Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

highlighted the curved lines of the Pima tribal tattoos on his temple.
    Rebecca pulled back in shock. “Who…?”
    I patted her shoulder. “There’s nothing to worry about, Rebecca. That’s Jimmy Sisiwan, my partner at Desert Investigations. He’s a detective, too.”
    Jimmy’s smile transformed his fierce face into beaming beneficence. “We Pima Indians aren’t into scalping, Rebecca. We’re just peaceful farmers. Want some lima beans? Some squash? Or how about a nice barbequed rabbit?”
    She didn’t laugh, but at least she relaxed enough to crawl into the truck beside him. I followed and as I did, the wind picked up. Piñon needles scraped against the cab. In the distance, something muttered crossly. A mountain lion? Or a polygamist seeking blood atonement for his fallen prophet? Given a choice, I would take my chances with the mountain lion.
    “There were complications,” I told Jimmy, forcing my voice to remain steady. “A shooting. We’d better get the hell out of here and across the state line. Don’t stop for anybody, you hear?
Anybody
. Especially not Rebecca’s father.”
    Abel Corbett, damn his hide, had caused all this mess in the first place. Fourteen years ago, he and Rebecca’s mother had run away from Purity, married, and moved to Arizona where they had led as normal a life as possible for people with their backgrounds. But the marriage eventually fell apart when Abel, who had kept in touch with his polygamist father and uncles, began to pine for multiple wives. After his father wrote that Prophet Solomon had promised him two sixteen-year-old girls if he returned to Purity with Rebecca, Abel promptly kidnapped his daughter and took her back to Utah with him.
    Jimmy’s hand froze on the way to the gearshift. “Did you say there’s been a shooting?” He looked down at my hip where my own .38 was secured in its holster. During the past three days I had not fired it once.
    “Prophet Solomon’s dead,” I told him. “And no, I had nothing to do with it. We discovered his body in Paiute Canyon while we were making our escape. Now let’s get going, okay? I’ll give you the details later.”
    Jimmy gave me another worried look but for once heeded my advice. He flicked on the headlights and threw the truck into gear. The tires spit a small avalanche of pine needles and rocks as we shuddered northwest, leaving the sheltering piñons far behind. Facing us now were empty miles of desert and scrub, where we’d be easily spotted by pursuers. I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw nothing but blackness, but that did not mean Prophet Solomon’s body hadn’t already been found. I wondered if the law hanged fiancé thieves in Utah. Or was that just horse thieves?
    The Toyota took a nasty dive into a deep rut, almost bottoming out. Rebecca fell against me.
    “Can’t you be a little more careful?” I complained.
    Jimmy’s gaze didn’t shift from the road. “Fast or careful, Lena. Take your pick.”
    I said nothing.
    The Toyota dove downward again. Reflexively, I put my arm around Rebecca. She shook worse than the truck.
    As the crow flies, less than two miles separated us from Arizona, but after leaving the compound which straddled the Utah/Arizona state line, the dirt road veered sharply northwest toward Zion City and didn’t cross the two-lane blacktop heading south to Arizona for another twenty miles. But the terrain, gullied by sudden canyons and drop-offs, was so treacherous that even if we’d had a four-wheel vehicle we wouldn’t risk leaving the road at night.
    As we bumped along I tightened my arm around Rebecca’s thin shoulders. “I’ve got a surprise for you, a really good surprise. Your mom’s back on the Arizona side of the border, at the motel. She came with us because she didn’t want to wait until we returned to Scottsdale to see you.”
    For the first time that night, Rebecca’s face crumpled. “I want my Mommy!” she wailed.
    When we finally pulled into the parking lot of the North Rim Motel, I saw a colony of bats diving for moths in the incandescent light. Rebecca didn’t look at them once. She barely waited for the truck to stop before she climbed over me, pushed open the cab door, and ran across the parking lot into the arms of the wild-looking woman pacing back and forth in front of the open door to Room 122.
    “Mommy!”
Gasps. Sobs. Muffled love words.
    Damp-eyed myself, I watched them for a moment, then whispered to Jimmy, “Let’s give them