Chapter 6: Baptism by Fire
The world shrank to the smell of gasoline and the Chief’s surprised grunt as Adam drove him backward into the display case. Glass exploded. Ancient war clubs clattered around them, heavy things of stone and wood. The first punch was instinct, a hard right to the Chief’s jaw that snapped his head back.
“Run, Diana!” Adam roared, the words tearing from his throat.
She stood frozen for a heartbeat, the thunderbird pipe clutched in one hand, her weapon in the other. The fire, fueled by Jesse’s gasoline, was already climbing the shelves with a dry, hungry crackle. Orange light danced over the stolen masks, making their carved eyes seem alive with malevolent glee.
“I’m not leaving you!” she shouted back.
“The pipe! Get it out!” He didn’t have the breath to argue. The Chief was already recovering, a man built on a foundation of reservation politics and thick-necked pride. He drove a knee up into Adam’s gut.
Air exploded from Adam’s lungs. He staggered, his grip loosening. The Chief shoved him off, grabbing one of the fallen war clubs—a short, brutal thing with a stone head bound by leather. He swung it in a wide, clumsy arc.
Adam ducked. The club whistled past his ear and smashed into a shelf of painted pottery. Shards of clay flew like shrapnel.
“You stupid kid,” the Chief snarled, hefting the club again. “You think this is about some old bones? This is about survival. His money keeps the lights on at the clinic. It puts fuel oil in the elders’ tanks.”
“It puts a leash on you,” Adam spat, circling. The heat was becoming a physical presence, pressing in from all sides. Smoke stung his eyes.
Across the burning aisle, Rostow was a silhouette against the flames, methodically firing toward the small door Jesse had used. He wasn’t trying to hit them; he was cutting off their retreat, herding them toward the inferno.
The Chief lunged again. This time, Adam didn’t dodge. He stepped inside the swing, taking the impact of the Chief’s forearm on his shoulder to get close. He drove his own forehead forward into the bridge of the Chief’s nose.
There was a wet, crunching sound. The Chief howled, stumbling back, blood immediately sheeting down his mouth and chin. The war club clattered to the floor.
Adam didn’t let up. He followed, driving a fist into the man’s kidney, then another. This wasn’t a police arrest. This was something older, more final. Each blow was for Tommy, for the desecrated graves, for the betrayal that poisoned his own home.
A gunshot, different from Rostow’s—sharper, a controlled pair—sliced through the roar of the fire. Diana, from behind a burning shelf, was providing cover. The shots sparked off the concrete near Rostow’s feet, forcing him to take a step back.
It was the opening they needed.
Adam left the Chief gasping and bleeding on the floor. He sprinted toward Diana, the heat blistering the skin on his face. Embers floated in the air like fiery snow.
“Jesse’s door!” he yelled, grabbing her arm.
They ran, hunched over, through the narrowing gauntlet of fire. The hangar was becoming a furnace, the oxygen being greedily consumed. A shelf ahead of them, overloaded with baskets and blankets, groaned and then collapsed in a torrent of flame, blocking the direct route to the exit.
“No, no, no,” Diana coughed, pulling up short.
Adam scanned the chaos. The main door was too far, the path to Jesse’s door now a wall of fire. The Chief was starting to stir. Rostow was advancing again, using the dense smoke as cover.
His eyes fell on the stalled black F-150. Its front end was scorched, steam still whispering from the punctured radiator. But the rolling door behind it was still open, the predawn grey a tantalizing promise of clean air.
“The truck,” he said, pulling her toward it.
“It’s dead!”
“We’re not driving.”
They scrambled around the hood. Rostow saw their intention and changed his angle, cutting across the hangar to intercept. Adam yanked the driver’s door open. The keys were still in the ignition. He turned them. The dashboard lights flickered, but the engine was silent, a dead hunk of metal.
“Push!” he commanded.
Diana didn’t question it. She holstered her weapon and put her shoulder against the warm metal of the door frame, digging her feet into the concrete. Adam did the same on the other side. The truck was immense, a beast of a machine. It didn’t want to move.
“He’s coming!” Diana screamed, her voice tight with strain and smoke.
Adam grunted, pushing with everything he had, his muscles screaming in protest. For a second, nothing. Then, with a reluctant screech of tortured metal, the truck began to roll backward. Slowly at first, then with gathering momentum down the slight incline of the floor.
Rostow broke into a run, raising his weapon. But he was too late. The rolling truck, now a two-ton battering ram, slid past him, its open door slamming into a burning shelf and spinning it away like a matchstick.
It cleared a path.
“Go!” Adam shoved Diana ahead of him.
They sprinted through the gap just as the F-150 crunched to a halt against the far wall. The cool air of the outside hit them like a physical blessing. They gulped it down, stumbling into the gravel yard, their clothes smoldering.
Behind them, the hangar was a vision of hell, flames licking out through the roof.
A engine roared to life. The Chief’s police SUV, its tires kicking up gravel, sped toward them. Adam raised his revolver, but the vehicle didn’t slow to attack. It swerved around them and accelerated down the access road, disappearing into the darkness. The Chief was cutting his losses.
Rostow emerged from the burning doorway, his suit jacket gone, his face smudged with soot. He saw them, saw his collection being consumed, and his expression was one of pure, undiluted rage. He raised his pistol.
A shot rang out, but not from Rostow’s gun.
It came from the tree line. Rostow jerked, a dark flower blooming on his shoulder. He spun, firing wildly into the woods before staggering back toward the burning building, clutching his wound.
Jesse Littlefoot stepped out from the pines, a hunting rifle in his hands, a grim smile on his scarred face. “Told you I was your Uber,” he called out.
There was no time for thanks. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. The fire was now a beacon that would draw every county and state responder for miles.
“We have to go. Now,” Adam said, his voice hoarse.
Diana nodded, still clutching the thunderbird pipe as if it were the only solid thing in the world. She looked from the burning hangar to Jesse, then to Adam. “The photo. Mary’s photo. It’s still in there.”
“It’s ash,” Adam said, pulling her toward the woods. “But we have the pipe. And we have each other.”
The three of them melted into the forest as the first fire truck arrived, its lights painting the trees in fleeting pulses of red and white. They left behind the roaring pyre of Rostow’s ambition, the evidence, and any last illusion of the law that Adam had once sworn to uphold. The path ahead was uncharted, and the only thing they carried was the truth, heavy and smoking in their hands.
The path ahead was uncharted, and the only thing they carried was the truth, heavy and smoking in their hands. Jesse led them through a labyrinth of black spruce and tangled undergrowth, his movements silent and sure. They didn’t speak, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the distant wail of more sirens converging on the inferno.
After what felt like an hour, they emerged at a different gravel service road where Jesse had an old, rust-blistered Bronco waiting. “Get in,” he grunted, not waiting for a reply.
They drove in silence for a long time, the dawn finally breaking in streaks of grey and pink behind the mountains. Diana sat in the back, clutching the pipe, her knuckles white. Adam watched the rez slide by outside his window—the weathered houses, the stray dogs, the quiet life carrying on, oblivious to the war that had just been fought in its name.
He finally broke the silence, his voice rough. “You shot him.”
Jesse kept his eyes on the road. “I winged him. A message.” He glanced at Adam. “The message was, ‘we’re still here.’”
They ended up back at Elder Mary’s cabin, the scent of sage a familiar balm. Mary took one look at their soot-stained faces and the pipe in Diana’s hands, and simply nodded. She wordlessly prepared a bitter tea that cleared the smoke from their lungs and a salve for their burns.
Two days later, Diana sat in a sterile conference room in the regional FBI office, the thunderbird pipe sealed in an evidence bag on the table between her and her supervisor. She told a streamlined version of the truth, one that involved an unauthorized lead, a fire of unknown origin, and the recovery of a significant cultural artifact. She omitted the Chief, the photo, and Jesse Littlefoot’s rifle.
Her supervisor, a man with a placid face and tired eyes, listened without expression. He slid the pipe back into his briefcase. “The official report will state the artifact was recovered during a joint operation. The fire is under investigation by the ATF.” He stood, the meeting clearly over. “You’re being reassigned, Albertson. Effective immediately. Phoenix office.”
The dismissal was so clean, so absolute, it felt like being erased. She just nodded.
But Adam was shocked two weeks later when he saw her beat-up sedan parked outside the tribal administration building. She was leaning against the hood, talking easily with one of the clerks. Her long, thick auburn curls were gone, replaced by a sharp, shoulder-length cut that framed her oval face and made her hazel eyes seem even larger.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his heart hammering against his ribs.
She smiled, a real, unburdened smile he hadn’t seen since before the hangar. “I resigned. The FBI and I had a fundamental disagreement about what justice looks like.” She gestured to the camera bag slung over her shoulder. “I’ve got a grant. Photographer documenting contemporary rez life. Think you can introduce me to some interesting subjects?”
He just stared, the weight of the last few weeks—the betrayal, the fight, the fear of losing her—lifting all at once. The community was gathering for the council meeting where he was to be formally voted in as the new Chief, a role he never wanted but now knew he had to bear. People were milling around, watching them.
He didn’t care.
He closed the distance between them in two long strides, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a claim, a promise, and a declaration, right there in the dust and the sun in front of everyone. Someone whistled. An elder chuckled.
When he finally pulled back, she was breathless, her smile wider. “So that’s how the new Chief greets people?”
“Just you,” Adam said, his thumb tracing her jawline. “Just you.”