Night of the Panther Read online

  Honor steeled herself against his cutting tone. His ability to slice to the bone with words had always intimidated her. But at least he’d made clear the rules of this game they were about to play. The gloves were off. He meant things to be nasty. Still, she realized, for all his apparent desire to wound her, there was something fiendishly beautiful about his wrath, and she, after all, was a deserving target.

  He nodded toward one of the chairs that faced his desk.

  She took it, relieved when he sat down as well. Somehow he didn’t seem quite so dangerous across the expanse of teakwood, perhaps because their heights were more equal. She gauged him to be at least six foot two, several inches taller than she was at five foot five.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,” she said, making a clumsy attempt at conversation. “It’s been a long time.”

  The bones of his face seemed to sharpen as he stared at her, intensifying the dark, flaring angles. “You don’t give yourself enough credit,” he said. “I’ve been trying to forget you for eighteen years.”

  Honor touched the hem of her jacket with unsteady fingers, adjusting the silky material. She’d opened herself for that blow. What she hadn’t expected was that he would so readily admit how affected he’d been by her.

  She glanced up, wishing she could express to him how sorry she was, longing to say anything that would help heal the wounds. But even if she’d been able to summon the words, it wouldn’t have been safe to utter them. The cold white flame that burned in his eyes told her not to try anything so condescending as an apology after all this time.

  “Maybe I should tell you why I’m here,” she suggested.

  “Yes.” He leaned back in the leather executive chair, ebony hair cascading down his back. “Do that.”

  “I’m sure you’re aware of what’s happening on the White Mountain Reservation.” She hesitated, anticipating a reaction, and got none. “They believe something’s polluting the groundwater.”

  “What does that have to do with you? Or me?”

  Honor saw no choice but to tell him what had happened. It was the only way to explain why she was there. The shaman had told her that he’d called and written Johnny, asking for help, but Johnny had turned down his requests. Obviously the old man intended Honor to be a troubleshooter. She’d been sent in to fix a problem no one else could.

  “Your grandfather came to my bookstore in Scottsdale,” she explained. “He asked if I would talk to you.”

  “He came to you? Why?”

  “Perhaps because of my father,” she said, sensing that now wasn’t the time to reveal Chy Starhawk’s real reasons. “They say it’s runoff from the Bartholomew mines that’s fouling the pastureland water.”

  Johnny didn’t respond except to tilt back and rest his head against the chair as he studied her. Tough break, but it’s not my problem, he seemed to be saying.

  “I know you’re not on the best of terms with your grandfather,” Honor continued, goaded by his silence. “But isn’t there something you can do? The tribe’s livelihood is at stake.”

  The light caught his hair, giving it an iridescent sheen as he swung around in the chair and stared out the window. “I did do something,” he said. “I wrote the tribal council and offered to send someone in my place, one of my colleagues. He’s a bright young lawyer, familiar with both environmental and tribal law.” He turned back from the window. “My grandfather refused.”

  Honor wasn’t surprised. The shaman hadn’t mentioned Johnny’s counteroffer, but Honor knew a substitute would never satisfy the old man. The warrior he’d seen in his dream had been his grandson.

  Honor considered telling Johnny what she knew of the dream, hoping it would help him understand his grandfather’s urgency. Her only hesitation came from knowing about the dark prophecy associated with Johnny’s origins. There was bad blood between Johnny and Chy Starhawk.

  Months before Johnny’s birth, the shaman had had another dream, one that foretold tragedy. Johnny’s mother had become pregnant by an Irish artisan with whom she was desperately in love. But the man didn’t share her feelings, and when he abandoned her, she became despondent. Two days after Johnny’s birth, she drowned herself in a river that ran through the reservation. Her suicide seemed to fulfill the dark prophecy, and Johnny had never been able to escape it. It had caused him to be shunned by those in his tribe who still believed in the ancient ways. It had made him an outsider among his own people.

  “Why are you here. Honor?”

  Johnny’s question startled her. “I thought I told you,” she said. “Your grandfather asked me to come, and I felt . . . an obligation.”

  “An obligation? In what way?”

  The hooded interest in his eyes made her cautious.

  If he’d been at all receptive or compassionate, she might have told him that she was there because of him, that she was trying to atone in this way for her part in what had happened. It would have been such a relief to unburden herself of the guilt she’d lived with, to share the heartache. All she’d ever wanted was his forgiveness.

  But she couldn’t open herself up that way. Everything about him seemed poised for some retaliatory move. She was aware of the flicker of alertness in his gaze, the glare of rapidly contracting pupils. He had the instincts of a hunting cat, and he was waiting for her to reveal herself, to give him a fatal glimpse of her vulnerability.

  “If the Bartholomew mines are involved,” she said finally, “then I have a responsibility to try to help.”

  He remained tilted back in the chair, contemplating her. “I’m surprised at you, Honor,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “I never thought you’d go up against your father this way. But then betrayal comes naturally to you, doesn’t it?”

  Honor bit back a stunned gasp. Did he hate her so much? “That’s unfair,” she said, her voice shaking. “My father and I haven’t spoken in years. I could hardly bear the sight of him after your trial. He—”

  She broke off, wanting desperately to put the blame for what happened on her father, yet knowing she couldn’t, not totally. He had put terrible pressure on her. He’d made promises he didn’t keep, but she was the one who’d taken the witness stand. She was the one who’d testified.

  “My relationship with him has deteriorated completely,” she said, her voice flattened by the weight of despair she felt. “I left home after college. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Johnny rose abruptly and walked to the window, staring out. He was a formidable figure in the streaming light, icy and remote, his jaw tautly flexed.

  Honor drew in a breath, gathering herself, trying to remember what she was there for. “I didn’t come here to drag up the past,” she said. “And even if I had, it’s clear that the last thing you want to hear from me is how sorry I am. But I am sorry—” She caught back a sob, startled at the raw pain locked up in that one word. “Terribly. Now . . . please, couldn’t we put our differences aside for a moment and talk about the reservation?”

  He remained at the window, his gaze fixed on some distant point. “Go ahead,” he said after a moment. “Talk. Apparently that’s what you came here for.”

  His supreme indifference in the face of her pain angered her. She found herself wanting to say something that would shake him up, force him to respond. Anything was better than his glacial contempt. “Those mountains were your home once,” she said hotly. “Is all that gone, your sense of community, of belonging? And if you don’t care about the people, what about the animals and the trees? I can’t believe you want to see all that natural beauty destroyed, contaminated with toxic runoff and chemical sludge.”

  He sighed wearily, impatient with it all. “Aren’t you getting carried away, Honor? The tribe has access to lawyers from the Indian Legal Services. The offer of my colleague is still good if they want it. They’ll be fine.”

  She rose out of the chair. “But, Johnny, they want you! You’re one of them, for God’s sake. Have you forgotten you’re half-Apache?” />
  He whirled on her, the icy flame leaping in his eyes. “Forgotten?” he said. “I wish to hell I could forget. What would you like me to remember about my Apache heritage. Honor? That my warrior ancestors believed in retribution? That vengeance was a matter of honor? An Apache never forgets a betrayal, never forgives. Is that what you want me to remember?”

  She stepped back, trembling. His body was taut, poised to strike, alive with uncoiling threat. She had always known in her soul that if something turned Johnny Starhawk cold, he would be a dangerous man.

  “Get out of here, Honor,” he said harshly. “Make a run for it now, while I’m still feeling civilized enough to let you go.”

  Two

  ALONE IN HIS OFFICE Johnny was grimly aware of his own raging pulse. It had been eighteen years since he’d seen her, but she hadn’t changed. She still had that same hesitant, maybe-we-could-be-friends smile he’d found irresistible when they were teenagers. She was still golden, still as pristine and untouchable as he remembered. And God, achingly beautiful with all that trembling anguish in her voice. Even when she was trying to be tough, her blue-gray gaze was wistful, pleading to be understood.

  He swept a hand through his hair, shoving back the darkness that had fallen over his eyes as he stared at the door she’d just fled through. He thought he’d conquered his feelings for her. He’d thought himself free, but perhaps he would never be free of her. From the first moment he’d set eyes on her in the dingy corridors of Roosevelt High School so many years ago, he’d known she was boo begoz’aa da, forbidden to him.

  Her father’s wealth and position alone made her unreachable, but something far more basic than that had kept him at a distance—her pale beauty. Her eyes were the same color as the morning mists that rose off the river bordering her family’s estate, separating it from the reservation. He’d noticed her walking there, a pensive dreamer, haunting the opposite shore. She’d had a translucent quality he associated with fragile things, rose petals and dragonfly wings. A hard touch—a man’s touch—would surely leave marks on her body. At sixteen that thought had both aroused and frightened him.

  He might never have spoken to her at all if she hadn’t broken the barriers with her shy smile. He’d noticed her glancing at him when they passed in the hallways at high school. But when he’d turned, she was always too far away, darting in and out of his focus like a deer seen through rifle sights. Finally one day, his curiosity aroused, he’d followed her to her locker. He was standing across the narrow corridor, waiting when she turned. There was nowhere for her to run, nowhere to hide, and after a moment of visible panic, she’d found her smile again.

  A shaking sound had trembled on her lips as he’d approached, half whimper, half sigh. It had astonished him, that sound. It had ripped through his heart and gut, turning him into a hardened animal. All he’d wanted was to touch her. His body spasmed painfully with the impulse, but his hand had locked. He couldn’t do it. Something powerful had held him back, something as ancient and unchangeable as his Apache bloodlines.

  That first encounter had set the boundaries of their relationship. They were destined to become friends, kindred spirits, to share their loneliness, but nothing else. He had never touched her in all the months they knew each other, except accidentally once, and even then the sight of his dark hand on her fair skin had made them both pull back. Their eyes had met, and the staggering sexual truth of their attraction couldn’t be denied.

  They had never touched again.

  Johnny’s hand clenched painfully now as he remembered the rest. He’d fought the young toughs who’d taunted and humiliated her, almost killing one of them. He’d protected Honor Bartholomew from everything and everyone, especially from himself.

  He dragged back his chair and sank down in it, sweeping a hand across his desk as if to clear the clutter. A pencil box and letter opener went flying. Close up the wound, Starhawk, he told himself savagely. You’re bleeding all over the place. It was insane to let himself wallow in romantic teenage swill this way. He had work to do, a landmark case in progress. She’d disrupted his schedule enough for one day. Make that one lifetime, he thought.

  He glanced at his desk calendar and saw Honor’s name in the ten o’clock slot, neatly printed by his secretary. The pain that rose inside him was lacerating as he pulled the page from its binding and crushed it in his fist. Seeing her again had brought it all back. Now even to read her name ripped at him.

  For all the anguish in her eyes, she couldn’t possibly have been torn apart the way he had. Every barely audible word she’d uttered on that witness stand had clawed a piece from his soul. Just once, he thought. Just once I want her to know this pain, to hurt the way I have.

  “Pack your clothes, lady! Go home.”

  Honor sighed heavily. She’d been issuing that order to herself all evening, but she hadn’t yet moved from where she sat in the wingback chair of her hotel room. Not even to seek sustenance or to answer nature’s call. She couldn’t. She was immobilized, like a woman turned to stone. Not that she questioned the soundness of her own advice. It was probably the sanest plan she’d had in recent days, but something wouldn’t let her act on it.

  “Leave now,” she promised herself, “and this is the worst it will get. You’ll go back to Scottsdale, reopen your bookstore, and all this will seem like a bad dream.”

  She pressed her fingers to her temples, massaging the hot throb that wouldn’t go away. The worst was plenty bad enough. She had a headache coming on, and her whole body felt bruised and aching. However, if she stayed, a headache would be the least of her worries. Johnny seemed determined to wreak havoc, and vengeance, and anything else that could possibly be wreaked. It was a frightening prospect.

  “Go home, Honor. Pack. Get on that plane.” She glanced over at her suitcase and felt the impulse to act move through her, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Going home was too easy. There were any number of reasons why she couldn’t board that plane and fly away with a clear conscience.

  She’d be letting Chy Starhawk down, but perhaps more important, she’d be letting herself down. Going home was exactly what Johnny would expect her to do. He undoubtedly thought of her as weak-willed, and she couldn’t fault him for that. He had little reason to think otherwise.

  She’d let herself be swayed by her father, admittedly an intimidating man for a fourteen-year-old to defy, and the results had been disastrous. He’d persuaded her that if she didn’t testify voluntarily, she would be subpoenaed, which would reflect badly on the Bartholomew name. And then he’d promised to intervene with the judge, an old friend, if Johnny was convicted, and see that Johnny didn’t serve any time. Afterward she’d realized his plan all along was to separate her and Johnny.

  After the trial, when she’d gone to see Johnny to beg his forgiveness and try to explain, she’d learned he’d been sent away as a condition of his suspended sentence. She’d been talked out of trying to find him by his Apache godmother, the woman who’d raised him after his own mother died. A petite, soft-spoken woman, his godmother had been both compassionate and convincing as she begged Honor to leave Johnny alone, to let him get on with his life and make whatever he could of it. He’d been hurt enough, she’d said.

  Honor had been a shy child by nature and raised to be mindful of authority and respectfully obedient to the adults in her life. Spontaneity was not encouraged, and what independent spirit stirred inside her gentle soul was quickly squashed under the weight of her father’s rules and regulations.

  But she was an adult now. Whether it was fate or circumstance that had intervened in the form of Johnny’s grandfather, he was giving her an opportunity to right a wrong, and this time she needed to follow through, to have the courage of her conscience. She had something to prove, to herself as well as Johnny.

  She rose from the chair and released a sigh of relief. Free at last! An uneasy smile crossed her face as she glanced at her reflection in the dresser’s mirror. But free for what? A fight to the d
eath with the courtroom warrior?

  Good manners are never old-fashioned. It was her mother’s favorite saying, and Honor could almost hear Adele Bartholomew’s musical tones resonating in her head as she smiled politely at one of the most obstinate women she had ever encountered, Johnny Starhawk’s receptionist.

  “If you won’t make me an appointment,” Honor said, “then perhaps you’ll tell me when Mr. Starhawk is coming in?”

  The svelte auburn-haired receptionist shot Honor a glare designed to vaporize her on the spot. “Mr. Starhawk isn’t coming in this morning,” she said, turning back to her typewriter. “He’s in court.”

  “In that case,” Honor said evenly, “I’ll wait.”

  The secretary drew a deep breath and mustered a cold smile. “I think Mr. Starhawk would prefer that you didn’t.”

  The gauntlet had been thrown down. “I’d prefer to hear that from Mr. Starhawk himself, thank you,” Honor said politely but firmly.

  “You’re about to get your wish.”

  The deep tone of Johnny’s words sent a shock wave of alarm through Honor. It had come from behind her, but she hadn’t even heard the office door open. When had he entered the room?

  She whirled to face him and saw the menace in his dark eyes even before he voiced it. “If you know what’s good for you”—he said so softly he could barely be heard—“you’ll get the hell out of here.”

  Honor tried to speak, but she was trembling too hard. A shudder of fear weakened her thighs and swept up her body, slamming into the lump that had formed in her throat. “No—” She shook her head. “No, I won’t do that.”

  Logic told her he couldn’t force her to leave his office without becoming physical. She didn’t think he would do that in front of his receptionist. She prayed he wouldn’t, but she flinched back instinctively as he raised his hand.