Free Daughter of Destiny by Lindsay McKenna Page A

owned their own hotel as well as worked with the government to protect their sacred land.
    The coolness of the car felt marvelous. When Jake got in and shut the door, she said, “I never thought I’d appreciate air-conditioning, but if there’s a place on earth that needs it, it’s here. It doesn’t even get this hot in the cockpit of an F-14 on its worst day on a carrier.”
    â€œRight on.” He got out the local map and looked at it, memorizing the route to the hotel. Yulara wasn’t very big, maybe five thousand people. The man who’d briefed them for the mission had told them that the place was a tourist trap and the population consisted mostly of people who worked at the hotels and restaurants. Few people were crazy enough to live out here for the love of it. Jake understood why. Putting the car in gear, he pulled away from the curb.
    Kai looked around at the airport landscaping. From her tourist book she identified Desert Grevillea bushes sprouting bright yellow-and-orange flowers that resembled bottle brushes. Purple flowers hugged the ground like a richcarpet beneath the tall, many-limbed Grevillea, suggesting a bright, almost surrealistic painting. Tall, swaying clumps of what could be spinifex grass were planted all around the perimeter. Each one looked like the hair of a woman who’d stuck her finger in a light socket and gotten electrocuted, Kai mused. She had read that the native grass, although beautiful, was dangerous because it was sharp-bladed and could cut a person’s flesh as easily as a filet knife. Furthermore, spinifex had topknots like barbed wire that would cling to a person’s clothing and then work their way in, abrading the skin.
    A two-lane asphalt road pointed toward the village in the distance. After they’d left behind the spinifex barrier around the airport, they found the desert alive with many interesting plants and a surprising rainbow of colors. Kai was amazed anything grew here, and she knew the plant spirits had to be tougher than nails to survive such a harsh environment. They had her respect.
    â€œYou any good at driving on the wrong side of the road?” she asked Jake, glancing over at him.
    â€œNo, but I learn fast.” Like their British forefathers, Australians drove on the left side instead of the right. Jake found the switch uncomfortable and paid much more attention to his driving than he usually did. “It’s only a few miles to Yulara. And there’s not much traffic, so I don’t think I’ll plow headlong into anyone.” He smiled briefly when he heard Kai’s “humph.” If she didn’t trust him to drive, she’d do it herself, Jake knew. Such was her independence. Kai wasn’t one to wait on decorum. That suited him. He’d been raised to respect a woman’s opinions as much as a man’s.
    â€œGawd, I’m beat. All I want is an air-conditioned room, a cold shower and about twelve hours’ sleep.”
    â€œMakes two of us.” He braked the Toyota at a stop sign and then turned left. Ahead of them he saw fifteen or twenty buildings huddled together roughly four miles away—Yulara Village.
    Kai settled back, her eyes closed. “What do you think about Smythe’s comment about watching out for the bad guys?”
    â€œProbably on the mark. We don’t know who stole the totems yet and that’s what has me on high alert. We could have flown in with one of the robbers.” He looked in his rearview mirror. “No one is following us.”
    Mouth twitching, Kai muttered. “No one knows who stole them. Grams doesn’t know. The res police are throwing up their hands. And who would be interested in them, anyway?”
    â€œAccording to Smythe, there are some rich men who will pay big bucks for Native American objects for their personal collections. They’d be at the top of the list of suspects. Houston is running that list right