Jenna Kernan - Turquoise Guardian

From the security guard’s radio came a call to lock down. On the other monitors people scurried about, fleeing the halls for the closest cover.

Carter retrieved his Tribal ID from the high counter and tucked it in his open wallet as the shooting started, the burring sound of an automatic rifle blast unmistakable and close.

For just an instant, Carter was back there in Iraq with his brother and Ray and Dylan and Hatch. The next instant he was drenched with sweat and running.

Suddenly delivering his message came second to keeping Amber alive. Had Little Falcon known what was about to transpire?

The stabbing fear over Amber’s safety took him by surprise. He’d been so sure he was over her. So why was he running into gunfire?

Although he now moved forward with the stealth of his ancestry bolstered by the training of the US Marines, the stillness in the corridor was unnerving. It had the eerie quiet of a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Everyone was hiding except for him and the killer.

From down the corridor he heard a bang, like the sound of a heavy door slamming shut. He ran toward the sound, the light tread of his cowboy boots a whisper on the carpeted hallway.

He saw the blood trail as soon as he rounded the corner. It led from an office that read Purchasing upon the door. The gunman’s boot prints were there in blood leaving the scene, dark stains on the industrial carpeting.

Amber’s office, he realized. For an instant he was too terrified of what he might find to go inside. Was it the same as Iraq? Was it already too late?

He held his breath and stepped across the threshold. The calm sending his flesh crawling. He moved from one body to the next, checking for signs of life and the face that still visited his dreams.

Everyone in the outer office was dead. He moved to the two private offices. The man in the first was gone, shot cleanly through the forehead. In the next office he was greeted by the sight of dark legs, sprawled at an unnatural angle. One moved.

Carter was at her side in an instant, sweeping away the dark hair that covered her face. She was breathing, but she was not Amber. Her eyes fluttered open and flashed to his.

“Rest. Help is coming,” he said, feeling his gut twist in sympathy.

He could tell by her sadness and the tears in her eyes that she saw death coming.

“Amber?” he whispered.

“She left. When the shooter spotted her empty cubicle, he said he would find her.”

His heart gave a leap and hammered now, hitting his ribs so hard and fast it hurt.

“Where is she?”

“Left. Harvey Ibsen’s home. Paperwork. Oh, it hurts. My kids. Tell them I’m sorry. That I love them.” Her eyes fluttered shut.

Someone entered the office.

“Security!”

“In here,” Carter called.

A moment later a man in a gray uniform shirt and black pants appeared in the doorway. His gun drawn.

Carter lifted his hands. “Unarmed.”

The man aimed his weapon. Carter didn’t have time to get shot.

“EMTs on the way?” he asked.

The man nodded, his face ashen.

“Come put pressure on this.”

He did, tucking away his weapon and kneeling beside Carter before placing a large hand on the folded fabric over the woman’s abdomen.

“You know a guy called Harvey Ibsen?” Carter asked.

“Yeah. He works here.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know. In town, I guess. Who are you?”

“Friend of Amber Kitcheyan.” Friend? Once he had planned to make her his wife.

“Yeah?”

Carter was already on his feet. He pointed at the woman. “She wants her kids to know she’s sorry to leave them and that she loves them.”

The security officer blanched. Carter stepped away.

“Hey, you can’t leave.”

Carter ignored him. If the shooter was after Amber, he had to go. Now.

“She also said that the shooter was looking for Amber. Send police to Ibsen’s home. I think he’s heading there.”

The man’s eyes widened and he lifted his radio.

“Call Amber’s cell. Warn her,” said Carter.

“She doesn’t own a mobile. Or at least that’s what she told me.” The security officer’s eyes slid away.

Carter groaned. Of course she didn’t. That would have made the necessity of him delivering this message superfluous. He headed out, following the ghastly bloody footprints. His phone supplied an address for a Harvey Ibsen, and his maps program gave him the route.

Ibsen didn’t live in Lilac. According to Carter’s search engine, he lived in Epitaph, the tourist town fifteen miles north of here. The name, once a joke for the number of murders committed during the mining town’s heyday, now seemed a grim omen.

Carter swung up behind the wheel of his F-150 pickup. Amber’s boss was out the very day this happened. A coincidence that was just too perfect in timing. Luck. Fate. Or something else?

He didn’t know, but he had a sour taste in his mouth.

Chapter Two

Carter headed out, turning away from the town of Lilac, named not for the color of the rock, but the name of the man who decided to crush the poor-quality copper ore in a stamp mill and make the low-grade ore profitable.

En route to Epitaph, he phoned his twin brother, Jack, a detective with the tribal police back home on Turquoise Canyon Reservation, and filled him in.

“We have no jurisdiction outside of the tribe,” said Jack. “You’re practically in Mexico.”

Actually he was thirty miles from there and heading north.

“See what you can find out. Tell them that Amber is a member of our tribe.”

“She left the tribe, Carter.”

“They don’t know that.” Carter reined himself in. He wouldn’t lose his temper or shout at his brother.

There was a pause.

“Ibsen lives in a small housing development in Epitaph. You need the address?”

“Got it.”

“Okay. I’ll call border patrol. They might have a checkpoint set up along that stretch. What is the shooter driving?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you want me to call the others?”

He meant the members of Tribal Thunder, the warriors of the Turquoise Guardian medicine society. The ones charged with protecting their ancestral land and people from all enemies.

“Call Little Falcon.”

“I’ll call Tommy, as well. He’s down there somewhere. Maybe he can help,” said Jack.

Tommy was their brother. At twenty-six he had scored a spot on the elite all–Native American trackers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as the Shadow Wolves, and had been down there on and off for two years. Carter supposed not all the Bear Dens could be Hot Shots. A Hot Shot was a member of an elite team of firefighters flown into battle forest fires, and the Turquoise Canyon Hot Shot team was one of the most respected and sought after in the nation, a reputation they had earned with hard, dangerous work. He and the other members of his former US Marine outfit all missed the buzz of adrenaline, and so had joined the most dangerous job they could find as a substitute.

“Great. Gotta go.”

“Be careful,” said Jack.

Carter hung up and slipped the phone into his front pocket. Amber still didn’t have a cellular phone. She hadn’t owned one the last time he’d seen her either.

“Please, don’t let that be the last time,” he whispered and pressed the accelerator.

* * *

AMBER HUMMED A tune about being happy as she rolled along. The fifteen mile drive out to Harvey Ibsen’s was uneventful, and the scenery was lovely, so different than Turquoise Canyon. The roads were well maintained and flat as Kansas. She whizzed past dry yellow grass dotted with silver-green yucca and woolly cholla cacti with spines that looked like fur.