Warning Shot

Both men rose, grinning. Each wore tight-fitting uniforms. Josh’s hair was black and bristly short. Noah wore his brown hair in a knot at his neck.

They headed out behind the officers, with Axel holding Hockings’s taut arm as if she were his prisoner. Behind them came the acting chief of police. Trace tried and failed not to notice that he could nearly encircle Rylee’s bicep with his thumb and index finger and that included her wool coat. She glared up at him and her muscle bunched beneath his grip. Hockings clearly did not like role-play.

The crowd that Hockings had insisted Vasta question were now calling rude suggestions and booing. Vasta waved and spoke to them in Kowa, a form of the Iroquoian language. The officers before them peeled away, giving Axel a view of his cruiser and the rear door. For reasons he did not completely understand, his squad car was untouched. Axel hit the fob, unlocking his unit. Noah swept the rear door open.

Axel made a show of putting his hand on Hockings’s head to see that she was safely ensconced in the rear of his unit. The effect brought a cheer from the peanut gallery and allowed him to get the answer to one of his many questions about Hockings.

Her hair was soft as the ear of an Irish setter and blond right to the roots. Hockings fell to her side across the rear seat and remained on her side. Wise beyond her years, he thought.

The booing resumed as he climbed behind the wheel. It pleased him that Josh and Noah now stood between his unit and the gathering of pissed-off Mohawks.

And off they went. They were outside of Salmon River, the tribe’s main settlement, but still on rez land before Rylee sat up and laced her fingers through the mesh guard that separated his front from the back seat. Her fingernails were shiny with clearish pink polish and neatly filed into appealing ovals. Her wrists were no longer secured.

“How did you get out of that?” he asked.

“My father says you can measure a person’s IQ by whether or not they carry a pocketknife.”

“With the exception being at airports?” he asked.

“You going to keep me back here the entire way?”

“Not if you want to sit beside me.”

She didn’t answer that, just threw herself back into the upholstery and growled. Then she looked out the side window.

“They better not damage my car,” she muttered.

“More,” he said.

“What?”

She wasn’t looking at him. He knew because he was staring at her in the rearview until the grooves in the shoulder’s pavement vibrated his attention back to the road.

“Damage your car more,” he clarified. “They already shot at it. So, you find who you were looking for?”

She folded her arms over her chest. Just below her lovely small breasts, angry fists balled. She was throwing so much shade the cab went dark.

“How do you know I was looking for someone?”

“What Home Security does, isn’t it, here on the border?”

“In this case, yes. We have an illegal crossing and the suspect fled onto Kowa lands.”

“They have your suspect?”

“Denied any knowledge.”

Homeland Security Agent Rylee Hockings was about as welcome in Salmon River as a spring snowstorm.

“Maybe Border Patrol has your guy.”

“No. They lost ’em. That’s why they called me. They abandoned pursuit when our suspect crossed onto Mohawk land. Both the suspect and the cargo have vanished.” She glanced back the way they had come. “I need my car.”

What she needed were social skills. She didn’t want his help, but she might need it. And he needed to get her out of his county before she got into something way more dangerous than ruffled Mohawk regalia. Up here on the border, waving a badge at the wrong people could get you killed.

The woman might have federal authority and a mission, but she didn’t know his county or the people here. Folks who lived on the border did it for one of three reasons. Either it was as far away from whatever trouble they had left as they could get, or they had business on the other side. He’d survived up here by knowing the difference, doing his job and not poking his nose into the issues that were not under his purview.

There was one other reason to be up here. If you had no other choice. Rylee had a choice. So she needed to go. Sooner was better.

He considered himself to be both brave and smart, but that would be little to no protection from Rylee’s alluring brown eyes and watermelon-pink mouth. Best way he knew to keep clear of her was to get her south as soon as possible.

“The Mohawk are required to report illegal entry onto US soil,” she said. “And detain if possible. They did neither.”

“Maybe they aren’t interested in our business or our borders.”

“America’s business? Is that what you mean?”

He scratched the side of his head and realized he needed a haircut. “It’s just my experience that the Mohawk people consider themselves separate from the United States and Canada.” He half turned to look back at her. “You know they have territory in both countries.”

“Yes, I was briefed. And smuggling, human trafficking and dope running happen in your county.”

She’d left out moonshining. But border security was thankfully not his job. Neither were the vices that were handled by ATF—the federal agency responsible for alcohol, tobacco, firearms and recently explosives. He was glad because enforcement was a dangerous, impossible and thankless assignment. His responsibilities, answering calls from citizens via EMS, traffic stops and accidents made up the bulk of his duties. He was occasionally involved with federal authorities, collaborating only when asked, and Agent Hockings seemed thrilled to do everything herself. He should leave it at that.

“Borders bring their own unique troubles.”

“Yet, you have made limited arrests related to these activities. Mostly minor ones, at that, despite the uptick in illegal activities, especially in winter when the river freezes.”

He ignored the jibe. He did his duty and that was enough to let him sleep most nights.

“It doesn’t always freeze,” he said.

“Hmm? What doesn’t?”

“The river. Some years it doesn’t freeze.”

She cocked her head and gave him a look as if he puzzled her. “How long have you been sheriff?”

If she were any kind of an agent, she knew that already, but he answered anyway.

“Going on six years this January.”

“You seem young.”

“Old enough to know better and halfway to collecting social security.”

“You grew up here, didn’t you?”

“I’ve never lived anywhere else.”