Whitehorse (30 page)

Twisting his fingers in the crotch of her panties, he ripped them in two and shoved the silk remnant up around her waist, exposing the fading scar of her Caesarian surgery across her abdomen. He traced it with one finger before bending and kissing it, following the slightly puckered skin with the tip of his tongue.

Closing her eyes, feeling the slight tickle of his tongue and the ends of his hair over her sensitive skin, she reached to bury her hands in his hair. He caught her wrists in his hard fingers, and as he rose up once again to cover her body with his, he stretched her arms out to her side and pinned them to the ground.

"Don't touch me," he told her, sliding his knees between her thighs and shoving them apart. "I'm going to give you exactly what you deserve, Leah. What I've wanted to do since the night I showed up at your door with my heart in my hand and my idiotic dreams of happily ever after branded in my brain. Remember what you said to me that night, Leah?"

"I don't love you," she said, turning her face away as he slid his body into hers, stretching it painfully, causing her to gasp at the shocking pressure that lifted her hips briefly from the ground and wrung a short startled cry from her. "Oh God, Johnny. I didn't mean it."

"What else, Leah?" He looked down her body, to the place where his own disappeared into hers. "Do you recall what else you said that night?" He moved deeper, opened her legs further to better accommodate him while his fingers tightened on her wrists and ground them harder into the dirt.

"That I had never loved you. It was all a mistake. Foolishness. I must have been crazy to even think I could have been attracted to you."

"And?"

"You didn't and never would fit into my life, not being what you are." She shook her head as her chest tightened and the tears began to stream. "I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. Please believe that I didn't mean it. I only said those things because my father was there. I couldn't allow him to hurt you."

"Hurt me?" He grinned. "The son-of-a-bitch has destroyed everything I have ever loved. I won't allow it to continue, Leah. I can't. Damn you for coming here. For reminding me that no matter how I try I can't get you out of my system."

His hips pumped hard, grinding her buttocks into the dirt, yet she refused to take her eyes from his, just gave her body in supplication like one happily sacrificing her soul.

She awoke, shivering, despite the shirt Johnny had laid across her, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head resting on her rolled-up jeans. Where was she? And why in God's name did she feel as if she'd been stampeded over by a herd of horses?

The stones in the center of the inipi had grown cold and the brisk air bit at her skin as Leah sat up, her eyes heavy, body aching and shivering as she carefully slid her arms into Johnny's shirt sleeves and wrapped the garment around her. The darkness inside the inipi felt suffocating, and the throbbing between her legs made even breathing an effort. Then she remembered…

There had been nothing remotely resembling love in what Johnny had done to her. He had treated her like a whore—worse, she suspected, than he treated the women who, over the last several years, had so eagerly spread their legs for no other reason than to be screwed by the famous, and infamous, Johnny Whitehorse. He had fucked her with all the pent-up hurt and anger that had eaten at him over the years. All the fear and sorrow that must have incapacitated him in the days since Dolores's death. Did he blame her for that as well? Was that why he had come here, as he said, to sweat her out of his system? To be done with her emotionally once and for all?

Leah laughed to herself. What irony that at long last she had acknowledged her feelings to him and now he wanted no part of her.

As she reached for her jeans the sound of chanting came to her. Tossing back the flap over the opening, Leah looked out through the predawn gray haze, to the yellow light cast up by the campfire flames.

Dressed only in his jeans and a mantle of brown and gray eagle feathers that had been attached to his arms, all the way to his wrists, Johnny moved in carefully choreographed steps around the halo of flickering light, his head fallen forward and his hands stretched toward the sky. He had painted white dots on his cheeks and zigzag lines resembling lightning bolts down the backs of his hands, and segments of his long hair had been plaited and decorated with colorful beads. He took her breath away. This was the part of Johnny Whitehorse that she had never experienced. Frightening. Mystical. Savage. Yes, savage. Wild. Free. Dangerous. And arousing despite what he had done to her in the last few hours.

He danced. And danced. Spun. Dipped. Leaped. His voice rose and fell, odd choppy words that made no sense to Leah. Grunts, cries, shouts. His arms outstretched like eagle wings as his bare feet kicked up dust, making him appear as if he were soaring through clouds. And as he chanted and danced, it seemed to Leah that the beat of drums and the birdlike warbling of flutes rang out a rhythm as steady as a heartbeat from the dark sky, along with the singsong rise and fall of ghostly voices that chanted along with him.

Ghosts. Spirits—
Gans,
as the Apache called them.

Leah believed in neither. It was only the play of firelight and dust and the first streaks of daylight creeping in scarlet waves over the eastern mountain peaks that formed the shapes of dancing men in fierce headdresses and buckskin masks, their dark eyes peering out at her through the slits in the colorful hides as they moved in unison around the firelight. No doubt if she looked back into the black inipi she would see herself asleep still, her head lying on her jeans, her body curled up under Johnny's shirt and shivering with cold, and she would realize that she was dreaming. Just dreaming.

Johnny chanted to the awakening sky, his arms outstretched, the eagle feathers fluttering in the clash of cold and warm air as the sun rose higher. Blood-red and burning it filled up the sky, dwarfing the earth, turning the mountains into hills and the sky into a scarlet mirror. He became a black silhouette against the fiery shield, a speck of dust upon the universe, yet his voice rose as clear as bells on a soundless Sunday morning.

Then it was over. As the last of the sun's red flood drained into yellow, Johnny stopped dancing and his voice fell silent. Wearily, facing the sun, his head fallen back, he dropped his arms to his sides and slowly fell to his knees.

Leah dragged her jeans on, then, tossing Johnny's shirt aside, slid her blouse on and clumsily buttoned it. She felt around for her shoes, then crawled from the inipi into the sunlight that was fast becoming brilliant enough to blind her. She was forced to squint in order to determine that Johnny was no longer there.

"It's time to go," came his voice.

She looked around.

Astride the painted horse, he looked down at her, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow. Beneath the white paint on his cheeks, his skin looked ashen.

Johnny held his hand out to her. She moved stiffly to the horse and took his hand. He swung her up behind him, and as he turned the animal down the trail Leah wrapped her arms around him and laid her head against his back, the vision of his dancing before the burning red sun still vivid in her mind.

FIFTEEN

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T
he funeral service for Dolores was held at the reservation's Catholic church, erected a century before by Father Albert Raun, who had hoped to flush heathenism from the Apache spirit. However, the only Apache to grace the small congregation on that day was Dolores herself, closed inside her rosewood coffin that Johnny's agent had picked out at Dickenson's Funeral Home the day before.

The scattering of attendees were from the television station where she worked. Johnny suspected they were there out of duty more than real grief and respect for a colleague. Dolores had stepped on a lot of toes while establishing her name and reputation as a top-notch reporter. He suspected there were more than a few of her peers who would leave the service and celebrate with Dom Perignon.

"So where the hell is her family?" Edwin whispered as Johnny moved up the church aisle, toward the open doors where the sounds of excited reporters and fans sounded like revelers awaiting the passing of floats during Mardi Gras.

Johnny put on his dark glasses and glanced around the church. "The Apache believe in burying their dead at night. They'll come for her later."

"Maybe we should leave through the back entrance."

"And make me look guiltier than I already do? I don't think so."

The bodyguards moved in around Johnny as he stepped from the church. The sea of faces and cameras surged like an incoming tide toward the steps, shouts, and the buzz and click of cameras drowning out Edwin's comments and the orders he barked at the bodyguards as he elbowed his way through a line of police and a group of teenage girls who had managed to get beyond the barricade.

As the limo door swung open, Johnny got into the dark car and sank into the seats as the outside noise became muted by the insulated steel wrapped around him.

Ted Weir, the assistant district attorney, had remained in the limo throughout the services. Sitting next to Johnny, he gazed out at the pushing, shoving crowd and shook his head, grinning. "Damn. Who would have thought it, huh? When the two of us played football in school I figured you'd go on to college on a football scholarship and then come back to work on the slopes if you didn't make it in the pros. Me? I figured I might make it through school by the skin of my teeth and come back to Doso and work at my old man's auto parts shop. Now here we are: you the hottest hunk in the country and me humping to bust crackheads and child molesters."

The car eased through the crowd as Johnny continued to search the faces that peered back at him, eager for a glimpse of their idol but unable to see anything but the reflection of their own hopeful expressions.

"You know, Johnny, keeping shut mouth about this investigation is only gonna get harder. And frankly, I'm surprised that the boss is even going along with it."

"Phil Singer is thinking about his own ass, Ted. If he comes out and informs the media that Senator Foster is being investigated for murdering Dolores and attempting to murder me, he's going to feel more heat than the O. J. Simpson jury."

"Let's face it. Not every day a state senator is accused of murder. This could be just another of your ploys to cover your butt and at the same time bring the man down for what he's done regarding the reservation's resort and casino issue."

"Dolores had proof of Foster's involvement with Formation Media. Foster found out about it and tried to have us both killed."

"Dolores
had
proof. Whatever proof she had burned up in that car wreck, Johnny. If Senator Foster was somehow involved in your accident he got exactly what he wanted. He destroyed your evidence and has made you look like a reckless crackhead."

"My blood tests will prove otherwise."

"So what? Hell, you could just as easily have been Dolores's supplier." Ted shrugged. "One very positive side note. You have no history of drug usage. Right?"

Johnny looked back out the window, at the businesses crowded with tourists, men wearing Bermuda shorts with cameras hanging from long straps around their necks and women whose faces were partially hidden under straw-brimmed hats or visors. They glanced curiously at the limo as it crept through the traffic.