From Mission To Marriage

“What’s the story on the murder?”

She sighed, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “After four years of getting knocked around and refusing to report him, Brenda had reached her limit and was talking divorce. Surprise, surprise when she accidentally fell out of a raft in white water.” A pause ensued as Vanessa swallowed hard, then she glanced at him with her dark eyes narrowed. “She was not wearing a life jacket. She was not dressed for rafting. She was six and a half months pregnant. What would you conclude?”

“Sounds like premeditation. First-degree homicide,” Clay muttered a curse, shaking his head. “He only did four years?”

She shrugged, still gripping the steering wheel as if it were Hightower’s neck. “Yeah. The D.A. went for first degree, but the jury couldn’t agree on the premeditation. The thing was, she didn’t die right away. Some other rafters happened along, got her out of the water and got her breathing again. But she had a head wound that put her in a coma. She stayed on life support until the doctors thought the baby could make it.”

Clay didn’t ask, but she answered his unspoken query.

“Little Dilly’s alive and well, thriving.”

“Thank God. Her name is Dilly?”

“Delinda,” she explained, smiling for real now, pride showing. “Our beautiful blessing.” She went on about Hightower. “The first bombing is only the beginning. James hasn’t done his worst. That was just to get our attention. He’s out for blood. Mine and probably others who were responsible for his conviction.”

“You didn’t put that in the report,” Clay remarked.

“Because I only put down the facts, not supposition. Even though I know beyond a shadow who did it and why, I can’t prove motive. But I will,” she assured him.

For the first time, Clay saw the determination and drive he was looking for. Gone was the Pollyanna attitude and the youthful exuberance that had characterized her before. Here was an agent with a mission she would die to complete.

“He had the schedule for the annual Indian Fall Fair in October and a layout of the fairgrounds, Lisa said,” Vanessa reminded him. The woman had dwelled on it during Clay’s questioning. “Thousands attend it and they won’t be spread out. Everyone I know and love is involved in one or more of the events, exhibits or concessions. For spectators, we have a festival in May,” Vanessa explained. “This one is usually the first week in October and sometimes called ‘the fair. ’It’s like a country fair, sort of, only we have many more exhibits, local crafts, fancy dances and drumming, stick ball games and so forth. It’s mainly for the residents, but we do have some tourists and dignitaries.”

“Should you even be on this case?” he asked.

“Why not, because I have a personal interest in nailing him to the wall? Nobody minded that we were related by marriage when I found him after Brenda’s death. I took him down and I testified against him, too, for all the good it did. Four lousy years!” She huffed in disgust.

“Are there any other suspects?” he asked, wondering whether she had even considered it.

She shook her head. “Hightower’s our best bet, but I’m keeping an open mind.”

“Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. All right, back to business. Extra guards will be hired for a round-the-clock watch on the fairgrounds for any suspicious activity. Can the local force handle that?”

“Yes, and we’ll run the dogs through to sniff out any explosives before anyone’s allowed in, then do gate checks.”

Clay nodded his approval. “Let’s get with your chief and the council, maybe round up a contractor to put in cement barriers to prevent crashing the fences with a truck bomb.”

Vanessa remained quiet, but the air in the car was thick with unspoken argument.

“Okay,” Clay said. “What?”

She cleared her throat and flexed her hands on the wheel as she drove. “We need to locate Hightower before he strikes again, not just set up to react. Word’s already on the grapevine that everyone should keep an eye out for him and notify us when he’s spotted. That’s one great advantage to living in a community with only a few thousand people. Like Cheers, everybody knows your name.”

“Clever, involving the citizens.” Clay smiled. She was rapidly justifying a chance with COMPASS. So what if she was mouthy, nosy and had a warped sense of humor? He had put up with worse from the Sextant crew. He didn’t know the members of the COMPASS team very well yet, but she’d probably fit right in.

“Hungry?” she asked, braking as they reached the paved road and waiting for his answer.

“I am. Is there somewhere around here we can grab a few burgers before you take me to my hotel?”

She put on the left blinker and began to turn. “Oh, we’ll do better than that. How about barbecue, beans and fry bread? My grandparents eat at five, a blood-sugar thing, but there’ll be plenty left.”

Clay frowned. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Not feed you and put you up? What are you thinking? If I don’t bring you home, the tribal council will haul me into court for sedition or something, not to mention that the grans would skin me alive.” She shook her head fiercely. “Uh-uh, no way you can get off the hook, so deal with it.”

“Put me up? Stay with them? No, I couldn’t—”

“You don’t understand. You have to unless, of course, you want to insult the whole tribe. And discredit yours while you’re at it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he said, knowing the time had come to make things clear to her. “I don’t have a tribe.” It was true. He could not remember his mother’s people and his father refused to tell him who they were. The first few years of Clay’s life were a blur, spent at a place only God could identify, because Clayton Senate Sr. had gone to the grave with that secret six years ago.

She flashed a saucy grin. “Well, you have one now, brother, whether you want one or not. Tsi lu gi. That means welcome.”

Clay huffed out a breath of resignation and muttered, “Wa do.”

“My God, you speak Tsalagi?” she asked with a laugh of delight. “You’re Cherokee! Why didn’t you say so?”

He didn’t tell her he also knew Navajo and several other Native American tongues. He had a way with languages and these were simple to learn, a relative hobby, compared to Russian and Arabic.

Wherever you went in this business, it paid to talk the talk, or at least to be able to listen to it.

He normally kept his mouth shut and did just that, but this woman had a strange effect on him. In one afternoon, she had slipped under his guard, caused him to reveal a hell of a lot more about himself than his best friends knew, and had even made him laugh out loud.

For the first time, Clay sensed how dangerous Vanessa Walker was going to be to life as he knew it. And yet, he also realized he would not avoid her even if he could. Running scared was not his way. Father had called him a brave countless times and, while it had been meant as more insult than compliment, Clay did his damnedest to live up to the name.

Chapter 2

A fter driving for about half an hour, Vanessa turned off on a nearly invisible, unpaved side road that led up one of the mountains. “The grans are expecting us. I phoned them about it this morning,” she explained while easily negotiating the twisting path with its overhanging branches and low visibility.

“Take me back to a hotel, will you? I really need to process these prints and fax those and Hightower’s old license photo to—”

“No problem. You can fax from the grans place. They love company. Today is barbecue day. Maybe goat, maybe pork, maybe both.”

Clay’s apprehension grew. Primitive accommodations and food cooked over an outdoor fire didn’t bother him in the least, so he didn’t quite understand this niggling sense of unease in his gut.

“Don’t worry. I promise you won’t get the third degree. Now you might if they got the idea I was bringing you home to get their approval as a potential husband. The tribe’s pretty strict on consanguinity rules, so they’d politely insist on your background if that were the case. But I’ll explain you’re only here on business. I’ll make that very clear.”

“Consanguinity?” He knew what the word meant, of course, but what the hell was she talking about?

“Oh yeah,” she said with a chuckle. “No relatives considered, goes without saying. Also, I can’t marry within my own clan whether there are blood ties or not. Usually there are, to some degree, but it’s not a problem.”

“Yet you aren’t married,” he observed. “Must cut down on the number of potential candidates.”

“Not really. There are seven clans to choose from. But I’ve never felt the urge to go looking.”

“Why not?” And why did he insist on prying into her life as if it were any of his business?

She shot him a saucy look. “Ambition outweighed lust. Simple as that.”