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“Are you anywhere near Silverton?”
“I’m right in the middle of it.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. I’m going to patch you through to Chief Eiden. He wants to talk to you. I don’t do this very often,” Trish continued, “so if I screw up, just hang on, okay?”
Miguel couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to communicate with her. A series of clicks preceded the sound of his voice. “Devon, do you read me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“I thought you were going to stay away from Silverton.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“See anything odd up there?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” She turned to face Jesse and his sisters. The trio stood watching her with dark and suspicious eyes. At least Jesse and Sylvia were watching her that way. Maria had laid her head on her brother’s shoulder and looked half-asleep. The Tylenol was probably kicking in, reducing her fever enough to allow her to rest comfortably. It would only last a few hours and then the fever would be back, climbing and becoming dangerously high if she weakened any more from lack of food and water.
“I was going to drive up there, but there’s a report of a couple of lightning strikes over near Wolf Canyon I need to check out. Don’t want any fires getting out of hand around here.” Thunder rolled down the valley and echoed in the cracks and crevices of the mountain, adding urgency to his words.
“There’s no sign of anyone having been here lately.”
“Thanks, Devon. You’ve saved one of my guys some time, and wear and tear on the squad cars. Eiden out.”
“Did you copy all that, Devon?” It was Trish’s voice again, slightly distorted by background static.
“I got it all, thanks, Trish.”
“Thank goodness. I never quite know whether I’m doing it right,” Trish fussed. “I just wanted to tell you not to hurry back if you’re enjoying yourself. Your two-o’clock called and said her car has a dead battery. I rescheduled her for tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Trish. I’ll see you at three. Devon clear.” She released the toggle and put the radio receiver back in its clip on her visor.
“She called that guy you were talking to ‘Chief’,” Jesse said. “Does that mean he’s an Indian, not a cop?” His lip curled in a sneer. He tightened his arm around Maria. Sylvia began inching away again, moving farther up the path.
“He’s both actually,” Devon said.
“You lied to him about us.”
She nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“Why’d you do that?”
Why had she done that? She hadn’t wanted to lie to Miguel. She wasn’t a deceitful person, and she valued honesty in others and in herself. But she didn’t regret her action. “I gave you my word,” she said.
Jesse held her gaze a few moments longer, then nodded. “We’ll go with you.”
DEVON RESTED HER HEAD against the glass of her bedroom window. It was very late, long after midnight. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. She looked down the mountain, noticing for the first time that if the branches of the trees outside her window moved just right, she could see a gleam of light from the direction of Miguel’s house. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?
He was up late, too, it seemed. Probably because he’d been on patrol around the country looking for signs of wildfire started by the thunderstorms that had rumbled through the valley, producing sound and fury, but not much rain.
She straightened and walked out into the main living area of the cabin. The room was small, but the soaring ceiling gave the illusion of space. Adjacent to her bedroom was a bathroom with both a shower and a tub and a stacked washer and dryer. She could hear the dryer humming away now. She might as well see if the load of towels was dry. She couldn’t sleep, anyway.
Next to the bathroom was an eat-in kitchen. She’d stopped by both the grocery and the minimart to stock up on food for the children. She hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion where she usually shopped by buying too much food. The clerk would wonder why a woman who lived alone and ate Lean Cuisine more evenings than not would buy two gallons of milk, two dozen eggs and three loaves of bread. Her refrigerator was full for the first time since she’d moved into the place.
The dryer buzzed and she hurried to silence it. Above her, in the loft, the three children were sleeping, Jesse on an air mattress on the floor, the girls in the sleeper sofa beneath the window. After she’d broken radio contact with Miguel, she’d gone back to the mine with Jesse and his sisters and helped them pack their few belongings and carry them to the old stable where they’d hidden their truck.
But that was as far as she’d gotten. Jesse had refused to let her inside the badly listing building with its empty windowpanes and sagging roof, guessing correctly that she would see the license plate and use it to learn more about them.
They’d ridden into town on the floor of the Blazer, and she fed them cold cereal and scrambled eggs and toast as soon as they’d gotten safely inside her house. By the time she’d found clean clothes for the older siblings—a pair of faded scrubs for Jesse and a high-waisted denim jumper for Sylvia—and one of her smallest T-shirts for Maria, and shown Sylvia how to run her washer and dryer, she was fifteen minutes late for her three-o’clock prenatal. Lydia had not been pleased, but there was nothing she could do about it.
She returned from the clinic at seven to find the children scrubbed as clean as their clothes. Thankfully their hair had only been dirty, not infested, so a trip to Taos for lice shampoo wouldn’t be necessary. She couldn’t buy that at the pharmacy across from Elkhorn’s Hardware any more than she could buy two gallons of milk and three dozen eggs in one stop. People would notice.
She pulled warm, clean-smelling towels out of the dryer and carried them to the couch in front of the fireplace, which she’d filled with silk ferns for the summer. She began to fold them, still thinking of the three children. Keeping them safe and fed and secret was not going to be easy. They were runaways. Probably illegal aliens. She still didn’t even know their surname or their ages.
Keeping their whereabouts a secret was breaking the law. Something she had never done in her life.
But she had given her word to three desperate and scared children. And she was determined to honor it. Even if it meant she must keep on lying to everyone she knew.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I BROUGHT YOU SOME TEA.” Kim Sherman smiled as she held a steaming mug out to Devon a couple of days later. “I thought you might need a boost.”
“I do.” Devon smiled back at her cousin, although it took some effort to get her tired facial muscles to produce the desired response.
“I won’t keep you from your work.” Kim stepped away from the table where she’d placed the mug. “I just wanted to let you know I talked Lydia into going home. I also checked to make sure everything’s turned off, put away and locked up except the front door.”
“Thanks,” Devon said, taking a sip of the tea. “Especially for getting Lydia to go home. She’s been here since seven this morning.”
“I know. I’m sure her doctor wouldn’t approve of the hours she’s been working.”
“Exactly. I’m glad she listened to you.” She was glad, but she also felt somewhat envious of Kim’s relationship with Lydia. It was so much better than her own.
“Anything I can do for you? Any billing? I have twenty minutes or so until Nolan and Sammy pick me up.” Sammy was Nolan’s seven-year-old niece, an energetic tomboy he’d been raising since her parents’ tragic deaths. Kim eyed the pile of charts on the table. When she’d first come to work at The Birth Place, her office door had always been firmly closed. But since she’d fallen in love with Nolan McKinnon and been accepted as Lydia’s granddaughter, she no longer barricaded herself behind a closed door.
She had also abandoned the well-worn gray cardigan, buttoned to the throat, that she had worn so often in the past. Her clothes were still conservative and businesslike, but the colors were softer, brighter. She’d exchanged her dark-rimmed glasses for contacts, and now Devon saw her own gray eyes staring back at her.
Her eyes, and Lydia’s.
“I’m almost ready to call it a day, too. I’m finishing my report of Jenna Harrison’s delivery.” Devon was working in the all-purpose area of the clinic that served as a storage area and break room. She didn’t have an office of her own, and had, in fact, resisted broaching the subject. For once she did, it would mean that she was staying at The Birth Place for good. Admitting that her life, such as it was, and her practice in Albuquerque were a thing of the past.
She hadn’t thought much of either in the past few days, she realized.
Kim moved closer, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Mother and baby are doing fine, I hope.”
Devon didn’t have any problem finding her smile this time. “They are.” Then the smile disappeared. “It was touch-and-go there for a while.”
“You mean she was in danger?” The death of Nolan McKinnon’s sister and her baby seven months earlier, although unavoidable, had weighed heavily on the staff and, in Devon’s opinion, had been a contributing factor in Lydia’s heart attack. Devon bent her head to her notes for a moment before looking up at her cousin again. “Not life-threatening. But I was afraid we would have to transfer her to Arroyo for a C-section.”
“But you didn’t have to transfer her. And I’m sure she thinks her son is worth it.”
“I’m sure she does.” Lydia had never doubted that Jenna, an older, first-time mother, could complete the labor and delivery without intervention. Devon had not been as serenely confident as Lydia. She never was. When Jenna’s progress stalled at eight centimeters and remained there for several hours, Devon wanted to urge her grandmother to move Jenna to the hospital.
But she’d kept her mouth shut, and now she was glad. Lydia had suggested one more session in the huge Jacuzzi that half filled the birthing suite. The warm water and subsequent reduction in pressure on Jenna’s lower body had done the trick. Her contractions once more became productive and less than an hour later, her squalling, red-faced and utterly beautiful little boy had made his entrance into the world.
Jenna and her son had remained under the watchful eye of the midwives the rest of the day. Devon had just finished helping her strap her son’s carrier into the safety seat of the Harrisons’ minivan for the trip home.
“Devon, may I ask you a favor?” Kim sounded oddly hesitant.
Kim had never asked Devon for a favor before, other than the honor of being her maid of honor. Devon put down her pen and gave her cousin her full attention. “Of course,” she said.
“I…I’d like to invite someone to the rehearsal dinner if you don’t mind. Two people actually.”
“Oh, Kim. Did we forget someone? I’m sorry. I don’t know how this happened.”
Kim waved off Devon’s attempted apology. “No, no. It’s my foster parents. I…I lost contact with them years ago when they had to move out of the state. Nolan tracked them down for me. And, well, we’ve been corresponding. I haven’t told anyone else about them yet. Even Grand—even Lydia. I wanted to make sure they were interested in seeing me again.” For a moment the lost little girl her cousin had been looked out from Kim’s eyes. But the ghost was there for only a moment and then it disappeared. “They’ll be traveling through the area, and they want to meet Nolan and Sammy. I’ve invited them to the wedding, but I’m sure they’ll understand if—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they’re more than welcome.”
Devon half rose from her chair and Kim took a small involuntary step backward, then smiled. “No hugging. You midwives are great ones for hugging.”
“We are, aren’t we. No hugs until the wedding, I promise.” Devon felt laughter bubble up, and then a quick tingle of anticipation as she contemplated discussing the addition to the party with Miguel. She hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since she’d spirited the runaway children into her home, and the strength of her sudden longing to remedy that situation caught her by surprise. “I think it’s wonderful you’ve found your foster parents again. Do you think they’ll want the chicken or the fish?”
THE BIRTHING CENTER appeared deserted as Miguel turned into the parking lot. He eased the big SUV around to the back and noticed Devon’s Blazer still in her space. The high-altitude twilight was fading fast, taking the heat of the summer day with it. The sky was clear as blue glass, no sign of clouds anywhere. The leaves on the aspens beyond the parking area were curled on the edges from lack of moisture. The grass beneath his feet felt brittle when he stepped on it. It was only a matter of time before some fool threw a lighted cigarette out of the window of his truck, or a careless hiker started an illegal campfire, and they would be staring a wildfire in the face. And with almost two years of drought behind them, it would probably be a hell of a fire when it got going.
Devon had left a message on his answering machine about the party. Something about two more guests. Probably Kim’s foster parents. Nolan had told him he’d tracked them down a couple of months ago. He didn’t know much about Kim’s childhood, but it must have been tough on her as a kid, her mother dying when she was small, being shunted from one foster home to another. He’d grown up in an intact family, even if his dad did drink too much, and he had aunts and uncles and cousins all over the county, as well as in Ohio. Family was important to the Navajo. In fact, one of the worst things his grandfather could think of to say about someone was that they “acted as if they didn’t have a family.” But Kim had had no one to look out for her growing up. No wonder she sported as much emotional armor as an armadillo.
He checked the back door of the clinic. It was locked. He left his vehicle where it was and walked around the side of the building. Quietly he turned the handle on the front door. It opened easily and he stepped inside. No one was at the reception desk, but a light came from the records room behind it, and in the break room across the hall.
A movement from the far corner of the waiting room caught his attention. It was Devon, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the children’s play area. At her back two big plastic toy boxes were piled full of stuffed animals and pull toys. A wooden table was covered with puzzles and coloring books. A bookcase under the window held what seemed to Miguel to be hundreds of picture books. Devon had a pile of them in her lap, and a couple of dozen more heaped around her.
He stayed where he was in the shadow of the deeply recessed door and let himself enjoy the sight of her. Her hair was caught up in a twist on top of her head, but it was so fine that strands of it floated around her neck and shoulders, catching the lamplight like spun gold. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the thin cotton of her scrubs. They were blue today, and over the top she wore a printed lab coat covered with fat, naked babies frolicking on fluffy pink clouds.
He suspected that wearing hospital scrubs and a lab coat, even one with fat naked babies on it, was an act of rebellion for Devon. All the other midwives followed Lydia’s lead, opting for the earth-mother look—peasant skirts or jeans, sandals or clogs. Not Devon. She was a medical professional with her own style, and she wasn’t about to give it up, no matter how often she butted heads with her formidable grandmother.
She raised her hand to cup the back of her neck and arched her back, as though to ease tired muscles. She’d arched her back that way when she’d climaxed that night in his bed, her body tightening around him and spurring him on to his own release. He felt a surge of blood to his groin and decided he’d better make his presence known before his imagination produced a result that would be hard to ignore and damned near impossible to hide from Devon.
He closed the door behind him with enough force that she looked up in alarm, clutching the picture books to her chest. “Miguel! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I didn’t sneak up on you. I moved into an unknown situation with due caution. No telling what kind of suspicious character might be hanging around in here.”
“I’m the only one here,” she said, and he could tell she was trying hard not to respond to his teasing.
“That’s what I mean. Suspicious character.” He crossed the tile floor and dropped to his haunches beside her. “Stealing books from the kiddies? I might have to cuff you and haul you down to the station for that.”
A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead. “I’m not stealing. I…I thought I’d sort through a few of the worn ones and get some replacements the next time I’m in Taos.” She still clutched the books to her chest as though she thought he might take them away from her.
He tossed his hat onto a nearby chair, then levered himself into a sitting position, with one knee drawn up for his forearm to rest on and the other leg stretched out alongside her. “Can’t the books wait for another day?” He waggled his index finger at the overflowing bookcase. “There are more books than a dozen kids could read in a week on those shelves.”
She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “People bring them in. They donate them. There are duplicates.” She did look tired. Faint circles were smudged under her eyes, and lines bracketed the corners of her mouth. She’d been at the center since five in the morning. He’d heard her truck go by as he was getting in the shower. It was after seven at night now. He should quit teasing her. He changed the subject. “I got your message on my voice mail. What’s up?”
She brightened immediately and her smile slammed into his heart. If he hadn’t already been sitting on the floor, he would have had to find a chair. “Kim’s found her foster parents. Or at least Nolan has.”
“That’s great. Nolan told me a couple of months ago he was going to try and contact them, but he didn’t have much to go on. He said Kim hadn’t heard from them for at least fifteen years.”
“She asked if she could invite them to the rehearsal dinner. Of course, I said she could. I hope you don’t mind that I did it without consulting you.”
“Did you find out if they want the chicken or the fish?”
“Miguel.” She slapped playfully at his hand. It was the first time she’d touched him since the night they’d spent in his bed, and he found that it challenged his self-control as much as or more than her beautiful smile.
“Actually, I did ask her which they might prefer. It was a stupid question, because she hasn’t seen them or spoken to them since she was a little girl.”
“But I bet she had an opinion, anyway.”
She grinned. “Yes, she did. She thought we should play it safe and go with the chicken.”
“Two more chicken dinners, it is.”
“You don’t mind that I okayed their coming without consulting you?”
“I think I’ve just been insulted.”
Her eyes widened and her grin vanished. “I didn’t mean—”
He had to be careful how much he teased her. She was still very touchy about her growing relationship with her cousin. “This is Kim and Nolan’s party. I’m happy she’s found the couple that meant so much to her after her mother died. You did exactly what I would have done.” He leaned forward and was saddened that she drew back, even if it was only a fraction of an inch. “Surely you know me better than that after all these years, don’t you, Devon?” He hadn’t meant to take the conversation into personal territory, but the words had refused to stay unspoken.
“I don’t know you at all,” she whispered, and pulled her lower lip between her teeth as though she, too, wished the words unspoken. She put a hand on the floor to push herself to her feet.
He stopped her by wrapping his fingers around her forearm, holding her beside him. “Devon, have you given any thought to why you ended up in my bed that night?”
She drew in her breath sharply, then said, “Shock. Confusion. Sleep deprivation. I was a little out of my mind, I think.”
“Maybe,” he agreed with a small smile. Part of him had wanted her to say it was because she was still madly, passionately in love with him. “I think we both were.”
“I didn’t know if my grandmother was going to live or die. I needed comfort. You offered me that.”
“Devon, it went past the comfort stage five minutes after we left the hospital.” The words came out as a kind of growl and her eyes widened a little.
“I told you, it was an aberration. We were both a little crazy that night.”
Devon had been out of his life for a decade. But the moment she’d walked back into it, he was the same moonstruck teenager he’d been a dozen years before. There was something he had to know. Something he wasn’t sure she herself knew yet. “Are you planning on staying in Enchantment?”
“I haven’t made up my mind. Lydia and I have such differing styles, there are days when we can’t say two words to each other without getting into an argument.” She dropped her head and began tracing circles on the cover of one of the picture books. “My practice and my life are in Albuquerque.”
“Does that life include a man?”
Her head came up. “Do you think I would have slept with you if there was?”
“You might have if you were as frightened and lonely as you said you were.” The question had been nagging at him over the past weeks. He didn’t want to think about another man making love to her. She was his. She had been since she was sixteen and she had let him make love to her for the first time—the first time for both of them, although he’d never told her that, either. Damn, he was losing his mind. He didn’t have a single claim on her. He’d never told her he loved her. Instead, sore in heart and soul when he returned from the mess in Somalia, he’d pushed her away so hard she’d never come back.
Maybe if he’d been older, more mature, he could have handled it better. But he’d been almost as young and green as she was, idealistic and filled with foolish notions of romance and happily-ever-after. He’d expected her to know, without his saying a word, how troubled and disillusioned he was. How the things he’d done or couldn’t do had tarnished his soul. He’d counted on her, and the love he felt for her but had never been able to express, to somehow magically heal him. Of course it hadn’t. So he’d pushed her away and curled into himself in misery. And broken her heart.
He should tell her now about the hurt and horror of that godawful place and what it had done to the naive, gung-ho kid he’d been, how it had torn him up inside for more years than he wanted to remember. Maybe then they could get past it, move on to the beginning of a future together. But it didn’t seem right to talk of death and destruction in this place of hope and beginnings.
She waited so long to respond to his comment that he thought she wasn’t going to. At last she said, “There was someone, but we broke up months ago. At Christmastime.”
She had been in Enchantment for Christmas. It had been the first he’d seen of her in a long time when, decked out in his dress blues, he come by to retrieve the carton of toys the center was donating to Toys for Tots. She’d said hello, that it was good to see him. And her smile had rocked his world just as it had since the first day he’d seen her, a gawky, golden-haired, horse-mad fifteen-year-old. He’d managed some kind of reply and thanked his lucky stars he’d been in uniform. It put a little needed steel in his backbone.
“What was he?” he asked now. “Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief?”
“You’re the only Indian chief I know. He was a doctor. Third-year cardiology resident.”
“Your idea or his to call it quits?”
She sighed. “Mine. He was a great guy, but not the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” Who was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? A small-town cop with a few rough edges?
He had to ask one more question. “Did you love him?”
“No,” she said quietly. “And no more questions from you.”