The Stronghold. Lisa Carter

the guards said. Howling. Frightened the other children. Wouldn’t eat. Starving herself. She was scared out of her mind. By us. By everything.”

      Pilar placed the folder on the seat. “Take her back to wherever she came from. She sounds mental. This isn’t some story about a feral child raised by Mexican wolves in the desert, is it?”

      “Look, I’m as patriotic as the next. Maybe more than most. But I’ve more than a little sympathy for those desperate enough to sell their soul to the coyotes promising them the American dream across a river. I’ve seen the poverty. The violence. The fear that keeps them heading north toward hope.”

      She pursed her lips. “Where they end up, often as not, on our land. Rez land. No love has ever been lost between a Mexican and an Apache.”

      “Don’t know as I’d agree with that last statement.” The look he gave her scorched Pilar. “Would you?”

      Pilar’s heart hammered. “We were talking about the girl.”

      His eyebrow quirked. “Were we?”

      She fidgeted under his scrutiny.

      He blew out a breath. “Before we could interview her, the girl escaped and climbed onto the roof of the detention center. When one of the agents followed, she jumped.”

      Pilar released the catch on the seatbelt. “She must’ve been Apache then. Death before captivity. Never surrender is kind of our thing.”

      Alex flicked her a glance. “Tell me about it.”

      He shoved the folder at her. “She’d been marked. Like another dead Jane Doe we found on the New Mexico side. Not far from the Mescalero rez. Marked like the body Dr. Chestuan found on San Carlos land.”

      Marked . . . nausea churned Pilar’s stomach.

      “We think maybe she got away and the others weren’t so fortunate. I’m here to do a job and then I promise to be out of your—” He flushed, biting off his words as a palpable memory surged between them.

      Of his fingers entwined in her hair. Those five glorious days when she loved him so completely. Reckless of her heart. In total disregard for the future.

      With an abandon perhaps only possible when one is as young as she’d been then.

      She blinked back tears. Apaches didn’t cry. Her eyes strayed to the panic and hopelessness etched on the young girl’s face in the photograph. What had been her story? Where had she come from? Was it fear that drove her north?

      Or something else?

      Perhaps you only learned self-preservation as you grew older. When you no longer believed in immortality, much less invincibility.

      The silence lengthened.

      He moistened his lips. “Another disturbing fact has come out of the autopsies. Each can be traced to the perigee.”

      At her upraised brow, he continued. “The supermoon. When the moon’s larger on the horizon due to its closest orbital proximity to earth. Including according to Em the latest vic, dead only a month sometime during August’s perigee.”

      “The killer stalks his victims by the light of the moon?”

      “And I back-checked the night you disappeared, Pilar. All those years ago, when a supermoon filled the night sky.”

      She sucked in a breath.

      He gestured toward the darkening horizon. “He targets Apache girls. We’ve got two days to stop him before the second of this year’s tetrad, another Apache Moon, comes round again.”

      Could the serial be the monster who destroyed her life? Pilar fought to steady herself. Was this a chance to, once and for all, end the nightmare she’d been living? To make sure he never hurt anyone else the way he’d hurt her?

      She schooled her features. “Okay. I’m in.”

      “Good.” His brow creased, Alex examined her a moment before glancing away. “Team meeting at the tribal station at eight a.m. sharp. Then I need to interview the canyonland neighbor.”

      He leaned across her and threw open the door. “Tell Manny we’ll finish the game we started soon as I get a chance.”

      The door dinging, she inched past him. His overwhelming physical presence as usual weakened whatever resolve she ever drummed up concerning him.

      “And Pilar?”

      One foot on the running board, she paused, clutching the folder to her chest.

      “I’ve always believed you and I make a great team.”

      ***

      Alex drove a further twenty-odd miles southeast toward his grandmother’s ranch. Passing under the crossbars of the bull and the T for Torres, he reckoned his abuela counted him first and foremost among the bullheaded.

      The headlights swept the sprawling adobe ranch.

      He’d spent time in a multitude of countries, yet here’s where he considered home.

      Because here he first met Pilar.

      Parking in the circle drive, Alex laid his forehead on the steering wheel.

      God, how he loved her. How he’d always loved her. And seeing her again after all these years?

      She reduced him to feeling like the same gawky teenager he’d been when he dared to reach for barely understood dreams and failed so miserably. His stomach knotted—when he’d failed her so miserably.

      He’d lived the last decade and a half in a sort of sensory deprivation. Only today had the colors of the sky and desert sprung to life once more for him. And with his nerve endings no longer numb, he felt a raw, searing hurt every time he looked at her.

      Every time she glared at him with such icy hatred, his gut clenched at what his irreparable mistakes cost them. Cost her.

      The front door opened, spilling light onto the wooden planks of the veranda. And the diminutive form of his grandmother stepped into the night air.

      She motioned. “Come, mi nieto. Tell me about this long-awaited reunion between you and your Pilar.”

      If only she were still his . . .in every way that mattered.

      His grandmother sat down in a rocker at the corner of the porch. She patted the rocker’s twin and he sank down.

      “Knowing Pilar, I’m going to hazard a guess she’s livid with me for not warning her you were taking this case.”

      He scrubbed his face. “Livid’s not the half of it. Although, most of her rage is rightly aimed at me.”

      Isabel Torres sighed. “Despite my best efforts over the years, I’m afraid our Pilar doesn’t do forgiveness. Only revenge.”

      “Don’t know why we’d expect anything different.” He dropped his chin. “Vengeance, after all, is the Apache Way, isn’t it?”

      “It is the human way.” Abuela wrapped the fringed shawl closer around her shoulders. “It will be good for Pilar to have you here. But her anger’s far better than the state she was in when she first returned. After . . .”

      He gripped the rocker. “I pursued this case because it’s a chance to put things right, Abuela.” He grimaced. “As right as they can ever be between Pilar and me.”

      She rested her blue-veined hand on his. “It is good this thing you do. You will bring justice and healing to Pilar. It is long past time for the both of you to move forward with your lives.”

      And what if moving forward involved someone with Pilar other than him?

      His heart squeezed.

      Alex had blown his chance with her. Pilar deserved closure and so much more. A chance at happiness.

      His grandmother stilled.