Delmer Mitchell finally spoke up. “I thought I read about lots of abandoned mines on these lands. What about one of them?”
“Most are on public lands,” Joe said slowly, considering the idea. “And a lot were sealed off in recent years, when government funding was used for the reclamation act.”
“But not all of them,” Arnie mused. “And I think they focused on the abandoned uranium mines, because they presented the biggest risk. It’s worth checking into.”
“I still say it’s a needle in a haystack,” Tarken said flatly. “We can’t waste federal resources putting together a sting on a possible coyote run unless we have better intelligence than this.” There was agreement in the expressions of the other federal agents, with the exception of Honani, who remained impassive. “Get us something more concrete. All of us should go back to pulling on the threads we’ve been working. Maybe something will shake loose.”
As if his remark had signaled an end to the meeting, the men began to push away from the table and stand. Dawson came over as the agents were filing out of the room. “Lopez and I can at least put out bulletins for officers to watch for that van on the date you mentioned. It’s a long shot, but someone might spot it. And we can show copies of that composite around, too.”
Joe thanked him politely and the Border Patrol agent followed the others out the door. But the man had been right. It was a long shot, and from all accounts, Lee, if he was the driver of the van, had a long and successful career outwitting the officers dotting the States’ southern border.
“So what now?” Arnie asked when the room was once again empty. “I still think that mine idea has merit. Maybe we should focus on that.”
“With only two days to work with, we need to narrow the search. A place close to here,” Joe murmured, his mind racing. “A place that might not be a permanent site, but where they have reason to believe they’d be safe.”
“A mine that hasn’t been reclaimed in a really remote part of the reservation,” Arnie said doggedly. “Say, within a seventy-mile radius of the last spot.”
“Or a place where few people could travel freely,” Joe mused. “Like private property.”
The other man got up and went to the coffeemaker, picked up the carafe and shook the miniscule remaining amount in disgust. “They wouldn’t have time to arrange another lease so quickly.” He replaced the container on the coffeemaker and came back to the table.
“But what if one of them had property they could use? Just until something else gets obtained.” A glimmer of an idea was taking hold. “Who has access to more property than a third of the tribe combined?”
“Graywolf?” Arnie sank into a chair. “Well, his family has property. And the construction company would have a lot of sites that could be possible areas, too.”
Joe shook his head. “Too much traffic in and out of a construction site. No, if it were me, I’d pick a place I knew. One I could be pretty sure would be left alone. And even better if I knew no one could get to it without trespassing.”
“The kid would be taking a heck of a risk.”
The more Joe considered the idea, the more it made sense. “He thinks he’s smarter than we are. He thinks he’s above the law. He got caught several times for dealing, with barely a slap on the wrist. A track record like that might convince the kid he’s infallible, instead of realizing he owes it all to smooth lawyers and family money.”
“Maybe he’s not calling the shots at all, maybe his father is-did you ever think of that?”
“There’s nothing pointing that way, but if he were, it would be one more reason to focus on Graywolf land for the new site.” Joe got up and strode to his desk where he’d stacked the information they’d gotten from the land office, took out a map of the Navajo lands and spread it across his desk.
“And you said my desk is bad,” Arnie commented, trailing out to watch Joe quizzically. “Looks like you became a slob in my absence. What is all this?”
“Information.” Joe grabbed a section of maps and property documentation and thrust it toward his partner. “I needed to find out who owned that piece of land where Delaney was shot at, and Garcia brought a whole box of this stuff back from the land office. Start going through it. Maybe we can find something on the Graywolf holdings.”
Although he wasn’t looking up, he could hear the smirk in his friend’s voice. “Delaney? Would that be the lady you didn’t want on the reservation?”
Deliberately, Joe kept his gaze trained on the map. “Like you said, Charley and I had different opinions. It really doesn’t have anything to do with Carson.”
“Oh, really.” Arnie went to his desk with his pile of papers and sat down. “Seems to me that the case isn’t the only thing I need to be caught up on.”
But Joe wasn’t about to say anything further. Whatever this thing was between him and Delaney, it wasn’t something he wanted to share. It wasn’t even something he could easily identify to himself.
It’d be easy to tell himself that sex was all that bound them. Easy to accept the boundaries she’d so carefully laid out for their relationship. But it was hard to reconcile a casual no-strings liaison with the need that was beginning to burn in him at the oddest times when she wasn’t near. Or with the sense of contentment he felt with her curled up beside him, as she slipped uneasily into a troubled sleep.
It was dangerous for a man to allow a woman close enough to fill parts of himself he hadn’t realized were empty. And it was far more dangerous to let such a woman know that she wielded that kind of power. He had no intention of doing either. He knew Delaney Carson well enough to be certain that would frighten her at least as much as it did him.
The sunsets on the land of Dinetah would always remain the most spectacular in her memory. Delaney finally lowered her camera and sat down on the ground in back of her small house to enjoy the final display of crimson bleeding over the horizon. Her computer was already loaded with similar images, far more than she needed for the book. But the rest were for her. Brilliant washes of color to remind her of the Navajo custom of finding beauty all around them.
Saturday had been spent with Eddie in her first visit to Monument Valley. She’d quickly discovered how naive it had been to assume she could “see” a place so vast in one day, so they’d focused on the southern end, around Hunt’s Mesa. It had taken her four-wheel drive and some hiking to get them to the more inaccessible parts, but the landscape of lonely buttes and sculpted red rock formations had taken her breath away.
There had been a sort of sacredness about the place that quieted the spirit and hushed the soul. One that hinted of centuries-old ghosts and long-dead secrets. She’d been left with a lingering sense of sadness that she’d never truly understand what it meant to the Diné to stand in that place. And a sort of peace that came from being there at all.
Although she didn’t hear his approach, she felt a presence behind her and knew instinctively who it was. “You missed it,” she murmured. Shadows were spreading along the darkened horizon and the sky had grayed. “Do you ever get used to that kind of beauty day after day?”
He’d squatted down behind her. She could feel his breath in her hair and had the urge to lean against him, to feel his strength and warmth envelop her. She squelched the temptation. A woman who got too used to leaning on someone else could easily forget how to rely solely on herself.