Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

side and grabbed at a drooping mesquite. Both hands connected with a low-lying branch, but even as I wrapped my fingers around it, my legs continued into the water, where the current sucked at my skirts and threatened to sweep me away.
    “Help me!” I screamed toward Meade, who looked down at me from a safer height.
    His smile told me that he wouldn’t, and I realized how badly I’d misjudged him. Meade was no impulsive teenager. He was a prophet, and prophets planned everything—including murder. He’d never intended to commit suicide at all. No, he’d faked his despair in order to lure me to my death.
    Solomon’s last hunting party had probably been Meade’s idea, not his own.
    Something, a log, probably, banged into my legs, snagged against my skirts. When it finally skated away on the surface of the current, it took my skirts with it.
    Leering, Meade crawled down the bank toward me, shoving his muddy face close to me so that I could hear his every spiteful word. “Nice legs, Sister Lena. Not that I care. You’re a soiled vessel and not worthy of me.” Then he got to his knees, reached up, and began to uncurl my fingers from the tree limb.
    But Meade didn’t know how strong all those hours in the Scottsdale gyms had made me. After taking a deep breath, I hauled my bare legs out of the water and kicked the little monster in the balls. With a surprised grunt, he began to roll toward the water. Just before the torrent swept him to his death, I released my left hand from the tree limb, leaned over, and grabbed his belt.
    “Hold still, Meade!” I yelled, but the fool kid kept struggling, not truly realizing that escape from my grasp meant certain death. If I let go, he would either drown or get his brains bashed out against the canyon walls. By the time the water spit him out, there wouldn’t be enough left for his own mother to identify. Gritting my teeth, I managed to drag him closer to shore.
    Yet still he fought against me, and attempted to paddle out into the current. “Let me go!” he screamed, his voice a high tenor against the current’s deep-throated rumble. “God will save me! I’m his Chosen One.”
    And I was the Queen of Romania.
    The harder Meade struggled, the tighter I held on. But as his denims became waterlogged, the drag on my arms increased. The fingers of my right hand, still wrapped in a death grip around the mesquite branch, began to cramp. My left arm, the only thing that anchored Meade to life, developed a tremor.
    How long could I hold on? How long could I dangle here, suspended over the water, clinging to this crazy, struggling boy? I wasn’t Wonder Woman, just a burned-out ex-cop with a bullet in her hip, a woman neither as young or courageous as she used to be. What difference did it make, anyway? If I let Meade go, I wouldn’t have to come back to Utah, give my testimony at some long, protracted trial. Just think of how much money Meade’s death would save the taxpayers! Meade was no good to the world, anyway. He’d already committed one murder and attempted another. What was to keep him from coming back to Purity, after his release from his vacation in Juvie, and starting a blood atonement massacre against all his foes?
    Then, the darkest of all temptations slithered into my heart. Given Meade’s genetic makeup, how many deformed children would he sire upon his sisters and cousins before he was through?
    How many more Coras would he create?
    The tone of the current grew louder, deeper, and I turned my head upstream to see what had created the difference. A felled cottonwood tree, its trunk at least two feet in diameter, as yet unbroken by its journey. Headed straight for Meade.
    I tugged at him, but my strength was gone, and even though he’d swallowed enough water to slow his struggles, I could barely maintain my grip on his belt. There was a good chance he’d already lost consciousness. Maybe he wouldn’t even feel the tree as it slammed through his brain.
    Then I could let go.
    But no. I couldn’t.
    It made no sense, but I refused to let him go while he still breathed. I wouldn’t consign the living Meade to the flood’s rough justice. If the cottonwood wanted to take him, it would have to take us both.
    “It’s a good day to die, Meade,” I said through gritted teeth. “A good day for us both.”
    I prepared to die.
    But then I heard her.
    Save the child! Nothing else matters! Save the child!
    My mother’s voice, drifting back to me across the