Eagle Warrior

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Morgan winced at the cracking sound of a fist striking the man’s face. Blood sprayed on the white paint and the school photos tacked up in the hall. Morgan balled a fist before her mouth to stifle a scream. From outside Lisa shouted her mother’s name.

Her rescuer thumped her captor’s head on the hall runner as Morgan turned and fled.

* * *

RAY THOUGHT HE should have dropped the guy when he stopped fighting but gave him just one more shot for making him blow his cover. He’d been happy watching Morgan and Lisa from a distance. Experience had told him that things looked better that way. Now they’d seen him and he’d have to come up with something.

Damn.

He released the limp intruder and noticed that the housebreaker was bleeding all over himself but more important he was bleeding on Morgan’s hall runner. Ray knew women despised mud or blood on carpets.

Once on his feet, Ray gave the guy a poke with his boot and the guy’s head lolled. He retrieved the man’s wallet and drew out his license.

“Andrew Peck.” Ray glanced from the image of the smiling well-dressed man to the bloody, slack-faced Anglo with the rapidly swelling nose.

“You live in Darabee. Right up the road,” Ray said.

A little searching of the billfold yielded several business cards. Mr. Peck was a manager at the Darabee Community Savings. Home invasion seemed a strange thing for a bank manager to be doing. He clearly was not very good at B and E or at personal defense. Ray kept the business card and tossed the wallet back on Mr. Peck’s rising and falling chest where it bounced to the ground at his side.

Ray made a call to Kenshaw Little Falcon, reporting in. Little Falcon was his shaman, his spiritual leader, the head of their medicine society and the man who had hand selected the warrior sect called Tribal Thunder. Ray was proud to be among the newest members of the elite group of two dozen Tonto Apache men all selected from within the larger medicine society known as the Turquoise Guardians. Tribal Thunder recruits came from the men who completed the rigorous warrior training required to be considered a candidate. The newest inductees also included his friends Dylan Tehauno and Jack and Carter Bear Den. Like him, all three men were former US Marines but only he had a criminal record and a stunning proclivity for screw-ups.

His shaman told him to contact Jack Bear Den, who was also a member of Tribal Thunder and, conveniently, a detective with the tribal police here on Turquoise Canyon Reservation.

Their tribe of Tonto Apache was small, only 950 members but large enough for a casino and a manmade recreational lake, thanks to the Skeleton Cliff Damn. Their tribal police force totaled seven, including their dispatcher.

When he finished with Jack, he moved to the open back door to call to Morgan and Lisa. They didn’t reply. The night was closing in but he could see that Morgan had them both locked in her car. Pitiful place to hide as he could break the glass with any number of rocks lying nearby, but at least he’d found them. She’d obviously left her keys inside the house.

He shouted to her that the police were coming and to stay put. Then he went to check out the damage the guy had done inside. He stepped over Mr. Peck to find a huge mess in the bedroom that had recently been occupied by Morgan’s father. The mattress lay askew, bedding stripped, dresser drawers all emptied out.

Ray looked back at the intruder. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

A glance in Lisa’s and Morgan’s rooms showed the man had either not looked there yet or chosen to focus on Karl’s room.

Her father, Karl Hutton Hooke, had shot and killed the mass murderer who’d killed nine people down at the Lilac Copper Mine near the border last February. Ovidio Natal Sanchez had been apprehended in the town right outside the reservation boundary. On the very day the suspect had been delivered into custody, Mr. Hooke had walked right up and shot Sanchez twice through the heart. Nobody could explain why Karl had done it and, according to Jack, Morgan’s dad refused to speak to anyone, including his court-appointed attorney.

Ray heard a sound in the hall and returned to find his captive make a failed attempt to rise.

“What were you looking for, Peck?”

Peck groaned and rolled his head from one side to the other. His hand went to his nose. He coughed blood and opened one eye.

“You want to tell me why you’re here?” asked Ray.

“Do I know you?” Peck tried to staunch the copious amounts of blood issuing from his nose with his index finger and thumb. This forced the blood in a new direction and he began to cough.

“We only just met. Why are you here?”

“I was just...” His eyes shifted toward the kitchen, judging the distance to freedom and finding it too far. “I...it...”

“Yes?” Ray asked, lifting his brows and affecting a look of interest.

“I’m not saying a thing without a lawyer.”

Ray smiled. “You have me confused with a law-abiding citizen. So let me explain.” Ray squatted on his haunches and grabbed Mr. Peck, lifting him by the front of his bloody shirt. “I’m Apache and on my reservation.” Ray showed him his empty hand. “I could kill you with this.

“Plus I have a criminal record and a bad temper. I’m not calling you a lawyer. So once again. Why, Mr. Peck, are you lying in Miss Hooke’s hallway?”

Mr. Peck started to cry. “Please. You got to let me go.”

Ray sighed and then shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

“I can pay you.”

“Pay me?” Ray snorted. “This lady is a friend of mine. You scared her. So it’s gone past money.” Ray lifted Andrew’s index finger and gave it a shake. “I expect a bank manager needs these.”

Peck tried and failed to recover his hand with a weak tug. When he reached with his opposite hand Ray slapped him in the forehead with the heel of one hand. Peck’s head thumped on the carpet and his hand fell away.

“I’m about to break this. Fair warning.”

“All right. I was looking for the money.”

The obvious question was what money, but Ray didn’t do obvious.

“Yeah. Me, too. Why do you think it’s here?”

Andrew’s mouth quirked and a little of the fear left his expression. His pale twitchy eyes reminded Ray of a rodent.

“He didn’t have much time between when he cashed the check and shot that man. Maybe twenty-four hours.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “She doesn’t seem to have it. Or she’s real smart. So I figured I’d start here.”

“And you chose a time when Ms. Hooke would find you. Why?”

“No. I thought she worked nights at the casino. Somebody at the bank said so.”

“She did. But her father used to watch her daughter. Now she’s alone so...”

Andrew absorbed that. “Oh, yeah. Right. So what do you say? Fifty-fifty?”

“How much we talking here, Andy?”

His mouth clamped shut and he sniffed. Ray selected which digit to break and Peck writhed and whined.

“Okay. Okay. It was two hundred thousand. A bank check. He asked for cash. We had to make him come back. I don’t keep that much on hand. So he came back, you know, the next day and the check was good. So I cashed it. And he walked right out of there with that money in a cardboard box. Just folded over the top flaps and tucked it under his arm.”

Two hundred thousand? No wonder Kenshaw Little Falcon thought Morgan and her girl needed protection.

“You cleared the check?” asked Ray.

Peck nodded. “Sure did, after the bank in Phoenix cleared the funds.”