the farther she went, the more certain she became that, whatever her future held, she would find it somewhere east.
Near the Arizona border, it started to rain. Sonora stopped and took a room at a chain motel. She tossed her bag onto the bed before heading to the restaurant on site.
Once she finished her meal she started back to her room on the second floor. She was halfway up the stairs when she pulled an Alice and, once again, fell down the rabbit hole.
It was raining. The kind of rain that some people called a toad-strangler—a hard, pounding downpour with little to no wind. She’d never stood in the rain and not been wet before. It was an eerie sensation. And it was night again. Why did insanity keep yanking her around in the dark? It was bad enough she was hallucinating.
She didn’t have to look twice to know that she was back at the Native American man’s house. Water was running off the roof and down between her feet, following the slope of the ground. All of a sudden, lightning struck with a loud, frightening crack. She flinched, then relaxed. There was no need to panic. She wasn’t really here. This was just a dream.
She looked toward the house, then felt herself moving closer, although she knew for a fact that her feet never shifted. Now she was standing beneath the porch and looking into the window. At first, she saw nothing. Then she saw the Native American man lying on the floor near a doorway.
She gasped and started toward the door when she realized that, again, she had no power here. She was nothing but a witness. Dread hit her belly high. Why was she seeing this if she could do nothing about it?
Then, as she was watching through the window, she realized there was a light in the window that hadn’t been there before. It took a few moments before she could tell it was a reflection from a vehicle coming down the driveway behind her.
She turned, wanting to call out—willing herself to scream out, please hurry, but as before, she was nothing but an observer.
Adam Two Eagles drove recklessly through the storm. The phone call he’d gotten a short time ago from Franklin had frightened him. Even now as he was turning up Franklin’s driveway, the knot in his gut tightened.
Franklin had sounded confused—even fatalistic. Adam didn’t think Franklin would do anything crazy, like do himself in, but he couldn’t be sure. And when he’d tried to call him back, there had been no answer.
He could have called an ambulance. The people in Broken Bow knew Franklin. They knew he had leukemia. They would send an ambulance, but if it was unwarranted—if Adam had misread the situation—it would embarrass Franklin, and that he didn’t want to do. So here he was, driving like a madman in the dark, pouring rain, just to make sure his friend was still of this earth.
As he came around the curve, he saw that the lights were still on in Franklin’s house. That was good. At least he wouldn’t be waking him up to make sure he was okay.
Lightning struck a tree about a hundred yards in front of him. Even in the rain, sparks flew. Right before the flash disappeared, Adam saw branches exploding, then flying through the air. He swerved as one flew past the hood of his truck, then sped past the site just before the tree burst into flames. It wouldn’t burn long in this downpour, but the sooner Adam got out of this rain, the better off he would feel.
He slid to a halt near the porch, jumped out on the run, vaulted up the steps, and had his fist ready to knock when he realized he wasn’t alone. He let his hand drop as he slowly turned, staring down the length of the porch to the small square of light coming through the window from inside.
The porch was empty, yet he knew he was being watched. Drawn by an urge he couldn’t explain, he moved forward, and when he reached the window, stared out into the night, into the curtain of rain.
“Who’s there?” he called, and then for a reason he couldn’t explain, reached out and touched the air in front of him.
No one answered, and he felt only the rain.
Shrugging off the feeling as nothing but nerves, he turned back toward the door, and as he did, glanced through the window. Within seconds, he’d spied Franklin’s body lying on the floor.
“Oh no,” he cried, and ran to the door.
It was locked, but not for long.
Adam kicked the door inward, then ran to his friend.
Sonora’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it would burst. Every breath she took was painful, and she felt like she was going to be sick.
The man who’d come out of the storm onto the porch was unbelievable—like some knight in shining armor she might have conjured up during her teenage years.
His skin was the color of burnished copper. His hair was long, black and plastered to his head and neck from the storm. He was tall and lean, without an ounce of fat on him—a fact made obvious by the wet clothes molded to his body. But it was his face that intrigued her. His nose was hawk-like, his chin stubborn and strong. His lips were full and his eyes were dark and impossible to read.
And he was looking straight at her.
Sonora shivered.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening.
He wasn’t part of the dream.
And it was a dream. It had to be.
When he started toward her, she screamed, or at least she thought she screamed. The sound was going off inside her head like the bells of an alarm, but the man kept coming.
All of a sudden, she fell off the porch. When she came to, she was on her hands and knees on the stairs of the motel.
“Hey, lady! Are you okay? I saw you trip and fall but I was all the way down at the end of the walkway. Couldn’t get here fast enough to do you much good.”
Sonora shuddered, then brushed at the knees of her pants, and dusted off her hands as she looked up at the man standing at the head of the stairs. He was short and stocky with a bald head and a red beard. An odd combination of features for the guy, but he seemed harmless.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. I’m fine, but thanks.”
The guy nodded, then took a couple steps backward before turning around and going back down the hall to his room.
Sonora unlocked her door and went inside, hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of the doorknob, and then carefully locked the doors. It took even less time to undress, and moments later, she fell into bed.
The hallucination she’d just had was still in her mind, but she shrugged it off. She couldn’t be bothered with worrying about some stupid daydream with Miguel Garcia still on the loose. With those thoughts in her mind, she fell asleep.
Chapter 4
Sonora crossed the Arizona border into New Mexico just before noon the next day. Traffic was already thicker on I-40, as well as on the access roads. A digital message on a bank near the interstate gave a temperature reading of ninety-eight degrees. With the amount of traffic and exhaust fumes heating up the pavement, Sonora could add another ten degrees of heat to that reading
