Off the Grid by P. J. Tracy Read Free Book Online Page B

that were biting into her wrists, then moved back to give her space.
    She rubbed at her eyes and nose and looked up at him. “I’m Taka,” she finally choked out. “Are you here to save us?”
    He cleared his throat and tried to answer, but all he could do was nod.

7
    E lbow Lake was still this mild Sunday morning, its glassy surface scattered with pink diamonds from the rising sun. This was the quiet time, when only the water spoke, in hushed burbles that gently woke the world around it.
    A V-shaped flock of migrating geese was the first to break the early-morning silence, honking overhead, looking for a place to rest their wings after flying the red-eye on their way south for the winter. A loon uttered a haunting cry from Spider Bay, calling its brethren to do the same before the weather turned.
    This was the one place on the reservation Chief Bellanger always came to when the world threatened to suck all the peace right out of him.
    It was maybe the worst thing about being Chief of Tribal Police. He got all the bad news long before anyone else, and there was a large loneliness in that. The first call this morning had come from Bully Bad Heart Bull. They weren’t close, exactly, but the Chief had given him a training slot on the Tribal Police Force back when he’d been rejected by every branch of the service because of a skin condition. Bully had been a gawky, tall kid then, subject to boils, and damn near suicidal because he couldn’t enlist with the rest of his friends to become a modern warrior for his tribe and his country.
    Within a year, the boils were gone, he’d filled out some, got some policing experience under his belt, and the Minneapolis PD was willing to look at him. As a Native American, he was an ideal liaison for the tribal community clustered in the city, and he was there still. He’d never forgotten the boost up the ladder Chief had given him; thus, the call. But it wasn’t a good one.
    I found one of the kidnapped Sand Lake girls this morning, Chief. Aimee Sergeant. She was murdered.
    Chief had just closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the phone while he listened to the gruesome details.
Did you call Sand Lake?
    The Feds took care of that, and MPD. They don’t like beat cops spreading that kind of word. But I remembered you were tight with the Sand Lake Chief. Thought you might want to give him a call.
    Thanks, Bully.
    There’s another thing. The BCA lead thinks Aimee ran to save the others.
    A little warrior.
    Yeah. Something Sand Lake can hang on to.
    And so, Chief had made his condolence call and then gone to the lake, where things made a lot more sense than a little girl ending up dead in a vacant lot.
    His canoe cut soundlessly through the water, along the margins of tall grass near the shore. He was pleased to see some of the seed heads swelling with wild rice. It would be prime for harvest in another week, when he would enlist his cousin Moose to paddle while he knocked the ripe grain into the bottom of the canoe.
    His “Old Woman,” as he affectionately called his wife of thirty-two years, would then weigh and bag the rice to sell to the two local gas stations, the scant tourist roadside stands, and the casino on the northern border of Elbow Lake Reservation. Their share of the proceeds would be their mad money for the year, never much, but enough to blow without guilt on a nice dinner and a few games at the Golden Eagle Bingo Hall.
    Not that they hurt financially. But if you were an Indian who’d grown up on the rez fifty-some years ago—and both of them were—you learned the prudence of frugality pretty much from weaning. You also learned the importance of continuing tradition, whether the motivation was sheer practicality or cultural pride and preservation.
    Chief dipped his paddle and created a whirlpool of resistance in the water that slowed and finally stopped the canoe; better to see the pink diamonds of sunrise transform to a flawless chromium white as the sky