* * *
She woke up when the car was brought to a slow, gradual halt. Struggling to pull her aching, tired, sore and bruised body into a sitting position, she blinked the sleep out of her eyes and adjusted them to the dark.
Greywolf gave her no more than a cursory glance over his shoulder before opening the car door and getting out. He strode up an incline that led to a structure. She could barely distinguish its outline against the darkness, but she recognized it as a Navaho hogan. Aislinn doubted that the six-sided log dwelling would have been visible at all had it not been for the faint light coming through the rectangular doorway.
The hogan was nestled against the side of the mountain and was cloaked by its dark shadow. The slightly rounded, conical roof was left untouched by the silvery moonlight, which spilled down the mountain like mercury.
Curiosity, as much as the profound desire not to be left alone in such primitive, almost mystical, surroundings, motivated her to leave the car and follow him. She scrambled up the rocky path, trying to keep her eyes both on where she was going and on Greywolf's lean silhouette.
Before he reached the hogan, another silhouette, much smaller than his, was outlined in the patch of light in the doorway. It was that of a woman.
"Lucas!"
His name was uttered in a soft, glad cry before the petite figure left the doorway, ran down the path and launched herself against him. His arms locked around her, hugging her tight. His head and shoulders bent low, protectively, over her diminutive frame.
"Lucas, Lucas, why did you do it? We heard about your escape on the radio and saw your picture on TV."
"You know why I did it. How is he?"
He held the small woman away from him and peered down into her upturned face. She shook her head sadly. Without another word Greywolf took her arm and guided her back up the path and through the doorway.
Intrigued, Aislinn followed them. Never having been in a hogan before, she tentatively stepped inside. The single-room house was stifling hot. A low fire burned in the center. Smoke, seeming to lack the energy to make the climb, was emitted through a hole in the roof. Kerosene lamps provided the only other lighting. In the foreground was a rough square table with four crude chairs. A dented enamel coffeepot and several battered tin cups were on the table. There was a dry sink in the corner with a hand-crank water pump.
The floor was hard-packed dirt. On the floor, not far from where Aislinn was standing, someone had done a beautiful sand painting. The design was intricate and meticulously executed. She had no idea what it symbolized, but she knew that such sand paintings were used in ancient curing ceremonies.
Against the wall opposite the door was a low cot draped with Navaho blankets. Greywolf was kneeling beside it. Lying on the cot, beneath a blanket, was an elderly Indian man. Long, gray braids framed gaunt, jaundiced cheeks. Gnarled, callused hands fitfully plucked at the blanket. His eyes shone feverishly as they gazed up at the much younger man bending over him, speaking softly in a language Aislinn couldn't understand but knew was of the Na-dene group.
There were two other people in the room—the woman who had greeted Greywolf so intimately, and another man, surprisingly, an Anglo. He stood at the foot of the cot on which the old Indian lay. He was of average height and had thinning brown hair streaked attractively at the temples with gray. Aislinn placed his age at around fifty. He stared meditatively down at Greywolf and the old man.
For a multitude of unnamed and unacknowledged reasons, Aislinn had avoided looking at the woman. She did so now. She was very pretty. Indian. She had high cheekbones, raven-black hair styled in a soft, straight pageboy to just above her shoulders, and liquid dark eyes. Dressed like an Anglo, she wore a simple cotton dress, low-heeled shoes and inexpensive jewelry. The way she held her small head lent her an air of elegance. She was slender, but her figure was feminine and perfectly proportioned.
Greywolf pressed his forehead against the work-worn hands of the old man, then turned to speak to the man standing at the foot of the cot. "Hi, Doc."
"Lucas, you crazy fool."
A ghost of a smile flickered across Greywolf's austere features. "Some greeting."
"Some damned stunt. Escaping prison."
Greywolf shrugged and glanced back down at the old man. "He says he isn't in any pain."
"I've made him as comfortable as I can here," the man addressed as "Doc" said. "I urged him to go to the hospital—"
Greywolf was already shaking his head and interrupted the other man. "He wants to die here. It's important to him. How long?" he asked hoarsely.
"Morning. Maybe."
The woman shuddered, but didn't make a sound. Greywolf took the steps necessary to enfold her in an embrace. "Mother."
His mother! Aislinn thought, aghast. The woman looked so young, far too young to have a son as old as Lucas Greywolf.
He put his lips close to her ear and murmured words that Aislinn imagined to be consoling. She was awed that the cold, remote man she had been with for almost two days could show such compassion. His eyes were pinched shut. The stark contrast of light and shadow playing over his face made his anguished expression even more pronounced and testified to the depth of his emotion. When he finally opened the light-gray eyes, they happened to fall on her where she still hovered in the doorway.
He eased away from his mother, and bobbed his chin toward Aislinn. "I brought a hostage with me."
The blunt statement brought his mother around and she saw Aislinn for the first time. She raised a dainty hand to her chest. "A hostage? Lucas!"
"Have you lost your mind?" Doc asked angrily. "Hell, man, they're looking all over the state for you."
"So I've noticed," Greywolf said with casual disregard.
"They'll slam you back in prison so fast it'll make your head spin. And this time they might throw away the key."
"That's a risk I was willing to take," Lucas said, matching the other man's anger. "I asked permission to leave the prison in order to see my grandfather before he died. The formal request was denied. I played by their rules, but it did me no good. It never has. This time I've learned my lesson. Don't ask, just do."
"Oh, Lucas," his mother sighed, slumping down into a chair. "Father understood why you couldn't be here."
"But I didn't," Greywolf said fiercely, baring his teeth and spitting the words out. "What difference would it have made to let me out for a few days?"
The three fell silent because there seemed to be no answer to that question. Finally Doc stepped forward and kindly said to Aislinn, "I'm Dr. Gene Dexter."
She liked him immediately. His looks were unremarkable, but his demeanor was soothing and reassuring … or did it just seem so because she had spent the past forty-eight hours in the volatile company of Lucas Greywolf? "Aislinn Andrews."
"You're from…?"
"Scottsdale."
"You look tired. Won't you sit down?"
Gene Dexter offered her a chair and she accepted it gladly. "Thank you."
"This is Alice Greywolf," Dexter said, laying a hand on the woman's shoulder.
"I'm Lucas's mother," she said, leaning forward in her chair. Her dark eyes were filled with sincerity. "Will you ever forgive us for what's happened?"
"He's your father?" Aislinn asked softly, pointing to the still figure on the cot.
"Yes, Joseph Greywolf," Alice answered.
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
"Can I get you something?" the Anglo doctor asked Aislinn.
She sighed tiredly and gave him a wry smile. "You can get me home."
Greywolf made a scoffing sound. "I was an unpleasant surprise to Miss Andrews when she came home the night before last and found me scavenging food out of her refrigerator."
"You broke into her house!" Alice exclaimed in disbelief.
"I'm a criminal, Mother. Remember? An escaped convict." He poured himself a cup of coffee from the enamel pot on the table. "Excuse me." He gave Aislinn a smirking smile before he returned to the bedside of the dying man.
"He escaped prison, broke into my house, and took me hostage just so he could come here to see his grandfather before he died?" All the perplexity Aislinn felt went into the question she hardly realized she had spoken aloud.
When she recalled how Greywolf had frightened her, how he had threatened her with the knife, how he had taunted and tormented her, she wanted to get up, walk across the dirt floor, jerk him up by his long hair and slap him as hard as she could.
She had submitted to his threats because she had thought him capable of violence. Looking at him now as he leaned over the old man, whispering tender words, stroking the creased forehead with a loving hand, she doubted Lucas Greywolf would harm a fly.
Aislinn drew her eyes back to the two people who were quietly watching her as though she were an object of curiosity. "I don't understand."
Alice Greywolf smiled gently. "My son isn't easy to understand. He's impulsive. He has a short temper. But his bark is worse than his bite."
"Personally I'd like to whip his butt for involving this young woman," Dr. Dexter said. "Why would he make things more difficult for himself by kidnapping Miss Andrews?"
"You know how determined he is, Gene," Alice said with resignation. "If he made up his mind to get here before Father died, nothing could have stopped him." She looked at Aislinn with concern. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
Aislinn hesitated before answering. She could tell them he had humiliated her by forcing her to watch him strip off his clothes and take a shower. Then he had made her strip and had tied her to him while they slept. He had mauled and pawed her, but never for recreation. He had verbally abused her, subjected her to embarrassment many times, but she couldn't honestly say that he had hurt her.
"No," she answered quietly. Confused, she shook her head as she glanced down at her clenched hands. She was protecting him again. Why?
"Your arm is bandaged," Gene observed.
"I hurt it trying to get out of a rest room."
"A rest room?"
"Yes. He, uh, locked me in."
"What?"
Aislinn backtracked and told them everything that had happened, leaving out the more personal aspects of her encounter with Greywolf and glossing over the incident at the roadblock. "Lucas bandaged my arm just an hour or so ago."
"Well, I'd better check it," Gene said, going to the basin in the dry sink and pumping water into it. He began to wash his hands with a cake of yellow soap. "Alice, get my bag, please. She probably ought to have a tetanus shot."
A half hour later, Aislinn felt better. Her arm had been examined and diagnosed as having nothing more than a painful scratch. She had washed at the sink and had used a borrowed hairbrush to untangle her hair. To replace her tattered blouse and dirty jeans, Alice lent her a traditional tunic blouse and long skirt of a Navaho woman, having taken them from a storage trunk against the wall. "It's very kind of you to agree to wait here until … until Father dies."
Aislinn buttoned the blouse. "I expected to be taken to an outlaws's hideout." She glanced toward the bed where both Gene and Greywolf were attending the elderly Indian. "I don't understand why he didn't just tell me why he had escaped."
"My son is often defensive."
"And mistrustful."
Alice briefly laid her hand on Aislinn's arm. "We have some soup that's still hot. Would you like some?"
"Please." Only then did she realize that she was starving. Alice sat at the table with her while she ate. Aislinn used that opportunity to ask questions about Greywolf, questions that had previously piqued her curiosity.
"Am I to understand that he was serving a three-year sentence for a crime he didn't actually commit?"
"Yes," Alice replied. "Lucas was guilty of only one thing—of organizing that demonstration on the steps of the courthouse in Phoenix. He had gone through all the legal channels. He had secured a permit to march. It wasn't supposed to get violent."
"What happened?"
"Some of the marchers, much more militant-minded than Lucas, got rowdy. Before Lucas could regain control, public property was being vandalized and fights had broken out. It resulted in a brawl. Several people, including policemen, were injured."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. Because he had already won a reputation as a dissident, Lucas was the first one arrested."
"Why didn't he tell them he was trying to put a stop to the violence?"
"He refused to name the men who were actually responsible. He represented himself at his trial and wouldn't allow anyone else to speak in his defense. But I think that the judge and jury had already made up their minds before the case ever came to trial. There was a lot of media publicity about it. He was found guilty. The sentence was disproportionately severe."
"Wouldn't he have been better off to hire a lawyer to defend him?" Aislinn asked.
Alice smiled. "My son didn't tell you much about himself, did he?" Aislinn shook her head. "He is a lawyer."
Speechlessly Aislinn stared at the other woman. "A lawyer?"
"A disbarred one now," she said sadly. "That's one reason he's so bitter. He wanted to help our people through the legal system. Now he won't be able to."
Aislinn could hardly assimilate everything Alice had told her. It seemed that Mr. Greywolf was more complex than even she had imagined. She glanced at the cot just as he stood and turned toward the table where she was sitting with Alice. Gene Dexter laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"You said 'our people,'" Aislinn remarked to Alice. "Your Indian heritage is extremely important to you. Is that why you and Lucas use the name Greywolf?"
"What name should we use?" Alice asked, apparently bewildered by the question.
"Why, Dexter," Aislinn said, equally bewildered. "Isn't Gene Lucas's father?"
Aislinn was met with three stunned stares. Alice's velvety brown eyes were the first to look away. A becoming blush stained her dusky cheeks. Gene Dexter cleared his throat uncomfortably. Greywolf's response was somewhat more abrupt and to the point.
"No, he isn't."
* * *