Black Rock Guardian

by Jenna Kernan

  It was another twenty minutes before Faras appeared carrying an open beer bottle. He sat in the shade beside Ty.

  It was a common way in his culture to speak around issues. The proper way to address a concern was to sneak up on it casually after some degree of small talk. But Faras was a businessman and rarely had time for custom.

  “Before we get to your dad, I want to tell you about Quinton.”

  “What about him?”

  Faras leaned forward, gripping the neck of the bottle with both hands as he stared at the dirt before his boots. Then he shook his head, his lips a tight line.

  Ty leaned forward as well, though the action hurt his shoulder. “Faras? Did something happen?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was hushed. “Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But it will.” Faras shook his head. He was not usually this obtuse. Then without warning Faras lifted the full beer bottle and threw it with all his might. The bottle sailed in a graceful arc, spinning end over end as it expelled its contents before smashing on the masonry.

  Ty sat back, waiting.

  “There was a raid on our meth lab.”

  “Deer Kill Meadow?” asked Ty, repeating the location of the lab that Faras had mentioned to him previously. Faras had also told Ty that he would be responsible for making deliveries from that meth lab. Ty had been thinking of ways to get out of that. Now, however, with his father’s imminent release, his bargaining position was greatly compromised.

  “No, no, man. That’s the point. Ain’t no lab on Deer Kill Meadow. Just like there ain’t no lab down on Canyon Ridge Road.”

  “What?” Ty didn’t understand.

  Faras turned in his seat to face Ty. “We ain’t got a meth lab, bro. Neither place. Made it up.”

  Ty felt his skin tingling as he recalled how close he had come to telling Beth about the lab. But it wasn’t related to their case and he hadn’t made an agreement to help with anything but the surrogate ring. Then he remembered the early morning phone call and Beth’s hasty departure. Was that the tip from Quinton reaching the FBI here on Turquoise Canyon? Ty clenched his fists and forced himself to remain still as his muscles twitched and his skin prickled.

  Was she all right?

  “Why?”

  “A test,” said Faras. Finally, he met Ty’s gaze. “I should have known it wasn’t you. But I had to be sure. You’ve been different since Jake found that baby. Distant. I knew you didn’t like our association with the Russians and I knew we had a leak. Someone told the FBI where to find Kacey. You delivered her and she was your brother’s girl, so you seemed the obvious choice. And then someone told the FBI where to find the two girls they were keeping at Antelope Lake. Your brother Kee was there with Dr. Hauser. I thought it likely that Kee had told your brother Jake about the location of the house. But I know your brother Kee and, no offense, he could not have overtaken those Russian soldiers. I still don’t know what happened except that Hauser and the two watching over our goods all died.”

  Ty did not like hearing the captured women being referred to as goods. He had a sister about the same age as the missing girls and it burned him up inside to think of someone doing that to Addie.

  “So I set up you and Quinton,” continued Faras. “Fed you each a different location. Today the FBI raided the house on Canyon Ridge.”

  Ty needed to speak to Beth. To warn her. Was it just a test or also a trap? What if Faras’s men saw her and remembered her?

  If Faras knew Beth’s identity, then she was dead and he would follow soon after.

  Suddenly, it was hard to sit still. He longed to reach for his phone and call her. Hear her voice and be certain she was safe. Instead he laced his hands before him and told himself not to let Faras see that he was nervous or that his shoulder was injured. He was grateful for the leather jacket he wore over the injury earned while helping Kee rescue Ava Hood at Antelope Lake.

  “Quinton?” asked Ty.

  “Yeah. My second. Can you believe that? I hope they paid him well and he put something away for his woman and kid because he’s not coming home to them.”

  Ty’s heart hammered. “No?”

  “Minute I got the call about the raid, I sent out Chino.”

  Chino was not at the dentist’s. He was assigned to murder Quinton. Ty’s ears buzzed. He liked Quinton. He’d almost been Quinton.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ty. His throat felt as hard and dry as a canyon wall.

  “I need a new second.”

  “Chino wants that job,” said Ty.

  “And you don’t. But the Russians are pulling out and when they go, so does the money. They’re used to it now, my guys. Food, booze, nice wheels, you know? It won’t be easy replacing that kind of income. We need to prepare for that. Besides, Chino don’t want to be my second. He wants to be alpha wolf.”

  “They’re pulling out?” Ty tried to keep the elation from his voice. The scourge among them was leaving. Jake and the FBI had done it, put enough pressure on the organized crime bosses that the Russians were leaving their rez. His brother Colt could come back home. Ty could have danced, he was so happy. “What about the ones they still have?”

  “They own them. Use them again or send them into service some other way.” He shrugged. “Dunno.”

  Human trafficking, Ty realized. That was what Faras was saying. “They’re our women.”

  “They’re like Peter Pan’s lost boys. The ones that fell out of their strollers and no one noticed or cared. Remember you read me that story?” Faras grinned.

  Ty had a sickening feeling that the very sad and lost boy he’d read that story to had grown up to be a pirate himself and used that tale to influence his selection of victims.

  “We should demand them back,” said Ty.

  “You don’t ask those guys for nothing. They’ll hand you your ass and make you wear it as a hat. Besides, we got our own troubles. Your dad is coming back. We have to be strong because sure as hell, he’ll challenge me. I need you as my second, Ty. I want you to join us again.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Beth returned to Ty’s place after sundown on Monday night to find the bay doors of the shop open and Hemi trotting out to meet her. The dog escorted her down the drive, barking joyfully but not getting too close to her motorcycle. She cut the engine as Ty stepped out of the garage, using a rag to wipe his greasy hands.

  The day had been terrible. The tip was bad, the location wrong and the result was that fifteen heavily armed FBI agents had startled a very nice older couple from their bed. The rest of the day had been spent making apologies and trying and failing to bring in their informant, Quinton Ford.

  There had also been a break in the surrogacy case. Police in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had picked up Elsie Weaver, the first of the women to go missing. Beth’s supervisor had flown out there and discovered that Elsie had never been abducted. According to the sixteen-year-old, she had been to the clinic in November of last year but that visit had nothing to do with her decision to run away with her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend, now being held in the Santa Fe jail on a growing list of charges.

  Beth had gone back to Betty Mills, the former health clinic administrator and Dr. Hauser’s accomplice there. Mills had been transferred to the larger facility in the neighboring city of Darabee. Betty had been less than cooperative. Her plea deal had gone out the window when she failed to mention that tribal police detective Ava Hood’s cover had been blown. Mills had let Hood walk right into a trap that nearly got her killed. Eventually, Mills verified for Beth that Elsie Weaver had never been one of their girls, as Mills called her, simply the inspiration, because when Elsie disappeared, no one cared. No one looked. She was listed in a database and forgotten. That gave Hector the idea of a simple way to raise the funds he needed to bring their facility into the twenty-first century.

  Hector had approached a colleague in Phoenix who ra
n a fertility clinic. Then a contact was made with Kuznetsov’s representative. The tribe’s gang was enlisted to capture and deliver, and just like that, they were in business.

  Beth rolled the bike onto its kickstand and slid off the seat. Beth still did not wholly understand Ty’s role in all this. He was an enigma. May Redhorse’s second son was not at all what she had expected. He had clearly moved to protect his brother Kee’s fiancée from her captivity and, if Officer Redhorse was to be believed, to save Jake and the infant he and his wife adopted from attack. Yet they had him on driving the recaptured Kacey Doka back to the Russians. She suspected there was more to that story than what she had read in the deposition, but they didn’t need it because his blood at the crime scene was the hook that guaranteed Ty’s compliance, as much as that was possible.

  Ty stepped into the circle of the floodlight fixed above the bay doors. The bright light reflected off his brow, cheeks and chin. His biceps bunched as he worked the rag, and her stomach pitched and something lower thrummed. Seeing him momentarily chased away the weariness that had settled between her shoulders.

  She cast him a lazy smile. He didn’t return it. In fact, there was a new tension in his face and a ticking beneath his eye.

  “Where’s Quinton?” he asked, his voice calm, but he bunched the rag at his side. Hemi came to him, sitting at his feet. She whined, as if sensing his upset.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Canyon Ridge Road. Meth lab. Right?”

  Beth faced him, now completely on alert. She needed to know how Ty knew about this.

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “What?”

  “Were you there?” He moved forward, his gaze sweeping her as if searching for injury.

  Her skin tingled a warning. “I can’t tell you that. Now tell me, how did you know about this?”

  “They told me it was Deer Kill Meadow Road,” said Ty.

  “Who did?”

  Ty explained it to her. Beth felt her chest squeeze. They’d thought their informant had run out on them. Intentionally fed them bad intel for his payout and then fled. The truth was much worse.

  “But you signed an agreement to reveal such information,” said Beth.

  “No. My agreement was specific to the surrogate-ring case.”

  He was right and his intelligence now irritated her. She wasn’t used to informants who had this kind of smarts.

  “Beth, if they saw you, you’re blown.”

  That made her pause as she thought back over her day.

  “I never left the vehicle. Tinted glass,” she said as much to herself as to Ty.

  His shoulders sagged. “You sure?”

  She nodded. That was relief in his expression and not for his own skin. Ty was concerned for hers.

  “Tell me all you know about this,” she said.

  “They fed us each different locations to see which way you moved. Canyon Ridge Road was the location they told Quinton. You understand? Now Faras has his snitch. It’s Quinton and he’s sent Chino to kill him.”

  Beth wheeled back to the bike, pausing only to make a call. Then she was racing back to the command center they had set up in Koun’nde. They had to find Quinton before Chino Aria did.

  * * *

  BETH DID NOT return that night. On Tuesday, Ty tried to get Kee and Jake out for supper but only managed to get them to come for a drink. They met in the casino’s sports bar. The waitress wore an elaborate purple wig, a plastic tiara and fairy wings. She took their drink orders and left them three small candy bars with the menus.

  “What’s up with that?” asked Ty.

  “It’s Halloween,” said Kee. “I promised Mom I’d be home in time to take Abbie, Shirley and Shirley’s brothers out trick-or-treating.”

  Halloween. Ty had completely forgotten. Lately, his entire life seemed a sort of trick. Ty glanced at the waitress and wondered if he should know what she was dressed as.

  “What about Jackie and Winnie?” he asked, mentioning the other two foster girls staying with their mother.

  Kee ticked off the children on his fingers. “Winnie is manning the door for Mom, Jackie has a party and Ava is taking the girls out.” He was referring to Ava Hood’s nieces, Olivia, Alexandra and Margarita, all under five. It looked very much as if Kee and Ava would take temporary custody of her nieces while Ava’s sister sorted out her drinking at a six-week rehab program.

  “What are they dressing as?” asked Jake.

  “Princesses for the twins and Olivia is going as blue.”

  “Blue what?”

  “I have no idea. She likes blue.”

  That three-year-old had ideas all her own, admitted Ty.

  He waited until the waitress delivered their drinks before dropping the bombshell about their father’s parole.

  “Well, he won’t do anything stupid, like threaten Mom, because he’ll be on parole,” said Kee, ever the rational and optimistic one. “If he even sets foot on her property, she can have him arrested.”

  “She never had him arrested before,” Ty reminded him.

  “I’ll start the paperwork on an order of protection,” said Jake.

  Ty groaned. “That won’t stop him.”

  Jake still believed in the law, even after all he’d seen. Admirable and naive, Ty thought.

  Jake had once called the police on their father, assuming, wrongly, that they could help. Neighbors had called, as well. But May had, without exception, failed to press charges at every opportunity. Afraid, he now knew, of what would happen when he got out.

  Jake lifted his chin and glared at Ty. “It won’t stop him, but it will give me the right to arrest him if he goes near her.”

  Ty hissed between his teeth, letting the frustration escape like steam from an engine. “You can’t be there twenty-four-seven. Eventually he’ll come after her and Burt. And what about Addie? What if our sister gets between Colton and Ma?” Ty had stopped calling their father Dad the day he saw his father bounce a beer bottle off his mother’s head. He’d called the police that time and paid the price.

  Jake’s mouth flattened and his eyes went steely.

  Ty hadn’t been there when his father broke their mother’s arm. But Addie and Colt had been. Colt had called Jake, who was then fourteen and at basketball practice. Ty had been off with Faras somewhere causing trouble and Kee had been in his second year of medical school.

  “Restraining orders only work on people who follow the law,” said Ty.

  “What do you suggest?” asked Kee.

  Ty’s reply was immediate. “One of us needs to be out there with her.”

  Jake’s face was grim. He had a new wife and baby girl to look after. He had a full-time job that required him to be away long dangerous hours.

  “Prison might have changed him,” said Kee, looking for the good in people even where there was none.

  “I’m sure it has,” said Ty. “Made him meaner, tougher and more dangerous.”

  “We don’t need to do anything yet,” said Jake. “I’ll call the parole office and ask to be contacted when his release is scheduled. In the meantime, I’ll get Mom to file the paperwork.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Ty.

  “Just let me handle this,” said Jake. He rubbed his neck. “Maybe I’ll go pick him up. Better way to keep an eye on him. Find out what his plans are. You don’t know for certain that he’s coming here.”

  Ty did know because his father had a score to settle with Faras and with him. “He’ll be back.”

  “Well,” said Jake, “we’ll see.” Then he turned to Kee. “Did I hear that Ava is going back to school?”

  Ava Hood, Kee’s intended, had been a tribal police detective down on the rez in Salt River, but she’d broken one too many rules and lost her shield. Woman after Ty’s own heart. Ava had done what i
t took to get her niece back. Now she and Kee had custody of Louisa Tah and her other three nieces while her sister struggled with some addiction problems. Both his brothers had full plates.

  “Yes,” said Kee. “Forensic fire investigator.”

  Sounded hard to Ty.

  “Knew we wouldn’t keep her in dispatch for long,” said Jake. “Oh, and I heard from Bear Den that we found Elsie Weaver.”

  Elsie was the first to go missing and, according to what Beth had told him, the inspiration for Hector’s plan to use certain women from their tribe as surrogates.

  “Where?” asked Ty.

  “Flagstaff. She’s working down there, living with her boyfriend.”

  “She’s okay?” asked Ty.

  “Completely. She wasn’t taken by anyone. She’s a runaway. When they picked up her boyfriend on shoplifting, Elsie came to get him and was detained. She just wants nothing to do with her family.”

  “Can you blame her?” asked Ty.

  Jake made a face and continued, knowing as well as anyone what went on in the Weaver family. “They’ve been contacted nonetheless. She’s told the police down there that she didn’t know about the others.”

  “She coming home?” asked Kee.

  Jake sighed. “She’s a minor, so yes. Don’t think they’ll keep her long, though.”

  “So that leaves just three missing?” said Ty.

  “Marta Garcia, Brenda Espinoza and Maggie Kesselman,” said Jake.

  Kee glanced at his watch. The gathering had reached its conclusion. Ty had failed to get either brother to recognize the magnitude of the threat their father posed. But that was because he had been unwilling to share one critical piece of information, the reason Colton Redhorse would be coming back looking for blood.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Quinton Ford’s body was found on the southern bank of the Hakathi River between the Red Rock Dam and Antelope Lake sometime on the morning of Tuesday, October 31, by two kayakers. Beth had not learned this until late that afternoon when someone from the Arizona Highway Patrol notified tribal police that they’d found a body, possibly Native American. Photos had been sent and the identification made.