took only a moment to vault through the opening and lunge across the driver to reach the door release. The latch clicked, and she felt like crying in relief. Instead, she continued, head first out the door, clasping the armrest in passing to keep from sprawling on her face.
Once outside the SUV she spotted the driver’s gun in a holster clipped on his belt. His face was a bloody mess as it seemed the air bag had broken his nose. She reached Leopold’s gun, or whatever his name really was. His pistol went in the back of her waistband as if she were a gangster. She shut the door and hurried to the rear door where Carter slumped. Amber tugged Carter’s door open and reached for him. He was heavy, and she realized she could tip him out, but then what?
She considered shooting both the unconscious impostors and dismissed the notion as she wrinkled her nose in disgust. She couldn’t. She knew that much.
Her eyes caught the glint of something shiny, and she spotted the gun on the floor mat by Carter’s feet. That pistol went in the front of her waistband. She could hear Warren Cushing groan as he started to regain consciousness.
She felt the pressure of time and the choice of leaving Carter or staying here with these two strangers. Well, she had the guns. What if Carter had been wrong and these men were really FBI and she and Carter had just attacked federal officers and wrecked a federal vehicle?
Amber’s shoulders slumped. She wiped back tears and retrieved Carter’s phone from his rear pocket. For the second time in one day she called for help, only this time she used Carter’s favorites list to find and dial Jack Bear Den’s cellular phone.
“Where are you?” asked Detective Bear Den.
She told him as best she could, not liking the high frantic quality of her voice. “We crashed the car. These men said they’re FBI. Carter says they aren’t, and one has an ID reading Warren Cushing, and he told me his name was Muir and—”
“Slow down,” said Bear Den.
She grabbed a breath and swallowed, then started again. Her words came out a jumbled mess, and it took a moment for her to realize that Detective Bear Den was shouting her name. She stopped talking.
Then she noticed something, the meaning rising to fill her consciousness.
“I smell gas.”
“What?” asked Bear Den. “Get him out of the vehicle!”
She thrust the phone in her pocket as the implications made her heart beat in her throat, choking out the stench. She gave Carter another sharp poke in the ribs. This time he groaned.
“Wake up, Carter,” she said. “Wake up now!”
“Amber?” The voice came from the phone behind her. She ignored it to grasp Carter by the front of his soft chambray shirt.
She glanced about for cover. The closest thing was a large rock, to the left by the water, but it was too close and still half submerged in cold water. Next was a second outcropping along the bank that was maybe fifteen feet away. She glanced up the incline to the road above them, and it seemed impossibly steep.
She slung Carter’s arm over her shoulders and tugged.
“Come on, Carter. Move!”
He groaned, and his arm tightened on her shoulders.
“Up, soldier! That’s a direct order.”
Another groan, but he swung his own legs out of the SUV and slid against her. His eyes fluttered.
“What happened?” He lifted a hand to his head.
“Later.”
“Yeager. Get Yeager.” Was he back in Iraq?
He slipped to a knee, and she had a sinking feeling that she’d never get him up again.
“Gas,” he said.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
He used her as a crutch, and the weight nearly buckled her knees as they inched past the rear of the smoking Subaru and along the rocky bank of the stream. She threaded them under an overturned juniper, which had toppled from the bank above and now hung precariously before them.
They had come only twenty feet. But it would have to do because Carter dropped, carrying her to the ground with him. The juniper branches, still lush and loaded with the tight gray berries, fell like a curtain between them and the Subaru. She feared it would be little protection if the vehicle exploded. She got him to his side, and he groaned again.
“Like getting kicked by a horse,” he muttered.
She picked up the sound of car doors closing and cowered. Was that help or the impostors coming after them?
* * *
CARTER’S EARS BUZZED as if he had just come from a rock concert. Dappled light filtered down on him with shards of sunlight so bright they seemed to slice the tissues of his eyes. His face hurt. His neck ached. He groaned.
“Quiet now,” said a soft female voice, and a small hand pressed to his shoulder.
Who was that? He forced his eyes open. There, lying beside him, was an unfamiliar woman who seemed to be covered in baby powder. For just a moment he thought he was dreaming as he looked on the sacred deity, Changing Woman, who brought rebirth to the land.
He lifted a hand to touch her cheek and found it warm and alive. Tear stains cut tracks through the white dust, revealing the soft brown skin beneath.
He glanced at his wrist, all red and raw skin, as if he’d been tied. Carter’s gaze flicked back to hers.
“Amber?” he asked.
He had never seen her like this, disheveled and lost. What had happened?
He rocked his jaw, wondering who had hit him as he moved his hand from her face to his.
Amber took hold of his hands and squeezed. The ache now moved to his chest. Only she could make his heart ache and his body come alive with longing.
He’d loved her as a girl and lost her when she became a woman. He’d tried to forget her. Carter admitted now that he never could. Not this one, because she still owned a piece of his heart. He knew this because that piece now bled with longing for her. The woman who’d left him. But worse, she’d left her family and abandoned her people.
“Amber,” he whispered, reaching up and cupping her cheek.
She smiled, and the powder on her face flaked at the corners of her eyes. Her hair was also powdered like George Washington’s and tucked up in a knot at the back of her head. She used to wear it down so that it brushed the waistband of her jeans and his thighs when she sat astride him as they made love.
Why? Why had she thrown it all away? Their future—a life together here where they both belonged? Why was she ashamed of who and what she was?
Now her bun had shifted. Tendrils had escaped and hung about her powdered face. Her Anglo blazer was streaked with grime and sand, and she’d lost the top two buttons of her blouse. He reached up and cupped her chin, his thumb brushing
