Rider on Fire & When You Call My Name. Sharon Sala
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wrapped in the cloak of darkness, he lifted his arms to the heavens and began to dance. Dust and ashes rose up from the ground, coating his feet and legs as he moved in and out of the shadows around the fire. He danced and he sang until his heartbeat matched the rhythm of his feet.
The wind rose, whistling through the trees in a thin, constant wail, sucking the hair from the back of his neck and then swirling it about his face.
They were coming.
He tossed the owl and the hairs into the fire, and then lifted his hands above his head. As he did, there was what he could only describe as an absence of air. He could still breathe, but he was unable to move.
The great warriors manifested themselves within the smoke, using it to coat the shapes of what they’d once been. They came mounted on spirit horses with eyes of fire. The horses stomped and reared, inhaling showers of sparks that had been following the column of smoke and exhaling what appeared to be stars.
One warrior wore a war bonnet so long that it dragged beneath the ghost horse’s feet. Another was wrapped in the skin of a bear, with the mark of the claw painted on his chest. The third horse had a black handprint on its flank, while matching handprints of white were on the old warrior’s cheeks. The last one rode naked on a horse of pure white. The wrinkles in his face were as many as the rivers of the earth. His gray hair so long that it appeared tangled in the horse’s mane and tail, making it difficult to tell where man ended and horse began.
They spoke in unison, with the sounds getting lost in the whirlwind that brought them, and yet Adam knew what they’d said.
They would help.
As he watched, one by one, they reached into the fire and took a piece of Franklin’s essence to help them with their search. Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, they were gone.
Adam dropped to his knees, then passed out.
Chapter 2
DEA agent Sonora Jordan was running after a drug dealer when she fell into the twilight zone. One moment she was inches away from grabbing her perp, Enrique Garcia, and the next her gun went flying as she fell flat on her face. The shot that would have hit her square in the back went flying over her head. Instead of the heat and dust of Mexico, she was in the shade of a forest and hearing the sound of moving water from somewhere up ahead.
She lifted her head, and as she did, she saw a tall, older man standing on the porch of a single-story dwelling that was surrounded by trees. His skin was brown, and his hair was long and peppered with gray. There was a wind chime hanging by his head that looked like a Native American dream catcher. The chimes were different shapes of feathers. It was so foreign to anything she knew, she couldn’t imagine why she would be hallucinating about it, and wondered if she was dead.
The man lifted his hand, and as he did, she had the strongest urge to wave back, but she couldn’t seem to move. She couldn’t see his face clearly, yet she knew that he was crying. A sad, empty feeling hit her belly and then swallowed her whole.
By the time she realized she wasn’t dead, only facedown in the dirt, the vision was gone. If that wasn’t enough humiliation, her perp was nowhere in sight.
“Oh, crap,” she muttered, then breathed easier when she saw Agent Dave Wills coming back with the perp she’d been chasing. Garcia was handcuffed and cursing at the top of his voice.
“Can it, Garcia,” Wills snapped, then saw Sonora on the ground. “Jordan! Are you all right? Are you hit?”
“No…no, I’m okay,” Sonora said as she got up, picked up her gun, then began brushing at the dust on her face and clothes.
“What happened?” he asked, as he shoved Garcia into the back of his car and slammed the door.
She didn’t know what to say. “I guess I tripped.” It was lame, but it was better than the truth.
He frowned. Sonora Jordan wasn’t the tripping kind. He reached for her shoulder, intent on brushing a streak of dirt from her face when movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned just as the other Garcia brother appeared.
“Look out!” he yelled, shoving Sonora aside as he reached for his gun.
Sonora reacted without thinking. Her gun was still in her hand and she was falling again. Only this time, she got off four shots. Two of them connected.
Juanito Garcia died before he hit the ground.
Enrique saw the whole thing from Wills’s car and began to scream, cursing Sonora and Wills and the DEA in general.
Wills waved his arm at another agent and yelled, “Get him out of here!”
As he was being driven away, Enrique looked back at Sonora, mouthing the words, “You’re dead.”
It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before, but it never failed to give her the creeps.
Wills eyed the muscle jerking in her jaw but shrugged it off. She was tough, no need getting bent out of shape on her behalf. Still, this bust hadn’t gone as they’d planned.
“They made you too early,” he said. “What happened?”
She spun, eyeing him angrily. “Oh, hell, Wills, I hate to venture a guess, but it might have been your ugly mug showing up a good ten minutes too soon. I wasn’t through making my play when you came flying around the corner.”
Wills shrugged. “But we got ’em.”
“No, we got two. Miguel Garcia is the boss man and he wasn’t here…yet.”
This time Wills frowned. “So, it’s not my fault he didn’t show. You said he would.”
“Yeah…at three-fifteen.”
“So, what time is it now?” Wills asked.
“Three-fifteen,” Sonora snapped, then strode to her car and got in, slamming the door behind her. When Wills still hadn’t moved, she leaned out the window and yelled, “You plan on buying a house down here?”
Wills glanced down at what was left of Juanito Garcia and then at the faces peering out at them from windows above the street.
“Hell, no,” he said.
Within minutes, they were gone, leaving the aftermath and cleanup to others. There was a border to cross and reports to be written before anyone slept tonight.
* * *
Sonora typed the last word in her report and then hit Print. She gathered up the pages with one eye on the clock and the other on the scowl her boss was wearing.
Gerald Mynton wasn’t any happier than she’d been about letting Miguel Garcia get away. Capturing two out of three wasn’t the kind of odds Mynton operated on. He was an all-or-nothing kind of man. Added to that, Sonora Jordan was no longer a viable agent in this case. He knew Wills was partly responsible for missing the last Garcia brother, but there was nothing they could do about it now except pick up where they left off—minus Jordan.
When he saw Sonora get up from her desk, he motioned for her to come in. She gathered up what was obviously her report and strode across the floor.
Even though he was a happily married man and totally insulted by the thought of sexual harassment among his agents, he couldn’t ignore what a beautiful woman Sonora was. She was over five feet nine inches tall and could bench-press double her weight. Her hair was long and dark and her features exotically beautiful. In all the years he’d known her, he’d only seen her smile a few times.
But it wasn’t her looks that made her a valuable agent. Besides her skill, there was an asset Sonora had that made her a perfect agent. She had no relatives and no boyfriends. She was as alone in this world as a person could be, which meant that her loyalties were 100 percent with the job.
Unfortunately, killing Juanito Garcia had temporarily put an end to her