"He could have been a Deputy Director by now if he'd come home."

  "At least," Mac said, "but there's always something brewing in that part of the world. You know that."

  "Give him my love the next time you talk to him."

  "I'm sorry you got hurt the other night, Zan. It was never my intention to put you in danger, any more than I planned on Dar getting killed."

  "It was unfair to accuse you of being responsible," she said. "I understand that now."

  "Do you?"

  "He was where he wanted to be. I've gotten a different picture of him lately, one I don't like."

  "Then maybe you know why I was against your engagement."

  "You were trying to protect your kid sister, just the way you did when we were growing up."

  "That's always been my responsibility and my privilege. Lifelong habits are hard to break."

  She cleared her throat in an attempt to choke back a lump of emotion. "If you promise not to change, I'll promise to be less of a jerk."

  He laughed. "That's a relief, 'cause I'm about to test you."

  "How?"

  "I'm taking you off surveillance. I want you to devote all your time to the computer files."

  "Why?"

  "The two retirees are where they should be, but Ian isn't. He's registered at the hotel and the conference. His stuff is there but he hasn't been seen. Someone is signing in for him. I think you may be right about his connection to Dar. I'm looking into it."

  "If you can't trust anyone, how are you handling the investigation?"

  "I went outside the Agency."

  "Would I recognize Ian if I saw him?"

  "Maybe not. He's changed."

  "So tell me, are you playing big brother again?"

  "I won't deny that protecting you is a dividend, but mainly I just want to find that mole and figure out what happened five years ago. All we have right now are theories and Stormwalker's version of events. I've always believed him, but my gut feelings aren't enough."

  "If his reports were destroyed, we'll never prove anything." A possibility she refused to consider.

  "You don't believe they were destroyed, do you?" Mac's voice reflected his frustration.

  "I hope not."

  "At least we will have tried."

  "We?" she asked.

  "You haven't been alone these past few weeks. I've been with you every step."

  "Okay, big brother. I'll stay with it."

  When Zan returned to the computer, she went to the original investigation. The suicide had left a huge hole in the evidence where the Lance Corporal's first-person testimony would have been. Investigators had relied on information from two other marines caught up in the same affair. In return for reduced sentences, they recounted details of their subversion by female agents and identified senior agents, "handlers" of the young women, with whom Dar had crossed paths many times. Each swore to having seen Dar in the computer room, which was off limits to all but a chosen few. And they'd seen him talk with the women. Their statements had been discounted as pure smoke.

  But what if they'd told the truth? Dar would have been in the computer room only if he was after something. To get it, he would have had some knowledge of the hardware and the software that ran it.

  "And he wouldn't have needed training from me," she muttered.

  So what purpose had those weeks served? Had he sought to gain access to agency data? Or to gain some other advantage from his engagement to the sister of the Agency Operations Officer?

  Anger churned in the pit of her stomach. Her fingers trembled on the keys, but she continued her search and finally came up with Dar's duty reports. The file listed them chronologically, as they'd been transmitted and showed the special coded acknowledgments for each one.

  She made a pot of coffee, poured a cup and sat down to study the reports, carefully analyzing each one and how it related to the others, stopping only as dawn approached. By then, she had established in her own mind a reasonable theory about what had happened. She fell asleep on the thought that she had to talk to Stormwalker before she presented that theory to Mac.

  When Stormwalker hadn't shown by the time the two days were up, Zan was certain she had imagined his visit and tender words, even the kiss still warming her lips. She feared he'd encountered problems but when Kenny came to see her, she took care to keep her concern to herself.

  "Have you seen Stormwalker?" he asked.

  "No one around here has."

  "I haven't seen him since the incident in the barn."

  "You were my last hope. He must have gone off somewhere, maybe into the hills or. . . ." He waved his hand, indicating some vague place out there. "If he's out in open country, we don't have a hope in hell of finding him, much less protecting him. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

  "I was pretty much out of it when he left."

  Kenny's eyes narrowed briefly. "Would you tell me if you knew?"

  "Why wouldn't I?"

  "You must hate him because of O'Neill. Maybe my interest in his well-being is unwelcome."

  "Are you suggesting I'd want him harmed in some way?"

  "It would be a way to gain some retribution for the man you loved, a man, incidentally, that I admired. I can understand how you might want . . . revenge."

  To give herself time to think, Zan put out cups and poured coffee for both of them. Kenny's remarks reminded her too much of the conversation in the parking lot. She held the hot cup in her hands to dispel a sudden chill.

  "If he's guilty, the law will provide all the retribution I need."

  "You come from a family whose life's blood has been the law and its enforcement. I hope your faith isn't misplaced."

  Zan lost patience with the innuendos but willed herself to remain in control. "What exactly are you driving at?"

  "Nothing, except maybe that life raises more questions than it answers. Since I've been around awhile, I might be able to level the playing field for you. Just a bit."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  "Good." He looked at his watch. "I'm due back at the office in half an hour, so I'd better get moving."

  She'd wanted reports on the fire and results of the ballistics tests, but wanted him gone even more. His comments left her with the feeling she had overlooked a key to unraveling the frame up, simply because it had been in plain sight. Was that key Kenny Becker himself?

  A search of his personnel files corroborated what she already knew of the man. Only when she looked at his duty reports did she find anything resembling a clue. He'd known Dar from an assignment they'd shared back in the early eighties and had once used the alias Augustus Sawyer, a name that resonated in her memory. Could he have lent it to Ian to use during his visit, as some weird inside joke?

  She shook her head. "If I call Mac and accuse another agency operative of conspiracy, he'll laugh me out of the country." She needed more than a theory before she called him again.

  She continued to stare at the screen, turning the name over and over in her mind. She'd definitely heard it before. "But where?" she murmured. Had it been from a case she'd heard about? Or the agency gossip mill? Or in one of the databases she'd maintained as part of her job?

  "Damn and blast." As children, she and her brothers had stomped around the house playing pirate and bellowing the only curse their father would allow. Now it seemed too appropriate. "Double damn and blast."

  She typed in the necessary commands that brought up the directory she'd created to teach Dar computer basics. This wasn't the original directory, of course, because she'd destroyed that before leaving the Agency. She was looking at the backup files automatically created by the software, files she'd overlooked in her haste to put painful memories behind her. If she'd forgotten about them, perhaps the person responsible for Stormwalker's troubles had also, or maybe hadn't even known they existed.

  She studied the files, one by one, looking for a clue to lead her to Stormwalker's reports. To save time, she sorted the files looking for any carrying the name "Augustus Sawyer," one of many names she'd used when creating the phony cases. By the time she was through, she had isolated twelve references, one for each of Stormwalker's missing reports. There they were, buried among the fictitious cases she and Dar had created. The genuine reports had been hidden here, false reports created here and then copied into the main database to be filed with the rest.

  "Blast, blast, blast," she muttered, angrier than she'd been even after Dar's death, furious with herself for giving him the means to commit God knew what and then blame an innocent man.

  She dialed Mac's number. Before going any further, she wanted him to know what she'd found. She told him where in the system to look. Within seconds, they were scanning the same data and Zan was explaining the files' existence.

  "Why didn't we find this when we searched five years ago?" he asked.

  "I wanted to ensure that our bogus data could never find its way into agency files, so I fenced it off with a series of passwords and commands that only I knew. Or so I thought. Obviously, Dar was more computer literate than he let on. I think someone at the Agency did the work while he was in the field.

  "If you look at his transmissions, you'll notice that some weeks after Stormwalker went to Vlad, their style and pattern changes from our standard format and frequency. I think someone rewrote Stormwalker's reports to mimic Dar's and passed them off as his."

  "What's your next move?" Mac asked.

  "Have you confirmed our suspicions about Ian?"

  "We're almost there."

  "Then I should continue going through the files, to make sure we haven't missed anything. Of course, you could put your people on it, but I'd like to finish what I started."

  "Whatever you want is fine with me. I'd rather use my team elsewhere and you're doing a super job where you are."

  "Thanks, but Mac, there's one more thing." The string of expletives that followed her report about Kenny nearly fried the wires. "I'm going after Stormwalker to warn him."

  "You be careful, y'hear?" She heard both his frustration and his concern.

  "I will."

  She was glad she hadn't told Kenny she planned to look for Stormwalker, that her instincts had warned her to silence, but what she'd kept a secret from Kenny she had no trouble sharing with Mike. He could provide little help, except to suggest that Stormwalker might be with his grandmother, a possibility she'd considered.

  "Are you familiar with his haunts?" Zan asked. "Any places he'd choose if he wanted to get away for awhile."

  "There's only one I know of, a cabin he and his father used for hunting, but it's been years since anyone's been up there. I doubt if the place is still standing."

  "It wouldn't be near Le Mirage, would it?"

  "That'd be easy," Mike said with a shake of his head. "No, I'm afraid it's in the Black Hills, just outside the park."

  "I'll need a map," Zan said. "Could you provide one?"

  "I can," he said. "And company, too, if you want."

  "Thanks, but I can't risk your safety. I'll take the map in the morning, if that's possible."

  He nodded. "I'll have it by the time you're ready to leave. Do you want to use the pickup?"

  "I'll use my RV. It has an extra gas tank and heavy duty suspension. And a portable generator." She shrugged. "I'd rather have four walls around me than camp out."

  Zan left to purchase supplies for her trip. Although she wasn't sure she'd find Stormwalker, she bought steaks for two.

  Early the next morning, Mike helped her decipher his lines and markings. He briefed her on key landmarks and the places where she would encounter rough going.

  "Let me go with you. I know this country."

  "Thanks for the concern. I'll be fine." She handed him the keys to her car. "Take her out on the road once or twice." He'd grinned. "It will be my pleasure."

  As the powerful custom engine ate up the miles to Emma Redfeather's house, Zan began to experience a heady sense of enthusiasm. Her pulse quickened and she found it difficult to suppress a smile. She wasn't sure if the cause was the sense of an adventure about to begin or the anticipation of once again being with Stormwalker if she found him.

  Rolling down the window, she let the early morning wind touch the side of her face as it rushed past. Still cool, it served to clear whatever cobwebs clung to her mind after the attack. She found herself reviewing what had happened, searching for some fact she'd initially missed or had forgotten, but by the time Emma's house came into view, she knew there was nothing.

  Stormwalker's grandmother was working in her garden and beckoned to Zan to join her. "Can I help?" Zan asked.

  "I'm pulling weeds," Emma said.

  Zan smiled at her. "I think I can handle that."

  They knelt between neighboring rows of the summer's last crop of vegetables and worked in comfortable silence. Finally, Zan asked, "Has your grandson been here?"

  Emma chuckled. "And I thought you came to see me."

  Zan blushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude, Grandmother."

  "I'm glad you called me that," Emma said. "I hope it will mean more between us someday."

  "I'm not sure I understand."

  "You have some feelings for my grandson, haven't you?"

  "I sure haven't fooled anyone," Zan said, "except maybe myself."

  Emma smiled warmly at her. "Just so you're not fooling yourself, any more."

  "No, Grandmother, not anymore."

  Emma shook her head once in satisfaction. "He stopped here on his way. Said he was going away to make things safer for everyone but didn't say where."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "Yesterday," Emma said. "Just after the sun came up."

  "Did he say how long he planned to be away?" Zan asked. When Emma shook her head, Zan began pulling idly at another patch of weeds, estimating traveling time to Le Mirage. She looked up, saw the mountains at the horizon line and silently wondered if her search would take her that far.

  "Why does Billy Winter hate your grandson?"

  "You got time?"

  "For answers I do."

  "When Stormwalker was a child, the other boys taunted him and called him 'White Eyes'. He came to me and asked why his eyes were not a warm, honest brown like everyone else's. I knew that the white-man scientists had ideas about how such things could or could not happen. But I was not one of those and I said, 'Perhaps some long forgotten wasichu lived among us and left an echo of himself in our blood. Maybe this white man who should remain buried in time has come back to life in you as a sign from Wakan Tanka.'

  "He wanted to know if I could make some medicine that would change him to be like everyone else. I told him no medicine exists to make a man into something he is not. Even Old Elk didn't have such power.

  "'You are who you are meant to be,' I told him. 'Your eyes are of the sky, the oceans, the four-legged who roams where he wishes. Ours' are of the earth. If you are made different, perhaps it is meant for you to see what we cannot, to go where we cannot. Your eyes, like your strength, are gifts to be used wisely and for the good of your people.'

  "So he ran with the pack of boys, some older, some younger, all of them getting into this kind of mischief or that, most of the time managing to escape without doing damage to themselves or others.

  "With patience, he endured the taunts and jokes about the difference that set him apart from the others, about the gentleness they saw as timidity, about the good mind that often guided them away from serious harm. He'd been taught never to use his physical strength in anger and he took no action, knowing he could put an end to the torment any time he'd had enough.

  "One day he decided the time had come. He knew he didn't have to prove anything to himself, but he did have to prove himself to the others, or they would never leave him in peace.

  He challenged each of the boys to a contest based not on strength but on skill. Each opponent chose the sport in which he excelled, but when it was finished, he had beaten them all, each at his own game.

  "Now, instead of making him the butt of their teasing, they chose him to be their leader and never again called him anything but Stormwalker or Kola, which means friend. All except the one whose place he'd taken. His name was Billy Winter."

  "Is it possible that what happened back then could have been enough to turn Billy against him forever?"

  Emma shrugged. "Sometimes when the hurt is too deep to touch, a man will defend the pain he can reach. So a test of skill becomes more important than it should and the real hurt festers unseen until it can no longer be contained."

  Zan considered her words. Although she wanted the facts behind Emma's cryptic message, intuition told her she would have to find them elsewhere.

  Even so, Emma had said a lot. The animosity between Stormwalker and Billy Winter was old and ran deep, and such great anger often took the place of great love. That these bitter enemies had once been close friends made sense. She nodded and looked at the horizon again.

  "Why do your eyes wander so far?" Emma asked.

  Worry skittered along her nerve endings and the need to see Stormwalker's face tugged at her. "I have to find your grandson. I don't want to offend you, but it's necessary."

  "I know, Granddaughter," the old woman said with a smile. "We will have time later on, when everything is settled."

  Zan had the road to herself. The sky was a bright autumn blue and the breeze, though warm, had lost its blazing heat. The fields of grass bordering the highway had begun to fade from summer yellow to autumn brown. Within days, the aspen and cottonwood leaves would turn as well and the brief but potent Dakota summer would be over.

  She had a feeling she would find Stormwalker at Le Mirage and made that her next stop. She followed the streambed as far as the woods bordering the meadow. After parking the camper beneath a rocky overhang, she entered the woods. When she broke through to the other side of the trees, she saw the vista stretched out before her, as breathtaking as it had been the first time she'd seen it.

  She looked for signs of a campfire or footprints along the stream bank, but found nothing. That didn't surprise her. He always destroyed evidence of his visits, brushing away his tracks and packing out any refuse to preserve the unspoiled nature of the place.

 

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