tall and straight as her dignity and two-inch heels allowed. “Yes, sir. I won’t let you down.”
He pulled back, relaxing his shoulders if not quite smiling again. “Good. I’ll go make those calls and find some people.”
“Don’t bother, Patrick.” A squat woman with a thick black bun on the back of her head waddled into the reception area. She peeled a clear plastic rain slicker off her scarlet blouse and brightly patterned skirt, hanging the coat up beside the reception counter as she talked. “We’re on our way back. Since they’re only taking the weekend off, I think Callie and Tom are anxious to get their honeymoon started, so the festivities are breaking up.” The sixtyish petite woman turned her eyes, dark as night but shining with laughter, up to Joanna. She clapped her hands together. “As I live and breathe. Joanna?”
“Good to see you again, Elizabeth.”
“‘Good to see…’?” She tutted. “What kind of greeting is that?” Elizabeth Reddawn flung her arms open and squeezed Joanna against her ample bosom. “My goodness, child, how you’ve grown up.”
The woman’s enthusiastic welcome seemed to demand some kind of a response before she’d let go. Nonplussed by the effusive human contact she typically avoided, Joanna finally reached around and patted the back of the older woman’s shoulders, completing the hug. “It’s been fifteen years.”
“Has it really?” Elizabeth pulled away, her eyes crinkling with the depth of her smile. She maintained a clasp on Joanna’s fingers, alerting her that there was more personal conversation to come, even though she turned away and tilted her head toward the sheriff. “By the way, Patrick? Bree asked if you still wanted to do a movie with her and Charlie tonight because they’d stay in town instead of going home.”
“Are you kidding? That new action-hero movie opens tonight. Of course I’m taking my son.” He turned to include Joanna in a wink that erased his stern countenance. “Bree would be the wife. She gets to hold the popcorn and keep Charlie and me in line.” He nodded to Elizabeth. “You’ll keep our guest company for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
“Excuse me.”
“So…” Turning her maternal indulgence from the sheriff’s retreating back to Joanna, Elizabeth took hold of both hands and quickly inspected her from head to toe. “Joanna Kuchu—Daughter of the Buffalo. You’ve matured into a woman as beautiful and powerful as your namesake.”
As Elizabeth pulled her toward the couch and chairs of the seating area, Joanna gently disengaged her hands. “It’s Joanna Rhodes now.”
Elizabeth sat and patted the sofa cushion beside her. “You’re married?”
“No.” Joanna perched on the edge of the couch, curling her fingers into her lap. “I was a Rhodes scholar my senior year at Yale. I liked the name—I liked the honor—so I had it legally changed.”
“I see.” Her quizzical frown indicated she suspected there were deeper reasons for erasing her past. However, the Elizabeth Reddawn Joanna remembered wouldn’t have pried unless invited to do so—even if she was champing at the bit to ask questions. Judging by the way she kept plucking at her wool skirt, the older woman was definitely itching to ask something. But Joanna wasn’t offering. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Several silent moments passed, leaving Joanna wondering how long Martinez would be on the phone to his wife, and how long she could sit here smiling and pretending that this reunion wasn’t awkward as hell for her. “How do you like working for Sheriff Martinez and the crime lab?”
“It’s nicer than working at old Elmer’s office ever was. And I’m not just talking about the new furniture and state-of-the-art facilities in our lab.” Despite Joanna’s stiff posture, Elizabeth reached across and squeezed her hand around one of the fists in her lap. “These are good people here. You’ll like them.”
The other woman’s caring touch seeped into Joanna’s fingers and shot little tendrils of distracting warmth into her resolve to stay focused solely on work while she was in Kenner City. “I’m only here for a couple of days. I doubt I’ll have time to get to know them.”
“What about the people in Kenner City and Mesa Ridge you already…? Oh. Of course.” Elizabeth politely pulled away, no doubt sensing the protective personal barriers Joanna was pushing back into place. “I don’t suppose you have relatives in the area to keep you here.”
“No.”
“Will you be paying your respects to your mother and daddy?”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
“Ethan Bia has been back in town for a few years now, after his stint in the army.”
Ethan Bia? A shiver of recognition, of feelings long buried and often regretted, danced along Joanna’s spine.
She flashed through the remembered sensations of a young man’s eager touch—the patient demands of his mouth on her untutored lips. She blotted out the image of anger she’d seen only once on his tanned, rugged face—the last memory she had of the gentle giant she’d once loved.
“Ethan left Mesa Ridge?” That was almost more surprising than her reaction to the mere mention of his name.
Elizabeth jumped on the question. “For six years. He’s a consultant with the crime lab now. Works search and rescue in the area. What about calling him—?”
“I’m not here to socialize.”
Joanna hardened herself against the name, as warring memories of strength and warmth, regret and shame, surged inside her.
“Nüa-rü. The wind.” He stroked the long strand of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You’re just as elusive to me.”
“Ethan…”
She’d had to leave. Just as surely as Ethan had had to stay. He was tied to the earth and the mountains in a way she’d never been tied to anything or anyone.
A smack across the face. A knife at her breast.
“You owe me, bitch.”
Joanna jerked inside her skin. No. No way could she have stayed.
“Honey?” Elizabeth’s hand was on hers again.
The locker-room doors swung open, thankfully putting an end to the discomfort of reacquainting herself with the past.
“Madre de Dios,” muttered one Latino man, shaking the rain from his black hair. “It hasn’t let up once since noon. It’ll be raining buckets by sunset.”
“You’re telling me.”
Joanna pushed to her feet as a second man—same height, same black hair, same features save for the scar that bisected his chin—came up beside him. Both wore suits, although the first one was already pulling off his tie and stuffing it into his pocket as they approached.
The second one pulled a cell phone from his belt beside the gun he wore. “I’d better give Aspen a call at school and tell her I’ll pick up Jack from the sitter’s. I don’t want her on those muddy reservation back roads any more than necessary. I predict a washout in our future. No pun intended.”
“Nice one, hermano.” The first one elbowed his buddy in the arm. “Emma talked about seeing great waters and danger in her dreams last night.”
“Maybe she should take up weather forecasting.”
“Yeah, and maybe you should call your wife before she forgets what you look like. Again.”
“Ouch.” Both men laughed as they moved their magnets on the sign-in board behind the reception counter to indicate that they were back in the office and on duty. “Point taken. I’ll leave the one-liners to you.”