Dance of the Bones by J. A. Jance Page B

and preloaded credit cards. It was also where she kept a collection of burner phones. Just because she knew how to get in touch with ­people didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted them to be able to get back in touch with her.
    Taking one of those out, she consulted the little black book that also resided in the safe. She found the number she needed and made the call. There was no sense in stalling around about it. She had made her decision.
    Big Bad John Lassiter had to go, the sooner the better!

 
    CHAPTER 4
    THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG ago that Young Girl —­ Chehia —­ from Rattlesnake Skull village, was out walking in the desert where she found a young man who was injured. He was lying under a mesquite tree, crying. Young Girl knew at once that Young Man was Apache, Ohb. Even though she did not speak Young Man ’ s language, Young Girl knew that he needed help.
    You must understand, nawoj, my friend, that the Apache and the Desert ­People have always been enemies. When I ’ itoi created everything, he loved the Tohono O ’ odham, the Desert ­People. They were friendly and industrious, so I ’ itoi kept them living close to his sacred mountain, Ioligam, where they stayed busy in their fields, growing corn and wheat, melons and squash.
    But I ’ itoi found the Apache troublesome. They quarreled a lot and they were very lazy, so I ’ itoi sent them to live on the far side of the desert. There they found plenty of animals to hunt, but it was hard to grow food. And so, whenever the Apaches grew too hungry, they would ride across the desert to steal the food the Desert ­People had grown.
    When Chehia, Young Girl, found the injured man, she could have just walked away. But he cried so piteously that she did not. Instead, she helped him to a nearby cave and hid him there. Every day, she would slip away from the village and bring him water to drink and food to eat. Soon he grew well enough to return to his own ­people, but by then Young Man and Young Girl had fallen in love. He asked Chehia to run away with him, but she was afraid to leave her own ­people.
    One day, when she brought Young Man ’ s food, he pointed off across the valley to a place where smoke was rising in the air. “ Those signals are signs that my ­people are coming, ” he said. “ You must run back to the village and warn yours that they are in danger. ”
    LANI’S BODY TENSED WITH UNEASE as Leo Ortiz turned the Toyota Tundra off the highway and headed down Coleman Road. The three of them—­Leo Ortiz, Lani, and Leo’s son, Gabe—­had driven the whole way from Sells in almost total silence, one broken only by incessant clicks from the video game Gabe was playing on his phone in the backseat.
    Off to the left, Lani could see the charco, the water hole, that in her mind still belonged to the long-­abandoned village of Rattlesnake Skull. Now, as often happened when she was upset, the almost invisible pin-­sized flaws on Lani’s face—­ones she covered each morning with deftly applied makeup—­began to prickle and itch. She knew what was causing the old ant bites to burn—­Rattlesnake Skull charco was where all this had started so many years ago. The water hole was where the authorities had found the body of Gina Antone, a teenage Tohono O’odham girl who had been tortured and murdered by an evil ohb-­ like Anglo named Andrew Carlisle. Garrison Ladd, Lani’s mother’s first husband, had been a suspect in that case right along with Carlisle.
    In the course of the homicide investigation, Diana and the dead girl’s grandmother, Rita Antone, had been thrown together. To everyone’s amazement and to the dismay of the ­people on the reservation, the two women—­the Indian and the Anglo, the old Tohono O’odham widow and the young Milgahn one—­had become fast friends.
    On the reservation, Rita