Free Cold Betrayal by J. A. Jance

looked handicapped. They met her requests for a ride with somewhat more gentleness than the first one had employed, but the answer was still the same—N-O.
    In The Family, women were not allowed to wear jewelry of any kind except a plain gold wedding band. Any other jewelry, including watches, was considered vain, ungodly, and wicked. From fifteen on, boys were allowed to wear watches, while the womenfolk were forced to tell time by following the positions of the sun. There was no window in Enid’s restroom refuge, so the sun’s timekeeping abilities were lost to her. Even so, she knew that more than an hour had passed, and she was starting to grow anxious. By now Aunt Edith, finished with her errands, was probably at home or very nearly so. Soon someone would sound the alarm that Enid had gone missing, and the search for her would be on in dead earnest.
    The restroom door opened again. The two women who entered wore boots and jeans and hiking boots. Their hair was cut short. They weren’t wearing lipstick or makeup. In fact, they looked more like men than women, although they went inside the stalls the same way the others had. Through the intervening walls, they talked easily of the hike they had taken and how soon they would arrive back at their RV park. They weren’t particularly threatening, and they seemed kind enough, nodding to Enid as they left. Still, their mannish appearances was so far outside her realm of experience that she let them leave without asking them for help.
    The woman who arrived immediately after they left was an older Indian lady with iron-gray hair pulled back into a complicated knot at the back of her neck. Enid knew a little about Indians. The ones who came through town occasionally were mostly Navajo. The men wore jeans, cowboy shirts, and boots along with shiny silver and turquoise bolo ties or handmade belt buckles. The women often wore brightly colored dresses and amazing turquoise necklaces, similar to the ones that were for sale in this very gas station, where handmade jewelry was arranged in a glass display case near the register.
    Boys from The Family always made fun of the “squaws wearing their squaw dresses,” but Enid often found herself envying those brightly colored, flowing dresses that bore little resemblance to the bland, home-sewn shapeless things she and the other women in The Family wore until their colors faded away to nothing.
    Some of the older boys liked to tease the younger girls, telling them that the Indians came to town looking for women and girls they could kidnap for their scalps and claiming that Indians liked blond-haired scalps more than any others.
    Based on what she’d been told, Enid should have been terrified of the new arrival, but she wasn’t. The old Indian woman had a wise, kind face that was creased with a network of sun-deepened smile lines. When she came out of the stall and went to the basin, she nodded at Enid’s reflection in the faded mirror.
    “I need to get to Flagstaff,” Enid blurted out urgently, saying the words fast enough that there was no time to change her mind. “I’m looking for a ride.”
    Drying her hands, the woman turned to Enid with her brow furrowed into a frown. “We’re not going all the way to Flag,” she said. “Twenty miles this side, but you’re welcome to ride with us that far if you want.”
    When Enid left the restroom at last, she scurried along beside the heavyset woman, hoping that the Indian woman’s ample body and voluminous skirt would shield her from the curious glances of both the clerk and the customers gathered around the cash register. Once outside, the woman led the way to a dusty pickup truck, an older-model Ford. A scrawny Indian man in a white Stetson, a black shirt, faded jeans, and equally faded boots was finishing filling the gas tank and returning the hose to the pump.
    He looked up at Enid questioningly as she and the woman approached the vehicle. “She’s going to Flagstaff and