The Shadow Page 8

  Jonas didn’t want to answer her, so he kept silent. He couldn’t be sure of anything at this point, but he was more determined than ever to stay on the trail.

  They’d gone less than fifty yards more when she spotted an arrowhead on the ground. She bent down to retrieve it, then suddenly stopped.

  “I collect arrowheads,” Emily explained. “They’re really hard to find. Would it bother you if I took it?” she asked, remembering what he’d said about the chindi.

  “I’d rather you leave it where it is. Those belong to the Old Ones, the ‘Anaasází. Leaving their belongings intact and undisturbed shows respect for who they were.”

  “All right.”

  “The coordinates we’ve been looking for are very close now, maybe fifty feet,” he said, checking the display on the GPS.

  They went a little farther, and found gray potshards and rocks arranged in a circle at what might have been a fire pit—or maybe part of an ‘Anaasází shelter. “An old encampment—or it might have been a dwelling,” he said.

  “This must be why Dad marked this location.” Emily said nothing else for several long moments, then finally asked the question foremost in her mind. “Is Dinétsoh the missing man you’ve been searching for?”

  Jonas said nothing.

  “Don’t you think I’ve earned the right to know?”

  “I work for the tribe. As it was for your father and his clients, there are certain confidences that have to remain privileged.”

  “Dinétsoh was my friend, too,” she said softly.

  There was nothing else he could say. He’d tell Diné Nééz as soon as possible, and hope he’d be allowed to at least confirm what she already knew in her heart.

  “Maybe the Law rock is around here,” she said, looking for a mark on a rock, or maybe rocks arranged in an L. After a fruitless five-minute search, they moved on.

  They soon reached another open area where the placement of crudely shaped rocks suggested three structures had once stood there. They also found many more pottery shards—white pieces with black painted designs, black designs on red ceramic, and some with a corrugated pattern that looked like a stylized weave.

  “I have a feeling this is a big part of the reason Dad was concerned about these parcels. There are no signs of digging anywhere, so pot hunters and vandals don’t yet know this is here.”

  “Let’s take another look around for that L rock,” Jonas said.

  They circled the site, found nothing, then moved in the general direction of the next coordinate. All traces of the ‘Anaasází site soon disappeared, giving way to an open area of tall grasses punctuated by an occasional juniper.

  Jonas stopped, checked the GPS, then looked for any low ground or arroyos they could use to cross the clearing without making themselves easy targets. Although no one would be able to hide in ambush in their immediate vicinity, the two of them would be sitting ducks for a gunman positioned among the tumbled rocks at the base of the bluffs, or higher.

  “Let’s circle this open area, staying just within the trees, and stick to cover whenever possible.”

  He led the way. Fragments of the large stones and rubble that had fallen, victims of wind, water and gravity, provided good cover.

  “Stop,” he said suddenly. Apparently someone or something else had made the same decision—to seek cover. Yet the amount of dried blood that stained the flat surface of the sandstone trail worried him.

  “That blood…it’s from an injured animal, right?” Emily asked, her tone betraying the sudden fear that gripped her.

  “There’s no way to know for sure. But this much blood and no body means that whatever it was must have been big enough to take a hit. Maybe Sam Carpenter has been hunting this area, as well, and put a bullet in a wild dog, coyote or even a lost calf. He acted a little trigger happy.”

  “Could it have been a mountain lion…or a man?” she asked in a strangled voice.

  He nodded and continued studying the pattern of blood on the ground. The shape and distribution suggested the victim had stopped here for a while, maybe trying to find a way to stem the flow. There was no discernible trail leading away in any direction, and that fact suggested the intelligence of an experienced tracker.

  Jonas was glad to note that Emily had moved closer to him. He was constantly aware of her, and seeing her instinctively turn to him for safety satisfied everything male in him.

  Angry with himself for getting distracted, he muttered a curse. He needed to focus on the danger, not the proximity of a beautiful woman.

  His gaze took in the immediate area. Something didn’t feel right. Trusting his instincts, he took point and led the way up through the rocks, his gaze on the ground before them.

  “What’s that?” she asked, gesturing beyond a gap in the tree line.

  Taking a few steps back to place himself in Emily’s sight line, he followed her gaze and saw a woman’s leather tote bag hanging from a juniper branch at eye level.

  Emily stepped toward it, but he quickly grabbed her shoulder.

  “Impulse moves lead to trouble. Wait until I check this out.”

  “A woman hiker probably lost it. Maybe the ruins have been attracting more passersby than I thought.” She paused. “Wait a minute. Most hikers don’t carry handbags.”

  “Exactly. They use backpacks,” he answered. “Things that practically scream for attention always send up a red flag for me. Overseas, the enemy would booby trap innocent-looking objects people were likely to pick up or examine.”

  He bent over, picked up a long stick, then moved it gently across the surface of the ground ahead of his feet. After several steps, he stopped. “There’s a thin wire right here,” he said, pointing Navajo-style by pursing his lips.

  He crouched and, moving his hand along the barely visible line, lifted leaves away with his fingertips. A small canister device about the size of a shotgun shell was mounted on a stake driven into the ground. It was angled upward in line with the dangling purse, the clear line attached to the bag and the device.

  “Step back and to the left,” he said quickly.

  “What’s that, a firecracker?”

  “It’s an M44, something government hunters and ranchers have been known to deploy. It’s used mostly to kill coyotes. The animal pulls on the bait at the top and a spring inside it shoots a sodium cyanide capsule into the animal’s mouth. But this has a line attached, and pulling on the purse sets it off.”

  “The purse is the bait, and since this is my land, I’m the target?” she said, her voice rising.

  “The chances of you or anyone other human being actually hurt by this kind of trap, one that requires you to take the pellet into your mouth, is slim to none. That means it was meant to be found and used only to scare you—or set you up for something else.” Jonas studied the ground, noting where it had been smoothed out, probably with a leafy branch, to get rid of any distinguishing shoe prints. “We’re not in the clear yet. Can you see your previous footprints?”

  “I think so,” she said, looking back.

  “If you’re not absolutely sure, then stay put. Once I deactivate this trap, I’ll probe around for another. Traps meant for people are often set in pairs—one for the wary victim to find, and the other to do damage,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

  Jonas had seen cyanide traps when he was back in high school on the rez. Bubonic plague, rabies, hantavirus and other issues were common in the Four Corners, and those often resulted in aggressive animal-control measures. He’d also had plenty of field experience with bombs, IEDs and a host of other booby traps.

  Once he’d cut the fishing line, Jonas pulled the M44 from the ground by the stake, removed the poisoned capsule, then took everything else apart.

  Working carefully, he lifted the new-looking purse off the branch and checked inside. It was empty except for a rock at the bottom—ballast. He dumped out the stone, placed the parts of the device inside, then stuck the purse into his backpack. He’d go over the
components later.

  “There’s a piece of metal over there, just to the left of that shrub,” Emily said, pointing. “I saw it flash in the sun when the breeze moved the branches.”

  Jonas inched forward carefully, probing the ground with the stick. Suddenly there was a loud crunch. Leaves and dust flew up as a big half-circle of jagged metal leaped off the ground, clacking loudly.

  “A bear trap?” Emily asked, then shuddered.

  “Two of them—the smaller one, set off the other. But either of these would have practically cut a leg in half.”

  “This is crazy. Why would anyone targeting us leave a trap like that behind? It’s not discriminating. Anyone could have been injured or killed. What if kids had come up here on a hike, or just to mess around below the bluffs?” She ran a hand through her hair in frustration.

  “I wish I could answer that.”

  “Do you think this might have been Sam’s work? He’s the only person we’ve seen around here.”

  “No. I was able to spot a few boot prints where the leaves were blown away by the whip of those jaws on the traps. The impressions don’t match those of a man his size. The person here was taller. Heavier, too.”

  Jonas took the binoculars out of his backpack and made a more detailed search of the surrounding area. He concentrated on the higher ground, where several large crevices and narrow canyons infiltrated the bluffs, possibly granting a way to the top.

  They circled the area for another hour. Although he continued to search for a trail his fellow warrior might have left, in the end, he ran out of time.

  “We better head back. The sun’s getting low, and we shouldn’t be out here after sunset,” he said.

  “All right. But I want to come back at first light. Someone’s playing a deadly game and I want to know who he is and why he’s doing this.”

  “You’ve got a lot of guts,” Jonas stated, glancing over at her in admiration.

  She looked at him in surprise. “No, actually I’m scared to death, but this is my home. I can’t let someone run me off. If I do, I’ll be losing far more than my land. I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself after that.”

  It was the simplicity of her words and the powerful sentiment behind them that touched him most. “Facing fear and still doing what’s necessary is what courage is all about.”

  “And you? Are you ever really afraid? You never seem to be.”

  “That’s training. Knowing how to react in any situation makes a lot of difference, but, yeah, I’ve been scared plenty of times in my life. I don’t know of any soldier who hasn’t. You just learn not to let it get in the way.”

  As he led the way back, he chose a roundabout route. They would hike west along high ground first, then return north to the house on a parallel course to the trail they’d followed on the way up. It would also give him one last chance to intercept a trail leading up toward the bluffs from the highway—the most direct route Dinétsoh could have taken from the accident site.

  Several hundred yards after they’d turned in the direction of the house, he spotted tracks in the soft dirt. Two distinct sets of footprints were visible leading away from Emily’s home.

  Jonas crouched down and studied each. Near the first, he could see where drops of blood had fallen onto the rock.

  He weighed his options carefully. If he didn’t follow the trail now, a windstorm or an unexpected shower could destroy it in a matter of minutes. But under the present circumstances, he couldn’t send Emily home on her own.

  “If you think we’re just going to head back home instead of following that trail, you’re nuts,” she said. “Those are Dinétsoh’s footprints.”

  “What makes you so sure?” he asked immediately.

  “He had a very slight limp. I know, because whenever we’d go out hiking, he’d take the lead. He never liked the Anglo way that required a man to step aside so the woman could walk ahead of him. He said that it made no sense to him. Men had to go first so they could protect their families from danger.” She smiled, remembering. “Back in those days, I noticed his tracks reflected the almost imperceptible way he dragged his left leg. Like that,” she said, pointing down.

  Jonas nodded, already having noted that. “These tracks aren’t fresh, so whatever battle was fought here is long finished. But I can’t guarantee we won’t run into other problems or encounter more danger.”

  “Did I ask for a guarantee?”

  He could have hugged her. “You’re terrific,” he said, flashing her a grin. “All right then. Let’s get going.” He stood and readjusted his backpack. “I’ll take point.”

  They followed the tracks for several hundred yards, continuing downhill, and soon came to a damp, sandy wash. The wild grasses were taller here, and long, wavy lines in the sand indicated the direction water had flowed recently.

  “This is an intermittent stream,” he noted. “He might have crossed here when there was a little water flowing. If he was trying to elude someone, it would have obscured his trail. There were some isolated storms in the area, too, the day before the…incident.”

  “Water comes and goes here during the rainy season,” Emily said, remembering taking long walks back in the days when she hadn’t had a care in the world.

  “I want to check along the other side of the wash, up and down the flow. It probably won’t do much good, but you never know,” Jonas mused. “Why don’t you wait for me? I can work faster alone and I won’t be long.” Here, she’d have enough cover to shield her. “If you need me, just yell. I’ll hear you.”

  He returned a short while later and shook his head. “The only trail I found was the one belonging to the person who followed the man with the limp. It looks like he finally gave up and headed back northwest.”

  She gazed in that direction, shading her eyes from the sun, which was now low in the sky. “The highway’s over there, isn’t it? In fact, we’re only about a mile from where my dad died. Could that first set of tracks have been left by my father? Maybe he took off from the accident site, injured, trying to avoid someone. Then, later, he returned to the car, but passed on before the deputies found him.” By some miracle she kept her voice from shaking.

  “Does that really fit with what the police told you about the incident?” he asked her gently.

  She shook her head and sighed. “No. They said my dad was pinned in—trapped.” She took an unsteady breath and, wiping tears away, added, “but something tells me you know more about that than I do.”

  He’d been briefed by someone who’d been at the accident scene, but the gruesome details weren’t for the ears of a close relative or even a friend. Uncertain of what he could tell her, Jonas kept his eyes on the distance, trying to figure things out. “How tall was your dad?” he asked at last.

  “Five foot ten.”

  “Then neither set of prints belong to him,” he said. “I’m five foot nine, and I wear a size twelve. Your father was taller than I am, so I figure he must have worn at least a fourteen.” He paused, then in a pensive voice continued. “The only sure thing the trail we’ve found tells us is that one man, though injured, was mobile. He went across the wash in hopes of hiding his passage. That’s how he lost the guy behind him.”

  “Then Dinétsoh was the one being pursued,” she said. “Don’t bother to deny it. Although you still haven’t given me the missing man’s name, it’s clear that he was the one with my father the day of the accident.”

  Jonas had been ordered to withhold information from her, but it was pointless now. “It’s true,” he said with a nod. “We also suspect that your father and our friend were attacked and run off the highway.”

  “But those traps. If Dinétsoh has already passed by, why place them there at all?”

  “Probably to impede whoever might come looking for him,” Jonas answered. “They must have been set fairly recently, too, because my people would have come across them when they were out looking for Dinétsoh.”

  “But if he’s the targe
t, then why is someone coming after me, too? I haven’t seen Dinétsoh in years.”

  “That, I can’t answer. But your father plays a part in this, too. Maybe someone believes you know more than you do, or have whatever it is they want.”

  “I’m not a threat to anyone,” she said wearily. “All I want is to build my inn. Why can’t I make them see that?”

  The tremor in her voice got to him, and without thinking, he pulled her into his arms. For a brief eternity he held her, rubbing his cheek against her hair and enjoying the softness of her body against his.

  “It’s hard to predict what they’ll do next, but here’s one thing you can count on. No one will harm you, not while wind breath remains in me.”

  Wind breath—what animated the body. Emily knew the term. With a sigh, she snuggled even deeper into his arms.

  His whole body responded to her. He needed her—and not just for a one-nighter. That sure knowledge pounded through him. But he had to guard Emily and keep her safe. Emotions would compromise his judgment and that wasn’t what she needed from him—or what he expected from himself.

  Reluctantly easing his hold, Jonas took a step back, giving himself room to think.

  “There’s still something you haven’t told me,” she said as they got under way again. “What makes this parcel of land so special to the tribe? Let’s face it, “Anaasází sites are not that uncommon around this area.”

  Knowing he wasn’t at liberty to discuss that with anyone, and opting not to lie to her, he again chose his words carefully.

  “The parcel is very close to the Navajo Irrigation Project, southeast of here. It’s also an area archeologists have wanted to explore for a long time. As much as possible, the tribe wants to control what goes on near our reservation.”

  “Grant…Do you think he could have hiked over there and set those traps? If I died, or was incapacitated and unable to make my mortgage payments, I’m sure he’d figure out a way to buy up the land. I don’t have any heirs.”