The Thunder Keeper(62)

Vicky drew in a deep breath. “The pipe’s there,” she said after a moment. “I intend to prove it.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“The same way an oil and gas company proved methane gas on the Navajo reservation.” She shook the man’s hand and thanked him again, ignoring the puzzled look that had come into his eyes.



Vicky walked back across the campus, pulling her cell phone from her bag as she went and punching in the number for Jacob Hazen’s office. There was a roll of thunder in the distance, a speckle of rain. After she’d talked her way past the secretary—“Don’t-tell-me-Mr.-Hazen’s-in-a-meeting this is an emergency”—the voice of the Navajo lawyer burst through the line, as loud and clear as if he were in one of the buildings she was walking by.

“Tell me, Jacob,” she said, launching into the reason for the call, marveling at the white habits she’d picked up, “who interpreted the satellite data on the new methane gas field?”

There was a pause on the other end. “This have to do with the brief?”

“The brief is at the appellate court,” she said, letting herself into the Bronco. Rain pecked at the windshield.

The man’s sigh sounded like a gust of wind through a tunnel. “Geophysicist at Global Visions, the satellite company we bought the data from. Name is Dave Hendricks.”

Vicky extracted a notepad and pen from her bag. Thunder came again, causing static on the line. She scribbled down the name of the company. Probably in New Mexico or Arizona, close to Navajo land.

“They’re here in Denver,” the lawyer said, as if he’d tuned in to her thoughts. “Out at the tech center.”

Denver. She glanced past the windshield at the black clouds in the north, over the reservation, and breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the spirits that guarded the world. “Can you get me an appointment this afternoon?”

“This afternoon?”

“I can be there at four,” she said, checking the dashboard clock. It was a little after twelve.

“What’s this about?”

“About a mining company that’s going to destroy a sacred place.”

“I don’t know, Vicky.” Another sigh mingled with the static. “A sacred place, you say?”

“Bear Lake in central Wyoming.”

“The place of the spirits,” the lawyer said after a pause. “Okay. I’ll ask Hendricks if he can help out. Don’t be late.”

Vicky hit the end button, then dialed her firm. After a moment Laola was on the line. “Vicky Holden’s office.”

“Any messages?”

“Secretary of state faxed over a report. You’ll never guess who owns the Kimberly Mining Company.”

“Baider Industries.”

Silence. A second passed before Laola said, “Soon’s the report came in, I tried to call Father John, but he was out. I left a message. Oh, one more thing. Lucas called. Wanted to make sure dinner’s still on tonight.”

Vicky told the secretary she’d see her tomorrow and pressed a couple of buttons. Lucas’s voice mail clicked on. “I’m running late, Lucas,” she said, cradling the phone into her shoulder, starting the engine and steering the Bronco into the traffic moving away from campus. She was always late with her children, she thought. Always behind someplace where she should have been.

“It’ll be seven-thirty before I can get to the restaurant.” She paused. “I’m looking forward to it.”

As she took the on-ramp to I-80, she saw the black sedan in the side mirror. The vehicle was coming up the ramp.

She jammed down the gas pedal and passed a semi, then another, the Bronco shaking beneath her, her hands trembling on the rim of the steering wheel. Then she swung into the passing lane again. Another semi dropped behind, then a truck and sedan. The highway ran ahead. Another semi, as small as a child’s toy, was framed in the gray sky.

She was flooring the gas pedal now, racing toward the semi, putting as much distance as she could between the Bronco and the black sedan behind her. She could hear the thunder in the distance.





27


The storm had broken loose, washing great sheets of water over the pickup as Father John drove north across the reservation. Thunder crashed overhead, followed by jagged flashes of lightning that lit up the air a moment before the haze closed in again. The pavement ahead shimmered in the headlights. Occasionally other headlights rose out of the haze, and another vehicle blurred past. He could barely make out the shadows of the foothills to the west, but to the east there was nothing. He might have been driving on the edge of the earth.