Page 3 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

Reservation Police

Office

Wednesday Early

Truth be told, normally, her life was pretty quiet when it came to work in on the rez. As Chief of Reservation Police, Rayna Running Wolf didn’t really have a difficult job most days.

Really, what it came down to was that she was a glorified babysitter who had to keep a bunch of children in check, or they’d end up hurting themselves.

Who were the children?

First off, her deputies.

They were armed, and for the most part knew not to point a gun at their own bodies.

Mostly.

Honestly, if she got the call that one of them had a self-inflicted-gunshot wound, she wouldn’t be shocked at all.

The Reservation Police Department had been going through shakeup after shakeup. It hadn’t been stable since Callen Whitefox left years ago.

She was trying to micromanage the deputies, so no one got hurt.

Speaking of hurt…

Next on that babysitting list were the residents of the reservation.

The latter, for her, was far more difficult than the former.

Why?

Well, mostly because they liked to drink, shoot off guns, and poke each other with sharp objects while intoxicated.

If you’d seen one knife fight on the rez, you’d seen them all.

Now, she understood why no one wanted this job after Callen Whitefox left all of those years ago.

It was like being the ringmaster at a circus. Oh, and the clowns were out of control.

It was ridiculous.

There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t question how she’d gotten wrangled into this mess.

Oh, yeah.

Now, she remembered.

Her father, Lance Running Wolf, was on the council, and he recommended her for the job over everyone—and she hadn’t even wanted it.

But no one said no to her father—except her on rare occasions.

Plus, a girl had to eat and pay for her cabin.

Yeah, all of this was a steep learning curve.

That was for sure.

While she had her training to be a cop, she had zero training when it came to the countless issues that came up on the reservation.

Like what to do with two natives trying to kill each other?

Or what to do when someone stole their neighbor’s car, only to find out that that person stole it from someone else?

Did you arrest?

Ignore?

Or pray for your sanity?

Yeah, all of that was a slippery slope.

The last thing she wanted to do was piss off anyone on the council, but sometimes, she did just that. What Rayna had learned was the outsiders’ laws didn’t always translate on the reservation.

In fact, they rarely did.

The Chief was so far up her ass that she had nightmares that he was coming to her door at all hours of the day just to watch her screw something up.

Sad.

But.

True.

Oh, well, if he thought this gig was a pleasure cruise, by all means, he should try to do it.

Seriously.

The only reason she was doing this damn job was because her father had somehow gotten her tied up in this menagerie of craziness.

Oh, yeah.

He didn’t take the word NO well.

If it was up to her, she would have continued to work for some cop department in Damascus, and called it a day. It would have been less stressful.

Staying on the rez had been ungrateful work, and there was no doubt that her father knew it.

The last chief had been shot by two drunk Natives, and that was NOT how she wanted to go out.

Screw that.

Her father knew how to get her wrapped up in this. He went with something that would get her every single time.

This was home.

She loved being Native, and she was proud of her heritage. Her father had raised her to be like that. The man bled Native.

Literally.

And figuratively.

The bottom line was despite its problems, Rayna would do what it took to keep the reservation intact.

As of late, it had been getting better.

How?

Outside help.

There were only a few things that people on this reservation talked about now a days.

The Blackhawks.

And how the rez had a woman sheriff.

Ironically, the latter was more shocking than two of Timothy Blackhawk’s boys doing right by them.

How nineteen fifties of them to assume her lack of a penis meant she couldn’t hold her own.

It made her want to slap the shit out of people, but that was neither here nor there. The last thing she was allowed to do was slap the shit out of the children she was babysitting.

Or so her father told her.

Now, as she was sitting in her office, she just wanted to get the paperwork done, and call it a day.

It was the changing of the guard in a way. She was the first woman Chief of Police, and she had a whole new staff of deputies.

When the last chief was killed, all of the men who worked under him had bailed faster than anyone could blink.

Many of the ones who did quit had issues with women running things just as much as she’d hoped they wouldn’t.

Now, she was running roughshod over newbies—as a newbie herself.

Yeah, there was one hell of a learning curve on this.

That was for sure.

All she wanted was a quiet day where no one was freaking out.

How did she make that happen?

Did she have to bribe someone?

Unfortunately, she didn’t see that happening any time soon.

How did she know?

When she was working on the payroll for that payday, there was a knock on her door. When she looked up, Deputy Forest Blasi was standing there.

Yep.

Here it came.

So much for quiet.

“Yes, Forest?” she asked.

“Rayna, there’s someone here that needs to talk to you. She’s crying, and it’s about her brother who is missing, but I’m not sure. She’s a hot mess.”

Rayna lifted a brow.

“Really, Forest?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Yeah, from what I could decipher, she thinks something bad happened to him.”

Rayna sighed.

There was always one question that had to be asked first.

“Who is it?” she asked. “Is it one of our usual suspects?”

Forest laughed.

“Yep. It’s Thomas.”

At the mention of his name, she rolled her eyes. Oh, if she was a betting woman, she’d know exactly which one was in trouble.

“Adsila?” she inquired, using his last name to differentiate. If she had a dollar for every Thomas on the rez, she could retire.

Hell!

There alone were two Thomases who worked for her as deputies.

He nodded.

“Yeah, you nailed that on the first try.”

Of course, she did.

Thomas Adsila was normally boozing and sleeping with someone’s woman on the rez.

Once, it was someone’s man.

The man got around like smallpox once did for Native communities.

Hard.

And.

Fast.

“She’s scared, and wants to put in a missing person report for him—I think. She said she found blood in his place. That I was able to piece together.”

Rayna knew it was most likely going to be like the last time when he got shitfaced drunk, and fell in his cabin. That happened twice last month to the man.

Like she’d said.

He was a repeat offender.

They’d been called when he was walking around disorientated with only his boxers and a flannel shirt—Native attire for him.

They found him a mile from his cabin, with his junk hanging out the front of the boxers.

“Take the report, Forest. If I don’t get through these payroll sheets, we don’t get paid. Then, I have to listen to a bunch of grown Natives bitch and moan. Oh, look. I can’t win either way.”

The man got the hint.

Rayna wasn’t taking this seriously.

When he opened his mouth, a small Native woman, who spent a lot of time filling out missing person reports for her brother, ducked under his arm, and magically appeared in the office.

“Rayna! Something has happened to Thomas! I know it. There’s blood at his place, and…”

She stopped her.

Oh, no.

Not again.

She wasn’t going on a wild Thomas chase.

PASS.

“Wynonah, breathe,” Rayna said, sitting back in her chair.

“We just went through this last month. Remember when Thomas fell and smacked his head off of his counter? Remember how we found him not far from some unlucky woman’s cabin peeping in the window all bloody?

Remember how he freaked the woman out when she saw him in his boxers? ”

The sister protested.

“Yes, but this time, there’s so much blood. He hit more than his head if this is the same thing. There was blood on the ceiling, Chief. How do you do that if you have a head wound?”

Okay…

That made Rayna pause.

“What do you mean there’s so much blood and it’s on the ceiling?” she asked. “How much are we talking?”

She wiped her eyes.

“There’s a bunch on his bed, and a trail of it from his bedroom to the front door. The ceiling in his bedroom is covered. Can you please come look?” she asked. “Please?”

Rayna knew this was likely him having done the same thing again, but if it kept Wynonah from losing her mind, and telling Chief Pain in Her Ass that she wasn’t doing her job…

So.

Be.

It.

It looked like she was taking a trip to the man’s house to see how much blood was ‘so much blood’. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how someone would get blood on their ceiling with gravity, but what did she know?

Getting up, she put her gun and badge on her belt, and reassured the woman.

“Okay, let’s go. Forest, I’ll be back in twenty minutes after I see what is going on at Thomas’ cabin. Hold down the fort,” she stated.

The deputy nodded.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She cringed.

She wasn’t that old, was she?

Ma’am?

Really?

Instead of going there, she grabbed her keys and took Wynonah by the arm.

“Let’s take a drive and see what you’ve got going on there.”

The woman happily walked beside her, and she even got into the front passenger seat of the Chief of Police’s ride. Once buckled in, they headed out.

“How did you find the blood?” she asked.

Wynonah told her all about it.

“He didn’t show up at work. Our boss said to go check on him. The door was cracked open, and that’s when I saw he was gone.”

She reassured her.

“Again, this happened before twice. I’m sure he’ll wander home or to some unsuspecting woman’s cabin before nightfall.”

Wynonah stopped her.

“How did he leave without his shoes?” she asked. “He only has one good pair. His hunting shoes were there too. He’s out there wandering around barefoot? That’s not normal for my brother.”