Authors: Sarah McCarty
Tracker nodded. “They didn’t deserve to die so clean.”
“No, they didn’t.” There weren’t words to convey the rage he felt at that. Sam came around the building, melding naturally into the shadows. At Caine’s questioning look, he nodded. The men were dead.
Tracker swatted aside a burning ember. “It’ll be damn hard to find out who the head of this mess is now, with all his men dead.”
“Not that hard,” Caine countered. “Whoever that solicitor is, he still wants Desi. And now he’ll have to come after her.”
“Or send someone else.”
Caine shrugged. “Then they’ll lay a new trail to backtrack.” He jerked his chin over his shoulder. “Right now I’m more concerned with what those three set in motion.” He glanced at Sam. “He sent Apache Jack after Desi.”
Sam spat smoke out of his mouth. “I heard.”
Caine stared to the west, unease eating at his gut. “He’s good.”
“Shadow’s better,” Tracker said in a flat statement of fact.
“Not to mention that Desi’s got a mean temper on her,” Sam added, scanning the crowd.
Fire crackled and popped. Heat drove them back.
“She’s just a woman.” A tiny, frail woman who deserved more than violence and danger.
Sam smiled, his teeth very white in his soot-darkened face. “I saw her practicing with you, and anyone thinking she’s going to be easy pickings is in for one hell of a shock.”
“She’s no match for Apache Jack,” Tracker stated.
Caine followed the flight of a hawk as it soared westward, heading where he needed to be. He remembered Desi’s battle with the men who’d kidnapped her, the honor with which she’d upheld her vows to him despite her experiences, the strength with which she met each challenge. He remembered the way she’d defended Boone and then Cantankerous, the way she’d demanded he teach her to fight. But mostly, he remembered that little smile on her face as she’d missed her target to win the booby prize of his kiss. As the hawk disappeared into the horizon, Caine whistled for Chaser. “You’re right. She’s a match for anyone who takes her on.”
D
esi was no match for this. Tired from lack of sleep, grumpy from the inability to take Caine to task for how he’d left, Desi stared at the chicken coop and the rooster guarding it. She held the pacifier in her hand while Cantankerous strutted and dared. They both knew he could take her. They both knew she could bribe him. The problem was she was having a hard time falling into Caine’s habit. Bribing with sex, she was discovering, was against her nature. Maybe because she’d just realized Caine used the same techniques on her when he wanted her to look away from what he was doing. And, according to Shadow, a veritable font of information, he hadn’t wanted her to know a bounty had been put on her head, so he’d kept her distracted with orgasms while he went out and risked his life. When he got back, she was going to kill him.
Cantankerous clucked. Boone, sitting by her side, whined anxiously, his attention totally focused on the feathered demon.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to come save me this time.”
The dog leaned his big head against her, knocking her off balance. The wind blew against her nape and unease prickled across her skin the way it had when she was a child and she’d thought monsters lived under her bed. She glanced toward the outhouse. Shadow hadn’t come out yet.
She glanced at the house, and suddenly her plan of gathering some eggs to make a cake for supper while he took care of business seemed foolhardy. He’d told her to stay in the house, but when Tia had gone off to take care of Ed, who’d just ridden in, the prowling restlessness had taken over, sending shards of energy through her body. She’d needed something to do and Shadow had given it to her. He was a lean man, fresh off a hunt, and he was always hungry. Getting eggs to make him breakfast seemed a good idea. The henhouse was well within the stronghold and Shadow was only a shout away. How dangerous could it be?
The wind blew again, and the unease left. She was letting the overprotectiveness of the men influence her. She wanted Caine home. Wanted to scream at him, slap him and then hug him and hold him tight. Until she saw him ride through the pass, the only thing she knew for sure was that she’d be on edge and jumping at shadows. She looked down at the red pacifier in her hand and then at the dog. “What do you think, Boone? Should we throw away our scruples or make a stand for what’s right?”
Boone eyed the rooster. It spread its wings and crowed. Mid-crow, Boone shivered and let out a moan of pure terror.
Desi glanced at the outhouse. Shadow would be popping out of there any minute now, which meant expediency was her best bet if she didn’t want a twenty-minute lecture. “You’re right. We don’t have time for scruples.”
She tossed the pacifier on the ground. Cantankerous went for it with unholy zeal. She shook her head as he hopped onboard. “That’s just not right.”
She didn’t have any more time to ponder why. Keeping her eye on the rooster, she dashed for the henhouse. She made it to the top of the little ramp and almost inside when a hand wrapped around her wrist. With brutal force, she was yanked behind the structure. The view of the ranch spun out of focus as her scream was killed off at birth by the huge hand that slapped over her mouth. She had time for one breath before she was slammed up against a hard body. A god-awful stench filled her nostrils as she kicked out. Her feet met only air.
She blinked and screamed in her throat, looking wildly around, but no one could see this corner of the yard, no one could help. She bit at the hand covering her mouth. All she needed was one squeak of sound. Boone came around the corner, freezing when he saw the tableau. His hackles rose. Something flashed in the corner of her eye. The big dog collapsed, a knife buried in the side of his chest.
Oh, no. No!
Fingers pressed against her neck. Stars splintered before her eyes and then everything went black.
The faint sound of a hound’s baying floated across the plains. Caine pulled Chaser up short. The only hounds he knew in the area were Hell’s Eight. “Recognize that bay?”
Tracker tilted his head. “Can’t say that I do, but whatever the scent, that dog’s going hell-bent for leather on it.”
There was something about the bay, a familiarity in the warble and the way it hitched from one note to the next.
“Boone’s pa had a bay like that,” Sam offered.
“Boone’s pa is dead.” Caine squinted against the sun, a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Boone’s not.”
“He’s coming fast up the other side of the pass.”
“Only thing I know that gets that dog moving is Desi,” Sam stated.
“And Apache Jack’s looking to collect that bounty.”
That’s what Caine was afraid of. He kneed Chaser up the ridge. “He’ll collect when hell freezes over.”
Tracker grabbed Chaser’s bridle, pulling him up short. Caine’s gun was in his hand before he acknowledged the thought.
Tracker didn’t move as the muzzle centered on him. “Think, Caine. The dog’s on the scent. From the sound of the bay, they’re coming this way. There’s no way we passed them. Country’s too open for that, which means they’re holed up between the two passes.”
Caine eased his finger off the trigger, but he couldn’t put the gun away. He’d promised Desi he’d keep her safe, and now she was out there somewhere with pure evil. He couldn’t wrap his mind around how scared she must be, what she might have already suffered, what still might be in store for her. The gun in his hand was shaking. He stared at it, not comprehending why.
Tracker eased the gun from his grip. “We’ll get her back, Caine.”
Sam came up on his other side. “Not if we go charging up that ridge like a bunch of greenhorns, we won’t. Apache Jack is one mean son of a bitch with the devil’s own smarts. Charging up the hill isn’t going to do anything except maybe get us all killed.”
He was right—they were both right. Caine held out his hand for the revolver. After a pause, Tracker handed it over. Caine holstered the gun, images of Desi trapped beneath Apache Jack’s scarred body, struggling against the man’s brute strength—calling for him, needing him—filled his mind.
Shit, he couldn’t focus on that. He scanned the ridge, projected the trajectory of the hound’s path with what he knew of the terrain. And he knew plenty. This was Hell’s Eight land.
“There are only two places where it’d be safe to hide. The caves along the ridge and the blind canyon.”
“Apache Jack isn’t the type to get himself trapped.”
Sam pulled out his makings, rolled the pouch between his fingers and then tucked them back in his pocket. “He’s in the caves then.”
“There’s only one big enough and dry enough for two.”
“And fortunately,” Tracker said, checking the load in his rifle, “it has a back entrance.”
Caine smiled. “Indeed it does.”
He listened to Boone’s bay and felt the same aggressive urgency beat within him, along with a bone-deep agony he hadn’t experienced since he’d watched his father fall under the first volley of bullets and his mother pick up the gun to defend their home. Time was not their friend. He kneed Chaser up the trail, sending one thought-prayer ahead of him. “Hold on, Gypsy. Just hold on.”
A bloody corpse landed at Desi’s feet. “Cook dinner.”
Desi looked down at the bleeding rabbit carcass and then back up at the man who’d kidnapped her. He wasn’t a prime specimen of masculinity by anyone’s definition. He was obviously of Indian descent, but unlike Tracker and Tucker, he didn’t radiate that sense of strength and honor that inspired trust. This man reeked of evil from the top of his bandanna-covered head, with its greasy shoulder-length hair, to the soles of his stained knee-high moccasins. She looked at the offering at her feet, fighting back her gorge. And he wanted her to cook a rabbit.
She didn’t reach for the carcass. “I don’t know how.”
A knife stabbed in the soft dirt between her feet. Her start was internal. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of letting him know how much he scared her, or how much the sight of that knife made her grieve for Boone.
“Then you’d best git learning fast.”
The threat wasn’t lost on her. She kept her fear hidden right along with her disgust. She had no doubt her kidnapper would enjoy punishing her for not doing it right, but she was also reasonably sure he would punish her even if she got it right. There was an unnaturalness about him, a twisted pleasure in his flat brown eyes that told her when this was all over, she wasn’t walking away alive. And between now and then, the sick son of a bitch intended to make her suffer.
She prodded the knife handle with her toe. It fell over, lying in the dirt like so much deadly temptation. “For that to happen, I’m going to need a teacher.”
Amusement lit deep in his gaze as he picked up the innuendo in the statement. “You want to learn from me?”
God, he was twisted. His perversion just oozed out of his pores like some sort of foul wind, raising goose bumps along her skin as her senses cried a warning. As if she hadn’t already figured out she was in trouble. She adopted her most serene expression and told the truth. “I don’t particularly want to learn to cook at all, but as I’m assuming there’s a consequence for not learning, I’m open to suggestions.”
He gave her the evil eye. It just might have been his normal stare, but it was vile, no doubt about it.
“Pick up the knife and skin the rabbit.”
He was completely unconcerned with her being armed. Desi glanced at the muscles in his arms and chest, the heavy scars beneath his open leather vest and on any visible surface. She also remembered the easy way he moved. He might be a true outlaw, but he was a skilled one. And from the slashing line of the majority of the scars, one who preferred to fight with knives. Whereas she only used them at the table. She sat forward and picked up the knife. It fit her hand with surprising balance. She put her other hand on the still-warm carcass. “Were do I begin?”
“At the neck and cut down.” He turned away, and looked at the entrance, presenting her with his back.
She did as he ordered. When he looked back, there was a touch of respect in his gaze. “You did not try to use the knife on me.”
“I’m not stupid. I recognize a trap when I see one.”
He smiled, revealing broken teeth. “Those sissified bankers taught you well.” He motioned with his hand. “Cut down the legs.”
So he was taking her back to
him.
“They were satisfied.”
His head canted to the side. His shoulder-length hair slid in a greasy hank over his shoulder. “But not well enough. There is no respect in your tone.”
She’d been trying to keep everything out of her tone.
“If you show me disrespect, I will hurt you.”
He said that in a completely matter-of-fact tone of voice that scared her. She tucked the emotion deep inside and focused on the rabbit. “I know.”
His finger came under her chin, forcing her face to his. His breath hit her cheek in a fetid promise. He studied her expression for three heartbeats. “You look very much like your sister.”
Her hand jerked. The knife slipped and sliced the base of her thumb. She dropped the knife and pressed her palm against the wound. “She’s alive?”