A Question Of Honor

“Is it very far from here?”

“It’s about fifteen miles north, near the res.”

“The res?”

“Indian reservation.”

Faith hadn’t realized until that moment that he was very much a Native American. “You’re from there?”

He nodded. “Born and bred. Wolf Lake is a good place. Some tourist stuff, but nothing too crazy. It’s pretty quiet most times. Shoot, they got a police force of four, and their main job is giving out tickets for illegal parking to tourists who wander through. That tells you how safe it is.”

It didn’t sound as if any of the four policemen would be looking for a financier’s daughter or even know about her. “How do I get there?”

He gave her directions, telling her to watch out for the inn just before the general store on the main drag of the town on the north side. “It’s a two-storied adobe with a carved eagle above the entrance. It was the first hotel ever in town. Now it’s more like what do you call those places...oh, yeah, a bed-and-breakfast. Six, eight rooms, nice place.” He hesitated and then said, “For the sake of truth in advertising, I should tell you my niece runs the inn. Name’s Mallory Sanchez. You can tell her I sent you, if you want.” He smiled slyly at her. “Probably won’t help you, but who knows?”

She answered his smile. “Thank you so much, Mr....?”

“Name’s Willie G. Lots of Willies around, but only one Willie G. in these parts.”

The waitress called out to him, “Got two orders, Willie.”

He waved a hand at her but didn’t turn. “What’s your name?”

“Faith.”

“Safe journey, Faith,” he said, moving toward the kitchen.

After the waitress boxed Faith’s leftover food and took the money for the bill, Faith stepped out into air that was just plain cold. Light snow was falling, gradually turning the land a pale gray-white. Faith got in her car, went back to the frontage road and headed east for two miles, then spotted the turn Willie had told her about. She drove onto the narrow two-lane road that was all but deserted in the early evening.

As she drove, there were fewer and fewer houses and buildings. The road cut through a vast desert area, with lots of rocks and rough ground, etched in white. Shadows fell on the snow from the mesas and buttes that rose in erratic patterns.The country looked bleak.

She clicked on her headlights and kept going. Had Willie told her the right distance to Wolf Lake? She felt as if she’d been driving for a lot more time than it took to go fifteen miles. Relief came when she caught sight of a road sign: Wolf Lake—2 Miles. She sped up, anxious to get there before the dark descended completely.

She was so intent on her driving, she didn’t notice she wasn’t alone on the road until the jolting wail of a siren cut through the air. Flashing red and blue lights bounced around in the interior of her car. She reflexively glanced at the speedometer, actually happy to see she was speeding. Simple speeding, stupid of her to do it, but this was not about her fleeing Chicago, just her driving.

She took a shaky breath as she pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. It was okay, she told herself. She had the license her dad had given her. When she jumped at the flood of bright light from inside the police car, she admitted that no matter what logic told her, she was afraid.

CHAPTER THREE

JOHN MUTTERED, “Crazy people,” when the speeding car came to a full stop. “Thought we’d get this type on the weekend or closer to Christmas when the tourists come around to visit,” John grumbled. He tucked the cruiser in behind the compact car with an Illinois plate on it.

There was a single passenger from what Adam could see, a woman grimacing at the glaring light that John had switched on. She wasn’t moving at all.

John tipped open the onboard computer, brought it up and put in the license-plate number. A moment later, he was reading the screen. “Gerald Lewis Reich and Martha Reich, Chicago area. Looks like Martha is on her own. Car’s clean, and they’re clean. Not even a traffic ticket between them in the past five years.” He reached for the door handle. “Be right back,” he said and got out.

The wind was picking up, swirling the snow, and John ducked his head while he gripped his cap with his free hand. He got to the driver’s window as it slowly slid down and he leaned in to speak to the driver. A hand pushed some folded papers out toward John, who took them and stood to read. Then John turned his head as if he was trying to hit his left shoulder with his chin.

Adam knew John was in full uniform and his two-way radio was wired into the shoulder. He spoke into it, then went back to the car. He pushed the papers back to the driver, bent to say something, then jogged back to the cruiser. He slammed the door on the cold wind and snow outside. “Got a call,” he said. “It’s Amos Joe and Birdie. They’re at it again. Got to get there before someone does something stupid again.”

He punched the gas on the idling cruiser, veering out and around the car still ahead of them. Adam glanced at the driver, who still had the window partially down. He caught a glimpse of a shadowy shape before they raced past and down the highway. “What about the stop?” Adam asked, motioning behind them.

“She just bought the car and didn’t get it registered before she took off, so I let her go.”

Adam saw the way John was biting his lower lip and he knew there was more. “What else?”

John shook his head. “Just a hunch, that’s all.”

“Just a hunch?” he repeated to his friend. “A hunch about what?”

John frowned at the road ahead. “Actually, the thing is, I get a feeling she’s scared of something, and not just of a speeding ticket.” He shrugged on a gruff laugh. “If I had a dollar for every right hunch I had about people, I’d still be broke.”

Adam stared at the darkness outside. “I don’t know. Your hunches have worked out sometimes.”

“Dumb luck,” John muttered.

Maybe John was right about the woman, maybe something was going on, but it wasn’t something either man could do a thing about.

What they could do was help his brother.

“When did you see Jack last?”

John cleared his throat. “Out at your pa’s place.” He was referring to Adam’s grandfather’s ranch just north of their parents’ spread.

“Why there?”

“Don’t know. Maureen said he’d headed out there, so I followed.” Maureen Cane, Jack’s assistant in the law office, kept close track of her boss. “I caught up with him sitting on the porch of the old house.”

Adam thought maybe the old place gave his brother some comfort. That adobe had been the first thing his grandfather had built when he’d migrated from the high country on the res, down to the low country. Eventually, he brought his expanding family to the raw land that had been in the Wolf family for what seemed forever. Pa, as the boys called their grandfather, had been obsessed all his life about making something out of nothing for his family. He’d been told to stay with his people, to not go off on his own to mingle with others.

But Jackson Wolf, whom Jack had been named for, hadn’t listened. He’d followed his own vision. He’d gone down and worked hard and long, clearing first the homesite, building the sprawling adobe to house his seven children, then went on to clear pastures to graze cattle and sheep. When he’d finished, his family had a home with efficiently run land that extended over three hundred acres.

Adam’s mother, Lark, had loved it, and when she’d married Herbert Carson, an Irish banker from Boston, whom she’d met by chance in the town, there was no question that they would settle on Wolf land. And they did. They moved south of the original house, onto a piece of land that was three times as big and ended up being three times as fancy.

But the Carson boys had always been drawn to Pa’s land. Like metal to a magnet, when school let out and they were free for the summer, they were at the old ranch. They’d trail after their grandfather, working alongside him and listening to his stories about their ancestors and his plans for the land. He’d gone even farther and helped develop the town of Wolf Lake. He’d been there when the name of his people had been put on the town. He’d realized his dreams.

As the squad car drove through the persistent snow, Adam remembered an incident when he’d been around fourteen. The brothers had left Pa’s place and hiked up into the fringes of the high country. At sunset, they’d been sitting on a ledge that looked down on the reservation in one direction, the town in the other and the vast expanse of Wolf land far below. Off in the distance, the soaring mountains beyond the buttes and mesas stood starkly against the early-evening sky. A deep gouge that cut through them opened a way to the other side.

Jack had said something about the new grazing area Pa had cleared, that he’d hoped he’d go farther south. Land had always been Jack’s passion, the Wolf land. Gage had pointed to a site on the far end of town, to the start of construction for a fully equipped medical clinic that Moses’s father would run for years before his son pushed for a real hospital. Gage had said they needed to make it bigger, and they had done that years later, turning it from a clinic to a hospital.

But Adam had looked past the town and the res and over to the separation in the mountains. All he remembered feeling at that moment had been an overwhelming urge to head for the opening and keep going. He wasn’t sure where to, but he knew he wanted to go.

Like Pa, he’d wanted to break free.

“We should discuss our trip and have things organized when we talk to Jack,” John said, snapping Adam back to the present.

“Good idea. We can contact Moses tomorrow and see if he can get away. It’s been a long time since we all went up there together.”

John nodded. “Just have to convince Jack to come.”