Kiss of the Bees

not optional was how he left Quentin and Lani once Mitch was ready to walk away. He would arrange the bodies artfully.

Lani would be found right alongside the remains of her killer. The scenario would be plain for all to see. After murdering and mutilating his sister, the record would show that Quentin Walker had taken his own life.

How do you suppose you’ll like them apples, Mr. Brandon Walker? Mitch Johnson grinned to himself. It should give you something to think about for the rest of your goddamned natural life.

The turnoff was coming up. “Okay now,” Mitch said to Lani. “Nap time’s over. Wake him up so he can give me directions.”

Lani turned to Quentin. “Wake up,” she said. He didn’t stir.

“Come on, girl,” Mitch said, once again grasping her lower thigh. “I know you can do better than that!” He didn’t bother to tighten his grip. He didn’t have to. Obviously, Lani Walker had learned how to take orders.

“Come on, Quentin,” she said, shaking her brother’s shoulder. “You have to wake up now.”

Quentin tried to dodge the commanding voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He was enjoying his sleep. There was no reason for him not to. And who the hell was this woman who was so damned determined to wake him up?

He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the face hovering in front of his. When the world spun on its axis, Quentin shut his eyes immediately. He tried to shut his ears as well.

“Quentin!” Another voice this time. A male voice. “Wake the hell up and get busy!”

Mitch. Mitch Johnson, and he sounded pissed. Quentin struggled to open his eyes. “Where are we, Mitch?” Quentin mumbled, not quite able to make his tongue and mouth work in any kind of harmony. “Whazza problem?”

“The problem is we’re almost to Coleman Road, and I don’t know what the hell to do next.”

“Doan worry ‘bout a thing,” Quentin murmured, closing his eyes once more. “Just lemme sleep a little longer.”

“Wake him up!” Mitch demanded. “Slap him around if you have to, but get his eyes open.”

Quentin felt a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He opened his eyes once more.

A woman’s face—a girl’s, really—hovered anxiously over him. It took a matter of seconds for the dark hair and eyes to arrange themselves into a recognizable creature. As soon as that happened, Quentin could barely believe it. Lani! The shock of recognition stunned him and brought him out of his stupor, although as soon as he tried to sit up, a fierce attack of vertigo once again sent the interior of the Bronco whirling around him.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Quentin demanded. “I said I’d take you to the cave. Bringing someone else along wasn’t part of the bargain, especially not her.”

Quentin didn’t like being around his sister. Lani was almost as weird as that old Indian hag named Rita who used to take care of her when she was little. Lani had funny ways about her, ways of knowing things that she maybe shouldn’t have, just like Rita. If Quentin had been able to, he would have climbed in the backseat right then, just to put some distance between them.

“She’s your sister, isn’t she?” Mitch returned mildly. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought her along for the ride.”

“Mitch,” Quentin said, speaking slowly, trying to make his lips and brain work in conjunction, trying to make it sound as though his objection were more general and less personal. “Don’t you understand anything? She may be my stepsister, but she’s also an Indian. Once the tribe hears about my pots, they’ll raise all kinds of hell.”

“Lani’s not going to say anything to anybody, are you, Lani?”

Once again, Vega’s warning fingers caressed the top of her leg. Dreading his viselike grip, Lani flinched under the pressure of his hand and shook her head.

“No,” she said at once. “I won’t tell anybody. I promise.”

The turnoff to Coleman Road was coming up fast. Mitch Johnson switched on his signal. “Now what?”

“Go about half a mile up. There’s a road off to the left. A few yards beyond that, there’s a wash off to the right. Turn there.”

“Up the wash?”

“Right,” Quentin said, grateful that his tongue and lips seemed to be working better now, although he felt like hell. This was one of the worst hangovers he’d ever encountered.

“Before we turn off, though,” he continued, “you’ll need to stop and let me drive. The trail isn’t marked. You won’t know where to go.”

Mitch glanced dubiously across the seat. “You’re sure you can drive?”

“What do you think I am, drunk or something?” Quentin asked irritably.

“Definitely or something,” Mitch Johnson whispered under his breath.

Lani sat quietly between the two men—between her brother and the man Quentin had just called Mitch. At least she now knew what the M stood for in Vega’s signature. Mitch.

As the Bronco’s heavy-duty tires whined down the pavement, Lani looked up at the shadow of mountain looming above them. Ioligam’s stately dark flanks were silhouetted against a starry sky.

They were going after pots. If they had been found here on the reservation, they were actually Tohono O’othham pots that might have been hidden inside the mountain for hundreds of years. Perhaps they had remained hidden from view in one of the sacred caves on I’itoi’s second favorite mountain.

She remembered once listening to Davy and Brian Fellows talking about the day Tommy and Quentin Walker