Читать книгу Lakota Baby - Elle James - Страница 11

“That’s my girl,” he said.

Joe almost dropped his arms from around her at the words. She’d married his brother and had a kid as soon as he left. How could he wish Maggie was his girl? Then he looked into eyes so green they reminded him of prairie grass in springtime. He could see why Paul had fallen in love with her and offered to give her what Joe couldn’t. Maggie was the kind of girl who was easy to love, if you didn’t have a thick head.

During the time he’d spent hunkered down with his troops, with bullets and mortars flying overhead, he’d discovered what a fool he’d been. The soldiers he’d fought with were his brothers. Black, white, red—it didn’t matter. They relied on each other to survive. They shared the same world, the same country. He wished he’d seen the truth before he left. Before Maggie had married Paul.

Her full lips drew into a thin line. “Where do we start?”

“First, let’s get you out of here.” He let go of her and walked back toward the living room. “Grab a coat, you’re going to work with me.”

She reached into a closet for a winter jacket, scarf and gloves, pulling them on before she paused to say, “What did they mean, give back what I stole? I didn’t steal anything. At least not that I know of.”

“That’s what we want to find out. When we get to the station you can tell me everything you know about what’s been going on on the Painted Rock Reservation and anything Paul might have been involved with at the Grand Buffalo Casino.”

“That won’t take long,” she muttered.

He grasped her hand and gazed down at her. “Everything, Maggie. Even the smallest detail may be a clue as to what triggered someone to hold your baby for ransom.”

“Okay,” she said, not sounding convinced. She drew away from him, her chin down, making a show of fitting her gloves against her fingers.

Was she uncomfortable about sharing information with him?

Probably. He’d been a jerk before he’d left. What proof did she have that he wasn’t still a jerk? A bitter lump of regret settled in the pit of his stomach. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, one of the other officers can interview you.”

Her head came up, her eyes widening. “No. I want you.” Was that trust in her eyes? Or was he mistaking desperation for something he wanted to see?

“Okay. But let’s get out of here.”

She glanced back at the living room, heaving a long sigh. “I want him back, Joe.” The words had become Maggie’s mantra, echoing inside Joe’s thoughts.

He stared at the plain room with what looked like hand-me-down furniture. The faint scent of talcum powder and baby lotion permeated the air. The only bright spots in the room were the playpen in the corner and a few toys scattered on the couch cushions and the floor. A happy enough environment to raise a kid, missing only one thing.

The kid.

Joe’s gut twisted and he wrapped an arm around Maggie’s shoulders. “We’ll find him.”

“Alive?” she said, her voice a breathy whisper.

“Yes.” If it was the last thing he did.

MAGGIE CLIMBED into the passenger seat of the SUV Joe used as his official tribal police vehicle. She felt funny, as though she was the criminal, even though the cage between the front and back seats was behind her. The thought angered her. Her house had been violated and her baby stolen, not the other way around. She jumped when the radio on Joe’s shoulder squawked.

“Sorry.” He flipped a switch on the device and it quieted.

Joe sat silent all the way to reservation police headquarters, a metal building with tan siding in the heart of the scattered community.

He climbed down and rounded the hood while Maggie sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes staring out the windshield. As her mind replayed the message from the kidnappers, she tried to read into it any glimmer of a clue. But she came up with nothing.

He opened the passenger door and held out his hand.

Maggie turned to stare down at him. “Joe, Saturday is three days from now. I can’t wait that long to find my baby.”

“I know. That’s why we’re here. We’re not waiting.” He helped her from the truck and walked her toward the building without removing his hand from hers.

The pressure of his big gloved fingers against hers, provided a little of the reassurance she so dearly craved. She needed it to keep her from stomping her feet in the gravel parking lot and screaming against the injustice. With every nerve sizzling beneath her skin she felt like a firecracker on the verge of exploding. Where’s my son!

Once inside, Joe seated Maggie at his office and pulled a digital recorder, pad and pen from a drawer. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

Maggie listed off the names of the juveniles she’d worked with prior to Kiya’s suicide.

“Can you think of any reason why she’d show up at the center after taking meth?”

“No. And the tribal police were clueless. It didn’t make sense. If she was back on drugs after all everyone had done for her, I’d think she’d feel so guilty she’d hide in shame.”

“Unless she realized her mistake and came back for help.”

“A little too late.” Maggie had thought of that, distraught that she hadn’t been there for Kiya when she’d needed her most.

“I can’t understand what went so wrong during the time I was gone.” Joe tapped his pen against the metal desk.

“Things were different. The tribal police didn’t have their leader. They tried to keep things together, but all I could figure was the teenagers were being influenced by an outside source.”

Joe shoved a hand through his dark hair. “My deployment couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

Maggie almost snorted, but held her reaction in check. You’re telling me. She’d listened to the man she’d fallen in love with inform her they had no future. Then he’d walked away—or rather flown away—to the other side of the world. Two weeks later, she confirmed her suspicions, she was pregnant.

She gazed at the top of Joe’s head as he bent to the task of noting her responses and her heart softened. Fourteen months had given her time to get over her anger and to learn more about this man through the people on the reservation. The more she learned, the more she understood the reasons for his reaction to their night of lovemaking.

Joe had lost his father when he was ten years old. Chaska Lonewolf had been a gentle man, proud of his heritage, proud of his son and determined to instill in him the ways of his ancestors. But he hadn’t had the chance. He’d died while out hunting when his truck had flipped onto him.

The loss of Chaska Lonewolf as a husband and financial provider for the family had devastated Joe’s mother. She’d taken Joe from the reservation, the only home he’d ever known, and gone to work in Rapid City, where she’d met and married Kevin Brandt. Shortly after the wedding, Kevin’s ex-wife had dumped six-year-old Paul on the new family and left town.

School wasn’t easy for a Native American boy in a white man’s world, but Joe had kept his head low and studied hard, determined to return to the reservation and his way of life as soon as he was old enough. The time had come sooner than he’d expected when Kevin was laid off and once again the family was destitute.

They’d packed up their meager belongings and moved back to the reservation where Kevin drank, bragged about Paul and berated Joe every chance he could get. A miserable life for a little boy who’d lost a loving father. No wonder he’d pushed Maggie away. What had the white man done for him besides give him pain?

Maggie felt deep compassion for the ten-year-old Joe. She’d struggled with the truth of Dakota’s parentage. He deserved a father like Joe’s. He deserved Joe. But Joe had spelled it out in his parting speech. There was no room in his life for her. So Maggie had to make arrangements to keep the tribe from knowing the baby was Joe’s.

Her first instinct was to leave her job and run as far from the reservation as she could. But the teens she’d been working with needed her almost as much as her unborn baby. When Paul started coming around her work, flirting with her, she jumped at a solution.

As it turned out, Paul was the only one who’d known she was pregnant before she married him. He’d been patient, waiting for her to get over the man who got her in that condition. In love with her from the start, he waited throughout her pregnancy, showering her with encouragement and as much affection as she’d let him. But when the baby was born, the wall of her emotions for Joe still stood between them. Maggie wanted to love this man who’d stepped in and helped her in her time of need, but she couldn’t.

Paul must have realized this because he spent more and more time working at the casino. Maggie never saw him. For the most part, she and Dakota were on their own.

Without her son, Maggie felt more alone in the world than ever. If not for Joe, she didn’t know what she’d do.

AFTER MAGGIE’S INTERVIEW, Joe dropped her off at the youth center, despite his better judgment. She’d insisted, saying she needed time to check on her kids and to think.

He’d grabbed her hand before she slipped out of his vehicle. “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything?”

“I will,” she said, climbing down.

“I’ll pick you up around three.”

Her head jerked up and she stared at him, her eyes glassy as if she had to concentrate to focus. “No need.”

A gentle smile lifted his lips. “You don’t have your car here.”

“Oh.” She was preoccupied, and rightly so with her baby missing. “Okay.” That was all she said before she turned and walked toward the building, pulling her coat tightly around her.

Joe wanted to go after her and coax her into telling him everything going on in her head. He felt like she was living detached from him and the world around them and he couldn’t get through to her.

With his stomach knotted, he swung his SUV to the west, bumping along a rutted track that shouldn’t be called a road by anyone’s standards.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into a dirt driveway and sat for a moment, staring at the one-story clapboard house standing alone on a knoll. The yard was free of clutter with not even a bush to adorn the base of the building. Two naked cottonwood trees edged up out of the dead grass, a poor break against the bitter north wind.

A nondescript house for one of the most respected members of the Painted Rock Tribe. Matoskah, or White Bear, had been the tribal Medicine Man for as long as Joe could remember. His reputation for native cures for common physical ailments had Lakotans from towns scattered across the reservation traveling the lonely back roads to seek his help. But more than the cures for disease and sickness, people sought him out for spiritual healing.

And that was the reason for Joe’s visit.

With the burden of a child’s life weighing on his shoulders, Joe needed focus and a mind clear of emotions, memories and confusion.

A mind clear of Maggie.

How could he still be upset that she’d married another man? He’d told her to take a hike, that she had no place in the life of a Lakota. Of this Lakota.

What they had shared was lust—deep, powerful lust. Not enough to maintain a relationship, not on a reservation where poverty and destitution were the norm. For some of his people, lust might be enough. But he and Maggie were from two different worlds. She was white and Joe was a dark-skinned Indian, sworn to uphold the ways of his people and preserve the Lakota bloodline and traditions for future generations.

Memories and regrets punctured his soul the day of his stepbrother’s funeral, when he’d seen what he could have had. Maggie and her baby—a family to call his own.

Shoving his shoulders back, he knocked on the faded door and waited in the cold. After one long minute, Joe stepped from the concrete stoop and strode around the house. In the backyard stood a dome-shaped structure. Vapor wafted in the bitter morning air, a hazy fog lifting from the taut hide stretched over arched willow branches.

A smile lifted the edges of Joe’s lips. Only Matoskah kept his sweat lodge erect year-round, when others were dismantled after powwow and tourist season ended. The buffalo hide, darkened with age and years of smoke, held the secrets, hopes and dreams of many Lakotans, divulged in the way of the ancients.

Joe hesitated to intrude on the shaman’s meditation.

“Enter the womb of our people, Son of Lonewolf.” Age did little to diminish the powerful voice of the tribe’s trusted healer. And how did he always seem to know who stood outside the lodge?

Holding the flap of skin aside, Joe stooped to crawl like an animal into a den, the steam rising from the rocks embracing him. He squatted to the left of the entrance and let his eyes adjust to the light from the fire’s coals and the little bit filtering through the thick skin overhead. Before the steam could escape, Joe turned to secure the flap, sealing the lodge.

Vapor swirled around him and he inhaled, accepting the surge of power that coursed through his veins. No matter how many times he’d been in a sweat lodge, he could count on that blanket of peace permeating his body and soul. Overdressed for tradition, he unzipped his coat as sweat beaded on his upper lip and forehead.

To the right of the entry, a hunched and wrinkled figure sat cross-legged, facing the coals and steaming rocks in the dug out center of the small space. Naked except for a meager loincloth, Matoskah sat staring at the glowing coals. The flap of supple deer skin was his one concession to modesty in the spiritual haven of his ancestors where the Indian was meant to be naked in the womb of the earth.

Joe reached out to grasp the spiritual leader’s forearm. “Mitaku oyasin, chante wasteya, nape chiyusa pe.” My relative, with a good heart, I shake your hand. The words brought back an image of his father sitting across a similar bed of steaming rocks from an eight-year-old Joe. He’d taught him that the words symbolized the importance of family and the completeness of the circle—only one of many lessons his father would teach him of the Lakota way of life, lessons he’d promised to pass on to his children and his children’s children.

Matoskah grasped Joe’s forearm in a firm grip. “Hau kola.” Hello, my friend.

“Forgive me, Matoskah, for intruding on your reflection. I have need of your counsel.”

The old man nodded and resumed staring into the coals.

Joe struggled to suppress his impatience. He felt out of place with too many clothes on his skin and too many thoughts churning in his head. But he forced himself to sit as the shaman did, drawing in a long, deep breath of the thick air. He closed his eyes, absorbing the souls of his ancestors, reaching for the combined wisdom of their years.

“What makes you as gray as the day outside, Joe Lonewolf?” Matoskah asked, the words swirling around the lodge like smoke from a peace pipe.

Joe opened his eyes and stared at the aged man. “A child is missing.”

Without looking up from the bed of rocks, Matoskah’s head dipped in a single nod. “I have heard.”

“It’s Maggie’s child.” Joe hadn’t meant to say anything about Maggie, but there it was, blurted out like a teenager unable to think before he speaks.

“I understand.”

What did the old man understand? Joe sat on his tongue, afraid to open his mouth and spew forth more of his hurt and anger. He’d come to cleanse his mind, not to stir the air with his confusion.

“This woman is not of our people.”

“No, she’s not. She’s one of the social workers with Indian Child Welfare Association. She works with the reservation teens.”

The old man inclined his head. “I know of her.”

As close-knit as the reservation was, Joe wasn’t surprised.

“She’s done well for our youth, working with those who abuse drugs and alcohol,” Matoskah added.

“Yes.” Maggie had thrown herself into her job, winning the hearts of many, including Joe. Had he not been so blind, they might have been together today.

“You must find this child.”

“I know.” The old man wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already believe. Joe wanted him to tell him what to do about Maggie, but the question lodged in his throat.

“You fear you will fail?”

Was that it? Was he afraid he wouldn’t find Maggie’s baby? “Yes.”

“Is your fear of failure for the child or for the woman?”

Joe leaned back. “The child, of course.”

“And if you fail the child, you will not fail the woman?”

The answer was obvious, why would the shaman ask it? Joe dragged in a deep breath of the moist air, cleansing his nostrils and lifting the cloud from his head. “Yes.”

“I sense hurt and resentment toward this Maggie.”

Joe’s chin dipped to his chest, his shame an almost overwhelming being seeping into his pores like the steam. “Yes.” As if the haze cleared, Joe realized some of his confusion stemmed from his anger toward Maggie for marrying his stepbrother. “Will my anger cloud my judgment and ability to find her child?”

“Only you can know this. Do you mistrust her because she is not one of your people?” Matoskah had that uncanny way of reading Joe’s thoughts before he’d completely formulated them himself.

“I did,” Joe admitted, his softly spoken words drifting toward the ceiling with the stone vapor. After a year in the desert country of Iraq he’d come to realize he didn’t trust himself where Maggie was concerned.

The shaman laid a hand on Joe’s arm. “When you were in battle, did you care about the color of your soldiers? What religion, what race?”

Joe sat straighter. “No, they were my brothers.”

“Does a child have a choice of what color, religion or race he is born into the world with?”

“You know they don’t. But that doesn’t change the world for our people on the reservation.”

“We are all brothers, Joe Lonewolf.” Matoskah lifted a cup of water and poured it onto the glowing stones. Steam hissed and rose in a cloud to fill the room. “Children are wakanyega, sacred beings. The child is one with the earth, one with our people, as is his mother. Look for this child like you would look for your own son, and remember, not all is as it appears. That is all you need to know. Mitaku oyasin.”

My relative.

Joe extended his hand and grasped his mentor’s forearm. “Pilamaya.” Thanks. Then on all fours, he crawled from the sweat lodge into the frigid air outside, welcoming the swift rush of cold filling his nostrils and stinging his cheeks.

Look for this child like you’d look for your own son. Dakota wasn’t his son but he was a child, part of the circle of life and born of mother earth. His focus would be on finding the baby alive. Once he’d accomplished that mission, he could decide what to do about his feelings for Maggie.