my lap. Then she slipped her hand under it.
We only had about a half-hour to catch our connecting flight, but Gem decided that was enough to make me buy her a frozen-yogurt cone topped with hot fudge.
It was just after eleven-thirty in the morning when we touched down in Albuquerque. I felt the tension go out of my body as soon as we got inside the terminal—you miss a meet with Lune, you might never get another.
I wanted to go outside to the parking lot right away, see if the tiger-striped car was where the message said it would be. But I knew better, so I just let Gem pull me through the airport until she found a place that sold a pair of boots she just had to have. That killed more than an hour. The search for just the right restaurant took some time off the clock, too. And by the time we’d finished there, we only had about twenty minutes to contact.
We walked past the taxi stand and headed for the parking lot. I held a scrap of cardboard in my hand and kept glancing down at it. Anyone watching would assume I’d written down the location where we’d left our car on the back of the claim ticket.
I led Gem straight to the top floor, figuring whoever left the contact car in place would have picked the least desirable spot, so it would attract less attention if it had to stay there for a while. We stepped off the elevator and started a brisk circuit, as if we knew where we were going. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to find what we wanted: a generic GM boxcar sedan covered in orange primer and black tiger-pattern stripes.
“Wait,” was all the message Mama had given me. When we walked up closer, the GM turned out to be an eighties-era Buick. An empty one. And it looked like it had been that way for a while. I glanced at my watch: 1:51. I patted my pocket for the cigarettes that weren’t there. Pulled Gem close to me so whoever showed wouldn’t think she was a spectator. Breathed slow and shallow through my nose.
A once-red Land Rover, one of the old ones, came to a stop perpendicular to the tiger-striped Buick, blocking us in. The windows were too deeply tinted to see inside. The back door closest to us opened slightly. I pulled it toward us, gently. The back seat was empty. I got in first, Gem right behind. The driver didn’t turn around. All I could see was that he was wearing an Australian Akruba hat. And next to him, on the passenger seat, was a mammoth pit bull, a brindle with white markings. The dog turned and regarded us with the flat, confident stare of someone who knows, no matter what you’re holding, he’s packing something a lot heavier.
The Land Rover pulled off. Gem opened her mouth, but I put two fingers across her lips before any sound came out. I knew what the problem was … just not how the driver was going to handle it.
We exited at the gate, turned left, and proceeded at a leisurely pace through the city. From where I was sitting, the only gauges I could see were navigational. I spotted a small-screen GPS unit, as well as a large mechanical compass and altimeter—whoever put that rig together was a heavy believer in backups. We were driving east on a complicated highway system. After a while, we got off and curled back so that we were going north. And climbing. When the altimeter got past six thousand feet, the driver suddenly pulled over and stopped.
Nothing happened for a minute or two. Then he dismounted. I waited for him to come around and open up the back doors, but all he did was let the monster pit bull out, leaving that door wide open. Through the window, I could see him step back a few yards, but the dog didn’t move, holding its ground. The driver took off his hat, tossed it aside, then made a “come toward me” gesture with his hand. I knew better than to exit from the door out of the driver’s vision, so I reached across Gem, opened her door, and guided her out, with me right behind.
“Close enough,” the driver said, as soon as both of us were on the ground. I could see he was an Indian—heavy cheekbones, dark eyes, thick black hair combed straight back and worn close to his skull, a calm interior stillness radiating off him. His skin had a faint coppery tone, but the shade was too light for his features—I figured him for a mixed-blood.
It was close enough for me to see the heavy semi-auto that materialized in his right hand, too. He held it way high up on the butt, against the curved grip-safety, just short of where the web of skin between the thumb and trigger finger would catch the slide. The barrel was pointed at the empty ground between us, as if he were just showing the pistol to me, not threatening me with it.
I zoomed in on his hand. His thumb was held extended and absolutely parallel to the slide. On the other side of the pistol, his trigger finger was positioned the same way, parallel to the slide, from the knuckle to the first joint. A hardcore pro. And holding all the cards.
But then he moved the pistol just enough so that I could see the tip of his finger curled down, inside the trigger guard. That last part hit me like an aftershock—
I moved my hands away from my body. Slowly, sending out gentle waves.
The Indian nodded as if he understood my gesture. “Tell the woman to get your bags and bring them out,” he said. His voice was more twangy than I’d expected, New Orleans in there somewhere. Exaggerated maybe by his nose—looked like he’d broken it one time and they hadn’t done a great job in the ER.
“Do it,” I told Gem, not taking my eyes off the Indian.
He said something to the dog in a language I didn’t understand. It jumped back onto the front seat as easy as a beagle climbing a curb. When Gem came back out with our bags, the dog was right behind her.
“Put them over there,” the Indian told her, gesturing with his free hand toward a clearing to his right.
Gem did it. The pit bull trotted alongside her like they were going to the park to play Frisbee.
“Go back with him,” the Indian told her, moving so he was between us and the bags. Then he moved a few steps closer, held my eyes: “There was only supposed to be one person.”
“It was a one-way communication,” I told him. “There wasn’t any way for me to say I was bringing my—”
“Who are you?” he asked, as if it was a test.
“Burke.”
“Why are you here?”
“To see Lune.”
“Can you prove who you are?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what would be proof to you.”
The Indian nodded as if that made perfect sense. “We are in the Sandia Mountains,” he said. “About a mile and
