Lakota Baby

Her head hung down and her shoulders shook with the force of silent sobs.

Joe stood helpless in the face of Maggie’s despair. When words wouldn’t come, he pulled her into his arms and pressed her face against his shoulder. He held her for a long time without speaking.

“It’s so cold outside,” she whispered, her breath warm against his chest. “They didn’t even take his blanket.”

Joe swallowed the knot of regret in his throat. “We’ll find him.”

With Joe’s arms around her, Maggie felt as if she’d come home. Hope feathered the inside of her stomach. Even after her tears dried, she didn’t lift her head, didn’t want to move from the certainty of Joe’s embrace. Despite the pain of their past, he was the only man she trusted to find her son alive.

And she’d sell her soul to the devil himself to get Dakota back.

Lakota Baby

Elle James

MILLS & BOON

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This book is dedicated to my children—Courtney, Adam and Megan—and to my grandson—Reily. If ever I lost one of you, I’d be as frantic as my heroine, Maggie, to get you back. Children are to be loved and cherished. They outgrow their parents entirely too fast. I love you guys!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Golden Heart winner for Best Paranormal Romance in 2004, Elle James started writing when her sister issued the Y2K challenge to write a romance novel. She managed a full-time job, raised three wonderful children and she and her husband even tried their hands at ranching exotic birds (ostriches, emus and rheas) in the Texas Hill Country. Ask her and she’ll tell you what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with an angry 350-pound bird! After leaving her successful career in information technology management, Elle is now pursuing her writing full-time. She loves building exciting stories about heroes, heroines, romance and passion. Elle loves to hear from fans. You can contact her at ellejames@earthlink.net or visit her Web site at www.ellejames.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Joe Lonewolf—Painted Rock Reservation tribal police chief, sworn to carry on the ways of his Lakota ancestors.

Maggie Brandt—Joe’s former lover and widow of his dead stepbrother. Will her secret ruin her chances with Joe?

Dakota—Maggie’s five-month-old son, kidnapped and ransomed.

Bill Franks—Ex-con turned vending machine delivery man. Is he delivering more than snacks to the residents of the Painted Rock Indian Reservation?

Gray Running Fox—Joe’s old friend and manager of the Grand Buffalo Casino.

Tokala—The mysterious drug dealer supplying methamphetamines to the Lakota youth.

Marcus Caldwell—National Indian Gaming Commission representative to the Grand Buffalo Casino.

Randy Biko—The leader of the Sukas gang.

Delaney Toke—Tribal police officer and Joe’s right-hand man.

Leotie Jones—A woman obsessed with Joe Lonewolf. Would she do anything to get him?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

She stood on a slight rise in the middle of a prairie, the golden grasses wilted and dying. Winter hovered on the horizon, gray clouds growing ever larger, harbingers of the snows to come.

Despite her goose-down jacket, she shivered, wondering where she’d left her gloves and hat. Anyone with sense wouldn’t come out in subzero temperatures without the proper clothing. Had she lost her mind?

As she pondered this conundrum, she heard a bleating sound as if a lamb had been separated from its mother. Where did the cry come from? She spun three-hundred-sixty degrees but all she could see was prairie for miles and miles. Not another living soul, animal or human, just herself alone on an endless plain.

Was it an animal separated from its mother? Her heart wept for the frightened creature.

Thinking she might have imagined the sound, she turned to find her way home. Home to the little cottage on Painted Rock, the South Dakota Indian Reservation where she lived with her son, Dakota.

The cry sounded again, only this time less like a lamb and more like the plaintive whimper of a baby.

Her baby.

“Dakota?” Her heartbeat picked up pace until it pounded against her ribcage. She couldn’t see her son in the vastness of the open prairie. Why was she here? Why had she left Dakota alone in his bed?

She took off at a run, knowing neither the direction nor the distance to town. All she knew was that she had to get to Dakota. He was crying—he needed her. The more she ran, the slower her legs moved until she slid into a wallow, her legs dragged down by the weight of cold, clammy mud filling her boots and coating her clothes.

“Can’t stop. Must get to Dakota.” Leaning to the side, she grasped an outstretched branch from a tree she hadn’t seen a moment before. The branch became a hand, locking with her fingers, dragging her to safety, freeing her from the pit of glue-like sludge.

For a moment, she lay with her face on the ground, gasping for breath. When she lifted her head to thank her rescuer, her dead husband stared down at her, his face slashed with blood, his eye sockets vacant. Again, he held out his hand to help her to her feet.

Maggie screamed and fell backward into the ditch, the sucking mire like fingers grasping at her arms and legs, dragging her deeper and deeper until mud covered her face, filling her lungs. When she thought her chest would explode from lack of air, blessed blackness swallowed her.

MAGGIE BRANDT sat straight up in bed, shaking.

“Dakota,” she said into the darkness, pulling in deep breaths of cool night air.

Her digital clock glowed—4:15 a.m. It wasn’t due to go off for another two hours. With her heart still pounding in her ears, she knew she wouldn’t get back to sleep.

Had she been startled awake by the dream? Or had Dakota really cried out in his sleep?

Shivering, Maggie slung the covers aside and slid from her bed. She padded barefoot across the carpeted floor, her feet moving more freely than they had when mired in the mud of her nightmare.

Why was it so cold in the house? If it was this chilly in her room, what about the baby’s room? Had he kicked his covers off? Why hadn’t he woken up crying?

Her steps quickened.

To conserve on her gas bill, she’d set the heat five degrees lower than usual. Had she turned it down too low?

On the way down the hall toward Dakota’s room, she passed the thermostat with only a cursory glance, determined to fix the heating problem after she’d assured herself that Dakota was okay. Tendrils of frigid air caressed her bare feet and calves, rising from the floor. Her breath caught in her throat, making it difficult for her to fill her lungs.

Frigid night air drifted in from the bedroom in front of her—it had nothing to do with the thermostat.

“Dakota.” Maggie raced into the minuscule room, barely large enough for the baby’s furniture. The small window stood wide open, the blue-and-white cloud curtains flapping in the bitter wind.

“Oh my God,” Maggie whispered. Her feet carried her one agonizing step at a time toward the crib of her five-month-old son, her heart choking the air from her throat. Even before she peered through the colorful mobile into the nest of blue blankets, she knew.

Dakota was gone.

A SHRILL BEEPING NOISE pierced his sleep, forcing Joe Lonewolf awake. He fumbled in the dark for his pager, until his fingers curled around it and he lifted it close to his face. In bright green digital letters he read Call Maggie, followed by a phone number and 911.

His pulse raced through his veins and as he swung out of bed the blankets and sheets fell in a careless heap to the floor.

Why would Maggie call at…he peered at his clock…four-twenty in the morning? Hell, why would Maggie call at all?

He grabbed for the phone and dialed the number, every cell in his body on high alert.

“Joe?” Maggie answered the phone before it had barely rang once. “I need you.” Her words came out in a sob, reaching across the line like a hand curling around his heart.

“What’s wrong, Maggie?” He could hear the faint wail of a siren in the background. “Are you okay?”

No response, only the sound of someone taking a ragged breath.

“Maggie! Talk to me!” he shouted, panic tightening his chest.

“Joe, Dakota’s gone.” A sharp clattering crackled across the line and the phone went dead.

What the hell was going on? Before he could form another coherent thought, he was throwing on clothes, a jacket and hopping into his boots. He hit the door running. Maggie needed him. He had to get there.

Outside his house, the predawn air hit him like a slap in the face. What was it, minus ten degrees already? And it wasn’t even the end of October. The first snow hadn’t fallen.

His black SUV had a thin layer of ice covering the windshield and it took two cranks before the engine turned over. Maggie needed him. The thought replayed through his head, a mantra to keep him moving forward when he could hardly see through the windshield.

Dust and gravel spewed to the sides as he spun the vehicle out of his driveway. He raced down the road until he passed the bright green city limit sign for Buffalo Bluff, the largest town on the Painted Rock Indian Reservation. For once in his life, he wished he didn’t live so far out of town. The eight miles to the small community took an eternity. At the same time, the drive gave him too much time to think about Maggie—his stepbrother’s widow.

Had it only been two weeks since Paul’s accident? It seemed like a month had passed from the time he’d received the call that his stepbrother had run off the road on his way home from work at the Grand Buffalo Casino. He’d been pronounced dead at the scene, leaving behind his wife and baby.

Joe slammed his hand to the steering wheel, still angry he hadn’t lived up to the promise he’d made his mother—to watch out for Paul.

Now Paul was dead. But his baby had his whole life ahead and he needed someone to look out for him. What had Maggie meant, he was gone?

Dakota. The baby boy still gnawed at Joe’s gut. He should have been mine. As soon as the thought surfaced, Joe pushed it down. He had no right to feel that way. Maggie should have been mine. His foot left the accelerator and his Explorer slowed in its headlong race across the reservation. None of this was supposed to happen.

Maggie wasn’t supposed to marry Paul, Paul wasn’t supposed to die, and Dakota should be tucked in bed sleeping like the baby he was. Why then was he racing into town, fear gripping his chest?

Joe skidded his SUV against the curb next to the little house on Red Feather Street and slammed the shift to Park. As he leaped from the vehicle, he squinted at the bright array of lights from squad cars and state police vehicles. The wind had died down during the night, but the smell of snow sifted through the morning air.

He blinked at the glare of headlights and strobes, his eyes stinging in the frosty air. Four hours of sleep wasn’t much to go on and he hadn’t had a drop of caffeine since yesterday noon. Not that he needed caffeine.

Not since Maggie’s call.

Delaney Toke, one of Joe’s tribal police officers, stepped down from the concrete porch. “Glad you came. She just sits there, rocking back and forth.”

“What happened?”

“Apparently, someone came in during the night and stole the baby.”

Although he’d been prepared by Maggie’s words, Joe still felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “How, when?”

“We don’t know. All we can guess is somewhere between midnight and four-fifteen this morning when she called.”

“Thanks, Del.” He moved around the officer and strode toward the door.

Maggie might be his brother’s widow, but she’d been Joe’s woman first. Until he’d gone to Iraq. He didn’t regret the time he’d served for his country, but he did regret the time he’d been away. He’d never thought Maggie would marry Paul.

But why wouldn’t she? Joe hadn’t made any promises—he’d actually told her they had no future and not to wait for him.

Standing in desert BDUs with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he’d fought his desire to take her into his arms as her face paled and her eyes pooled with tears. Had he really expected her to wait around for his return from the dangers of war? He’d been a bastard and gotten what he deserved when he came home to find Maggie married.

Too tired to think or to allow old memories to clutter his head, he sighed and turned toward the door. A state policeman was unrolling yellow crime scene tape around the yard to cordon off Maggie’s house from curious neighbors.

A cameraman from the satellite station out at the casino was already panning the scene. Joe bypassed the man and headed for the door.

“Hey, Joe,” Del called out. “Sorry about your nephew.”

Joe nodded briefly, his gut clenching the closer he got to the door. He hadn’t seen Maggie since his stepbrother’s funeral. But she’d called him. Fear for her child must have made her desperate. Joe knew she’d rather call anyone but him after how he’d treated her over a year ago.

Brown grass crunched beneath his feet, brittle from the subzero nights. A few tenacious leaves clung to the ash tree in the front yard, soon to be whipped away by forty-mile-an-hour winter winds. He tried to focus on the insignificant details, instead of on his imminent meeting with the woman he’d spent the better part of a year trying to forget.

Had she married Paul out of revenge?

No. Maggie wasn’t the vengeful type. Then, had she always been in love with Paul? Joe felt his chest contract. Had their night of passion been nothing but lust, just as he’d told her?

The letter from Leotie two months after his deployment to Iraq said it all. Maggie and Paul had gotten married not long after Joe’d left. She said they were happy, in love and expecting a baby.

The news hit him like a mortar to his belly.

As he’d walked night patrols in the desert, he’d wondered what Maggie would have done if he’d asked her to wait for him. Would she have married Paul anyway?

He’d been certain Maggie had no place on the reservation or in his Indian way of life. Just as he’d made a promise to his mother to watch out for his stepbrother, he’d made another promise to his father to raise his sons to know the Lakota ways. Maggie would not fit in with that promise. She was white, he was Indian. Their two worlds could not converge—or so he’d thought a lifetime ago, before he’d gone to war.

Now he was here for Dakota. The little boy with the face of an angel. With dark auburn hair curling around his head, he was the image of his mother. It hurt Joe to look at him. The child perched in his mother’s arms at Paul’s funeral, staring with wide, brown eyes at the gathering of people. Oblivious to the seriousness of the occasion, he hadn’t understood the finality of his father’s death.

Joe told himself the boy was his primary reason for standing in front of the little clapboard house, not his mother.

Maggie appeared in the doorway as if conjured from his deepest thoughts. Her pale skin was almost translucent, the light dusting of freckles even seeming faded. Yet, despite her red-rimmed eyes, she was every bit as beautiful as the first time he’d seen her in the tribal youth center. She’d stood out like a flame amidst the dark-haired, dark-skinned teenagers she was shooting hoops with.

Standing with her hands drooping at her sides, the agony in her gaze pierced Joe’s soul in a way he hadn’t expected, and his arms ached to hold her and soothe away the fear and anguish.

Then he remembered how quickly she’d gone into another man’s bed after he’d left—the bed of his stepbrother he’d resented as a child growing up.

His lips firmed into a straight line and he nodded. “Maggie.”

A single tear slid down her cheek. “Dakota’s gone.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and shivered. Dressed only in jeans and an oversized green sweatshirt, she wasn’t up to the cold of the late-October prairie breeze.

Joe had the sudden urge to walk away—no, make that run—as far away as he could get from her. But he couldn’t leave Maggie when she was so vulnerable. “Let’s go inside.” For the better part of the last month, he’d avoided her at every turn—a tough thing to do in such a small community. Especially when he was a tribal policeman and she worked with the reservation youth. Sometimes they crossed paths. He worked hard to make those occasions brief.

She led the way into the living room and waved at the couch, muttering something about sitting. Yet Maggie stood half turned away from him, her gaze on the scene outside the window as if watching for her son’s return.

Joe shrugged out of his coat and slung it onto a chair. The two state police officers moved in and out of the house, talking to each other and into the radios they carried. To Joe, Maggie might as well have been the only one in the room.

After one long minute, he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He walked up behind her and pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Maggie, sit. I can’t talk to you when you have your back to me.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” Her hand made a weak wave. “I can’t focus. I can’t think.” Then she turned and stared straight into his eyes. “I want my son back. Oh, God, I want him back.” Her head hung down and her shoulders shook with the force of silent sobs.

Joe stood helpless in the face of her grief. When words wouldn’t come, he pulled her into his arms and pressed her face against his shoulder. He held her for a long time without speaking.

“It’s so cold outside,” she whispered, her breath warm against his chest. “They didn’t even take his blanket.” Burrowing against him, her tears soaked into his chambray shirt.

A twinge of jealousy skittered across his consciousness to be squelched in the rightness of a mother’s tears for the son she’d lost. The son she’d had with Paul. Joe swallowed the knot of regret in his throat. “We’ll find him.”

WITH JOE’S ARMS around her, Maggie felt as though she’d come home. Hope feathered the inside of her stomach. Even after her tears dried, she didn’t lift her head, didn’t want to move from the certainty of Joe’s embrace. She knew if she did, the gaping black horror of the past would rush back to overwhelm her.

Joe pressed a finger beneath her chin and tipped her face upward, breaking through her wall of thoughts. “Maggie, what time did you notice Dakota missing?”

The blinking red of her alarm clock pierced her clouded memory. “Four-fifteen. I woke because it was cold in the house. They could have taken him between the time I went to bed around midnight and when I awoke.” His touch made her want to lean on him and let him shoulder her burden. But this was Joe.

She jerked her chin out of his grip, hardening the heart she’d given him freely once. If not for the loss of her son, she would have nothing to do with him. But despite the pain of her past, he was the only man she trusted to find her son alive. And she’d sell her soul to the devil himself to get Dakota back.

“Did you hear anything, see anything?”

She’d answered all these questions for Delaney but Joe needed to know as much as he could to search for her son on the reservation. The FBI hadn’t arrived yet, but Maggie would bet her son’s life on Joe. She inhaled and let the air out slowly, combing through her barely conscious memories of the past hours. “No. I didn’t see or hear anything.” Her voice caught and she bit hard on her lip to keep from shedding more tears.

She concentrated on Joe and it was as if she could see his thoughts churning in eyes so brown they could be black. His hair had started to grow out from his tour of duty with the South Dakota National Guard. He looked more like the tribal police officer she’d known rather than the unbending military man she’d seen at her husband’s funeral.

Officer Toke stepped in the door and nodded toward Joe.

Maggie held her breath hoping for news. Something tangible.

Joe pushed to his feet and strode across the room. “Did you find anything outside?”

The man shook his head. “The ground is hard and dry. Without snow, we couldn’t trace footprints.”

Maggie leaped to her feet and joined the men. “What about fingerprints?”

The police officer shook his head. “Dusted and sent to the state crime lab. Takes time to identify each. We’ll need yours to match up.”

She nodded but her shoulders sagged, the heavy burden of her failure pushing them down. “How could they just come in and leave without a trace? I was in the house all the time,” she whispered. A shiver rippled down her back.

Joe reached out and pulled her against him. “It’s not your fault, Maggie.”

“But I should have woken up.”

His fingers tightened on her forearms. “We’ll find him.”

She stared up into his dark, swarthy face, his high cheekbones and strong chin, evidence of his power and ancestry. He was Lakota, one of the surviving members of a proud nation of Sioux warriors. If anyone could find her son, he could.

The aching emptiness in her belly eased, followed quickly by an acidic froth of guilt. She should have told him her secret when she’d found out about it, before he left for the Middle East. But the time had passed. Now she had to keep the knowledge to herself.

Tribal police officer Delany Toke cleared his throat. “Joe, we found some graffiti on the exterior wall.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “What graffiti?”

“It was on the west side, out of line of sight of the road,” Del said.

“That’s been there a month.” Maggie raked a hand through her hair. Had it really been four weeks since the ugly paint had appeared on the side of her little house?

“Did you report it to the police?” Joe asked.

“No. I didn’t want the persons responsible to think I was scared. I had enough problems getting through to some of the teens as it was.” But that hadn’t stopped Paul from doing something about it. He’d been angry enough to march down to the youth center and ream every teenager unfortunate enough to stop by that day. Maggie would rather have let the matter drop, not risen to the bait.

“What does it say?” Joe asked.

Del glanced at Maggie. “‘Go away, white woman.’”

Joe stared at Maggie, his lips tightening into a thin line. “Any idea who might have done it?”

“Could have been one of a dozen.” A bucket of white paint still sat in the storage room waiting for her to cover the hateful words, but so much had happened since that day she’d completely forgotten.

Joe glanced at her. “I thought you had a rapport with them.”