J. Jance - Kiss the Bees

"Play it," Brandon ordered. "That's the only way they're going to believe what we're up against."

A few seconds later, Lani Walker's voice was playing to all the people crowded into the lab. "Quentin," she was saying. "Quentin, Quentin, Quentin."

"Your daughter?" Forsythe asked.

Brandon Walker nodded. By the time the scream tore through the room, Diana Walker was sobbing quietly into her hands.

"You're right," Sheriff Forsythe said, when Alvin Miller finally switched off the tape player. "It's time to pull out the stops."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Brandon Walker reached out and squeezed Diana's hand.

Quentin Walker had deposited his second load of pottery in the back of the Bronco and was on his way back to the cave for the third and last one when he saw the flashing red lights turn off Highway 86 onto Coleman Road.

Climbing up and down was hard physical labor. His head was far clearer now than it had been when he started out. Even though there was no chance of the people in the police car seeing him, he froze where he was and waited for it to go past. But it didn't. Instead, it slowed and turned left, heading for the charco.

Blind panic descended on Quentin Walker. Someone's found Tommy, he thought. And now the cops are coming for me.

For the space of thirty seconds, he stood paralyzed by fear and indecision. And then, without a thought for the other people in the cave-without even recalling their existence, to say nothing of the third batch of pottery-he turned and ran back down to the Bronco. There was a single car key in his pocket. Sweeping the camouflage cover off the top, Quentin clambered into the vehicle and shoved the key home in the ignition.

Switching on the engine, he gunned it, testing the power, trying to remember exactly how he had come to be here on the mountain. Dimly he remembered driving up here, but it had seemed lighter then. In the dark, he was hard-pressed to remember how to reverse course and get back down.

He began trying to turn the Bronco around. There was little room for maneuvering inside that little clump of mesquite trees, especially when he didn't dare turn on the headlights. Those would certainly attract the attention of the cops with their flashing red lights. Even now, the cop car was headed straight for the charco.

Realizing that's where the cops were heading drove Quentin into a frenzy. The next time he backed up, he high-centered on a boulder he hadn't been able to see in the rearview mirror. Even with four-wheel drive, the Bronco didn't come loose the first two times he tried to go forward. The third time, he really goosed it, slamming the accelerator all the way to the floor, giving the Bronco every bit of power he had.

And it worked. Too well.

With a roar and a spray of pebble-sized rocks, the Bronco shot forward-through the grove of mesquite and right over the edge of a limestone cliff that had lain, shrouded in darkness, just beyond the sheltering trees.

Quentin mashed desperately on the brakes, trying to stop, but by then it was too late. The Bronco was already airborne. It came to earth the first time twenty yards from where it had taken off. It landed nose-first and then bounced end for end. With the screech of tortured metal and to the accompaniment of breaking glass, it turned over and over. The battered remains finally came to rest, roof down, in the soft sand of the wash that skirted the bottom of the mountain. There was no fire, no explosion, only a cloud of dust that rose up into the nighttime sky and then silently dispersed.

Not having fastened his seat belt, Quentin Walker was thrown clear the first time the Bronco rebounded off the unforgiving mountainside. He flew through the air like a rag doll and then landed with a bone-jarring thump into a sturdy thicket of low-lying manzanita.

Quentin never saw Mitch Johnson come scrambling up over the landslide debris and out the crack of that second entrance, never heard him yelling into the gradually graying nighttime sky.

"Come back here, you rotten son of a bitch!"

Lani heard the engine turn over and stutter to life. The sound was faint but distinct. Other than the Bronco, there was no vehicle within hearing distance.

Mitch Johnson roared out his dismay. "Goddamn it! What the hell does he think he's doing?" Moments later, Johnson hurtled himself toward the pile of debris that blocked the second entrance. As he scrambled up it toward the crack at the top, loose rocks and pebbles rained down. A few of them smashed into Lani's legs and arms. Grabbing the pot, she scrambled to safety, stopping only when her body was pressed against the far side of the cave.

She could hear Mitch Johnson shouting at Quentin. For a moment, until the rocks quit falling, Lani stayed where she was. She might have remained there longer, but something outside herself urged her to action.

Now's your chance. Run!

Responding to that silent command, Lani stood and tried to walk. Her feet had fallen asleep. When she tried to stand on them, they were unfeeling boards beneath her. Seconds later they were alive with a thousand needles and pins.

Halfway across the floor of the cavern, she realized what she was doing and stopped cold. She had been trapped there in the cave with Mitch Johnson as surely as the spirit of Betraying Woman had been caught in her unbroken pottery. Now Lani had a chance to escape, but if the pots remained, so would Oks Gagda, imprisoned in her pottery long after the debt for betraying her people had been repaid.

Turning back toward the half-buried skeleton and her cache of pots, Lani was determined that the spirit of Betraying Woman would at last be set free.

Lani fell to her knees and felt around the dirt surface until she located the last half dozen pots-the ones Quentin hadn't been able to fit into either his first or second trips to the Bronco. Setting the one little pot aside, reserving it in case she needed to use it as a weapon, Lani set about breaking the other pots. One at a time, she heaved them against the rock wall, hearing them splinter to pieces.

At last only the little one remained. Lani reached down and picked it up. She started to take it with her, but reconsidered. If even one pot remained, Betraying Woman would still be trapped. Hating to do it, but knowing she had to, Lani raised her arm high overhead and smashed that pot as well.

There were tears in her eyes as Lani turned back toward the interior of the cave. She was truly alone now. Her first instinct was to follow Mitch Johnson up over the pile of debris, but what if he was still out there? What if she came out on the other side only to run straight into him. No, her only chance was to find the passage that led into the outer cavern.

In a sudden panic, she realized she had lost track of the exact location of the opening of the passage.

The moon had long crossed the peak of the mountain, leaving the cave in total darkness. There was no light-at least there shouldn't have been. But as Lani searched the darkness for which way to go, a light did appear. Not a ray of light, and not a beam either. It looked more like a shadow glowing in the dark. It seemed to hover there on the far side of the cave before disappearing into nothing.

Some people have claimed that what Lani saw was little more than a cloud of dust set loose by Mitch's scrambling feet. But for Lani, for someone steeped in the ancient legends of I'itoi and in the traditions of the Tohono O'othham, there was no doubt about what she had seen.

The phosphorescent cloud came from the pots, all right, but not from dust. Freed now from her clay prison, Oks Gagda herself had come to show Lani the way.

Setting off across the dirt floor of the cave once again with more confidence than the darkness warranted, Lani walked to the place where it seemed to her the cloud had disappeared. She held one arm in front of her to keep from running into the rock wall, but that wasn't necessary. At the very spot where the cloud had disappeared, the passageway into the outer cavern opened up before her.