Page 25

The older of the two gave him a full visual sweep, then stepped aside. “You can go in.”
It was on the tip of Caleb’s tongue to remind the man that everyone was a potential threat to a high-profile figure—even so-called family.
He shrugged instead. Not his client. Not his problem.
His hand closed around the doorknob.
An unexpected wave of grief punched him in the chest. He swallowed hard.
Lillie Blackwater Varella hadn’t been easy to love. But she’d been his mother. From the time he was a small boy, he’d run interference between her and his father when his old man was high or drunk and looking to take it out on someone. After his father died, he’d kept his mother sober when he could, fed and dressed in clean clothes when he couldn’t. At eighteen, he’d left for the Army, angry and with no small amount of guilt.
Because he’d known if he didn’t leave, he’d never get out.
Still, he should have done more. Visited more. Checked in more. Not just money and phone calls. The last time they spoke, his mother had sounded good. Maybe a bit lonely, but clean and sober.
Squaring his shoulders, he entered the room.
An old man in a black suit stood at his mother’s coffin. When he turned, Caleb’s feet rooted in place.
Benjamin Blackwater.
Shicheii—his mother’s father. President of the Navajo Nation.
The bodyguards on the other side of the door were for him.
The last time Caleb had seen his grandfather was at his grandmother’s funeral, twenty-two years ago. Back then, the man had seemed larger than life—tall with shoulder-length black hair. A face carved of granite that softened when he looked at his family.
Or maybe that had just been Caleb's childhood imagination.
Now, the hair was short, mostly gray, though the thick black brows remained. The lines etched into his grandfather’s face were new, buthis bearing wasn’t. He stood straight, a leader to his core, his gaze sharp as obsidian as it raked over Caleb.
Caleb's mother had followed her father’s rise—from tribal council member to leader to president. She’d told Caleb stories about Ben Blackwater’s achievements—stories she must have gotten off the Internet. She didn’t use social media or, as far as he knew, engage with other Navajo living in the Phoenix area. Still, she’d been proud of her father. Loved him.
Even if he and the rest of her family hadn’t loved her back.
“Yá’át’ééh, Grandson.”
Ben’s eyes carried a pain Caleb refused to acknowledge. His grandfather had no right to look grief stricken—not when he could have extended a hand to his daughter in her time of need.
“Hello, Grandfather.” Caleb joined the older man beside the casket. “Thank you for allowing Mom to be buried in the family plot.” The words tasted like ash on his tongue. Bitter but true. His grandfather had at least done that much.
“She was my daughter. Much loved, despite the distance between us.” Ben’s gaze centered on Caleb. “As are you, Grandson.”
Keep your damn mouth shut.He wouldn’t dishonor his mother by causing a scene at her funeral.
Ben gestured toward the sympathy floral arrangement—white lilies, yellow roses, and baby’s breath nestled in greenery—on a stand beside Caleb’s mother’s coffin. “From your colleagues, I believe.”
Caleb sidestepped and angled his head, his gaze narrowing on the card tucked into the arrangement.
With our deepest sympathies to Caleb and his family. Dìleas Security Agency.
A quick smiletouched his lips. Sophia and Penny had to be responsible. The men might be the muscle at Dìleas, but the women were its beating heart.
He made a mental note to text Sophia later, then turned back to his grandfather, searching for neutral ground.
“Strange, isn’t it? Mom andShima’ Sani’both died when they were fifty-two.”
One from cancer. The other from fentanyl she probably thought was a pain pill. Five years clean. All it took was one bad day. One bad pill.