Nude. Her gaze bounced down, widened. Leaning over she yanked at the sheet and pulled it up, her mind in shock. She shouldn’t be nude. She’d had shorts on. A shirt. She distinctly remembered…

She fell back on the bed with a mortified groan. She distinctly remembered all but inviting Joe Youngblood to tear her clothes off of her. And if memory served, it hadn’t taken all that much coaxing for him to do just that. She yanked a pillow over her face to shut out the humiliating recollection. But it wouldn’t be so easily banished. The problem with orgasms was that they only wiped the mind clean for a few moments. Well, substantially longer if people knew what they were doing and could, somehow, string round one with rounds two and three so smoothly that it felt like one long, mind-shattering free fall into pleasure.

Joe Youngblood had definitely known what he was doing.

Do I need a condom?

She shivered at the recollection of his voice. It had been a little late to ask since he’d carried her from the kitchen to the bed and had already been buried deep inside her again. But at least he’d summoned the brain-power to think of protection eventually. She hadn’t even given it a moment’s consideration, which made her ever-grateful for the contraceptive patch on her hip. Apparently she’d undergone more changes than she’d thought in the last couple years if she could so easily forget basic sexual safety.

The pillow was tossed aside, and she stared at the ceiling broodingly. One of the only positives for having made her share of mistakes is that it gave her a point of reference. Sleeping with Joe Youngblood wasn’t the worst error she’d ever made in her life. But God help her, it ranked right up there. She’d spent the night having mind-blowing sex with a man she barely knew and who was going to be darn hard to avoid in the future.

But she hadn’t dreamed.

She hadn’t struggled beneath an oppressive blanket of PTSD nightmares that could suck her into their vortex and leave her feeling weak and frightened and hopeless. She supposed she had Joe Youngblood to thank for that, but somehow she couldn’t summon a speck of gratitude.

The shadow-shrouded alley smelled like death. Joe peered through the gloom, gun drawn, and hoped the odor wasn’t an omen. He nudged Arnie and jerked his head toward the overflowing Dumpster against the wall of the next building. Arnie nodded, and they fanned out, approaching carefully. Quintero had been wilier than they’d given him credit for. They’d arrived at his apartment shortly after dawn, warrant in hand. But the drug dealer had gone out the bedroom window as they’d been coming through the front door. He’d disappeared into the alley moments before and the large refuse container offered the best chance of concealment.

Joe held up one hand, and his partner halted, gun trained on the Dumpster. Joe went on silently, spinning rapidly around the other side. The space was empty.

He glanced back at Arnie, the two men communicating silently. While his partner stayed put, Joe checked the rest of the dingy area.

Nothing. Joe turned around, headed back toward Arnie. He was still three yards away when he saw the first sign of movement from the pile of debris inside the Dumpster.

“Down, get down!” He leaped to the side as he shouted, a split second before the area exploded in gunfire. The scene fragmented into stills. Quintero rising from the garbage, his automatic spraying bullets. Arnie stumbling backward, falling against the building. Sliding down its wall to the rubbish-strewn ground.

Joe dived toward his friend, his sights on Quintero as the man turned the gun on him. They fired at the same time, and Joe hit the ground, shielding Arnie’s prone body, prepared to shoot again.

But Quintero was slumped over the front of the Dumpster, his body motionless. As Joe watched, the man’s gun slipped from his hand, clattered to the ground.

“He dead?” Arnie mumbled.

The sound of his partner’s voice had never sounded so good. “Are you?” Joe shot him a quick look, noting the blood running freely down his arm, before turning a watchful gaze back on the dealer.

“Not…even…close.” Arnie stifled a moan as he shifted position, cursed colorfully in English before switching to Spanish. Navajo was too precise a language to lend itself to eloquent cursing. The halting string of obscenities eased Joe’s worry.

Keeping his gun trained on Quintero, Joe pulled his radio from his belt and called for an ambulance. Then he approached the dealer.

He reached out to grab the man’s hair, lifted his head. Quintero’s eyes fluttered, then slid closed again. “You made some bad mistakes all around. You can fix one, though. Give us your supplier’s name. That’s all we want. We’ll have help here in a few minutes.”

But when Joe heard the breath whistling through the man’s chest, he knew that the ambulance wasn’t going to be there in time. Quintero’s lips were moving, but Joe had to lean close to make out the words.

“Go…to…hell.”

The distant sound of sirens could already be heard, but the man’s body had gone limp. Joe released him and eased away. Hell was an Anglo concept, not a Navajo one. But if it did exist, he was pretty sure Quintero was already on his way there.

Arnie had already been taken away to the hospital, but Joe waited for FBI agent Delmer Mitchell to arrive on the scene. Another member of the task force, he was investigating the suspected drug-related homicides of three Navajo youth two weeks earlier.

Joe stood a ways off as the agent went through Quintero’s pockets. “Seems like your job would be easier if you could just do this yourself.”

Joe didn’t bother answering. The Navajo aversion to death was too deeply ingrained in him to be put aside simply to conduct the search, and he knew it was useless to try and explain it to the belagana. Mitchell held up a cell phone, car keys and a large wad of cash. “This is it.” He got to his feet, holding the contents up for Joe’s perusal.

Shoving aside his distaste at touching the dead man’s belongings, he took the cell phone and turned it over, studying it. It looked like one of the disposables that were showing up in nearby department stores. Many of the homes on Navajo Nation lands still didn’t have landlines but cell phones were getting increasingly common, though the coverage was sporadic. Some criminals assumed they were untraceable with the use of prepaid plans. Joe was hoping that didn’t turn out to be the case.

He pressed the button to list the incoming call log and was unsurprised to find it empty. The same was true of the outgoing log. But when he hit Redial a number appeared on the screen and a hard smile crossed his lips.

A whistle escaped Mitchell’s lips. “The guy was carrying over five thousand dollars.” He looked at Joe. “You get anything?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t have much time. He’d have to follow up on the caller before news of Quintero’s death got out. “I’m going to search his apartment. And then I’ll find out whether or not this number leads anywhere.”

“Good-sized bust?” Captain Tapahe leaned back in his chair, working his shoulders tiredly.

Standing before the man’s desk, Joe nodded. “About three kilos of ice. Street value would be about a million, a million point three.”

Tapahe’s face brightened. “Not bad. Maybe he’s our guy after all.”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was surprised Quintero has risen that high in the feeding chain, but he doesn’t have the brains to coordinate the kind of network we’re tracking. He was strictly a middleman, and he wasn’t interested in sharing the name of his supplier.”

“Well, he won’t be talking now.” The captain’s voice was matter-of-fact. “The warrant turn up anything in his apartment?”