Kylie Brant - The Last Warrior

She struggled against that frantic certainty. Battled wildly against the constant pressure that held her immobile. Knowing all the while that she’d join the silent ghosts all around her…

“Delaney. Wake up.”

It wasn’t the soft command that had her eyes snapping open. It was the sudden release of the pressure that held her pinned. Support beams from the ceiling, maybe. Or stones from the pillars that had once dotted the hotel lobby.

She blinked, comprehension returning sluggishly. The dust that had filled her lungs only moments ago was gone. She was in a darkened room but the corpses around her had vanished. There was only a man, his expression grim and worried, surveying her carefully.

Understanding rushed in, mingled with humiliation. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” The words were sharp, though his tone was low. “Are you all right?”

She let out a laugh, one bitter breath, and scrambled off the bed. It was a wreck, sheets tangled, trailing on the floor from her fight to free herself of the nightmare’s grasp. And Joe’s. Her gaze bounced to him again. “Did I hurt you?”

The oath he uttered was dangerous. “Forget that. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” But she stumbled away from the bed, unwilling, unable to face it again. “I’ll be fine. Try to get some sleep.”

He followed her out into the other room, having pulled on his jeans without bothering to fasten them. She could feel him watching her in the shadows, and wished bitterly that she could prevent the shudders racking her body. Stop the nausea clenching and roiling in her stomach. And felt that familiar helpless fury when her body didn’t obey her mind and the shivers continued to skate over her sweat-slicked skin.

“Maybe you should go.” The walls of the room seemed to be pressing in. She was suddenly anxious to have him gone, before she disgraced herself completely and bolted from the house like a demented mental patient. “You aren’t going to get any sleep here, and you need it.”

He didn’t answer, but went back to the bedroom. She let out a pent-up breath and forced herself to walk, not race, to the front door. She fumbled with the lock and yanked it open, stumbling out onto the porch to haul in a greedy gulp of air, feeling marginally more normal just to be outside.

Normal. An ironic little smile settled on her lips. What passed for normal these days was a far cry from most people’s definition of the word. It took effort to remember what it had been like before she feared sleep. Before just the thought of enclosed places had her palms dampening, her pulse racing. When she had a little distance to recover from this latest episode she’d remind herself that the nightmares occurred less frequently. That she was, for all intents, moving ahead with her life despite all that had come before.

But now, in the dark and desperate hours of the night, the reassurances were empty.

“Come with me.”

Joe had appeared behind her, and she didn’t miss the care he took not to touch her. “No, I’ll see you later. Maybe when this thing is all over.”

He did reach out then, laying his palm on her shoulder to caress her arm in a long velvet stroke. “Let me show you something.” Reluctantly she followed him back into the house, both surprised and relieved when he headed through it, then out the back doorway and down the steps.

The quarter moon was smudged by inky fingers of dark clouds, but the stars were bright overhead, brilliant pinpricks of light glimmering against the black velvet sky. Feeling a little lost, she stumbled after him, her feet not nearly as sure as his in the darkness.

“Here.”

He’d made a bed of sorts from what looked like the sofa and chair cushions and her bedding. The thoughtfulness of the gesture stung her eyelids.

“I spent more time sleeping outside than in during months like this when I was a kid. It still brings me peace when something is troubling me.” He sank down on the pallet and pulled at her hand so that she landed beside him. With swift economical movements he got her situated next to him and pulled a sheet over them both.

“Peace can be elusive,” she murmured. But something resembling it settled in her now, with her head tucked beneath Joe’s shoulder, his arm around her and a billion tiny shards of light twinkling above her.

Though he was silent for a long time, she knew he wasn’t sleeping. His voice, when he finally spoke, was halting. “Does it bother you to talk about it? Make it worse?”

“Not really.” She stared unblinkingly at the constellations above. And that was true. Talking changed nothing. She’d become convinced that only time accomplished that, but had never imagined how excruciatingly slow that transformation would be.

“Why did you return? After they got you out. What drove you to fly back into the same danger and spend all those months there again?”

She’d been asked that question dozens of times before, and it was on the tip of her tongue to offer him the same answers she’d devised to deal with it. That immersion journalism gets in your blood. That she was unwilling to leave a job undone.

But because of all he’d offered her, here, tonight, she owed him the truth. “It was the only thing that helped me make sense of it,” she said simply. “That’s what people do, I guess, when faced with something horribly, unnecessarily tragic. All those people dead, and for what? I wanted something to show for our presence in that hotel. Because if I hadn’t after all that suffering, what was the point of it?”

“So you risked your life again so those deaths weren’t in vain.”

“No.” Her voice was sharper than she intended. “You make it sound heroic, and believe me, I was anything but. I was scared all the time. Always. And the only way I got through it was to spend my nights crawling into the bottom of whatever bottle I managed to score on the black market.”

“And yet you stayed.”

“I stayed.” In an alcohol-induced haze most nights, but she’d stayed. She’d remained several more long months reporting on the violence and devastation and then had politely flown back to the States before breaking down completely.

“Few could manage what you did.”

The words warmed her, even while she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe they were true. Yes, she’d managed to do her job even as she struggled with ghosts that had taken up permanent residence in her mind. And that had been a victory of sorts. But she knew exactly how far she was from vanquishing those specters completely. Charley was right. Coyote was always waiting. He was a constant presence inside her, ready to pounce when defenses were lowered.

“I think my ex plans to steal my son.”

Shocked at his non sequitur, she twisted her head to look up at him, but Joe’s gaze was fixed on the sky. “I learned by accident that she’s moved from Window Rock. A private investigator I hired confirmed it. She’s living in Phoenix at a furnished condo unit that rents by the week.”

“Have you talked to her? Maybe she just-”

“She lied when I called her cell. Mentioned that she’d found a different place in Window Rock that was closer to a park for Jonny.” Sarcasm laced his words. “Of course when I asked for the address she skirted that by saying she was planning to bring him here for his visit this coming weekend. She’s biding her time. The custody hearing is in a few weeks and the only chance she has to share custody is to remain on reservation lands. But once the hearing is over she’ll be gone. It’s all she talked about during the final months of our marriage. She wanted us to move away from here, to a larger city, off Navajo lands.”

The demand amazed her. “She didn’t know you very well, did she?”