Turquoise Guardian. Jenna Kernan

His step faltered as he changed direction, raising the rifle stock to his shoulder as he headed for her at a quick march.

       Chapter Three

      Carter took the turn too fast, the wheels of his truck screeching in protest. This was the street. Where was Amber? And then he saw her. The car. The shooter. All at once.

      Amber cowered beside the rear bumper of a rust bucket of a car that looked as substantial as an aluminum can. The dark blue van parked on the adjoining cross street looked right as a getaway vehicle. Before the house stood a single male, forties to fifties, dressed in jeans and an olive green windbreaker, an assault rifle lifted to his shoulder. His jaw was large and dark with stubble. Carter saw brown hair, a broad nose, a down-turned mouth and square forehead. Was this the man who had killed all those people at the copper mine? The gunman swung the rifle in Carter’s direction as Carter’s truck screeched to a halt beside Amber. He had expected her to open the door, but she didn’t. Didn’t wait for him to shout directions either.

      Instead, Amber vaulted into the bed of his pickup and rolled as Carter accelerated. The spray of bullets peppered his tailgate as he turned away from the van. Behind him, the gunman stood in the road for a moment, then lowered his rifle and ran toward the van.

      It wasn’t over. He felt it in the pit of his stomach.

      Amber pounded on the small sliding glass window that separated the cab from the truck bed. He swiped the window open and glanced back at her. She stared at him with wide eyes.

      “You,” she said.

      He cast her a half smile and returned his focus to the road which was complicated by the distraction of Amber slithering through the narrow opening with the undulating ability of a belly dancer.

      “You hurt?” he asked.

      “No.” Amber looked over her shoulder out the back. “He killed him.”

      “Ibsen?”

      “Yes. I think so. I heard my boss... I heard shots. Maybe we should go back.”

      “No. Call 911.”

      “No phone.”

      “I’m buying you a phone.”

      “No, you are not.”

      He didn’t have time to argue with her now. So he drew out his phone and passed it to her. She called the emergency number and gave them the address and situation. Her voice hardly wavered at all, but she kept her opposite hand pressed to her forehead as she spoke.

      When she finished, she relaxed her hand, and his phone dropped limply into her lap. Suddenly she stiffened.

      “My satchel!” She half turned in her seat. “I left it in the road.”

      “Forget it.”

      She pivoted back to place. “The packing slips. I’m responsible. They’re gone,” she said.

      She settled in the seat beside him, her brow furrowed.

      “Did you get a look at the one with the rifle?” asked Carter.

      “What? Oh, yes. A good one.”

      “Driver?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Think about them. Every detail.”

      “Are they coming?” Amber glanced back through the rear window at the road behind them.

      “Not sure.”

      She gripped his forearm with both hands tight. The scar tissue tugged, and he winced. Who would have thought such a small woman would be so strong?

      He scanned her worried face, taking in the changes, looking past the Anglo clothing and prim bun to the loose tendril of black silk caressing her jaw and falling away before her pointed chin. Her cheeks held a flush, and her dark eyes glimmered from beneath thick lashes, her eyes so black he could not see the pupils of her eyes. Her mouth, oh that mouth, pink and alluring with the small crescent scar cutting through the upper lip. That threadlike blemish had appeared while he was away on his first tour.

      He turned back to the road. Beautiful, he decided, still and always the most beautiful woman in the world.

      “How did you know where I was?” she asked.

      “I was at the mine.”

      “But why are you here?”

      There was no time for that now.

      “There’s been a shooting at the copper mine,” he said.

      He made another turn.

      “What?”

      He debated only an instant and then told her everything.

      “Everyone in my office?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”

      “Looked like it.”

      Amber covered her face and wept. The urge to shield her from the pain surged inside him. But driving at top speeds he could not even loop an arm around her shoulders as she cried.

      Suddenly, she lifted her head and stared at him with deep dark eyes glimmering with pain. Her pointed chin trembled, and her tempting pink lips were parted in surprise. He felt a familiar tug at his heart. They’d been so good together.

      He forced his gaze away.

      “That’s why you wanted me to remember what I saw,” she said. “You think it’s the same man.”

      “I do.”

      He wondered if, instead of asking her to remember, he should tell her to forget. But it was too late. They’d seen the shooter. She’d seen the driver. They were involved.

      She righted herself in the seat and closed her eyes. Then she lifted his phone, and dictated every detail she could remember into a text. The sound of her voice still stirred him.

      When she finished sending the text she returned his phone.

      “Who did you text that to?”

      “Your brother Jack.”

      His phone chimed as Jack sent back a question mark.

      “That way, he has it, in case anything happens...”

      “Nothing is going to happen. I got you.”

      She stared with a solemn expression that made her seem world-weary. He summoned a quick smile he hoped looked reassuring.

      “Why are you in Lilac, Carter? Why today?”

      He had that creepy sensation again. The one he felt when he learned that her boss was out today of all days. “I have a letter for you from Kenshaw Little Falcon.”

      “What?”

      She shook her head, not understanding. “My uncle? Why would he send you?”

      “He heads my medicine society now.”

      Did she ask why he had been chosen or why the message needed to be hand delivered?

      “It’s not from my father,” she said, the statement really a question. He knew from her mother, Natalie Kitcheyan, that Amber had been back to visit, but she timed her appearances carefully so as not to encounter her dad, Manny Kitcheyan. She also never visited Carter again. After that last time, he couldn’t blame her. But the truth that she’d moved on tugged at his heart.

      Carter’s phone rang. He fished it from his front pocket and passed it to her again.

      “It’s Jack,” she said.

      “Put him on speaker.”

      She did.

      “Carter? Where are you?”

      “I got