Saint (17 page)

“Don’t we all.”

* * * * *

For Seth, the dreams came again that night.

Carolyn.

Juarez.

The boxes.

Soul-wrenching fury beyond anything he’d ever experienced.

The monster inside him broke free. Devoured. Destroyed.

His hands ran red with blood. Blood of the guilty, the
innocent, mingling together in his nostrils. He’d thought he was in hell ’til
he’d gone beyond the door.

Beyond sanity.

Chapter Eight

Maria woke up when Harris’ cot banged
roughly against the makeshift table between them. “Seth?”

“Carolyn…”

The anguish in his tone made her flinch.
Hesitantly, she left her cot, feeling her way around the crate to his cot,
where she found his shoulder and gave him a shake. “Seth, wake up, you’re
dreaming.”

She felt for his other shoulder, shook him
again and ended with his fingers closed around her throat, cutting off the air.
Stars danced in front of her eyes—small dots of light that began zinging back and
forth—before she remembered to fight.

Jesus, he was going to choke her to death!
“S-Seth…”

His hand suddenly fell away. She fell to
the floor sputtering and coughing, sucking air into her lungs. She heard him
breathing hard, as if he’d just run a marathon. The battery-powered light came
on, glowing eerily in the darkness.

He dropped to his knees beside her, still
dragging in harsh breaths. “Shit.”

“I’m okay,” she assured him, her voice
little more than a croak. She’d heard of veterans having nightmares and night
terrors for years afterward. Apparently, Seth had them on occasion.

And he hadn’t woken confused or
disoriented. He knew exactly what he’d done. “Jesus…” he groaned, closing his
eyes for a moment, but not before she saw the disgust and self-loathing. “I
could have killed you.”

“You didn’t.” She cleared her throat,
fervently hoping she wasn’t the cause of his dreams. “I’m sorry Will dragged
you into this. He said the situation with Juarez would open an old wound for
you, but I-I didn’t realize—”

“Son of a bitch!” He sprang to his feet,
kicking the cot viciously, his whole body vibrating. “Why the hell didn’t he
just tell you the size of my dick while he was at it? And don’t you start
crying on me Goddammit.”

“You said the name Carolyn again. Is she the
reason you try so hard not to give a damn?”

Under control once again, he pulled her to
her feet, tipping her chin up to examine her throat. “Don’t fucking cry,” he
ordered brusquely, thumbing a tear that had slipped down her cheek. “It was a
long time ago. The dreams…just happen sometimes. It’s not your fault.”

“You’re lying.”

“Are you turning into a crybaby on me?”

“Apparently.” Because she couldn’t seem to
stop. They were just there. So she tried to brush it off, because he already
felt bad enough about what had happened. “Gabriel would be disgusted.”

“What about Francis?”

She wiped at her nose with the broad edge
of her thumb. “He’d quote some ridiculous passage from the Bible that didn’t
have anything to do with the anything. I don’t have any idea what Joan would
do.”

“Joan would kill the sonofabitch who made
you cry. That is saying a lot, since he killed his wife for having an abortion
without discussing it with him first.”

If he was trying to sidetrack her from the
subject of having his hand around her neck, he was doing a fine job. “He killed
her?”

“Served ten years for it in a military
prison. I obtained permission to pull him out for a suicide mission and if he
survived, he went free. You’re safer with Joan than you would be locked up in
Fort Knox.”

Wasn’t he clever to work the situation to
his advantage. “Forget it,” she muttered tightly.

“That’s the way it has to be, Maria,” he
said quietly.

She shoved his hand away, crawling onto her
cot to turn her back on him.

“Sulking won’t change my mind.” The cot
across from hers creaked as he lowered his weight onto it and snapped off the
light. “You can’t stay with me.”

She remained stubbornly silent and the minutes
dragged by as they bristled at one another in the tomb-like silence.

A few moments later he exhaled roughly and
said, “Carolyn was my wife.”

She wished she hadn’t asked, because
knowing he’d been dreaming about and missing his wife made her heart melt just
a little bit, even as it left her feeling like an intruder.

* * * * *

“Hello, Angelface,” Francis called out as
he descended the steps. “Did you miss me?”

Finally.
Seth
was ready to chew nails by the time the group returned. “Where the hell have
you been?”

“The, er, sinner was just a wee bit
stubborn. Angelface, why don’t you go up and say hi to Joan and Gabe.”

“Is that your subtle way of telling me to
beat it, Francis?”

“Now, honey, don’t get your jeans in a
twist.” Francis turned his best boyish smile on her. “We brought you a present.
Gabe has it. You can thank me later.”

Seth recognized the storm brewing on Maria’s
face.
Here we go.

Maria challenged Francis with a battle-ready
gleam in her eye. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Gabriel picked that moment to stick his
head down the hole and yell, “Are you coming up to get this package or not?”

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” she swore,
stalking past Francis to hold out her hand. “Throw it down to me.”

“No way. You come up and get it, girlie.
Oh, and bring your knife, you have to earn it.”

She glanced his way, then at Francis,
reluctant to leave. Well, he knew one way to get her moving. “So, did you kill
the clerk or not?”

She couldn’t get up the steps quick enough.
Francis, however, had seen the marks on Maria’s neck and was not amused. When
she was out of earshot he said, “I know there’s a good reason for that.”

“There’s never a good reason,” Seth replied,
holding the preacher’s gaze. “Tell Joan he’s taking Maria back with him until
the trial.”

“Why Joan?”

“Gabe doesn’t have enough patience.”

“I’ll take her then.”

“Like hell you will. You’ve wound her up
enough as it is. What gives with the clerk?”

Francis was smart enough not to challenge
him on the subject of Maria’s neck. “The little drugged-out shrimp sold you
out, all right.”

“We’d better get moving then, they’ll be
back.”

“Looks that way. Did you tell her we were
going to kill the clerk?”

“She has a very active imagination.”

Francis nodded. “That’s a fact. What about
Hocksteder?”

“Fuck Hocksteder, his time’s coming. Right
now we have to get Maria off this mountain and to Joan’s in one piece. Did you
bring back a vehicle?”

Francis shook his head. “Didn’t want to
take any chances. We hiked up. That’s what took us so long. And of course, I
had to listen to Gabe’s bitching the entire way.”

Ever since their last mission to South
America years ago, where an anaconda had fallen out of a tree onto him, Gabe
had a thing about communing with nature in any type of forestry terrain. “What’s
in that package, anyway?”

“You know.” Francis shrugged. “Woman stuff.”

“What did you do with the scumbag clerk?”

“I sang him a funeral hymn.”

* * * * *

“I’m not fighting you for that package,”
Maria said as she followed Gabriel into the clearing.

“Then you don’t get it,” he taunted,
dangling the bait in front of her.

“Fine.”

“What do you mean, ‘fine’?” he demanded hotly.
“We went to all the trouble to get you this crap and you don’t want it?”

“If it’s crap, then why would I want it?” She
strolled around the area, enjoying the fresh air, careful to keep her eyes off
the brown paper box Gabe held in his hand.

Joan, bless his heart, moved to stand toe-to-toe
with the archangel. “Give it to her.”

Gabriel’s mouth thinned in irritation. “What’s
the matter with you? She’s not helpless and she needs the practice.”

To be honest, she’d given the cheating
thing some thought since that first time she’d worked out with Gabe, and today,
for some irritatingly perverse reason, actually wanted to cheat the Marine out
of the package. She told herself it wasn’t because she wanted his respect but
because she wanted to see if she could do it.

Then Joan’s sharp gaze cut to her neck.
Feeling guilty and a little protective of the man who’d saved her life, she
played it off. “I fell off my cot last night. Dumb huh?”

Gabe held up his hand, wiggling five
fingers. “Your neck fell right into the colonel’s hand, did it?”

She hadn’t looked in a mirror—didn’t have
one—so she had to assume they could see something akin to finger marks. “It was
dark and neither of us could see.” Holding their gaze, she challenged either of
them to call her a liar. “I bruise easily, no big deal.”

Joan snatched the box from Gabriel,
offering it to her.

So much for outwitting Gabe. “Thank you,
Joan.” She sat down on the rotting log to open it.

Gabriel slipped his knife back into his
boot. “Joan, you’re so pathetic.”

“Amen, brother,” Francis chorused as he
emerged from the bunker entrance. “Well, Angelface? How do you like them?”

The box held a green T-shirt and camouflage
pants, a hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush. “I-I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you wear a size five.”

“Six, petite,” she replied absently. But
who cared? She had a hairbrush and clean clothes and could brush her teeth.

“Oops. Well, maybe they run big, if not,
they’ll be a little tight. But I promise not to complain if your cute little
ass is smashed down in the back.”

She smiled at Francis, at all of them in
turn. “I’m sure they’re fine. Thank you, really. It was sweet.” And very
unexpected.

“Aw hell,” Gabriel spat. “Now she thinks we’re
sweet.”

“We are,” Francis argued. “Sometimes.”

“No we’re not. Shut up, Joan.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

On the way down the steps she met Seth. He
backed up to let her pass, eyeing the bundle in her hand. “Hurry up if you want
to change. We need to get moving.”

“Where?”

“Off this mountain.”

“You’re a fountain of information. What did
Francis have to say—and don’t even think of brushing me off.”

“Nothing we didn’t already know. They
couldn’t track me through the name I gave the clerk at the hotel so they had to
have run the truck plates. Which aren’t under the name of Seth Harris, but
that’s neither here nor there. They would have gotten a description of you and
put it together.”

She nodded, surprised he’d actually
answered her.

“Why hasn’t Joan barreled down here to try
and kick my ass for putting those marks on your neck?” he asked.

“I told them I fell off my cot and you
tried to catch me.”

“I don’t need you to lie for me,” he grated
out angrily.

“It was an accident. You didn’t do it on
purpose.”

“That’s not the point.”

No, maybe it wasn’t. “Is that why you want
to send me to Joan’s? You trust a man who killed his wife more than you trust
yourself?”

“Maria, stop trying to pull me in a
direction I can’t go.”

“I would, if I knew which direction that
was.” She took the box of clothes and stalked behind the curtain he’d erected
while she was above ground. “You never wanted me here in the first place and,
okay, I can’t blame you for that. Will put you on the spot, you dealt with it
as best you could, and even if it doesn’t seem like it, I’m grateful. But you
can’t shove me off onto just anybody. I’m part of this and I’m going to be part
of making the decisions.”

Maria whipped back the curtain and found
Gabe instead of Seth. The Marine’s whole body filled the opening, trapping her
into the small cubicle, his green eyes glowed wickedly as he stepped closer. “Those
pants fit good. Couldn’t have done a better job if we’d measured.”

She couldn’t say why, but an uneasy
sensation slid down her spine as he moved closer. Even if she’d wanted to, she
couldn’t go anywhere, he was blocking the door and the wall was at her back.

“Gabe,” Seth barked. The sound of his voice
made her almost weak with relief.

“Fuck a duck,” Gabriel cursed beneath his
breath. “Can’t get five minutes to do one thing and he’s got me doing another.”

Maria sagged against the wall, listening as
Seth reeled off more instructions to the Marine. Gabriel grumbled under his
breath, calling for Francis to lend a hand. When she stepped out of the
cubicle, Seth was there, watching her like, maybe he thought she’d been
flirting with Gabriel. Yeah, that was going to happen. Not only was Gabriel
married, he was only capable of one tone around her—disdain. Ignoring Seth’s
stony look, she passed by him and ascended the steps.