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 her. But the guy was there at her boss’s house. He’s there, Jack, or he was. Two men. Dark blue Chevy van. Unmarked. Arizona plates.”
“I’ll call Arizona Highway Patrol. You safe?”
“For now. We’re heading north.”
“You guys clear?”
“Not sure. Any chance you can send Kurt down here for us?”
Carter was referring to their youngest brother, who was one of the pilots for the air ambulance transport team out of Darabee. In other words, Kurt might be able to get his hands on a helicopter.
“Either of you injured?”
He glanced at Amber, who was ashy and bleeding from the knees.
“If you need us to be, then, yes,” said Carter.
“There’s a hospital in Benson. Head there.”
“En route,” Carter said.
She disconnected and dropped the phone in his front breast pocket. She leaned in, wrapping her arms about his neck.
“You saved my life.”
She stared at him in a look that made his stomach tug. Those big, beautiful eyes open and grateful to him. How he’d missed her. Nine years since she’d broken it off. Seven since he’d laid eyes on Amber, but his heart remembered. He knew because it banged against his rib cage. He was thirsty for her, as thirsty as the desert longing for the yearly floods. He forced his gaze back to the road. He couldn’t do this again. The longing receded, replaced by the betrayal. Why did she leave her people?
Why did she leave him?
They could have worked it out. He’d been so stupid, and she’d been so stubborn. Blown to hell like that Humvee back in the Sandbox. No way to put back the pieces.
He glanced at her. Was there?
He looked in the rearview, spotted the van and stiffened. Amber followed the direction of his gaze, turning to stare through the rear window as Carter uttered a curse.
“It’s them!” she cried.
Carter accelerated toward the highway. His truck was tough, eight cylinders, but the van was gaining on them. That didn’t make any sense.
Amber spun in the seat, kneeling to look
