What have I done?
Kai stood still, dull with shock, in the middle of the Humetewas’ main room. Iris sat in a chair by the hearth, her tears bright in the firelight, but the old woman kept her face hard. Her fingers clenched the arms of her chair as she looked at her husband. Alvin was lying on his back across the pine table, stripped to his boxers. His thin chest rose up and down, much too rapidly. Blistered red welts marked his ribs. The reek of burned flesh filled the room.
A large-boned black woman stoked the fire. A second iron poker rested in the flames. Its tip was of the same shape as Alvin’s blisters. The shadowy woman didn’t even look up as Kai was dragged into the room.
Behind her, the giant blond soldier who’d captured them threw Jordan to the floor in the corner. With his wrists tied behind his back, he could not brace himself against his fall, but he twisted enough to hit the ground with his shoulder and skid up against the wall.
The other occupant of the room was seated at the head of the table. He stood up, pushing on a cane. Kai thought he was an older man — maybe it was the cane, or the ultraconservative suit, or the frailness that seemed to emanate from him. But as he thumped around the table, she saw that his face was smooth, unblemished, except for a dark stubble of beard, as artfully groomed as the sharp lines of his dark hair. He could be no older than his midthirties.
“Ah, there you are, Ms. Quocheets. My name is Rafael Saint Germaine.” He glanced to his watch. “We expected you much sooner and had to start without you.”
The man waved his cane over Alvin’s body. The old man flinched, which tore the hole in Kai’s heart even wider.
“We’ve been trying to ascertain the whereabouts of your uncle, but Alvin and Iris have been most uncooperative… despite the tender ministrations of my dear Ashanda.”
The woman by the fire glanced up.
At the sight of her face, Kai’s insides went slippery and cold. The woman, apart from her large size, looked ordinary enough, but as her eyes glinted in the firelight, Kai noticed that they were unfathomably empty, a mirror for whoever looked into them.
The crack of the cane on the floor drew her full attention. “Back to business.” The man named Rafael waved for his torturer to remove the hot iron. “We still need an answer.”
Kai stumbled forward to the table. “Don’t!” she blurted out. It came out as a half sob. “They don’t know where my uncle went!”
Rafael’s eyebrows rose. “That’s what the Humetewas have been claiming, but how can I believe them?”
“Please… my uncle never told them. He didn’t want them to know. Only I know.”
“Don’t tell them,” Iris said, hoarse with anger and grief.
The man named Rafael searched the beams overhead and sighed. “Such melodrama.”
Kai ignored Iris and kept her focus on the man with the cane. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.” She found her voice again. “But not until you let the others go… all of them. Once they’re safely gone, I’ll tell you where my uncle went.”
Rafael seemed to weigh this offer. “While I’m sure you’re an honest and forthright person, Ms. Quocheets, I’m afraid I can’t take that chance.” He waved the black woman closer to Alvin. “Mouths have a tendency to be harder to pry open without good leverage. It’s all a matter of basic physics, of action and reaction.”
The poker lowered toward Alvin’s cheek. Its iron tip glowed a smoldering red, smoking and softly hissing.
Rafael leaned both hands on his cane. “This particular scar will be much harder to hide. That is, of course, if he lives.”
Kai had to stop this. There was only one option. In order to buy some time and keep them from torturing Alvin, she had to tell them the truth.
She opened her mouth, but Jordan spoke first.
“Keep me prisoner!” he called from the floor. “If you need Kai’s cooperation, you can use me as leverage. But please let the Humetewas go.”
Kai latched onto that chance. “He’s right. Do that, and I’ll talk.”
“My dear, you’ll talk whether we release Iris and Alvin or not.”
“But it will take longer,” Kai pressed. “Maybe too long.”
She turned and matched gazes with Iris, trying to absorb the old woman’s strength. If need be, Kai would resist for as long as possible, do her best to convince the interrogators that they would only waste precious time in torturing Alvin and Iris, that they could get what they needed much faster by letting the old couple go.
She turned back to Rafael and let that determination shine forth. He stared back at her. She dared not flinch.
After several long breaths, Rafael shrugged. “Well played and argued, Ms. Quocheets.” He pointed his cane at the blond soldier. “Gather up the Humetewas, pile them onto one of those ATVs, and send them off into the canyons.”
“I want to watch,” Kai said. “To make sure they’re safe.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
In a matter of minutes, Iris and Alvin sat atop the white ATV. Alvin was too weak from his abuse to drive, so he rode behind his wife. Iris nodded to Kai, in that single gesture both thanking her and telling her to be careful.
Kai returned the nod, passing back the exact same message to Iris.
Thank you… and be careful.
Iris revved the throttle and took off. The pair trundled down a wash and quickly vanished around a turn in the canyon.
Kai remained standing outside the pueblo. She watched the trail of dust get farther and farther away, winding deep into the badlands.
Rafael stood on the porch in the shade. “I believe that should satisfy you.”
Kai turned and let out a rattling sigh. She stared at the man and at the dark shadow of the woman who was hovering behind his shoulder. Any lie Kai told would be punished — and it would fall upon Jordan’s shoulders to bear the brunt of that abuse. But if she cooperated, she knew her captors would keep them alive.
To be used as leverage with Painter.
As the bastard had said, it was only basic physics.
“My uncle flew to Flagstaff,” she finally admitted. “They were heading to Sunset Crater National Park.”
And she quickly told him why — just to be fully convincing.
As she finished, Rafael looked disconcerted. “Seems they know much more than I expected…” But he quickly shook it off. “No matter. We’ll deal with it.”
He leaned on his cane and turned to the open doorway. He spoke to the tall blond soldier. “Bern, radio your sniper. Tell him to take his shots and haul back to the helicopter.”
Sniper?
Kai took two steps toward the porch.
Iris and Alvin.
Rafael turned to her. “I said I’d let them go,” he explained. “I just didn’t say how far I’d let them go.”
Off in the distance, a sharp crack of a rifle echoed.
Soon followed by a second.
Painter stared up at the top of the mesa. He sucked deeply from the tube connected to his CamelBak water bottle. After two blistering hours in the heat, he’d come to believe that they’d never reach this mesa, that it would continue to retreat from them forever, like some desert mirage.
But here they were.
“Now what?” Kowalski asked, fanning his face with his Stetson. He’d become a walking sweat stain.
“The pueblo’s up top,” Nancy said.
Kowalski groaned.
Painter craned his neck. He saw no way up.
“Over here,” she directed, and headed around the base of the mesa to where a crumbling trail ran up its side.