Turquoise Guardian. Jenna Kernan

back.

      Amber descended the steps in a rapid gait, making a beeline for her vehicle, which was small, ugly, used and paid for. She didn’t do leases. She paid cash or did without.

      As she drove out of the lot, Amber glanced back at the van still illegally parked, and then turned onto the road that would lead her through the high chain-link fencing and off the copper mine’s property.

      * * *

      CARTER BEAR DEN’S first sign of trouble at the mine came in the form of a yelp from the security guard seated at the lobby reception desk. The guard’s eyes were glued to the monitor on his desk, showing a series of images from various security cameras. Carter leaned in to see what had made the man blanch.

      Carter had a message to deliver. He didn’t like it, but he was duty bound to see that Amber Kitcheyan received the letter. It had been given to him by Kenshaw Little Falcon, the head of the Turquoise Guardians, his medicine society and a tribal shaman.

      Now, standing beside the security desk and the uniformed boy they had hired to check in visitors, Carter looked at the monitor that showed a masked gunman making steady progress along an empty corridor, and he stopped thinking and wondering. This time he saw the face of danger before it was too late.

      Amber was in this building.

      The security officer stood now, one hand on his pistol grip and the other reaching for the phone seeming uncertain as to which to use.

      Carter had no such trouble. As a former US Marine with three tours of duty, he knew what he needed to do. Protect Amber.

      The digital feed displayed a view of an office where the masked gunman proceeded past a fallen woman toward the cubbies tucked directly behind the receptionist’s station.

      “Where is that?”

      “Purchasing,” rasped the guard.

      From the security guard’s radio came a call to lock down. On the other monitors people scurried about, fleeing the halls for the closest cover.

      Carter retrieved his Tribal ID from the high counter and tucked it in his open wallet as the shooting started, the burring sound of an automatic rifle blast unmistakable and close.

      For just an instant, Carter was back there in Iraq with his brother and Ray and Dylan and Hatch. The next instant he was drenched with sweat and running.

      Suddenly delivering his message came second to keeping Amber alive. Had Little Falcon known what was about to transpire?

      The stabbing fear over Amber’s safety took him by surprise. He’d been so sure he was over her. So why was he running into gunfire?

      Although he now moved forward with the stealth of his ancestry bolstered by the training of the US Marines, the stillness in the corridor was unnerving. It had the eerie quiet of a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Everyone was hiding except for him and the killer.

      From down the corridor he heard a bang, like the sound of a heavy door slamming shut. He ran toward the sound, the light tread of his cowboy boots a whisper on the carpeted hallway.

      He saw the blood trail as soon as he rounded the corner. It led from an office that read Purchasing upon the door. The gunman’s boot prints were there in blood leaving the scene, dark stains on the industrial carpeting.

      Amber’s office, he realized. For an instant he was too terrified of what he might find to go inside. Was it the same as Iraq? Was it already too late?

      He held his breath and stepped across the threshold. The calm sending his flesh crawling. He moved from one body to the next, checking for signs of life and the face that still visited his dreams.

      Everyone in the outer office was dead. He moved to the two private offices. The man in the first was gone, shot cleanly through the forehead. In the next office he was greeted by the sight of dark legs, sprawled at an unnatural angle. One moved.

      Carter was at her side in an instant, sweeping away the dark hair that covered her face. She was breathing, but she was not Amber. Her eyes fluttered open and flashed to his.

      “Rest. Help is coming,” he said, feeling his gut twist in sympathy.

      He could tell by her sadness and the tears in her eyes that she saw death coming.

      “Amber?” he whispered.

      “She left. When the shooter spotted her empty cubicle, he said he would find her.”

      His heart gave a leap and hammered now, hitting his ribs so hard and fast it hurt.

      “Where is she?”

      “Left. Harvey Ibsen’s home. Paperwork. Oh, it hurts. My kids. Tell them I’m sorry. That I love them.” Her eyes fluttered shut.

      Someone entered the office.

      “Security!”

      “In here,” Carter called.

      A moment later a man in a gray uniform shirt and black pants appeared in the doorway. His gun drawn.

      Carter lifted his hands. “Unarmed.”

      The man aimed his weapon. Carter didn’t have time to get shot.

      “EMTs on the way?” he asked.

      The man nodded, his face ashen.

      “Come put pressure on this.”

      He did, tucking away his weapon and kneeling beside Carter before placing a large hand on the folded fabric over the woman’s abdomen.

      “You know a guy called Harvey Ibsen?” Carter asked.

      “Yeah. He works here.”

      “Where does he live?”

      “I don’t know. In town, I guess. Who are you?”

      “Friend of Amber Kitcheyan.” Friend? Once he had planned to make her his wife.

      “Yeah?”

      Carter was already on his feet. He pointed at the woman. “She wants her kids to know she’s sorry to leave them and that she loves them.”

      The security officer blanched. Carter stepped away.

      “Hey, you can’t leave.”

      Carter ignored him. If the shooter was after Amber, he had to go. Now.

      “She also said that the shooter was looking for Amber. Send police to Ibsen’s home. I think he’s heading there.”

      The man’s eyes widened and he lifted his radio.

      “Call Amber’s cell. Warn her,” said Carter.

      “She doesn’t own a mobile. Or at least that’s what she told me.” The security officer’s eyes slid away.

      Carter groaned. Of course she didn’t. That would have made the necessity of him delivering this message superfluous. He headed out, following the ghastly bloody footprints. His phone supplied an address for a Harvey Ibsen, and his maps program gave him the route.

      Ibsen didn’t live in Lilac. According to Carter’s search engine, he lived in Epitaph, the tourist town fifteen miles north of here. The name, once a joke for the number of murders committed during the mining town’s heyday, now seemed a grim omen.

      Carter swung up behind the wheel of his F-150 pickup. Amber’s boss was out the very day this happened. A coincidence that was just too perfect in timing. Luck. Fate. Or something else?

      He didn’t know, but he had a sour taste in his mouth.

       Chapter Two

      Carter headed out, turning away from the town of Lilac, named not for the color of the rock, but the name of the man who decided to crush the poor-quality copper ore in a stamp mill and make the