Bear Butte Creek. Unlike the other Native Americans, Ben hadn’t drowned, no alcohol or drugs showed up in his tox reports. With his throat slashed, his body discarded like garbage, he’d washed to the bottom of Bear Butte Creek, an area the Lakota consider sacred.