Loe raamatut: «Warning Shot»

Chapter Two

Sheriff Trace responded to the call from the Kowa Nation one hour later, passing the border patrol checkpoint just off their rez and knowing that would only further ruffle feathers. Likely, this was also the work of Rylee Hockings.

Homeland Security Agent Hockings didn’t look like trouble, as she sat small and sullen in the seat beside the desk of the Kowa Mohawk Reservation’s acting chief of police. But having already met her, he could not help but take in the moment. Having ignored his advice and dismissed him like the help, there was a certain satisfaction in seeing her in wrist restraints.

He didn’t know the exact point when his moment to gloat changed into a completely different kind of study, but he now noticed that Rylee Hockings had a heart-shaped face, lips the color of the flesh of a ripe watermelon and large, expressive brown eyes with elegant arching brows that were the brown of dry pine needles. Her straight, fine blond hair fell forward, making her flushed cheeks seem even pinker. Their eyes met, and her brow descended. Her lids cinched as she squinted at him with open hostility.

Axel could not resist smiling. “The next time I ask you if you’d like an escort, maybe don’t flip me the bird.”

“I didn’t flip you off.” Her reply was a bark, like a dog that might be either frightened or angry but either way sent clear signs for him to back off.

“No, I believe you said that when you wanted the help of a sheriff who was dumb enough to lock his keys in his cruiser, you’d ask for it.”

He glanced at her wrists, secured with a wide plastic zip tie and hammering up and down on the knees of her navy slacks as if sending him a message in Morse code. He wondered why federal agents always advertised their profession with the same outfits. A blazer, dress shirt and slacks with a practical heel was just not what folks wore up here.

“I didn’t say dumb enough. I said careless enough.”

He glanced to the acting chief of police, Sorrel Vasta, who said, “Potato, Pa-tot-o.”

“I also mentioned that the Kowa tribe does not do drop-in visits,” said Axel.

“Especially from feds,” added Vasta. He folded his arms across his chest, which just showed off how very thin and young he really was.

“This,” said Agent Hockings, “is federal land. As a federal officer, I do not need permission—”

“You are a trespasser on the Mohawk Nation. We are within our rights to—”

Whatever rights Vasta might have been about to delineate were cut short by the blast of a shotgun.

Hockings threw herself from the chair to the floor as Vasta ducked behind the metal desk. Axel dropped, landing beside Hockings, pressed shoulder to shoulder.

“Shots fired,” she called, reaching for her empty holster with her joined hands and then swearing under her breath.

“Who are you yelling to exactly?” Axel asked. “We all heard it.”

She pressed those pink lips together and scowled, then she scrambled along the floor, undulating in a way that made his hairs stand up and electricity shiver over his skin. He hadn’t felt that drumbeat of sexual awareness since that day in high school when Tonya Sawyer wore a turquoise lace bra under a T-shirt that was as transparent as a bridal veil. She’d been sent home, of course, to change, but it hadn’t mattered. Images like that stuck in the memory like a bug on a fly strip. He had a feeling that the sight of Hockings’s rippling across the floor like a wave was going to stick just like that turquoise bra.

“Out of the way,” Hockings said, her thigh brushing his shoulder.

The electricity now scrambled his brain as the current shot up and then down to finally settle, like a buzzing transformer, in his groin. High school all over again.

Vasta squatted at the window and peeked out. The only thing he held was the venetian blinds. His gun remained on his hip. He glanced back at Axel and cocked his head.

Axel realized his own mouth was hanging open as if Agent Hockings had slapped him, which she would have, if she knew what he had been thinking.

“They shot her car. Peppered the side,” said Vasta.

Her head popped up like a carnival target from behind the desk.

“Who did?” Her perfect blond hair was now mussed. Axel resisted the urge to lay the strands back in order. Was her hair silky or soft like angora?

“I dunno, but they are long gone,” said Vasta. “Even took the shell.”

“How do you know that?” She reached his side.

“Shells are green and red, mostly. Easy to spot on the snow.”

Agent Hockings moved to the opposite side of the window. “There is a whole group of people out there. Witnesses.”

Axel’s laugh gleaned another scowl from Hockings. Vasta’s mouth quirked but then fell back to reveal no hint of humor when Hockings turned from Axel to him.

Now Axel was scowling. Vasta was making him look bad, or perhaps he was doing that all on his own.

Axel reached the pair who now stood flanking the window like bookends. He pressed his arm to hers, muscling her out of the way in order to get a glimpse outside. Her athletic frame brought her head to his shoulder, and he was only five foot ten. She was what Mrs. Shubert, the librarian of the Kinsley Public Library, would have called petite. Mrs. Shubert had also been petite and was as mighty as a superhero in Axel’s mind. He knew not to judge ferocity in inches.

“Or,” said Hockings, “you could see if any of the spectators have a shotgun in their hand or shell casing in their pocket.”

“Illegal search,” said Vasta. “And none of them have a shotgun any longer. So, here’s what’s going to happen. Sheriff Trace is going to escort you out in restraints and put you in the back of his unit. Then he’s going to drive you outta here. If you are smart, you will keep your head down and look ashamed, because you should be.”

“I will not.”

“Then they will likely break every window in Axel’s cruiser and possibly turn it over with you both inside.”

Hockings stiffened as her eyes went wide with shock. The brown of her irises, he now saw, were flecked with copper. She looked to him, as if asking if Vasta were pulling her leg.

He hoped his expression said that the acting chief of police was not.

She turned back to Vasta. “You’d have to stop them.”

“Listen, Agent Hockings, it’s just me here. Last week, I was an officer, and now this.” He motioned to his chief’s badge. “Besides, I’m tempted to help them.”

Hockings looked from Vasta to Trace and then back to Vasta.

“Are you pressing charges against Hockings?” Axel asked Vasta.

“Are you serious?” she asked the sheriff.

He gave her a look he hoped said that he was very serious. “They have tribal courts and you do not want to go there.”

“They can’t prosecute a federal agent.”

“But can hold you until your people find out.”

Her fingers went straight, flexing and then lacing together to create a weapon that he believed she was wise enough not to use.

“Fine. So contrite. That will get us out of here?”

The acting chief of police nodded.

“What about my vehicle?”

“I’ll drive it to the border and leave it for you.”

“The border?” To Rylee, the border was Canada. Vasta enlightened her.

“The border of our reservation.”

Her gaze flicked between them and her full mouth went thin and miserly. But she thought about it. Axel just loved the way the tips of her nose and ears went pink as a rabbit’s in her silent fury.

“Fine. Let’s get going, if you have your keys,” she said, pushing past him.

The acting chief of police was faster, beating them to the door to the main squad room. There, two officers sat on a desk and table respectively, both kicking their legs from their perches where they had been watching the drama playing out through the glass door of the chief’s office.

“Josh and Noah, you two have point,” said Vasta, instructing the men to lead the escort.

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.”