Free Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear

to slow and stop … waiting.
    As if slapped awake, she gasped and blinked. The road ahead of her was empty. Bare asphalt in the violet light of predawn. When had the bird taken wing? Why hadn’t she seen it fly away?
    Or, had it been there at all?
    She clawed her coffee cup from the dash holder. Swigging the hot coffee in the thermal cup brought a grudging warmth to her chilled soul.
    “My God,” she whispered. “What did I see?”
    She shook it off, and let off the brake, easing the truck forward. A wound had opened inside her, a sense of wrongness. She glanced at the truck phone and fought the desire to call her aunt. Sage Walking Hawk was the last of her beloved aunts—the women who had taken her under their wings and raised her after her mother’s death. The old Keres blood ran thick in Aunt Sage’s veins. She could see between the worlds. She would know what this owl wanted. The death bird wasn’t known for bringing good news.
    Magpie eased the truck around the curve in the road. Her heart was pounding like a powwow pot drum. On such a beautiful morning, what could possibly be wrong with the world?
    She saw the truck as she pulled into the Casa Rinconada parking lot. The big Dodge diesel looked forlorn, the only vehicle in the lot. A thick coating of frost covered the candy-red paint. Dust tarnished the chrome wheels and bumpers.
    Magpie pulled up behind it, her sense of premonition tingling after her encounter with the disappearing owl. And now, here was a truck in the lot? She growled to
herself and checked her list of backcountry permits. Only one was outstanding, and that for a couple who had hiked into the Wijiji ruin yesterday. They would have parked in the lot miles to the east.
    She looked at the truck, seeing the familiar lines, the amber clearance lights on the roof. She knew this vehicle. A glance at the New Mexico plates wasn’t conclusive; but she knew those bumper stickers: ARCHAEOLOGY—CAN YOU DIG IT? and ARCHAEOLOGIST FOR HIRE: HAVE TROWEL WILL TRAVEL.
    “Dale?” Maggie asked the air. “What are you doing up here?”
    Yes, she remembered this truck. She’d seen it the day he’d first driven it into Chaco Canyon. Over two years ago. They had been working at the 10K3 site in the western part of the canyon. Dale had traded in his ratty old International Scout for this opulent, chrome-plated four-wheel drive.
    Maggie opened her door and stepped out, looking around. Nothing unusual could be seen. Her soul felt drawn to the Casa Rinconada trail, as if pulled by an invisible string. She ignored the impulse and walked over to the driver’s side window. Dale wasn’t inside, was he? From the frost the truck must have been here overnight.
    With her ticket book, she scratched the frost away, and checked. To her immense relief no hunched body slumped there. The seat was empty but for a notebook, several cassettes from an audio book, and a thermos lying on its side.
    She turned, staring around at the low sagebrush. “Dale? Are you here?”
    The silence was broken by the faint roar of a jet somewhere in the stratosphere.
    She trotted down the trail, past the Small House interpretive sign and up to the Casa Rinconada kiva. Cold burning her lungs, she stopped at the edge of the ruin and looked down into the gloomy interior. She’d had
a momentary image of Dale, facedown on the kiva floor. But there, in the shadows, the vaguely human outline just out from the firebox was only a dusting of darker sand.
    Placing a hand to her chest, Magpie took a moment to catch her breath. A ghost of a breeze tugged at her collar-length hair and seemed to caress her round brown cheeks.
    “Dale?” she asked plaintively, as if the touch might have been his.
    She blinked and, for an instant, could have sworn that she saw him walking up the trail toward the Great North Road, his fedora tipped back on wiry gray hair. Then the image blurred and shifted, and an owl swooped up from the spot where she’d last seen Dale. Its