“Ty lives in Koun’nde. He has a phone. If I can get SaVala to lend me his phone, we can take it far enough to get service and call Ty and Jake. Then I can call Kee and ask him to come deliver this baby.”
She had her eyes closed again and was blowing through pursed lips. Sweat beaded on his brow.
“Kacey?” he whispered.
She turned her head to look at him, her cheeks puffing out and in as she blew.
“They won’t get you,” he promised.
Her head dropped to the headrest. He knew she was already nineteen, but she still looked like the girl he’d first loved, still loved. Why had he left her? She’d been right about everything. Something terrible had happened to him and to her. He’d been so sure that the Marines would be a shortcut to what she wanted, with money to provide the life away from her mother and the shadow of his father. He’d been trying to prove he was strong like his brother Ty and smart like Kee and good like Jake. But he wasn’t any of those things. He was a fragile wreckage of a man who couldn’t even talk to people since...well, since everything that had happened over there.
He hadn’t had the chance to be a hero. He’d just been taken like a sheep from a pasture to the butcher truck. Fate had made him the last lamb in line.
He pressed the web of his hand between his thumb and index finger to his forehead, trying to ease the pounding. He was in a car again and there was not enough air. He released his head to grip the wheel, bracing for the blast, waiting for it.
This time he’d be ready.
Colt was not going back there now. Kacey needed him. He was here on Turquoise Canyon and he had to stay focused. But he knew he wasn’t keeping the panic attack away. He was only postponing it. The doc at Walter Reed in Maryland said he needed counseling and put him on the list. With luck, it would be decades before they would get to his name, because he wasn’t talking about that with anyone ever. No one who wasn’t held by insurgents could possibly understand.
His gaze flicked to Kacey, who sat with her head dropped back on the headrest but turned toward him. She smiled at him, her face relaxed and her hands laced over her belly. Her dark hair was gathered in a loose braid that lay on her shoulder. Her once soft, round face had changed. Her deep brown eyes were still bright, but there were dark smudges beneath them. Her lips were full and pink, but her jaw and pointed chin seemed too prominent in her thin face. How much weight had she lost? Kacey had always been slender, but now she was skinny, way too skinny. How much had they given them to eat?
Not enough—clearly.
The rations that he’d been given during his captivity rose in his mind and he pushed the memory of that down. One sure way to be of no help to her was to think about that.
No one understood that the captivity wasn’t as hard as the memories that just would not go away. It wasn’t getting better with time. It was worse. Colt gripped the wheel. He hated cars, trucks, anything that rolled. No one in his family understood. They were worried, but they didn’t get it. He could not think about it, but he was stuck somehow. Afraid all the time.
Kacey was now looking in the side mirror, watching for trouble. Perhaps she could understand, he realized. Because she’d been a captive, too. But then she’d also understand that he was the very last person capable of helping her. That was why he was leaving her with his brother. Any one of his brothers was a better choice than him.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Almost there,” he said to himself as much as to her.
Kacey’s body relaxed. The contractions were not as strong now, fading as if taking a pause. How long did labor last? Hours? Days? She didn’t know. Her mother just went to the clinic and came home the next day with a brother or sister. Kacey assumed that by tomorrow at this time, she would have a baby. But exactly what happened in the meantime was vague.
She’d learned about childbirth in high-school health class. At the time, the lesson seemed theoretical. The abstract phases of birth just one more thing to be memorized and spit back on a quiz. Stage I—Early Labor. Stage II—Active Labor. Stage III—hand the baby to a nurse and take a nap.
Colt pulled off the road and up a short turnoff that was composed of two ruts in the yellow grass. A cabin came into view against the ridge, sitting up on concrete blocks. The step before the front door was clearly slag rock from a turquoise vein. She was Turquoise Canyon Apache, so she recognized what base rock surrounded a vein of the precious blue stone.
Colt barely had the car in Park before throwing himself against the driver’s-side door in his hurry to be out of the cab. He scrambled out onto all fours. It took him a moment to right himself before he straightened and returned to the car.
“Colt?”
He was sweating as if he’d run from his claim to this one. He peered in at her through the open door.
“Call him,” he whispered.
Kacey opened her door and swung her legs out, bare feet touching the long yellow grass as she inched forward on the seat. Colt retrieved his rifle and then rounded the car to stand beside her door.
She called a greeting. They were met first by a skinny white dog. The muck on his shoulder showed he’d been rolling in something, and the stench said it was something dead.
The claim holder arrived shortly afterward, dressed in coveralls coated with a fine white layer of rock dust. All claims belonged to the tribe, but families worked them and passed them along. Her family’s claim was worked by others, leased for a period of five years at a time.
David SaVala tried to shake Colt’s hand, but Colt chose to place his hand on the shoulder strap of his rifle. David greeted her instead, peering at her from beside Colt, but his smile was gone.
“Good to see you two back together.”
She smiled and nodded. That seemed easier than explaining.
David took another step toward her, moving beyond the open car door, and his step faltered.
“Oh.” He glanced from her swollen belly to Colt. “Oh, I see. Congratulations, you two.”
Kacey used the door and the frame to heave herself up. Colt rubbed his neck but said nothing. He backed toward the woods, but Kacey gripped his arm to prevent his escape.
She told David what they needed and he retreated to his cabin with his dog for the phone and handed it off to her with the pass code and instructions on where she would first find a signal. The distance and her condition required another car ride. They headed out with the dog trotting with them as far as the road. Colt was shaking by the time they reached the high point of Dead Elk Dip and the place that allowed a weak cell phone signal.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Don’t drive anymore.”
“Claustrophobic?” she asked. This was new. Ty had told her of Colt’s capture but had been short on details. She just now understood what helping her was costing him. Was it leaving his claim that upset him or the driving?
His skin was pale. He retrieved David’s phone. Colt placed the call and gripped his hair in one fist as he waited for the phone to connect.
Kacey heard a male voice issue a greeting.
Colt squeezed his eyes shut. His fist tightened in his hair.
“Who’s this?” came the voice on the other end of the line.
His jaw clamped shut and he thrust the phone at her.
“Hello?” she replied.
“This is Redhorse.” She