EPILOGUE
The flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix took barely an hour and a half, but it felt like crossing into another world.
Kari sat in a window seat, watching the landscape transform beneath her.
First the sprawl of L.A.—endless grids of streets and highways, the gray-brown smudge of smog hanging over everything, swimming pools glinting like scattered coins in the afternoon sun.
Then the mountains, sharp and sudden, a wall of rock separating the coast from everything that lay beyond.
And finally the desert, stretching out in every direction, vast and ancient and utterly indifferent to the small dramas of human beings.
She pressed her forehead against the cool plastic of the window and let herself breathe.
It was over. Diana Shepherd—Corinne Lindquist—was in custody, awaiting psychiatric evaluation.
Tayen was safe, reunited with Lola, heading home to the reservation to start rebuilding her life.
The five women Diana had killed would never get justice in any real sense—nothing could bring them back, nothing could undo the years their families had spent believing their daughters had simply succumbed to the pressures of a brutal industry—but at least there would be answers now.
At least there would be acknowledgment that their deaths hadn't merely been tragic accidents.
Kari closed her eyes and saw Diana's face in the storage unit as she explained why she'd killed the women she claimed to love. The anguish in her voice. The absolute conviction that she'd been helping them, saving them from a world that would have destroyed them eventually.
It was the conviction that haunted Kari most. Not the violence—she'd seen violence before, had long ago accepted that human beings were capable of terrible things.
But the certainty. The way Diana had constructed a reality in which murder was mercy, in which love meant never letting go, in which the only way to protect someone was to destroy them.
The plane began its descent, and Kari opened her eyes to watch Phoenix rise out of the desert—the cluster of buildings, the highways stretching out like arteries, the mountains standing sentinel in the distance.
It wasn't the reservation, not yet, but it was close.
She could feel something in her chest loosening, some tension she hadn't realized she'd been carrying starting to ease.
The plane touched down with a gentle bump, and Kari gathered her things.
Time to go home.
The desert air hit Kari like a blessing when she stepped off the plane—hot and dry and clean, nothing like the heavy smog of Los Angeles. She breathed it in deeply as she walked across the tarmac, relaxing a little more with every step.
Ben was waiting for her at the arrivals area, leaning against his truck with his arms crossed. He seemed to be trying very hard to look casual, but he couldn't entirely hide the worry buried deep in his eyes.
"You look like hell," he said by way of greeting.
"Thanks. It's good to see you too."
He grabbed her bag and tossed it in the back of the truck, then held the passenger door open for her with exaggerated courtesy. "Heard you got into some trouble out there. Concussion, cracked ribs, nearly strangled by a serial killer in a storage unit."
"News travels fast."
"Detective Carter called me. She wanted to make sure someone would keep an eye on you when you got back.
" Ben pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway heading toward the reservation.
"She also said you were a stubborn pain in the ass who wouldn't follow basic safety protocols and nearly got yourself killed. Her words."
Kari laughed, then winced when her ribs protested. "That sounds about right."
They drove in comfortable silence for a while, the familiar landscape rolling past—red rocks and scrub brush and the endless blue sky that Kari had missed more than she'd realized.
The land felt ancient and patient, unchanged by the dramas of human beings, indifferent to their struggles and triumphs.
There was something comforting in that indifference.
Eventually, though, she turned to Ben. "Any updates on the Naalnish investigation?"
Ben shook his head grimly. "Nothing. The FBI closed the case, and I haven't been able to dig up anything myself."
"You've looked at the other cases? The ones my mother was investigating?"
"A little."
She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"Look," he said, "it's not like I've been on this full-time. I still have my regular workload, you know?"
Kari sighed. The explanation made sense, but it didn't make her feel any better.
"I've been thinking," Ben said slowly, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. "We need help. Someone who can investigate from inside the federal system, who has access to databases and resources we can't get on our own."
"Who would help us? Who—" She stopped suddenly. There was one person who might help them. Might. Or he might just tell them it wasn't their case and they needed to back off. Difficult to tell.
"You're not talking about Daniels again, are you?" she asked.
"It's worth a shot, isn't it?"
Kari fell silent, thinking about the FBI agent whom she had once known as Uncle Paul.
The man who, once upon a time, had been her father's partner.
Kari's path had intersected with Daniels's on previous investigations, and it had become clear very quickly that he was not about to let family ties interfere with his work.
His loyalty was to the job, first and foremost. Everything else was secondary.
Still, if she could convince him…
"There's no reason to worry about getting shut out of the investigation anymore," Ben said with a derisive snort. "There is no investigation."
"I'll reach out to him," Kari said. "It's a big ask—snooping around a closed case that's none of his business, especially if there are higher powers who have a vested interest in making the whole thing go away.
But maybe I can convince him to keep his ear to the ground, if only for old time's sake. "
"Sounds like a plan." Ben pulled off the highway onto the smaller road that led to the reservation. "But you should get some rest first. You look like you need it."
He dropped her off at her house as the sun was setting, painting the desert in shades of orange and red that seemed to set the land on fire.
Kari stood on her porch for a long moment, just breathing, letting the silence and the space wash over her.
After the noise and crowds and constant motion of L.A.
, the quiet of the reservation felt like medicine.
She unlocked her door and stepped inside, dropping her bag in the hallway. The house was exactly as she'd left it—a little dusty, a little empty, but familiar. Home.
She was heading to the kitchen to make tea when the phone rang.
Not her cell phone. Her landline—the old one mounted on the kitchen wall, a relic from another era that she'd never bothered to disconnect. It almost never rang. Almost no one had the number.
Kari stared at it for a moment, an uneasy feeling prickling at the back of her neck. Then she picked up the receiver.
"Hello?"
The voice on the other end was distorted, electronically altered to be unrecognizable—a mechanical rasp that could have been anyone or no one. "Detective Blackhorse. Welcome home."
"Who is this?"
"Someone who's been watching your investigation with great interest."
Kari waited. The person on the other end of the line waited, too.
"What do you want?" Kari finally asked.
"I want you to walk away from the Naalnish case. Go back to solving crimes on your reservation. Live your life. Grow old. Die peacefully in your bed—instead of cold and alone in the desert."
"Is that a threat?"
"More like a warning—and the only one you're going to get. Don't forget: the same thing that happened to your mother could very easily happen to you."
"What do you know about—"
The line went dead before Kari could even finish the sentence.
Shakily, Kari hung up the phone and took a deep, calming breath. Who had been on the other end of the line? Someone who knew exactly what had happened to Evan Naalnish—and maybe to Kari's mother, as well?
Someone who'd had a hand in what happened to them?
Gooseflesh gathered on her arms. For all she knew, she'd just been speaking with her mother's killer. And she didn’t need to be any good at reading between the lines to realize she could very well be next if she didn't stop investigating.
But when had Kari Blackhorse ever been the kind of woman to walk away from a fight?