“Does he know this?”
“Not yet.”
Cassidy grimaced. This wasn’t going to be good. She knew Clyne Cosen well enough to know that. But she also didn’t like the bait and switch. She was here to investigate the ongoing drug activity here. Not play nursemaid to a bristly Apache who didn’t want her within a mile of him.
“We’ll be on-site for the next rally. This one is indoors, so no BS. Love to find the shooter before then.”
“You and me both.” She couldn’t help but twist to check the sore muscles and ribs. Yup. They still hurt. “I’m here. Gotta go.”
“Check in after the event.”
“Yes, sir.” She disconnected and said, “And keep that transfer request front and center.”
Cassidy pulled into the barren patch of ground her GPS had brought her to. She would have been certain she was off course but there was a series of fluttering triangular flags flapping briskly in the March breeze. She dragged her winter coat from the rear seat. Down in Phoenix it was sixty degrees. But up here fourteen thousand feet above sea level there was ice on the ground.
“That’s why they call themselves Mountain Apache,” she muttered.
A leaning white sign advertised the future site of the Black Mountain water treatment facility. Whoo-hoo, she thought and climbed from the vehicle. The wind tore a strand of hair from her ponytail and no amount of recovery could make it stay in place. Her chin-length hair was just too short for a pony and she’d be damned if she’d be seen outside the house in either pigtails or a headband.
She glanced at her watch and saw she’d arrived forty-five minutes early. That gave her time to check the perimeter and to wish she had worn thicker socks. The open field left few places to hide and the lack of any obvious vehicle was encouraging. But with a scope, a shooter could easily be in range. Clyne had agreed to wear body armor for this event. Cassidy adjusted hers, her backup. The one without the distortion over her heart.
Back at her sedan, Cassidy was just lifting her phone to call Luke when a line of vehicles, mostly pickups, arrived in a long train of bright color. The wind pushed her forward and she had to widen her stance to keep from losing her footing. The sudden movement made her ribs ache.
She watched the men and women emerge from their vehicles. Clyne was easy to spot. She didn’t know exactly why. Perhaps his height or the crisp way he walked. He joined some men dressed in trenches, walking with them along the flapping flags.
Luke walked slightly behind them. She knew the instant Clyne spotted her because his ready smile dipped with his brow. Then he turned his attention back to his conversation with his guests.
She heard him say, “Self-sustaining and by using local labor we expect to come in below the estimate.”
She fell into stride behind him, ignoring the heady scent of pine that reached her as Clyne passed. He’d smelled like that yesterday, she recalled, when he had carried her into the hotel. Cassidy inhaled deeply, enjoying the appealing fragrance.
“Hey,” said Luke.
“How was last night?” she asked.
“Quiet. You?”
“Good.”
“What did they say at the hospital?”
She didn’t answer.
“Cassidy?”
She fessed up. “I went home.”
Luke’s smile seemed sad. He had met Amanda more than once in the times before she knew he was her uncle. Amanda’s father’s half brother. If it were only him, she wouldn’t mind Amanda getting to know him better. Luke, she knew and trusted.
“I got Gabe to put someone on Manny Escalanti. Told him our office would pick up the overtime.”
Manny Escalanti was the new head of the Wolf Posse, the Apache gang operating on the rez. It had been this gang that had held the chemicals for production and moved the mobile meth labs to keep them ahead of tribal police.
“We need ears on him, too. Do we know if the Mexican cartels are still working with them?”
“DOJ says that they are working with both the Salt River gang and the Wolf Posse.”
In January, the cartel had decided to move operations to Salt River but failed to capture the chemicals needed because Gabe and his very connected fiancée, Selena Dosela, had succeeded in stopping them. Selena was also Black Mountain Apache and her father, Frasco, had ties to the Wolf Posse and American distributor, Cesaro Raggar. Good thing Dosela was working with them now.
“What do you think of Selena?” she asked.
“I think she’s very brave and very lucky.”
“I mean, do you think she is working with the cartels?”
“No. Not at all.”
His answer was a little too quick as if that was what he hoped to be true, rather than what was true.
“Her father was recruited by Raggar.”
Raggar was the head of the American distribution operation running the business from federal prison.
“And Frasco went to DOJ and made a deal.”
“To save his hide,” said Cassidy.
“It’s a valid reason to come to us. Kept his family safe and got them out of the operation.”
“Unless Raggar retaliates.”
“Gabe is very worried about that. Even asked me about witness protection for Selena’s entire family.”
That was new information.
“But her father won’t leave the rez.”
The sentiment seemed endemic up here, she thought.
The group formed a rough circle around nothing she could see other than that this was the place that their tribal councilman had chosen to stop moving forward into the barren field.
She and Forrest stepped back, just outside the circle, scanning the audience and the surrounding area.
“Too far from cover,” she said to Forrest.
“Too cold, as well. We won’t be out long.”
But it didn’t take long for a bullet to travel through a person’s flesh and bone.
Cassidy scanned the faces, checked the hands and listened to Clyne lift his voice to describe the fantastical water treatment plant as if it were some shining tower sitting on a hill instead of a pit that strained excrement.
Cassidy scanned the faces and realized that she and the two representatives from the BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, were the only white people in the gathering.
Clyne spoke loud enough for the gathering to hear and she had to admit his argument for the funding was eloquent, thoughtful and timely, but perhaps wasted on the men who were wearing the equivalent of raincoats in the unceasing wind. They stomped their feet restlessly as she swept the crowd, impressed with the practical clothing of the rest of the gathering.
Clyne finished and the men all shook hands. Photos were taken for the Black Mountain webpage and Cassidy made sure she was not in any of them. The procession retreated to the string of vehicles that reminded her of a wagon train for some reason. She shadowed Clyne to his vehicle where he stopped to glare at her.
“Would you like me to follow you or accompany you?”
“Neither,” said