The Stronghold. Lisa Carter

shook her head. “I can walk home if it gets too late.”

      Pilar’s mind shifted to the unidentified body in the canyon grave. Nobody bothered to monitor Reyna’s comings and goings. Another throwaway rez kid.

      Like her and Byron once upon a time.

      “Not tonight.” Pilar yanked the door open. “Come on. No arguments. I get enough of that from Manny.”

      Her brow puckering, Reyna paratrooped off the table and landed, agile as a deer, on the balls of her feet. “You don’t have to do that, Miz To-Clanny.”

      “It’ll be fun.” Pilar held the door. “I get tired of nothing but guy talk from Manny. We’ll get enchiladas and bring some to Manny before I take you home.”

      “You don’t need to do that.” But Reyna’s stomach rumbled as she crawled into the Jeep Cherokee.

      What Pilar didn’t need to do was to look at her watch to know it’d been hours since Reyna’s free and reduced lunch at school. Too well Pilar remembered the hunger of an empty belly and an equally empty trailer refrigerator. Too well she remembered the shame of her and Byron always being the poorest kids in school.

      Until Abuela came into their lives.

      “I don’t have any money for dinner, Miz To-Clanny.” Reyna squared her shoulders. “Mama says Buis don’t take handouts.”

      Pilar fought hard to keep what she thought of Reyna’s mother from showing on her face. She averted her gaze and inserted the key into the ignition. “Don’t worry about that, honey. Pay me with one of those pretty rocks you find.”

      “You’ve already got a lot of those from me.”

      Pilar cranked the engine. “Actually, you’d be doing Manny a favor by putting off the mammoth-size punishment he’s due. And,” she cut her eyes at Reyna. “I figured since you and Manny were such good friends, you could give me a clue to what’s going on in that boy’s head these days. One female to the other.”

      “Used to be good friends.” Reyna’s gaze dropped to the floorboard. “Females is what he’s got on his mind, I imagine. The high school ones, anyway.”

      Pilar wanted to bop Manny upside the head for hurting the too-skinny girl who’d not yet bloomed. Been there, been her.

      Over a decade ago while playing ball in the yard with four-year-old Manny, she’d looked up to find the little girl with big brown eyes gazing at Manny as if he hung the moon. Pilar couldn’t believe the child had walked all the way from next door.

      ’Cause next door in the middle of nowhere was a good two miles down the road. And thereafter, she’d made it her business to keep an eye out for the neglected child.

      Reyna had never met a rock she didn’t love. And she and best-bud Manny spent hours scrambling around the mountain vistas under Pilar’s watchful eye. On a visit to Abuela’s, it was Manny who taught Reyna to ride a pony. Manny who kicked butt at school when one of the other kids made fun of Reyna’s less-than-stellar wardrobe. Or mocked her brains.

      Manny used to be proud of his own braininess, too, until this year at high school when he discovered it wasn’t quite the social commodity Pilar had led him to believe. Especially around the guys and adolescent girls he was so eager to impress these days. Middle-schooler Reyna—like Pilar—was still trying to adjust to Manny’s new reality.

      Adapt or die.

      Pilar gritted her teeth. “Boys—men—take it from me—the whole lot of them are jerks, Reyna.”

      “He’s going through a tough time.” Reyna—ever the Manny champion whether he deserved it or not, mostly not—lifted her chin. “Manny’s got a good heart. He’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

      Giving Pilar a tough time more like it. Skipping school, getting into fights, hanging out with those Indian gangster lowlifes—at this rate Manny would either end up in jail or dead. Policing the rez by day, policing Manny was proving the hardest job of all.

      “Where’d Manny go this afternoon, Reyna?”

      Facing forward, Reyna put her knees together, prim as a schoolmarm.

      “You’re not doing him any favors by protecting him.”

      Reyna laced her fingers in her lap.

      Pilar blew out a disgusted breath as she turned into the drive-through lane. “Come on, Reyna. You’ve got to give me something. I’m at my wit’s end with the boy.”

      What troubled Pilar more than anything was how the sweet, even-tempered boy had become so angry and secretive.

      Reyna folded her arms over her flat chest. “It’s Bui, Reyna. Don’t have a rank or serial number. But I’m prepared to give you my tribal enrollment number if required.”

      “There’d be a chocolate milkshake in it for you, Reyna, if you come clean.”

      Reyna gave Pilar a haughty look. “I’m no snitch.”

      Pilar swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Is Manny using, Reyna?” As a police officer, she didn’t kid herself about the availability of drugs, especially to rez kids.

      Reyna’s eyes enlarged. “No. He’d never . . . not after what happened with his mother.”

      Pilar strangled the wheel. She’d failed Manny. As his auntie, she’d tried so hard to give him normal—or what passed for normal in their broken family tree. To give him the safe and secure childhood she and Byron missed.

      But sometimes—Pilar bit her lip so hard she tasted blood—you couldn’t fight genetics.

      That thought—and Alex Torres—kept her awake a lot of nights.

      A car behind them beeped. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Pilar inched to the intercom and ordered three chocolate milkshakes, two enchiladas grande-style, two fries, and one taco salad. Time—Pilar took stock of herself in the side mirror—past time to work on those five extra pounds.

      She crept to the cashier’s window and paid. Pilar passed the bulging bag across the console for Reyna to leverage at her feet. She handed the shake caddy for Reyna to balance in her arms.

      Reyna counted the number of shakes. “But I didn’t give you any dirt on Manny.”

      Pilar eased onto the highway. “I always get you a chocolate shake, Reyna, you know that.”

      Reyna’s lips quivered. “Don’t have any real pretty rocks in my collection right now, Miz To-Clanny, but I’m going to find you something special this time.”

      Pilar smiled over at her. “I know you will, honey.”

      Reyna seemed to come to a decision. “Ole Miz Clum asked Manny to chop firewood for her this afternoon. Going to be a bad winter the old lady said. Offered to pay Manny. Which he refused.”

      The girl tossed her head with an I-told-you-so look in her eyes. “As was only proper her being an elder and all.”

      “Clum? Talitha Clum?”

      Whose property abutted the box canyon.

      Pilar shivered at the thought of Manny so close to that horrible place.

      Reyna nodded. “She volunteers at the center. Manny likes her stories of the old days. When Apaches weren’t afraid, Manny says, to raise—”

      “I get the picture, Reyna.”

      Reyna rummaged in the bag and chomped on a shoestring fry. “I overheard her tell Manny she’d bring him home.”

      Yet when Pilar reached the trailer, Talitha Clum was nowhere in sight. And Manny wasn’t the only one making himself at home.

      ***

      With Emily busy with multiple autopsies, Charles coordinated by phone with a tribal