were there.”
“No.”
“Says you.”
Faras didn’t know. He was fishing, putting together the pieces.
“No way,” said Ty.
“Just making a three-day delivery of a Chevy Nova. Yeah, I heard. You want that baby to stay dead?”
Ty felt trapped. His entire life he’d been trapped. By his father, by the Marine Corps, by the gang. All he wanted in this shitty world was to have the chance, like Kee and Jake and Colt, to make something of himself. But he’d made his bed at eighteen. He didn’t regret what he had done. But he never anticipated that by accepting Faras’s help back then he would be tied to the man forever and painted with the same broad brush.
He wanted out. But if he left, just got on his bike and rode, who would protect his family from these predators that lived inside their rez like a nest of vipers?
The police couldn’t do it, because they had laws to follow and they were outmatched in numbers and finances. The Feds couldn’t do it. They didn’t operate here unless invited and they flitted in and out like migrating birds while he wallowed down here in the mud.
“You hear me, Ty?” said Faras.
Ty nodded.
Faras leaned in. “I got a new operation. We’re cookin’ now. Ice.”
Ty frowned, hating crystal meth and hating even more that the posse would be in production on his rez. “That so?”
“Yeah. First lab is in production up on Deer Kill Meadow Road. Old hay barn up there.”
“Won’t someone see the smoke?”
“Nights only. You gonna start transport next week.”
The hell he was. “Sure.”
Chino returned with the beer. Ty left his on the table, went to the bar and sat beside Quinton. Ty was sitting facing the taps when Quinton’s foot dropped heavily off the bar stool as he sat forward. He did not reach for his gun, but his eyes widened and he looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water in his face.
Ty spun on the swivel stool toward the door. A woman paused on the Budweiser floor runner and glanced about. Ty thought her attention paused on him, but that might have been wishful thinking.
“Damn,” said Quinton. “Why I have to be working when something like that shows up?”
Ty thought it was a someone, not a something. But he agreed with Quinton that the woman was spectacular. She was tall with a confident stride and an economy of movement that spoke of power. Ty waited a beat for her partner to arrive and then it settled over him that this woman had come by herself to an unfamiliar watering hole, one with at least eight Harleys parked out front, and she had walked in with a self-assurance that showed either foolishness or strength.
Strength, he decided. That to him was more appealing than beauty because it took grit to survive up here. Both fortitude and compromise.
The tilt of her head and the way she scanned her surroundings gave her the air of a woman who knew what she was doing. There was no hesitation or wariness as she took in her surroundings. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she owned the place.
The conversation lulled as one after another of both the single and married men considered their chances. Several of the men turned back to their beers, taking themselves out of the race by fidelity to their mates, or just by judging themselves to be farm-league players in a major league game.
Ty leaned forward and drank her in like water. High brown suede boots, with silver studs around each ankle, hugged her well-defined calves. Her jeans were dark, new-looking and tight, showing legs that went on and on. The cropped leather jacket seemed to have lived a long, interesting life as a favorite garment, and Ty resented the way it hugged her upper body and breasts. Below the bottom of the jacket was a wide silver rodeo buckle, the kind that was won, not purchased. From here, it looked like the lady was a world-class barrel racer. Oh, how he would love to see her ride.
Her fawn-brown skin held the luster of gold undertones, catching the light on her high cheekbones. She seemed multiracial. He thought he recognized the Native American lineage in her distinctive facial structure. Her pale eyes hinted at European roots, and she had full lips, light brown skin and a curl of her brown shoulder-length hair. A natural beauty.
Women, sitting beside their men, placed proprietary hands on their companions, claiming them as she again swept the room with a slow scan. Her gaze fell on him. Her mouth quirked and he saw trouble coming his way, again. Only this time he felt like walking out to meet it.
She raised her voice to be heard above the jukebox as she kept her eyes fixed on his. “I’m looking for Ty Redhorse.”
In Beth’s opinion, the photos of Ty Redhorse did not do him justice. They didn’t capture his roguish grin or his speculative stare. His mug shot, taken when he was just seventeen, showed a scared kid, and the one furnished by his brother pictured a man posing with his family as if he was uncomfortable in his own skin.
Maybe he was just uncomfortable with his family. Must be awkward at Sunday supper with his two remaining brothers. Comparisons were inevitable.
This man was broad-shouldered with a slim athletic frame. He also had the devil-may-care smile of a pirate. His forehead was broad and smooth, making him look more like twenty-one instead of twenty-eight. There was a slight, shallow cleft in his chin. One of his eyebrows lifted in conjecture. Dark eyes met hers and set off a flutter low and deep inside her.
She ignored the warning and continued on. Nerves, she told herself as she moved toward him. She might find Ty physically attractive, but he was just her admission ticket to the Wolf Posse, a means to an end. So it didn’t matter how appealing she found his face and body. Beth liked bad boys, just not this one.
Still, there was something about him that made her regret the missed opportunity he presented. In another time and place she might have acted on impulse. But not now with so much on the line.
Beth had met his brother, Jake Redhorse, a rookie tribal officer, and had none of this immediate attraction. His younger brother had a look that she would describe as brooding. From the family photo, she thought the oldest brother, Kee, radiated the stability of a professional man with none of the indescribable edge of danger she found tempting. Unlike his oldest brother, this Redhorse man had none of that serious, stable aura. She knew of his youngest brother, Colt, only via computer records. Colt shared some of the defiant disregard she read in Ty’s expression. But he also had PTSD and had given up speaking for months. That was way too much for her to ever want to take on. She met Ty’s inquisitive stare. Everything about Ty seemed to broadcast mischief and the invitation to forget the rules and play.
“I’m Ty,” he said.
All heads turned in his direction and then boomeranged back to her.
Beth had not anticipated the relaxed confidence of his physical self. He sat neither at attention nor slumped. Instead, he looked like he knew she was a problem heading toward him and he welcomed
