Jenna Kernan - Native Born

Tully glanced at her with an open look of assessment. She thought he was trying to puzzle this out as well and had also come up empty.

“All right, then,” said Tully and pointed at Cassidy. “Agents Walker and Forrest, you are reassigned to Black Mountain until further notice.”

Clyne glared at her and her wide eyes narrowed to meet the challenge in his gaze.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Chapter Three

“But why would he choose me?” Cassidy asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Tully. “Because you saved his brother’s life?”

Her partner, Luke Forrest, spoke up. “Don’t you see a conflict of interest here?”

“It’s Chief Cosen’s call,” said Tully. “One thing I know about Agent Walker is that she does her job. She proved it again today.”

She couldn’t tell if he was proud of her or still annoyed. But it was true. If she wanted Clyne Cosen dead, that had been her chance.

“Yes, sir.” It was automatic, her response. Inside her head she was shouting, No! But that was the voice of emotion. The one that she ignored whenever possible.

“Walker. Forrest. You are assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cassidy groaned. She didn’t need to be on another committee. Especially one made up of state, local and federal authorities. What she needed was to be in the field. They’d been getting close to Ronnie Hare and that bust might be all she needed to gain her transfer.

“Since you are Apache, I expect you to be able to do some recon and find out if there is anything going on up there that would lead someone to take a shot at Tribal Councillor Cosen.”

“Yes, sir,” said Agent Forrest.

Her daughter. The basketball game that she’d promised she would attend.

“I need to make arrangements for my daughter.”

“Go on, then.”

Clyne’s scowl deepened.

Cassidy moved to the far side of the room to make a call to her mother-in-law. After Cassidy’s husband, Gerard, had been killed in action, Diane Walker had moved west to help her pick up the slack. Cassidy had no family of her own, and Gerard had been Diane’s only child. She made the call, apologized and disconnected. It was not the first time she had been unexpectedly sent on an assignment. It was the first time that that assignment was challenging her custody in federal court.

Cassidy glanced back to the waiting three men. She had one more important call to make to Amanda, the only thing more important than her job.

“Hi, pumpkin. You at school?”

“Mom, school ended hours ago. I’m at the rec center. The game. Remember? Where are you? Warm-up is almost over.”

She glanced at her watch and saw it was nearly four in the afternoon.

“Right. You all warmed up?” she asked, turning her back on the men.

“Where are you?” asked Amanda.

“I’m still in Tucson.” Her daughter groaned. “Grandma is on the way.”

“Oh, Mom!”

“Listen. There was some trouble. You’ll see it on the news.”

“Mom?” Her daughter’s voice was now calm. Unlike some of her fellows, she had never hidden what she did from her daughter. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine. But I’m still in Tucson.”

“Did you see my brothers?”

She glanced to Gabe and then to Clyne. “Yes.” She gripped her neck with her opposite hand so hard that her back began to ache.

“I want to meet them!” Her daughter’s voice filled with longing.

“Maybe soon.”

And maybe forever. Cassidy’s heart ached low down and deep, reminding her of a pain she had not felt since she’d discovered her husband had been killed in action.

She needed to get them out of Arizona. If only that would work. But she knew that moving wouldn’t protect Amanda from one particular threat. The ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act. Sovereign rights. Tribal rights.

“Are you listening to me?” asked Amanda.

“What was that, pumpkin?”

“I asked if you will be back in time for Saturday’s game?”

She glanced to Clyne, the newest of the tribal council and enemy number one in her book. Oh, if she could just find something to bury them but all she’d come up with was something ancient on the third brother, Clay. She stiffened. A brow arched as she looked at Clyne, who narrowed his eyes at her.

“I’ll try, pumpkin.”

“Oh, Mom!”

From the phone, Cassidy heard the sound of a scoreboard buzzer.

“I’ve got to go.”

Cassidy pictured her in her red-and-white basketball uniform, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her lips tinted pink from the colored lip gloss her daughter had begun wearing. It was her last year of elementary school. Her last year of eligibility in the youth basketball league. Next year Cassidy would have a teenager on her hands. She hoped.

“I love you,” said Cassidy.

“You, too.” The line went dead.

She held the phone to her chest for just a moment, eyes closed against the darkness that crept into her heart. What would she do if they took her daughter away?

“Was that her?”

The gruff male voice brought her about and she faced Clyne, who had snuck up on her without a sound.

Cassidy straightened for a fight with Clyne—her daughter’s eldest brother and the first name on the complaint petitioning to have her daughter’s closed adoption opened and overturned. She knew he’d win. He knew it, too. She saw not an ounce of pity for her in those deep brown eyes. Just the alert stare of a confident man facing a foe.

His face was all angles where her daughter’s was all soft curves and the promise of the woman she would soon become.

An Apache woman. Not if she could help it. Amanda would be whatever she wanted and not be limited to one place and one clannish tribe who clung to that mountain as if it were more than just another outcropping of stone. Cold as his heart, she suspected. What did he know about Amanda, anyway? Nothing. According to his records he’d been deployed with the US Marines when his sister had been born and hadn’t been discharged until after the accident that took his mother.

“Was that who?” she asked. But she knew. Still she made him say it.

“Jovanna?” he said, breathing the word, just a whisper.

Her skin prickled at the hushed intimate tone.

“Her name is Amanda Gail Walker.”

“Amanda?” Clyne spat the word as he threw up his hands. “I’ve never met an Apache woman named Amanda.”

“And you won’t meet this one if I have any say in it.”

“We are her family,” said Clyne. “Her real family.”

“Hey, I’m just as real as the family that didn’t even know she was alive for twelve years.”

“Nine,” he corrected. Nine years on July 4 since his mother had died in that auto accident.

“If it were up to you all, she would have been raised in a series of group homes in South Dakota.”

“You are not a mother. You’re a field agent.”

“And?”

“You have no husband, no other children.”

“What’s your point?”

“You are alone raising my sister and you have a very dangerous job. You were shot today! You could get killed at any moment. A good mother doesn’t put her child at that kind of risk.”

“It’s an important job.”

“So is motherhood,” said Clyne. “So is teaching her who she is, who her people are, where she comes from. She belongs where her tribe has lived for centuries. You move her around like she’s a canary.”

“You finished? Because it isn’t up to you. It’s up to the judge. Until then I do my job and you keep away from my daughter.”

“Walker!” She turned to see her boss closing in. “Outside. Now.”

She followed him out into the hallway.