Tribal Law (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“I'm taking Selena home,” Gabe said to state police detectives Spencer and Murdy. He wasn't asking their permission.

Selena had had enough. He knew that much.

Three hours had elapsed since the shooting at Piñon Lake. And he was now surrounded by his men, representatives from the state police and a team from DOJ. The FBI was en route. Clyne had arrived alone, as requested by DOJ, without the other members of the tribal council. And from the look he cast Gabe, he was mightily pissed that Gabe hadn't kept him in the loop.

Selena had been questioned and from that he had learned how she came to be out here in a restricted area with two known gang members.

It was Dryer who identified her two attackers, rival gang members from Salt River. How they had known Selena's location and that she would be transporting barrels of precursor remained a mystery that Gabe planned to unravel.

Dryer lifted a brow. “Thought you'd like to be here when your boys track down the origin of the snowmobile.”

The snowmobile that had transported the barrels and therefore would likely have left a trail leading to the location of the rest of the precursor. Gabe glanced at the snowmobile, still and silent on its side, the trail of packed snow behind it so clear that it was visible in the starlight from twenty-five yards. Then he looked at Selena. She stood beside Detective Juris, her arms folded across her chest as she stomped her feet to stay warm.

Gabe looked back at Dryer. “Yeah, well, I'll be back.”

Dryer shrugged and Gabe continued toward Selena, who spoke to Clyne and Detective Juris.

“Come on,” he said to her.

“Who needs to speak to me now?” Her voice was dull with weariness.

“I'm driving you home.”

Selena knit her brows. “My truck?”

“Part of the crime scene,” said Gabe.

“We'll notify you when it is released,” said Juris.

As Gabe started walking, Selena shuffled along beside him like a sleepwalker. He could almost feel the exhaustion weighing her down.

“Where?” she said, as if forming a complex sentence was just too much effort.

“Home,” he answered.

“Mine or yours?”

He blinked.

“Yours,” he said automatically, and then wondered if Selena had just asked him what he thought she had.

She forced a smile that cut across her full mouth like a knife blade. He'd never seen her look more miserable.

The photographer from both the state police and his department had already finished with his SUV, which now sported a freshly damaged front bumper. Would he have hit that gunman's vehicle if he had known that Selena had been hiding under hers?

The picture of her box truck tire rolling over her body sent a shiver through him.

Gabe ushering Selena toward his vehicle, opened her door and pulled her safety belt across her waist. She sat like a tired child, allowing him to fasten the clasp. He hesitated then, leaning over her as the sweet scent of lavender mingled in the air close to her exposed neck. He shifted his gaze and found her dark eyes fixed on him. Her lips parted. His stomach dropped.

He leaned in to kiss her, but before their mouths met, he stopped. Her eyes opened and she gave him a quizzical look. He stood and glanced about to find Detective Murdy regarding them with quiet, hawkish attention.

Gabe hadn't done anything wrong. But he felt like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Kissing the only surviving witness at a crime scene was skirting pretty close to the kind of unprofessionalism he usually had no trouble avoiding. But this was Selena. He'd always had trouble avoiding her.

“You ready?” he asked.

She nodded and he closed her door, feeling guilty for almost kissing her and feeling guilty for not kissing her. As he rounded the creased front fender he tamped down his desires and focused on her. Selena had been through a terrible ordeal. What did she need now? A shoulder to cry on? Food? Sleep? Someone to listen to her? He didn't know. But whatever she needed, he wanted to be there for her.

Gabe started the vehicle and reversed course, turning them in the direction that would take her home.

Selena had been allowed to call her parents, so they knew she was delayed. Had she told them everything or nothing?

From the time they left Piñon Lake until he pulled onto Wolf Canyon Road, he heard only the hum of the tires.

“Are you all right, Selena?” he asked.

“I...I'm so sorry to hear about Officer Chee, and about what happened to Jason and Oscar, and for today.” Her voice rose, cracked. She struggled with the last two words. “Just everything.”

The lump in his throat rose so fast that he thought he might choke. He'd been so involved in the investigation that he hadn't allowed himself to feel anything. Until now. He was nothing but feeling around Selena.

“How did you hear about Dante?”

“On my route this morning. Folks were talking about it. And then I saw Andre Chee,” she said, referring to Officer Dante Chee's brother, who worked for HUD and volunteered at the fire house.

“Where?” asked Gabe.

“He was at the convenience store in Black Mountain when I made my delivery.”

Oh, God, was he tearing up? He swiped at his cheek and clamped his jaw against the ache in his chest.

He pulled into her driveway, threw the SUV into Park and switched off the headlights. On the other side of the front steps was a yellow Mustang GT. Gabe tried to ignore the dead man's car, but realized he had to talk to Dryer about it. Likely they'd leave it, as its location temporarily corroborated the cover story he'd devised for tonight's shoot-out. Dryer wanted Gabe to report the shooting as it occurred with one small change—Nota was driving and he was alone.

The car ticked and then went still. He didn't want her to leave but did not know how to make her stay.

Selena sniffed and he turned toward her.

He could see from the dashboard lights that she was crying. And he just sat there like a chunk of wood, wishing he could take her in his arms. Knowing what would happen if he did.

She reached out and he clasped her cold hand, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles. Her fingers were smooth and elegant, and devoid of the wedding band he had promised her. The lump in his throat moved to his heart.

This touch was not sexual and yet, somehow, it felt more important. They'd always had the physical attraction. Fierce and alive as an electrical storm. And for a while they'd had the intimacy, too. But that had all changed after her father's arrest. How he missed it. Being able to tell her everything, anything, and knowing what she was feeling, too.

Had he lost that because of his job or because of her father?

Selena spoke again, her voice intimate in the closed compartment. “Andre invited me to the funeral on Saturday.”

“Will you go?” Gabe asked, resisting the urge to bring her soft fingertips to his lips. What would he give to have her run her fingers over his face and through his hair?

“Of course. And he told me you'll be speaking.”

Gabe felt a stab of sorrow slicing through his middle.

“I've never given a eulogy before.”

He'd never needed to. Dante Chee was the first of his men to be killed in the line of duty.

She brushed her thumb over the back of his hand. “You'll be wonderful.”

He didn't remind her that he wasn't the family orator. That was Clyne.

“I'd rather be locking up his killers.” Though it seemed that the two gang members who had been killed tonight might be the shooters. A preliminary check indicated the footwear worn by Nota and the second man might be a match. If their shoe treads and the tracks at the site of the body dump were the same, the police might right now be zipping Chee's killers into body bags. Too good for them, he decided.

“Andre told me they still don't know who killed his brother.”

“We've got some leads.” He said nothing else.

She cast him a sidelong glance. Was she waiting for him to say more? He had always avoided speaking about his police work with Selena. Up until today, he had believed he was protecting her from the darker side of his profession. Now it felt more as if he was just shutting her out.

Back when he had discovered what her father had been doing with his delivery truck, he'd been very glad that he'd never divulged anything that might have compromised an investigation. Could he have been using his job as a way to keep Selena from getting too close?

Gabe shifted uncomfortably. He glanced over to see her staring out at her house.

Could his silence feel like distrust to her?

Selena had stopped stroking his hand. His gaze snapped back to her. She studied him with her brows raised and he scowled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Her hand slipped from his and she turned away, staring out at the snow that glistened under starlight.

Gabe glanced at Nota's car parked beside her sister Mia's box truck and then at the empty place where Selena's truck should now be parked. She had no truck for tomorrow's run.

“I know you'll find Dante Chee's murderer,” she said, her voice filled with a sort of world weariness. “You never let anything stand between you and an investigation.”

And that included her. They both knew it.

“What will you do tomorrow?” he asked, pointing at the place her truck should be.

“I'll take Mia's truck. She'll have to wait until I get back. We did it that way for a long time, remember?”

He did.

She glanced toward the front door. His heartbeat accelerated. He wanted to keep her here, if only for a moment more. Every moment with Selena was worth the pain that came afterward, when he was without her again.

“My little sister might be visiting soon,” he blurted.

Her attention returned to him as she cast him an odd look. “Jovanna? That's good. Your grandmother told my mother that you had found her.”

“She's been adopted by a white woman.”

Selena drew in a breath. “Clyne must be furious.”

She knew his brother well enough to know that. Of course, she knew his family, or
had
known, them very well. His heart ached again at the losses, one upon the other.

“Clyne wants her to know her roots, of course, become part of her tribe, and my grandmother wants her to be home for the ceremony.”

“What do
you
want?”

No one had ever asked him that. His first thought was that he wanted Selena. But he just couldn't think how that could happen. Because of her actions tonight she was now part of another active investigation. That alone meant she was off-limits. Would they always be on opposite sides?

“I want Jovanna happy. But I worry about her losing a second mother.”

“Yes. I understand that. Being forced from her adoptive mother might be very hard on her.”

Selena echoed Gabe's thoughts, but as of yet, he had not raised them with his family.

“I hope she will want to know us and learn about being an Apache woman. And I wonder if she even knows about the Sunrise Ceremony.”

“She'll need a sponsor. A woman to teach her what she must know. Has your grandmother asked anyone yet?”

“Probably.” But he didn't know. The woman who was selected must be a close friend, but not a relative. So it couldn't be either Lea or Isabella, the new wives of his younger brothers. He looked at Selena, thinking she would be perfect.

“What?” asked Selena.

“I wish it were you,” he said, and then lowered his head, thinking he shouldn't have said that.

She rested a hand on his forearm and his muscles twitched beneath the gentle pressure. He met her gaze.

“I would be honored,” she said in Apache.

He responded in the language of their birth. “It would be our honor, Sunflower Sky Woman.”

Her mouth gaped as she blinked up at him. Was she surprised that he remembered her Apache name? She shouldn't be. He remembered everything about her. Couldn't seem to forget a single thing.

“I wish things were different, Selena.”

“I wish that, too.”

The silence stretched. He closed his eyes, praying for some path that would bring him to a place where he could be with her and still keep his position as chief of the tribal police. Selena zipped her coat closed. It had grown so cold inside the interior of the vehicle that he could see each exhalation she made. Her breath and his breath mingled, fogging the windows, obscuring the outside world and leaving them in an icy cocoon.

“Gabe, I have to go in.” But she didn't move to do so.

“Soon,” he said.

“How did those men find us?” she asked.

He had no answer.

“I don't know.” He shifted in his seat. He needed to tell her something.

She turned toward him, so that her back was to the passenger's side window, giving him her attention.

“When I reached your truck and I saw someone lying inside, I thought...” Here his voice failed him. The squeezing pressure across his chest grew too great. He dragged in a breath and blew out frost. “I thought I'd lost you.”

She smiled. “I'm right here.”

He had lost her once before, but the permanency of this, of realizing that she might have died, frightened him so much.

“I don't want you to go inside.”

She cocked her head. “I don't understand.”

He didn't know how to explain it. He just knew he needed to get her away from this house.

When he said nothing, her gaze strayed toward her front door.

“I wish I could be like you. Believe in something so much that it came before everything else. For me it's always been a balancing act. What's best for Tomas? What does my mother need? How can I get enough business to pay the loans, keep us fed and keep my sisters happy? And now my father. I want everyone safe.”

And that love for them was going to get her killed, he thought.