Kylie Brant - The Last Warrior

The police units’ headlights had the area lit up like near dawn but she kept her gaze carefully away from the mine hulking in the background. She didn’t want to consider how easy it would have been to succumb to its chilly embrace.

The aftermath of the ordeal continued wreaking its private misery. The warmth of the blanket couldn’t quite chase the chill from her skin. Her heart refused to regain a normal beat and her stomach was a twisted mass of clenching nausea.

But she was still standing. She wasn’t sure she could do it without support, but she was on her feet. She’d faced her darkest fears, and she’d done it without the help of a bottle of Absolut. She’d celebrate her private victories in the tiny increments with which she achieved them.

She didn’t fool herself that there wouldn’t be further repercussions from this experience, but she did believe she’d weather them without reaching for that bottle on top of her cupboard. It wasn’t a drink she wanted right now, at any rate.

Joe detached himself from the group of officers and headed toward her. She noted his searching gaze, and thought he realized just how close she’d stepped to the abyss. For once the thought of allowing someone near enough to know her that well failed to terrify her.

“I’ve commandeered one of these rides. Are you ready to go home with me?”

She stared at him, her mind filled with a sort of clarity that had been missing for longer than she could remember. “Yes.” She pushed away from the car and walked toward him. “I think I’m ready.”

Eighteen Months Later

“You missed! I win again!”

Jonny’s jubilant whoop cut through Joe’s reverie as he bounced the basketball to his son. “You’re the champ, all right. Want to go for three out of five?”

The evening air was still warm enough to have them both perspiring. They’d shed their shirts an hour earlier. Maybe with the workout Jonny would be exhausted enough to go to bed without a struggle. It was a good thought, even if he didn’t hold out much hope of it.

His son had gone through a lot of adjustments in the last year and a half. It had only been recently that Joe felt as though he could stop scrutinizing the boy for any signs of trauma over the changes in his family unit. Kids were resilient, far more so than adults, although Joe had undergone a few major changes of his own.

He checked his watch. Thirty minutes to bedtime. He rebounded for his son and pulled up for a short jump shot. When he missed, he turned his son’s jeer into a groan by announcing, “Time for bed. You just have time for a shower and a snack if you hurry.”

“Come on, Dad! Another fifteen minutes?”

Looking down in his son’s eyes he steeled himself against the familiar con and said, “You know the rules. Doesn’t matter if you’re at your mom’s house or mine. Summer bedtime is eight-thirty.” Although the theatrics didn’t diminish, something in his voice must have convinced the boy because he started trudging toward the house.

Joe retrieved their discarded shirts and went to put the ball away. It had been difficult to forgive Heather for what she’d planned to do. Even after hearing her tearful explanation of wanting to get Jonny far away from the monster her father had become, it had been tempting to let it all spill out at the custody hearing. By revealing that she’d learned of her father’s activities and systematically planned a way to run, rather than go to the police, there would have been no contest to the hearing. She may even have faced jail time. She might have deserved that.

But his son didn’t.

The scandal that had swept the reservation when Bruce Glenn’s activities had come to light would be hard enough for Jonny to grow up with. He didn’t need to lose his mother in the process, as well.

Joe headed toward the house. It had taken nearly a year, but he and his ex had come to a wary sort of truce. She’d taken up residence in Chinle and Joe was as fair as he could be with the time she spent with Jonny. It had been over six months since Graywolf had been sentenced, and four since Bruce’s trial.

And it had been three months eleven days since Delaney had left.

The familiar longing traced through him as his mental calendar notched another day. She’d stayed put longer than he should have expected. Perhaps the most remarkable of the changes he’d undergone had been a gradual understanding that he could no more ask her to stop doing what she loved than she would have suggested he stop being a cop.

So he’d stepped aside when she’d taken that new job, swallowing his protests, his worry, and learned to live with the gut-clenching desolation that had been a constant companion since she’d walked away. He had his son. His family. His job. It should have been enough. But ever since she’d left there had been an acid-etched void that no one else seemed capable of filling.

Joe walked over to pick up Jonny’s bike, wheeling it closer to the house when an unfamiliar car slowed and pulled into the driveway. Frowning, he turned and lowered his son’s bicycle.

“I didn’t know superheroes rode bikes.” Delaney slammed the car door and rounded the hood. “Another myth bites the dust. One of these days I’m going to completely lose every ounce of naiveté I hold dear.”

He was at her side in two quick steps, his arms closing around her. “You didn’t tell me you were coming back this week.” He kissed her, long and deep, before raising his head to get his fill of looking at her. “We would have come to the airport to get you.”

“I wanted to surprise you.” He looked good, she decided, staring hungrily at him.

“You’ve got the book done already?”

He hadn’t released her and that was fine with her. Leaning against him, she murmured, “I’ve got enough material, I think. And if not, I can always fly back for a quick follow-up.”

The sordid tales that had emerged from the Graywolf and Glenn trials had ignited her imagination. Following her completed project on the Navajo culture, she’d decided to go to Mexico for an in-depth study of the staging society that existed near some border crossings. Although Joe hadn’t been able to hide his reaction to her plans, he hadn’t tried to dissuade her. At least not much. But even in his silence it had been an excruciating decision to leave, even for a time. And the loneliness she’d experienced in the intervening time away had shortened the time she’d spent on the project.

“Dad!” A bellow from the house interrupted them, and they looked toward the six-year-old boy, clad only in his underwear, framed in the doorway. “Can I have some ice cream? Hey, ’Laney’s back! Did you bring me something?”

Laughing, she called back, “It’s in my bag.” He whooped and ran back into the house. “It’s a carving of Huitzilopochtli, a deified ancestral warrior-hero.”

“Did you bring me anything?” The suggestive timbre in Joe’s voice had a delicious shiver chasing over her skin.

“Just me.”

His face lightened in a rare smile. “That happens to be exactly what I wanted.” There was a look in Joe’s eye, seductive promises that she was anxious to test. “I can’t wait to have you all to myself.” But then he glanced toward the house and said, “But first I have a six-year-old preparing for the nightly bedtime battle.”

“I know. I can wait.”

“Really?” His tone was light, but there was a flicker across his expression. “I was kind of hoping we were done waiting.”

She looked at him without answering. She knew he was asking about their future, and it was a question they’d learned to avoid since her answer only seemed to bring them both pain. But that was before she’d spent three long months away from him. The gnawing pain of missing him had clarified a great many things she’d once had trouble understanding for herself.