Daughter of Destiny (15 page)

Shrugging, Kai whispered, “Two years ago, I did. Lieutenant Ted Barnes. He was an F-18 Hernet pilot. We met on the carrier I was on. I fell in love with him…or thought I did.”

“And now?” Jake didn't want Kai to be engaged to an
other man. Not with her in his arms for the first time in so many years. This was like a dream come true. Jake had lost count of how many times he'd dreamed of this. He knew it was selfish of him to hope she hadn't found someone else. After all, Kai deserved happiness after the hell of her growing-up years.

“I broke up with Ted a year ago, Jake. We went our separate ways.” Her mouth thinned. “He couldn't handle a fully independent res girl.” She felt Jake laugh, the sound vibrating through her like warm honey across her scarred heart. “And to tell you the truth, I'm still recovering from it.” Kai looked up at Jake and absorbed the burning tenderness in his golden eyes. “That's why I didn't want you on this mission with me. I—I was afraid of myself, of my reactions to you. The past I thought I'd buried and left behind came roaring back at me. I was so cold to you when we met in Montana. I—I just couldn't handle the past, even though you were the only positive thing in my life at that time.”

Lifting his hand, Jake removed a strand of hair from the side of her face and slipped it behind her ear. “I saw your eyes, Kai. I saw the look in them. I knew you were glad to see me. Well…at least a part of you was. I sensed it.”

Though his touch soothed her ailing heart, her mind screamed at her not to get involved with anyone right now. Closing her eyes, Kai focused on his fingers sliding across her hair in such a gentle fashion. “You knew….”

“I knew I'd never forgotten you, Kai. Or what we shared.”

Opening her eyes, she held his gaze. “And now? Is that what you want? What we had in the past?”

Shaking his head, Jake whispered, “I want only those things from the past that were healthy and positive for us, Kai. We can't forget it. All we can do is learn from it and use our experiences wisely for the present—and maybe the future….” How badly he wanted to tell Kai what lay in his heart, but Jake knew she wasn't ready to hear it. Not now. Maybe never. Everything was so tenuous with her. Realizing she was still reeling from Ted walking out of her life, Jake felt some of his hope for them crumble.

“The only part of my past I don't hate is the part that had you in it, Jake.” Kai gulped unsteadily. “But I'm scared. Really scared. Me! I can fly an F-14 around in the skies, get shot at by SAM missiles and still not be half as scared as I am right now.”

Jake understood. “Listen,” he whispered, giving her a tender look, “let's take our time. We're together again. We have a job to do here. Let's take this relationship of ours one step at a time, okay?” He didn't want to. No, Jake was ready to go full throttle to the firewall in a relationship with Kai, but he could tell she wasn't there yet. Holding his breath, he watched many emotions cross her face. Once again, Kai was allowing him to see the real her. Before this, she had kept her expression carefully arranged so he couldn't see how she really felt. Now she was allowing him that privilege. He considered that a huge victory.

“One day at a time, Jake. That's all I can handle right now.” She searched his face, her eyes meeting and holding his. “Can you deal with that? With what I need?”

“In a heartbeat, Kai.” Jake looked around. The hut was growing brighter and brighter by the minute as the sun con
tinued to inch toward the horizon. The purple dawn had begun. “To tell you the truth, I never thought you'd come into my arms again, so what I have right now is a precious gift, and more than I ever thought I'd receive from you.”

Kai nodded mutely. She briefly touched his jaw, finding the skin sandpapery and in need of a shave. “I want to go for a walk, Jake. I have to feel my way through all of this….” She slowly extricated herself from his arms and shifted away from him. It wasn't what Kai wanted to do, but she knew under the circumstances she had to or she was going to kiss Jake, and that would signal a depth of commitment her heart simply wouldn't allow her to make right now. Slowly getting to her feet, she picked up her Rail Riders and drew the pant legs on one at a time.

“Want company?”

“No. I need some time alone, Jake….”

Jake watched helplessly as Kai quickly got dressed and slipped out of the opening. He heard her booted feet head off toward the north, away from the small village. Scratching his head, he decided to get his own boots on and just hang around outside the hut. His job was to be Kai's wing man, her eyes and ears. Then he remembered Ooranye's assertion that there was someone out there who wanted that crystal mask as badly as they did, and he quickly pulled his boots on, deciding he should follow Kai. Not too closely. No, he'd shadow her, so that she could have the time alone she needed. Was she deciding about them? About whether to ever allow him to hold her again? It was a burning question for Jake as he crawled out of the hut and stood up.

The eastern horizon was a deep purple now, the ebony of the night slowly releasing its grip. Around him, Jake noted some villagers were already awake and going about their morning activities. In the distance, he saw the silhouettes of the hobbled camels, grazing about half a mile from the encampment. Kai was out there with them, patting Rocket on the nose. Warmth encircled Jake's heart as he stood there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers. At least she didn't distrust animals as she did the men who had scarred her heart. Hanging his head, he scuffed the toe of his boot into the red sand. Somehow, he wished he could ease Kai's tortured past, but he knew he couldn't. Her drunken father had hurt her so grievously.

Lifting his chin, his eyes narrowing, Jake saw Kai walking away from the camels. Both began to follow her. Smiling wryly, Jake took his hands out of his pockets and followed at a leisurely pace. Would Kai continue to open up to him? Trust him as she had before? Allow her heart to reach out to his? He hoped so.

“T
here is a place nearby that I want to take you to. The ground is good and flat and I can draw you a map with my fingers. I'll show you how to get to this cave in the canyon where the sacred stone mask is located.” Ooranye stood up and dusted off the dark green shift she wore.

The morning sun was strong and they'd just finished a delicious breakfast with the wise woman in her hut. Ooranye carried a huge loaf of damper bread in one hand and a bowl of bush honey in the other as she slowly walked toward the spring. Jake walked beside Kai, his heart still warm with the memory of holding her that morning. He had noticed during their breakfast with Ooranye that Kai seemed softer, more open than before.

The old woman led them to a spot near the Anangu rock hole where Jake took his sponge baths twice a day. The area was just right for scratching pictures into the soil. Around the water hole in the gray stone grew a circle of white-barked River Red Gum trees. Their long, graceful limbs spread above the spring that Jake had come to ap
preciate so much. The eucalyptus trees with their broad, reaching limbs made it one of the few places where shade was available on the Gibson Desert, a miniature oasis. Their two camels were nearby after drinking their fill, hidden in the deep shade of the thick grove of trees.

Ooranye settled herself on a smooth red rock that was flat on top. She placed the flour damper on a similar one nearby, and gestured for Kai and Jake to join her. Sitting back, Jake enjoyed the morning, the birds singing…and then his sharp hearing caught an unnatural sound. Turning, he scanned the pale blue sky to the south.

“You hear it, too?” Ooranye murmured, cocking her head to listen. Her frown deepened.

Kai was the last to hear the sound. She got up and placed her hand against the trunk of a gum tree, looking at the southern horizon. “What is it?”

Jake moved closer to Ooranye. “Sounds like an engine…maybe a helicopter?”

Frowning, Kai said, “Yeah, for sure, an aircraft. And it's coming our way. Are the binoculars nearby?”

“No, they're in our hut,” Jake said unhappily. The sound was growing stronger. “That's a helicopter,” he told them, sure of it now. Moving to Kai's side beneath the spreading arms of the red gum, he saw a black spec on the horizon. “There it is.”

“I see it….” Kai turned and looked down at Ooranye. “Do you get aircraft out here often?”

Shaking her head, she said, “No. We live very far away from where such craft fly. We do not like the sound, so we make sure we stay away from them. The government has
promised that none would come near our village, so this is strange….”

The hair on the back of Kai's neck stood up. She got that same sensation when a SAM had been aimed at her as she flew over the skies of Iraq. Worriedly, she glanced at Jake. Hands on his hips, he stared at the approaching aircraft. “Could it be a tourist chopper?”

“I don't know….”

“The darkness has found you….” Ooranye muttered.

Kai's heart thudded with fear. She saw Jake's eyes narrow and his lips thin.

“It's that Huey from the Yulara airport,” Jake said in a low tone.

“Yes,” Kai agreed tensely. “I wish I had my pistol on me now….”

“Children, you must go!” Ooranye warned. “They must not see you. They are darkness. I feel it strongly. Hurry! Run to your hut and stay there. If they land, they will be looking for you, and we will take them off your scent. The camels will remain here with me.”

Kai glanced again at Jake. He held out his hand toward her. “Let's go.”

Kai nodded, and they turned and quickly jogged toward the huts that stood a quarter mile away. “I wonder if they have infrared on board.”

“I doubt it,” he said, breaking into a run. Feeling sure they could make it before the helicopter pilot saw them, he kept up the steady pace. Kai ran fluidly at his side. “That's a 1970s model, Kai.”

Nodding, Kai narrowed her eyes. It felt good to run, al
though fear was shooting through her. They were without weapons, which made the situation more dangerous. Her heart actually slowed in beat, adrenaline flooding her bloodstream, readying her to fight. “There were two choppers there,” she huffed. “I didn't pay much attention.” The copter was drawing closer by the moment, but they were nearly to their hut. A number of the Aborigines were looking toward the sky as Kai and Jake approached.

“I did. There was this Huey with a blue-and-yellow paint scheme, and a Bell helicopter, a silver Bell Longranger.”

“Good memory,” Kai said huskily. The whapping of the blades began to make the early morning air tremble as the helicopter sped nearer. Kai glanced back at Ooranye, who sat dipping her fingers into the bowl of bush honey and methodically spreading it across the damper bread held in the palm of her hand. She was pretending nothing was wrong. Wise woman, Kai thought. Acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Maybe if the pilot thinks nothing's out of place, he'll just go away.

“Jake? Can you read the numbers on the fuselage? And do you have a pen or paper handy once we get to the hut?” She didn't, and again Kai berated herself for her lack of preparedness. If someone was really hunting for her and the crystal mask, she had to get off her duff and stay more alert. No pistol. No binoculars. Nothing. She felt frustrated at her own incompetence under the circumstances.

The helicopter was behind the grove of gums now. “Yeah, when it passes by, I'll try and get a look at it without giving away our hiding place.”

Kai spied a group of Aboriginal women walking to
ward them, water jugs in hand. Whoever was in the helo would certainly see them and know they were heading to the rock hole oasis. Maybe that would throw them off Kai and Jake's scent. The helicopter was less than a mile away and flying at three thousand feet. Kai wasn't completely convinced they were hostile. Ooranye hadn't been wrong yet, but something in Kai didn't want to believe that anyone would challenge her quest for the crystal mask.

Ducking quickly into their hut, she got down on her hands and knees and reached for her pack. Unzipping it, she grabbed her holster and pistol. Jake did the same. Their breathing was heavy as they silently but quickly worked to arm themselves. Would the copter land? Kai wasn't sure. She turned, inching back toward the opening, where Jake now crouched, looking skyward.

He lifted his head as the Huey flew low overhead. The whole area trembled in the wake of the turning blades. “Got it!” he said to Kai. Memorizing the numbers on the fuselage, he watched as the pilot, who sat in the right-hand seat, banked the helo and flew in a circle around the oasis. Jake quickly scribbled the numbers down on a small notebook and shoved it into the pocket of his white, short-sleeved shirt.

“They're looking for
something,
” Kai muttered, her voice grim. Indeed they were. She could see the copilot craning his neck as he looked around. Kai couldn't make out his features because he was so far away.

After circling the oasis three times, the helicopter landed near the rock hole where Ooranye was calmly eating her bread. Kai peered through the cracks in the hut wall and
saw two men emerging from the helo as the blades swung sluggishly, the engine shut down.

“They're armed,” Jake hissed. He rose on one knee, his pistol held high, a bullet in the chamber.

“They're walking over to the rock hole where Ooranye's sitting,” Kai said, worried for the old woman. She still couldn't see the men's faces clearly.

Jake turned, rummaged through his pack and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “I want to see who they are,” he muttered, raising the field glasses to his eyes. They wore civilian clothes. The pilot appeared to be in his thirties, with black hair and brown eyes. He was deeply tanned, and Jake saw that he wore a pistol at his side. The other man was taller, leaner, red-haired and carrying an AK-47 military rifle. Looking closer, Jake saw there was a small label on the left-hand side of their red polo shirts. A name. What was it? Sharpening the focus, he honed in on the label: Marston Enterprises.

“It says Marston Enterprises,” he told Kai, watching as the men approached Ooranye.

Shaking her head, she said, “Same Marston who Giles Rowland worked for?”

“That's the label on their shirts. They're both wearing that name on it.” Pursing his lips, he whispered. “They're talking to Ooranye. She seems to be playing dumb.”

Kai squinted and looked through the cracks of the hut wall. The men were too far away for her to see facial expressions, but she saw the rifle. The camels stood in the shade calmly chewing their curds, disinterested.

“Why would this dude be carrying a rifle around with him?”

“Hunters?”

“Of us? Or animals? Besides, who hunts in the bush with an AK-47? No, he's no hunter of animals.” In her gut, she knew the men were looking for them. Mouth dry, Kai wiped her lips with the back of one hand, her pistol ready in the other one.

“Hang on—the red-haired guy is looking around…toward the village. I think he wants to check it out….”

“Yeah, and he's raised the rifle, ready to be fired,” Kai growled. Her hand began to sweat around the handle of her pistol. She was glad there was a nine-bullet clip in it. “If they come into the village…”

“Then there's gonna be a shoot-out.”

“Yeah…”

Jake watched Ooranye. By now, several of the other women, all relative of hers, had reached the spring and begun filling their jars with water, acting as if nothing was out of place. The two men appeared irritated. The red-haired one kept looking their way, impatience stamped all over his narrow face and close-set eyes.

“That guy wants to come into the village. The one with the AK-47,” Jake warned her quietly. His heart was pounding with dread. The last thing he wanted was a firefight in this village. With bullets flying, the possibility of innocent people being wounded was very real. Yet there was no place for them to run and hide, either. This village was their only cover. If they took off, they'd be seen, and those two would hop in their chopper and hunt them down from the air. No, there wasn't much choice left to them.

Gritting her teeth, Kai watched the red-haired man with
the rifle take a couple of steps toward the village. Her breath hitched and she tensed.

The pilot who was talking to Ooranye called him back. A breath exploded from Jake. “They're leaving!”

Relief shot through Kai. Eyes slitted, she watched the two men reluctantly turn away and walk back to the Huey. “Thank the Great Spirit….”

“When they've left, we'll find out from Ooranye what they wanted,” Jake murmured. He continued to watch the men, still not assured they would leave. Only after the copter was airborne and heading back in the direction of Yulara did he relax.

Kai sighed and gave him a tense look. Then she strapped her holster around her waist and put the pistol in it. Jake did the same. He kept the binoculars around his neck as they emerged from the hut and quickly walked back to the water hole to speak with Ooranye. By the time they arrived, the three women with the water jugs were sitting with the wise woman. They nodded respectfully as Kai and Jake approached, and chatted animatedly with Ooranye, who had continued eating as if nothing had happened.

Kai walked at Jake's side. “We weren't at all prepared for this incident.”

“No, we weren't.” He frowned. “We're not exactly cloak-and-dagger types, are we?”

A sour smile tugged at Kai's lips. “No…we're on a steep learning curve here, for sure. But I don't want to be caught like this again.”

“It wouldn't make sense for a helicopter to come out nearly a hundred miles from the airport to this place,” Jake
told her in a low voice. “Not unless they wanted something real bad—like us.”

“We can check all this out when we get back to Yulara. As soon as we get done talking with Ooranye, I'm going to call Mike Houston. You can give him the fuselage numbers on that Huey. Plus the name Marston Enterprises. Maybe he or someone else can run down the numbers and name and we'll get some info.”

Nodding, Jake said, “That's a good idea.” And then he gave her a silly grin. “The satellite phone is back at our hut, too.”

“Lesson number three—don't leave home without it.”

“Yep, that's right.”

Ooranye welcomed them back. She gestured for them to sit before her, and they did. Licking her fingers free of the bush honey, she said, “These white men wanted to know about you. They asked for you by name, so they know who you are.”

“Did they ask about the crystal mask?” Kai inquired.

“No,” the wise woman murmured. “But they saw the camels. They asked if you were here and I said no, that we'd bought the camels in a trade with some white men many months ago.” She grinned. “They believed me.”

Jake smiled briefly. “I know you can't see them, Ooranye, but they wore red shirts with a label that said Marston Enterprises on it. Do you know about that company?”

Wrinkling her brow, Ooranye said, “No. But Robert Marston is a very rich white man. We know of him because he sends his men to steal our sacred objects. He collects them because he wants their power. He is a two-heart, a man of darkness.”