Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 (29 page)

She nodded and seemed to be bracing herself.

“Are these people suspects?” Cassandra’s mother asked with a dramatic clutching of hands in front of her, eyes wide with alarm that perhaps her daughter had been within arm’s reach of actual fugitives.

“We don’t know yet,” Palmer answered and looked at Cassandra’s parents who were huddled together on the loveseat.

He turned back to Cassandra. “How did the woman and the child seem to you when you checked them out at the store?”

“Uh … they seemed normal, I guess. The kid was real quiet.”

“Did the woman seem nervous to you? In a hurry? Scared or angry?”

Cassandra thought it over for a moment. “Not angry. But she seemed like she was in a hurry. Maybe nervous. I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Just give me your honest impressions. That’s all. There aren’t any right or wrong answers here.”

She smiled again—an awkward teenager smile.

“Do you remember what the woman bought when she was in your checkout line?” Palmer asked. The police would have a list from Cassandra’s cash register, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

“I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to what people buy,” she answered. “But it seemed like this lady was stocking up on stuff. She had toothbrushes … three of them. A small tube of toothpaste. Different kinds of snacks.”

These sounded like the same things Stella and David had bought at the gas station store a few days earlier. The most interesting thing was that she’d purchased
three
toothbrushes … so the other person still had to be with her and David at the time.

“And she paid with cash?” Palmer asked.

“Yes.”

Palmer already knew that Stella had paid with cash … twenty dollar bills, and the police were comparing the serial numbers with the stolen money from the bank. But Palmer already knew they were going to match. He already knew that Stella and David were traveling with one of the bank robbers for some reason. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Was Stella in on the bank robbery the whole time? Maybe she and the robbers had set up a robbery at the dig site, taking something valuable they wanted from there. And then they traveled up here to Colorado to rob a bank. Then they turned on their own crew, killing all of them, and then they fled to … Travis’s house to kill his family? And then what? Back here to Cody’s Pass? To a hotel where they murdered even more people, including Travis? And what did the little boy David have to do with all of this? If they had killed all of those scientists and grad students down at the dig site and they wanted to flee as quickly as possible, then why would they go all the way to Iron Springs to kill David’s parents and then abduct him? Stella Weaver didn’t have any kind of criminal record—she was squeaky clean. What would make her go along with all of these gruesome killings so suddenly?

There was something he was missing … large pieces of the puzzle that he couldn’t see yet. It seemed like he had missed something important down in New Mexico, some clue that he had overlooked.

He thought about the Mountainside Inn. Why would Stella, David, and the bank robber she was traveling with stop there? Stella had checked in with a fake name and wrote down fake info for a vehicle. Palmer had checked the footage from the CC cameras in the lobby, but there was a lot of interference on them, and they stopped working altogether before showing exactly how Bruce Goldman and the hotel clerk were killed.

Why would Travis follow Stella and David to the Mountainside Inn? Why were Travis’ mom and sister slaughtered? Why was Travis’ dead father dug up and taken there? Why was he shot in the head? Why did Travis have his mother’s finger with him? Why wasn’t there a trace of DNA evidence at any of the murder scenes? And there was no DNA evidence that Stella or David had ever been inside Nora Conrad’s house—their killers had to have been someone else.

Palmer smiled at Cassandra, getting his mind back on the interview in front of him. “Anything else you can think of that seemed strange to you about them?”

Cassandra shook her head no. “They were bundled up in coats. And they looked … they looked kind of dirty.”

“Dirty?”

She smiled, revealing a mouth full of braces. She glanced at her parents like she was waiting for approval to say something impolite.

Her mother gave her a solemn nod to keep going.

Cassandra looked back at Agent Palmer. “I don’t want to be mean, but they kind of smelled bad.”

Palmer couldn’t help chuckling a little and his laughter seemed to set Cassandra more at ease. “Smelled bad? Like body odor?”

“Yeah. But it was more than that. There was another smell, like smoke. It was kind of faint, but …”

Palmer nodded, the image of the smoldering cabin flashed into his mind for a moment. He jotted down a few notes in his notebook and then smiled at Cassandra. “Thank you. You’ve been a lot of help.”

Cassandra smiled back at him and then she looked at her parents who got up and walked Palmer to their front door. All three of them watched Palmer walk away from their front porch to his car.

Palmer got inside of his rental car and started it. He sat there for a moment with the engine running as he stared down the street. He was tired and this case was just spinning around in circles in his mind. None of it was making sense. What was he missing?

He thought of Captain Begay down at the Navajo Reservation and his talk of skinwalkers and other ancient legends.

New Mexico—gas station

C
ole had staked out the gas station and he felt as good as he could about this meeting. He told Stella that he was going to wait in the pickup truck while she and David went inside to meet with Alice and the man she’d brought with her. He was sure that this friend of Stella’s wasn’t going to talk freely with him sitting there.

She reluctantly agreed.

Cole watched Stella as she turned around in her seat and explained to David that they were going to see a shaman who could help him with his power. But first they needed to
find
this shaman, and these people were going to help with that.

“My friend is going to ask me some questions about what happened to your parents,” Stella told David. “You have to be ready for that. She may even ask you about it.”

David nodded.

“Just answer whatever you feel comfortable with, okay? If you don’t feel like answering a question or talking about something, you don’t have to.”

David nodded again, and Cole could see that the kid was close to tears.

“I don’t want you to be scared, David,” Stella told him. “You know I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“I know,” David whispered.

Cole’s attention was drawn to two vehicles that had just pulled up to the far end of the gas station parking lot where the newer diner had been built onto it. A beat-up pickup truck followed a small import car. After the vehicles parked, a skinny woman with gray hair got out of the small car that was covered in dust, and a tall, thin man with a long dark ponytail got out of the battered GMC pickup truck that had different colored fenders and big tires on the back.

They walked towards each other, but neither of them smiled at the other, and neither one touched the other in greeting, not even a handshake. And neither one of them looked this way to their truck.

But they know we’re here, Cole thought.

Then the two of them entered the diner through a glass door.

Cole looked at Stella and he hoped that this friend of Stella’s was honest. And maybe she was; maybe she really wanted to help.

But Cole needed to stay ready and on edge; he hadn’t met too many people in his life who were honest and who kept their word.

“You got your gun in case anything goes sideways in there?” Cole asked Stella.

She nodded. “I don’t think anything’s going to go
sideways.
”

“Not just with them,” Cole reminded her. “If you see anyone else in there who … who doesn’t seem like themselves …”

“I know,” she said.

And he knew she did. The Ancient Enemy was close now—that little incident in the desert with the animals was proof of that.

“I don’t like leaving you alone out here,” she said.

“We don’t really have a choice. You need to get this information and I don’t think they’re going to be so willing to talk with me sitting there.”

Stella nodded.

“I’ll be okay,” Cole assured her. But he thought of others who had been alone and away from David’s presence—they had been taken by that thing. His brother Trevor had been taken by that thing right out of the bathroom window in the cabin.

Maybe David will still be close enough for some kind of protection, Cole thought. And he swore he could see the same thought in Stella’s eyes.

She looked at David. “You ready, kiddo?”

He gave her a small smile and nodded.

Stella got out of the truck and opened the back door for David. He slid out and stood beside her.

“Good luck,” Cole told her.

“Thanks,” she answered and smiled, and then they closed the doors and walked away.

Cole watched them walk towards the building as he pushed the button down to lock the doors.

David’s still close, he thought. Maybe that’s why the animals hadn’t attacked earlier, because David was still close. How close did David have to be to remain under the wing of his protection?

Cole had his nine millimeter tucked down underneath his leg, ready to draw it in a second if he needed to. He had filled up the gas tank an hour ago when they’d first gotten here to the gas station, and he kept the truck running with the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

He thought of the animals that had come out of the desert brush, the buzzards perched on the rocks. So many of them … all of them just watching. That thing was inside all of those animals at the same time.

How powerful was this thing? Did they even have any hope of fighting it? Could David ever be that strong or was the Ancient Enemy just playing with them right now?

Was that thing all around them all the time? Constantly following them and watching them? Was this thing some kind of god?

Or maybe an alien as Stella had suggested. That was an even scarier concept.

Navajo Reservation—gas station

S
tella walked across the parking lot to the door of the little diner that was attached to the sprawling building of the gas station store. The store had been packed with goods because the next nearest store and gas station were forty miles away. That made this a busy little gas station. And that was good for her and David. Plenty of other people around.

And good for Alice, she thought.

Alice and the friend she’d brought with her waited at a corner table as far away from everyone else as they could get. Both of them already had bottles of drinks in front of them: a bottle of water for Alice and a can of soda for the Navajo man.

Stella held David’s hand as they walked towards the table.

Alice popped up from her seat and rushed over to hug Stella. Alice was a tall woman, nearly five foot eleven and even though she was stick-thin, she was a lot stronger and tougher than she looked. She was still a pretty woman, but she had aged prematurely from decades of hard work under a brutal sun. But her eyes were alive like little glittering gems.

“Stella,” she said as she hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you for doing this, Alice,” Stella whispered back.

Alice let Stella go and smiled down at David. “And you must be David.”

David nodded, but he didn’t say anything to her, grabbing Stella’s hand again.

“Come on and sit down,” Alice told them. “Are you guys hungry? Thirsty?”

“No thanks,” Stella said. “We just ate a little while ago and we have some drinks in our cooler in the truck.”

Alice glanced towards the windows like she could still see the truck … and Cole sitting inside of it.

“He’s helping us,” Stella explained.

Alice just nodded.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“Yes … a story you promised to tell me about.”

Stella nodded and she looked at the Navajo man who had remained very still and silent the whole time.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “This is Billy Nez.”

Billy offered a hand to Stella and she shook it.

“
Ya-tah,
” Billy said in greeting.

“
Ya-tah-hey,
” Stella answered back.

Billy had rough and strong hands, but he shook her hand with the gentlest of grips like he was trying not to hurt her. Then the man turned to David and gave him a smile and offered his hand to him.

David shook the man’s hand and Billy seemed to freeze for a moment, his dark eyes glazing over like he was in an instant trance. It only lasted for a second or two, and maybe Alice hadn’t even noticed, but Stella had. Billy looked the same way the old man in the gas station had looked when David had taken his hand.

He’s seen something
, Stella thought
. David just showed him something.

“So, it’s time to tell me everything,” Alice said, her focus right on Stella.

“I’m going to tell you,” Stella told Alice, and then she met Billy’s eyes. “But you’re not going to believe me.”

Neither one of them said anything.

“Please don’t interrupt me until I’m finished,” Stella asked. “I know all of this is going to seem … outlandish, but just let me get through all of it. Once I’m done, then you’ll know why I need Joe Blackhorn’s help so badly.”

“Fair enough,” Alice said and she looked at Billy for his blessing.

Billy nodded solemnly.

Stella took a deep breath and began her story.

• • •

Forty minutes later Alice stared at Stella with a dumbfounded expression.

“And now we’re here,” Stella said, finishing her story. “And we need help. David needs help.”

“I … I don’t know what to say,” Alice said in a low, husky voice, and then she cleared her throat. “It all sounds …”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Stella said. “I understand that. I know you think I’m crazy. But if you could just help me find Joe Blackhorn, if I could just see him for a little while, then I’ll turn myself in and David can go back to his family. And the man we’re traveling with will turn himself in to the police, too.” Stella was telling a lie, but she wasn’t even sure if she was lying. She knew she couldn’t speak for Cole, but she wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she survived all of this. “The only thing I care about right now is getting help for David.”