It happened so quickly that Patricia's mind couldn't track the sequence of actions.One moment, the figure was standing on the threshold.The next, there was movement, a blur of motion that brought them close, too close.She tried to step back, tried to close the door, but a hand—strong, gloved—caught the edge of the door and pushed.
Patricia stumbled backward into her living room.Fear, real fear, flooded her system for the first time.This wasn't a confused study participant.This wasn't someone seeking answers about their heritage.This was something else entirely.
"Who are you?"she demanded, her voice sharp with the authority of a woman who had spent decades teaching, researching, commanding respect in academic and community settings."What do you want?"
The masked figure said nothing.The silence was more terrifying than any threat would have been.Behind the mask, she could hear breathing—steady, controlled, purposeful.
Patricia's mind raced.Jonas was asleep in the bedroom, too far away to hear unless she screamed, and even then, she wasn't sure she'd wake him from a deep sleep.Her phone was back in the office.The nearest neighbor was a quarter mile down the road.She was sixty-two years old with arthritis in her knees and hands.She could not run.She could not fight.
But she could try to reason with this stranger.
"You don't need to do this," she said, her voice steadier than she felt."Whatever's wrong, whatever the problem is, I can help you."
The figure moved again, and this time Patricia saw the knife.
It was traditional too—a blade that might have been used in ceremonies, or for craft work, or for preparing food.
Patricia tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat.She stumbled backward, knocking over a side table.A lamp crashed to the floor, its bulb shattering.The sound was loud in the quiet house, but not loud enough to wake Jonas, whose snoring continued unabated down the hall.
The figure advanced with terrible patience.There was no rage in the movements, no frenzy.This was methodical.Ritualistic, almost.As if the person behind the mask was performing a ceremony they had rehearsed, following steps laid out in some twisted internal script.
Patricia's back hit the wall.There was nowhere left to go.
"Please," she whispered.It was not a word she used often, this woman of facts and research and academic rigor.But in the face of this masked violence, it was all she had left."Please."
"The password."The voice was muffled by the mask, urgent."Give me the password to the encrypted files."
Patricia's mind raced.That'swhat this was about?
She could give up the password.She could save herself.But then what?Everything she'd worked for, all those families' histories, would be destroyed or manipulated.The truth would die with her silence.
And she had no guarantee it would even save her own life.
"I don't—I can't—" she stammered.
"Yes, you can."
Patricia swallowed hard.To her own surprise, a sense of defiance rose up in her.She wasn't going to betray those people, not even to save her own skin.
"No," she said firmly."I won't do it.I'm not giving it to you."
There was a long silence as the stranger studied her.Then: "Wrong answer."
The knife caught the moonlight filtering through the window, a bright slash of silver in the darkness.
Patricia Lomahongva's last thought was not of fear, or pain, or even of the person killing her.It was of all the families whose stories remained untold, all the complex truths about ancestry and identity that would die with her if her research was suppressed or destroyed.
She hoped someone would continue the work.
She hoped the truth would not die here, on the floor of her living room, beneath a mask that represented a fractured soul and a community too afraid to face its own complicated history.
The knife descended.
And the desert night pressed closer against the windows, vast and silent and keeping its secrets.
CHAPTER ONE
The diner was neutral territory, and Kari Blackhorse supposed that was the point.
