by Tina Donahue
The one in the passenger seat kept looking at his side-view mirror as though he feared someone following them. The driver divided his attention between what lay in front and to the left. His pitiless stare turned to surprise, then renewed rage at whatever he’d spotted.
The man in the backseat leaned up, his mouth forming the question, “What?”
Coming, coming, coming, Zeke’s thoughts warned.
He blinked at a flash of light. A gun’s report. A thin line of smoke rose from its muzzle. The Jeep’s windshield cracked, its glass webbing in all directions. Blood bloomed on a woman’s torso. Liz?
No.
“Zeke?”
Dumbly, he regarded her hand on his arm. His vision had faded as quickly as it had arrived, much of it already gone, which left only snatches of what he’d seen. Shifting the Jeep into reverse, he turned it around in a tight circle.
Liz gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Taking cover.”
“From what?”
Carreon’s lieutenants. During tonight’s battle, Zeke’s clan had killed most of the men. They’d taken two prisoner, with three having escaped. They were heading this way. He didn’t know how, given the hidden route. He wasn’t even certain if his vision was correct. It hadn’t always been in the past. However, he couldn’t discount any of it now.
“Tell us what you saw,” Liz cried.
Her father leaned up. Just as Carreon’s man had in Zeke’s mind.
“You had a vision?” Munez asked.
Zeke nodded, unwilling to tell either of them the extent of what he’d seen. He drove the Jeep toward a series of boulders and parked it behind the largest, then grabbed his assault rifle.
“Wait.” Liz dug her fingers into his arm, just below his tribal band tattoo. It formed a stylized snake curled around the eye of an eagle that designated him as a prophet. The snake’s head was gone, cut out by Carreon as a trophy when Zeke had lay dying.
“What did your vision show you?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
Zeke shook her off. “Get on the floor.” He spoke to her father. “You too.”
Liz didn’t move. “Why?”
“Just do it,” Zeke insisted.
She reached into the backseat for another weapon. “I’m coming with—”
“I saw you bleeding, killed in the crossfire,” Zeke blurted, then lied. “Your father too. Neither of you able to save the other. My vision showed Carreon’s men taking me prisoner, torturing me so I’d tell them the future. Do you want that?”
Her mouth trembled. “No.”
“Then do as I say and get on the floor.”
She looked torn between arguing and leaving him to fight Carreon’s men alone. “Please come back,” she whispered.
“I will.” He ran his knuckles down her cheek.
Liz took his hand and kissed his palm. Then she crouched on the floor, the same as her father had already done.
Zeke exited the vehicle and ran ahead to another series of rocks, his moccasins muting the sound of his footfalls. He took cover behind the biggest of the group. The strong breeze, mild and dry, smelled of dust. It tugged at his shoulder-length hair and dried the sweat on his naked chest. He held his breath and listened, then heard a faint hum in the distance—a generator or the sound faraway traffic might make when driven by the wind. This deep in the desert, the noise from a generator was impossible.
The merciless landscape was all too still, its thirsty vegetation scarcely moving with the gusts of wind. A uniform pewter shade stretched out before Zeke, interrupted by specks of some luminescent material that glittered within the endless miles of land.
The hum grew louder.
With the butt of his assault rifle braced against his shoulder, Zeke waited. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. Several drops slipped down the side of his nose and ran into his eyes. He blinked away the sting. His throat hurt from his heart’s frantic pounding. Grit filled his nostrils and coated his lips.
Movement. To the right.
He strained to see better and focused on an area approximately half a mile away. A series of large rocks jutted up from the ground, resembling a monster’s bony spine, whitened by the moonlight.
Zeke concentrated on them. Come on.
Nothing happened.
He swore, then sucked in a breath at a shadow moving in front of the pale stone. A new blast of wind brought the hum closer to reveal the sound of a motor.
Within minutes, Zeke saw the outline of a vehicle, its headlights off. From this distance, its shape resembled an SUV. Had to be Carreon’s men. At this hour—in this location—who else would be driving this way in the dark?
He tensed as it neared. Within his rifle’s scope, Zeke regarded the driver and his passengers in the moonlight streaming through the windshield. All were dressed in black. Smears of something equally dark, most probably dried blood, dirtied their cheeks.
They were the men from his vision, but they looked younger now. Scared to die when they’d barely had a chance to live.
Zeke hesitated. He considered the possibility of letting them choose his side over Carreon’s or living out their lives as prisoners of his clan. Their decision.
Would they take him up on the offer, or would they ridicule his suggestion, wanting to battle it out?
His forefinger slid down the weapon’s trigger. Their SUV rocked from side to side as it moved over the bumpy road. Available light skimmed off the barrels of their rifles, the metal glinting briefly.
How many of their victims had seen those brief flashes before they’d died?
Had Gabrielle?
Zeke’s chest ached at the memory of his daughter—her new outfit, a cheery yellow, stained with her blood. She’d died along with her mother and a score of other women while they attended a child’s birthday party.
Had one of these men been responsible for the carnage?
Even if they were innocent of that crime, did it matter? They’d been at Zeke’s stronghold tonight, shooting at doors, not caring if women and children were inside the rooms. They’d been prepared to take him prisoner no matter how many innocents they harmed.
His hesitation and humanity fell away, replaced by icy resolve. Never again would any of Carreon’s lieutenants take a loved one from him. Not while Zeke still breathed.
He steadied his weapon, focusing on the driver in his crosshairs. The man’s skin was darker than his companions, possibly a deep bronze. Hard to tell in the scant light. His thick black hair was slicked back, his expression unchanging when the bullet pierced his upper lip. It shattered his teeth and surely destroyed his brainstem.
His companion’s heavy eyebrows shot up, no doubt at the sound of the bullet’s impact, the blood that sprayed on his beard-shadowed cheeks.
It would be the last movement the man ever made on this earth. Zeke’s next shot caught the passenger in his thick throat.
The man in the backseat opened his mouth in what appeared to be a scream.
Without anyone to guide it, the SUV wove drunkenly over the trail, listing to the left as it hit a deep cleft. Back and forth it tottered, its metal groaning like a creature from hell before it came to an uneasy stop, leaning on one side. Two of its inhabitants slumped lifelessly in their seats. No different than Liz had looked a short while a—
Stop it.
Bent at the waist to take as much cover as he could, Zeke ran toward the SUV. As he neared the vehicle, he heard scrambling inside—the remaining man trying to right himself and grab his gun.
Zeke remained in a crouch as more noises poured from the vehicle. A frustrated huff. The smack of a man’s foot hitting a door, which swung open with a tortured creak.
Puffs of dust plumed up as Carreon’s remaining lieutenant fell from the SUV, his boots hitting the ground.
Taking aim, Zeke hollered, “Drop the weapon, or you’re dead too.”
All movement stopped. Even the Jeep’s elevated wheels no longer spun.
“Move away from the vehicle—s
lowly,” Zeke shouted. “Hands—”
“Fuck you!” The man lifted his rifle, took aim.
Zeke fired a volley of shots into his legs, exposed beneath the Jeep’s opened door. On a wild, agonized scream, Carreon’s lieutenant tumbled down, still clutching his weapon, aiming it, preparing to fire.
Another shot stopped him from doing so.
Zeke wanted to feel bad, but couldn’t. Nor would he offer any of these men a chance at reanimation. Their deaths were for Gabrielle and all the others in his clan who’d never asked for this fight. Who’d paid the ultimate price for Carreon’s hunger for power.
As the man’s blood flowed into the parched ground, Zeke regarded him. He was lean with a shaved head, the same as Carreon, his features decidedly plain, his lips too thin, nose too large. Not the man in Zeke’s vision whose longish hair and good looks were the kind that women found enticing, arousing.
Why had he been in the vision? Who was he? Another of Carreon’s men?
Zeke pulled the driver from the vehicle. His body thudded to the ground. Given the SUV’s angle, it would be a bitch to climb in and delete the GPS information so Carreon’s other lieutenants wouldn’t be able to use it to locate Zeke’s stronghold.
They wouldn’t have had it the last time if not for Kele. Zeke tamped down his anger at her. Heartache and jealousy, nothing else, had led her to betray their clan. She loved his younger brother, Jacob, while Jacob barely noticed her. Jacob wanted Liz, despite Zeke’s insistence that he wouldn’t share her. With Kele unable to stand any more hurt or rejection, she’d led Carreon’s men to the stronghold tonight so they would take Liz away.
To keep that from happening again, Zeke positioned himself at what he hoped was a safe distance and fired into the dashboard. Luckily, there wasn’t a dramatic explosion, the vehicle engulfed in flames, him hit by flying metal as one might see in an action-adventure flick.
A gaping hole replaced where the GPS system had once been. Faint wisps of smoke rose from it and the muzzle of his weapon. The best he could do. Hopefully, these men had been too busy fleeing to have downloaded the data to Carreon’s computer system and given the bastard another chance to locate Zeke’s clan in what was supposed to be a hidden and secure location.
He took the men’s weapons and cell phones, then ran back to the Jeep. His feet pounded the dirt, an accompaniment to the other night sounds. Animals cried out in the dark or skittered about. Brisk air skipped over the stark landscape, whining, then whistling. Near-dead vegetation crackled as though in answer.
At the Jeep, Zeke opened Liz’s door. She flinched, horror etched on her face, her tee and jeans smeared with blood from the earlier battle that Kele had caused.
“It’s all right,” Zeke panted. “I got them.”
She reached for him. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” He swallowed and embraced her briefly. “Get back in your seat, please. We have to go.” He circled the vehicle and put the confiscated phones and weapons on the floor in the back.
Munez leaned away from them.
Zeke got behind the wheel.
“Your vision didn’t come true this time,” Liz said. “It did when Carreon strangled me, but not—”
“It wouldn’t have happened then if you hadn’t left the stronghold. When I tell you to stay put, you do so, understand?” He shifted the Jeep into drive. “That’s why Jacob was hit tonight. My vision showed it happening, and I tried to prevent it, but he refused to listen to me. Just like you keep—”
“All right, all right, I’ll—wait, what are you doing?” She looked in her side-view mirror, the direction they’d been going. “This is the wrong way, isn’t it?”
Zeke gulped more air. “We have to go back to Carreon’s stronghold.”
“You can’t be serious. Why?”
“The vehicle you drove to Carreon’s is still there.”
“So?”
Zeke sighed out his next breath, wearier than he wanted to be. “He or his men will use the GPS to locate my clan’s stronghold. Right now, I’m hoping they still don’t know where it is. The moment they do, they’ll come again for you and your father. This time my people and I might not be able to stop them.”
Liz rocked in her seat as though she didn’t want to hear it.
Zeke continued toward Carreon’s stronghold, not knowing what he’d find. Not knowing what else his visions might protect them from or lead them into.
Chapter Two
The last place Liz wanted to be tonight was back at Carreon’s estate, the mansion hidden and all too secluded within miles of unforgiving desert. She recalled the damp smell of the tropical plants in his foyer, the scent of citrusy furniture polish, the sterile air in his safe room. His fingers around her throat, the intolerable pressure as his thumbs dug into her hyoid bone.
Instinctively, she drew in her shoulders at the remembered and terrifying sensation of her lungs burning. How her body had ached with the need for air. Unrestrained fury had flared in Carreon’s icy eyes. Blood dripped from his earlobe. She’d ripped his silver earring from it as she’d fought him.
Insane with rage that she’d come to stop him from harming anyone else—especially because it meant she was finally prepared to murder him—he’d pressed tighter.
Suppressing a shudder at the awful memories, Liz focused on the murky terrain surrounding them. How many more of Carreon’s men were out here tonight? Had he already sent backups to his stronghold? How could Zeke hope to fight all of them off by himself?
Knowing he couldn’t, Liz turned in her seat and reached into the back.
Zeke glanced at her. “What are you doing?”
“Papa, hand me that weapon.” She gestured to the one she wanted, a mean-looking sucker with a barrel as long as her arm.
Zeke spoke sharply. “No.”
Her father concurred, pushing her hand back.
Liz spoke through her teeth. “Give it to me.”
“Why?” Zeke asked.
“To fight with you.” To protect you.
Both men wore expressions that said they considered the notion beyond foolish.
Zeke hardly needed a woman, a pediatrician no less, looking out for him. He was a large man, six-three, his body in superb physical condition, his features those of his Comanche ancestors, rugged and masculine, his hair worn long like a warrior from some distant past. Moonlight skimmed his straight black hair, his broad shoulders and chest, emphasizing those hard slabs of coppery flesh.
Liz didn’t doubt the impressiveness of his physique and strength. However, they wouldn’t mean shit against gunfire
Above his left nipple—smooth and cocoa-colored—were three scars the size of pinpoints. Barely visible.
Prior to her having healed him, they’d been perfect circles, each the circumference of a bullet, and seemed to yawn open to show the rounds’ paths as they tore into his body and barely missed his heart. He’d been close to death when she’d first seen him. However, serenity, not fear, flooded his expression. He’d resisted her healing power, not wanting to come back, eager to be with his daughter Gabrielle again.
No matter Liz’s ability or her father’s to reanimate, she knew a part of Zeke was still on the other side with his child, always would be. He was too careless with his safety, too worried about others, never himself.
If she lost him forever, his body too destroyed for her to heal or as a last resort to reanimate…
Liz couldn’t finish the horrible thought. She tried to reason. “You can’t possibly fight all of Carreon’s men by yourself. If I’m armed—”
“That would be the worst thing possible. Listen to me,” he said, interrupting her again. “You’ve never fired a weapon before. You could end up shooting me and your father.” He checked his side-view and rearview mirrors. “There’s no reason to even discuss this. No one’s following us.”
“Maybe not here,” she argued. “But Carreon might have already sent more men to his stronghold. Even though he’s too much of a cowar
d to fight for it himself, he’s not about to give up as much as an inch of his territory.”
Zeke accelerated. The Jeep bounced over the rugged terrain. “They’d never get there before we do. It’s only a few miles away.”
He couldn’t be serious. Carreon’s men were everywhere, hiding like vermin. Surely, Zeke knew that…and most likely didn’t care. Liz’s concern for him intensified. “What if you’re wrong?”
“You’re not getting a gun.”
“But—”
“A few minutes ago, you fell asleep or passed out. You do that while you’re firing an assault rifle that’s fully automatic and we might all be dead before your finger slips from the trigger.”
Liz stared at him, not understanding. Previously, he’d asked if she’d fallen asleep. Now, he was claiming that she’d possibly passed out? When?
She recalled none of it. One moment they’d been escaping Carreon’s stronghold, the next the Jeep had stopped, and Liz had no idea why. She had no sense of losing time, not even a moment. As Zeke had driven them across the desert, Liz’s thoughts had been on her father. For some reason, she kept recalling the pain on his face when Zeke had helped him to his feet at the stronghold…how she’d fallen to her knees and laid her hands on his ankle, healing it.
Ordinary stuff for her in an extraordinary night. Including Zeke having looked at her so oddly earlier, panic clearly etched on his features.
“I didn’t pass out,” she insisted, then cleared the catch in her throat. “I’m fine.” Rarely had she felt as alert or jittery, her pulse points pounding.
Zeke snuck a peek at the rearview mirror. To exchange a glance with her father? Neither of them commented. The vehicle rattled as it hit a particularly rough spot. Rocks pinged against the undercarriage. Wind whipped past.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Zeke said.
His baritone rumbled within the small confines of the Jeep, the sound deep, rich, soothing.
And a lie. Liz heard his uncertainty.
She flinched at the two-way radio’s static.
Slowing a bit so he could drive with one hand, Zeke lifted the device to his lips. “Jacob?”