“Way out there is one of our most sacred sites. It’s our Mount Sinai.” As they roared down Arizona Route 191 toward St. Johns, Cait waved a hand toward New Mexico in the east. Miles beyond desert scrubland and wavy lines of hills was Zuni Salt Lake. The shallow saline basin was considered a sacred being, Salt Woman, the mother of the Zuni.
Jack looked in the direction she pointed. “I hiked out to it in 2002 when the feds approved putting in a coal strip mine near the lake. I joined the Sierra Club back then. There was a lot of protest over that mine, and the big utility company involved gave up their plans and decided to buy coal from an existing mine.
“You’d never know it’s a holy spot by looking at it. It’s not like the Grand Canyon, where the view knocks you out. The significance of the lake is spiritual, felt in the blood. Your people don’t need blockbuster scenery to be reminded of their origins.”
“You never told me about hiking there. What else don’t I know about you?” Cait faked a frown.
“That was the year of my divorce. I guess I don’t talk much about that time.” Jack swept a hand over his jaw. “I’d been a detective for five years, married for four. Margarita kept hassling me to go after federal jobs with better pay and perks. FBI, DEA, you name it. I was happy doing what I was doing. She found someone more ambitious, I guess. A big-time developer.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to make you dredge that stuff up.” Cait rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
“What still bothers me was how I could have been so wrong about her. Not seen who she really was.”
Cait changed the subject. “I’m looking forward to Tucson. I’m happy Chris will be working there. Maybe someday he’ll find himself back in New Mexico. I know Ernie and Ana are happy he’ll be only a day’s drive away.”
“So your mom’s back for a while?” Jack leaned his cast against the passenger door.
“Until June. Then she goes back to Phoenix to meet a new group of students. She’ll be there for a few weeks and then she can come home and communicate via email. She hated having to stay there for months and rent a room in order to teach.”
“I bet your dad’s happy to have her back.” Jack glanced her way.
“He’s been in a good mood.”
They rode in comfortable silence and soon arrived at Show Low. The town in Arizona’s forested Mogollon Rim attracted overheated inhabitants of Phoenix and Tucson in the summer and winter sports enthusiasts during cold months.
Snow banks now lined the main roads crowded with an influx of tourists.
Jack puzzled over a street sign. “Deuce of Spades Drive. What’s with the card game theme?”
Cait explained how Show Low got its name from a high-stakes card game between two ranchers. Outside of town, traffic and structures thinned as Highway 60 cut past meadows and groves of ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce and fir trees. Occasional dirt tracks led off the highway.
The terrain grew more rugged. Steep hills and red-rock cliffs abutted the highway as they crossed into the White Mountain Apache Reservation and approached the Salt River Canyon. The sight of the gorge took her breath away. Forested hillsides fell away to expose an endless, multilayered, panorama of sheer canyon walls and distant buttes.
Winter mist had settled in the bottom of a vast snaking chasm, steaming up like miasma from a witch’s caldron.
The two-lane road twisted and dropped. Each corner revealed outlandish towers of rock, the bones of the earth carved by eons of wind and water erosion. Century plant, yucca, prickly pear and cholla clung to abrupt rock faces. On the other side of the narrow highway, a stomach-wrenching drop-off plunged to the bottom of the rift, resembling a giant fissure cleaved by battling monsters out of a long-ago creation story. The roadbed offered the only level surface; beyond the pavement the land rose straight up or fell down to the center of the earth.
Cait kept a tight hold on the steering wheel. “Don’t miss a corner here. That guard rail looks flimsy.”
“The guy behind us wants to race.” Jack was turned in his seat, looking back. “Here he comes. What a nut job.”
A large white sport utility with dark-tinted windows overtook them as well as a sedan up ahead. The speeder cut across a blind corner on the approach to the bridge over the Salt River.
“Adios, stupido.” Cait watched the SUV slice across another switchback heading up the other side of the canyon.
She slowed and stopped at the rest area near the bridge over the river. They got out, stretched, and walked to an overlook by a railing. The water below surged between vertical canyon walls that soared to meet a pale sky marbled with iron-colored clouds.
“While we’re in Tucson, I want to take a close look at that investment guy who’s got his hooks in Clark’s mom,” Jack said. “Clark says she won’t talk about what she’s planning to do. Says she acts like a stubborn, sullen teenager.”
“That’s too bad,” Cait said. “Hope this guy isn’t a scammer.”
Above them on the other side of the canyon, sunlight glinted off metal. A vehicle was parked by the edge of a bend in the corkscrew road.
They continued on, Cait taking her time on the curves, easing off the gas through the corners. A broken section of guardrail and splintered wooden supports told a recent tragic story of a reckless or unlucky motorist. Not much chance of surviving if you went off the road here.
At the top of an uphill section, Cait drove by a scenic vista and saw what looked like the white SUV that had passed them earlier. The dark-tinted windows hid any occupants.
Oncoming traffic was light as they came to the end of the winding section. Ahead, the road flattened out. They picked up speed for a series of descents.
As Cait sampled coffee from a travel mug, she glanced at her side mirror. The white SUV was coming up fast. She tightened her hold on the steering wheel as the vehicle pulled up and hung even alongside them.
Fear dug its claws in her back and she dropped the mug. What happened next lasted seconds, but seemed to draw out through a slow-motion eternity. The sport utility smacked into their left front bumper. The driver continued to ram into them, letting up when the Jeep veered toward an embankment jutting up on the side of the road.
Cait struggled for control as the tires jumped over rumble-strip grooves in the paved shoulder. The Jeep shimmied and skidded on two wheels, throwing up dirt and gravel as they fishtailed.
Before the embankment, Cait steered back toward the pavement and braked. The Jeep whipped sideways and careened to a shuddering halt, straddling east and westbound lanes.
“Shit.” Jack let go of the dash. The white SUV took off westbound on the highway. “We’re lucky they didn’t stop and try to finish us off.”
An air horn blasted. Cait’s heart bounced in her ribcage and she gunned the accelerator to get off the road and avoid a big rig hurtling toward them.
Her hands trembled as she unlatched the driver’s door and tumbled out. “We could have flipped and rolled if we went up that bank. Damn semi was about to pancake us.”
“Betcha those were Sonny Para’s troops in that SUV.” Jack was calling 911 on his cell as he got out and examined the damage. “Bullet holes. Look at that.” He pointed to the driver’s door, and probed inside the vehicle, fingering tears in the side of Cait’s seat. “They shot at us. I didn’t hear it through all the screeching brakes.”
“How could that have been Los Brutos?” Cait asked.
“Maybe someone’s been following us since we left Albuquerque. You’ve been driving. Have you noticed the same vehicles behind us since we left Zuni?”
“No. I guess I didn’t pay attention. But we could have been followed.”
“We were blind-sided.” Jack looked up and down the highway. “Let’s go.”
Cait grabbed a map from the glove compartment with her still-shaking hands. “We’re headed for Globe. There aren’t any connecting roads up ahead. Sheriff’s deputies or highway patrol should be able to spot that SUV.”
“The dispatcher is alerting them. But with all these dirt forest roads and tracks, that SUV could hide until we go by. Once we get to Tucson, I’ll see if we can find a bullet or two rattling around in the Jeep. Send it in as evidence. Maybe it’ll match up with a slug collected from a crime scene in New Mexico.”
They kept their eyes peeled but there was no sign of the sport utility. Near the old mining town of Globe, they turned south on U.S. 60 and then west on State Route 77. The twisty two-lane highway climbed over the forested Pinal Mountains and down-hilled to the desert alongside a rocky canyon cut by the Gila River.
Miles later, the soaring chimney of a copper smelter announced the settlement of Winkelman. They continued south through the desert, past humble homes and vacant buildings, hardscrabble towns still hanging on. Outside Tucson, the road widened to multiple lanes and traffic thickened.
Cait’s cell phone buzzed. She talked for a minute and hung up. “Chris wants us to meet him at his new digs in the park.”
“Saguaro National Park East or West?”
“East.” Cait’s mood lightened at the thought of seeing her brother again. She felt anonymous and safe in the middle of heavy Tucson traffic. There was no way the crazies in that white SUV could know where they were going.