by Gayle Wilson
“The money’s what they want,” she said. “Maybe they’ll let you go since we’re leaving the suitcase behind.”
“Are you trying to psych me up, Samantha?”
“I’m trying to get you up the damn slope. What are you waiting for? An invitation?”
Yeah, he thought. That would be real nice. Not the kind he knew she meant. The kind she had made before. That night. The night he’d made love to her. Another fantasy.
He looked up the slope to where her voice was coming from. That was the reality. Making that climb and all the while expecting a bullet to slam into his spine or the back of his head. And then it would all be over. No more chances. No more dreams. Just bleeding to death in a nameless ravine somewhere on the backside of Mexico.
He thought briefly about telling her. Telling her how he felt. Just laying it all out there. And then if he got blown away…Then there would be nothing left but more regrets. More pain, maybe. Telling her he loved her wouldn’t make anything about their situation better.
“Okay, sweetheart,” he said instead. “When I count to three.”
“You sure you can count that high, McCullar?” she teased, her voice sounding relaxed, amused at the kids’ game he was playing.
“One,” he said, easing his body upward a little, trying to get his legs under him for the push without exposing his head.
“Two.”
I love you, Samantha Kincaid I’ve always loved you, and I guess I always will. For as long as I live.
“Three,” he said, too softly, trying to speak around the lump in his throat. It wouldn’t matter, of course. She would hear the sound of his scramble. The shifting of the rocks he dislodged. She would know he was on the way.
He pushed off, using all his strength, the muscles of his legs seeming to explode with power, propelling him upward under the influence of the adrenaline that surged through him.
Samantha, he thought again, even as he heard the first bullet impacting into the earth beside him.
Chapter Seven
He could hear the cough of the revolver Samantha was firing above him echoing intermittently with the higherpitched sound of the rifle behind him, that noise reaching him a fraction of a second after each hit. Zigzagging up the incline, the toes of his boots and his fingers digging hard into the shifting earth, he lost count of those impacts. He expected at any moment to feel a bullet slam into his body instead of hearing it strike nearby.
It didn’t happen. Not from any lack of effort on the part of the shooter, he acknowledged, as the spurts of dust kicked up by the shots kept pace with his progress. Maybe it was because Samantha’s fire distracted the rifleman just enough to put his eye off. Or maybe because Chase was giving it all he had, scaling the rock-strewn rise like a terrified cat going up a tree.
He felt something tug sharply at his vest as he dived over the top. He slid down the other side on his stomach for a couple of feet before he could stop his momentum, his hands clawing at the dirt and stones. Last shot, he realized. The last shot had come close enough to touch the leather vest he wore.
He lay against the unpleasant roughness of the downslope, panting, willing his heart to slow before it burst out of his chest. He wasn’t dead, he gradually began to realize with a sense of awe. Reaching the top alive wasn’t something he had had any right to expect when he’d started that climb. He shouldn’t have made it, and he had no explanation for why he had. No logical explanation.
Except maybe some unfinished business, he thought, as he listened to Samantha edging carefully across the loose rocks to where he lay.
“Chase?” she whispered, leaning.close enough that he could smell her. The same sweetly seductive scent of her body that night, the fragrance released in response now to the heat and excitement. Unfinished business.
“I’m okay,” he said. He raised his head just off the ground, turning his face so he could see her. There was a smudge of dirt across her chin and a film of moisture on her upper lip and under the small curls that feathered around her temples and forehead. She had never been more beautiful. He thought about telling her, but he knew that that, too, would have to wait.
“We need to go,” he said, but like after the wreck, the effort to move seemed beyond him. He had expended every last ounce of strength to make it over the top, and his shoulder was a burning agony. His. success was just a reprieve, he knew, a few minutes of safety; but still he couldn’t seem to work up the energy to do anything but lie here.
“I know,” she said. Almost tentatively, she put her palm on his right shoulder and then moved it gently over the shoulder blade, a small comforting circle. “Do you know you’ve got a bullet hole in your vest?” she asked, still making that caressing movement with her hand.
“Last shot,” he said. He put his head back down on his forearm, fighting the fear he hadn’t had time to think about on the way up. Not after he’d started, at least. Close. He’d come so damn close to dying before he’d had a chance to make anything right.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
“The suitcase?”
“I’ll get it.”
He listened as she crawled across the short space, the sound of her jeans-covered knees slithering upward against the roughness. He listened to the noises made by the small rocks that tumbled down the slope toward him. Maybe by the time she got back, he’d be able to move.
“Okay,” she said.
He rolled over, feeling whatever was wrong with his shoulder burn again, like somebody had pointed a blowtorch at his body and again, ignoring it. He sat up and pushed down the slope a few more feet, sliding on his butt until he thought he was far enough down to be hidden if he stood.
Which was a lot harder to accomplish, as weak as his knees suddenly seemed to be, than he had expected. By the time he’d managed it, Samantha was beside him, his gun in one hand and the suitcase in the other.
“You sure you’re all right?” she asked, real concern in her voice.
“I banged up my shoulder in the wreck. It’s okay. Just sore.”
She nodded, eyes still searching his face.
“I can carry that,” he said, reaching to take the suitcase from her.
“What about the gun?”
“We might as well put it up. Hopefully there won’t be anybody close enough to shoot at for a while.” He took the .38 out of her hand and slipped it back into the holster.
His eyes scanned the terrain in front of them and he realized perhaps for the first time what they faced. The mountains of the Sierra del Carmen stretched before them. Somewhere within those high canyons and rock faces were the kidnappers who were holding Amanda. And behind them was someone who knew they were carrying the rest of the ransom. Someone who was very willing to kill them to get his hands on it.
“Which way?” Samantha asked, her gaze focused on the same hostile and forbidding territory he was surveying.
He turned to look at her and realized that she really expected him to know. He sure hated to have to disillusion her.
“Damned if I know,” he said, allowing himself to smile at her. “I’m just making this up as we go along.”
Her eyes widened involuntarily, but she didn’t show any other reaction. “I guess maybe Sam should have taken bids,” she said after a moment, surprisingly returning the smile.
The best man for the job, he thought, but for some reason it didn’t hurt this time. It didn’t make him feel inadequate. He knew that hadn’t been her intent.
“If we get out of this,” he said, “I’ll give Sam a discount.”
She laughed. “Don’t even offer, because I promise you he’ll take you up on it. Even if you manage to get us all home safe and sound, he’ll probably take it. He didn’t get to be Sam Kincaid for nothing.”
He could feel the warmth of her laughter curling deep inside, down where the icy fear of death was beginning to thaw. All the way down to his gut. That eyetooth was still just a touch crooked. Her mouth spread a little too wide when she la
ughed. The dusting of freckles was still visible beneath the layer of real dust.
“That way,” he said, nodding toward what he thought was northwest, the direction the rough little trail they’d been following had taken on the map. He didn’t wait for her, but instead began the half-sliding descent down the back of the ridge that was the only thing between them and the guy with the rifle.
CHASE FOUND THE TINAJAin the floor of a narrow rock arroyo at midafternoon. They had moved more slowly as the day progressed, resting frequently in whatever shade the outcroppings provided, but the need to replenish the fluid their bodies were losing was becoming urgent.
The pothole wasn’t deep, but the water trapped in it from the runoff of the last rain was sweet and cool. He watched Samantha drink, her movements still feminine and graceful somehow, despite the long hours of thirst and exertion, and then he forced his eyes away, back to the direction from which they’d come. Trying to see if there was anyone following. Trying to decide what he’d done wrong. He must have done something wrong because they hadn’t come across anything that looked like civilization. No camp, no village, and no kidnappers.
His sigh must have been audible because Samantha looked up. There was moisture from the water hole dewed around her lips and chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and then used the same hand to push back the curls that had escaped from the braid she’d bound her hair into this morning, but she didn’t say anything. She hadn’t questioned him during the long hours they’d struggled on the course he’d chosen.
They both knew that the time the kidnappers had given them for the exchange had long since past, and they were no closer to getting the baby than they’d been when they set out from the Kincaid ranch. He was grateful for Samantha’s restraint in not blaming him. He’d done enough of that himself.
“We need to drink all of this,” he said. “It may be the last fresh water we find for a while.”
“There’s always the cactus,” she said. “What do we do after we leave here?”
“We keep looking. There’s got to be someone in this godforsaken wilderness.”
“You said we might be as much as ten miles away.”
They hadn’t been that far, he thought, not when they’d wrecked, but apparently they’d been far enough. They would never make it ten miles, not in these conditions and not given the ruggedness of the country they were crossing. And they both knew it.
“Maybe less,” he said. “Drink some more,” he ordered, cutting off that useless speculation.
When they had finished off the water, they headed out again. He was trying to follow the mental image he had of the map he’d studied this morning. Asking directions back in Melchor Múzquiz would have been risky, but he wished now that he had. At least he should have verified that the map he’d been following was correct. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty.
They had seen or heard nothing of the rifleman since they’d left the ravine, and as they trudged upward through the long afternoon hours, other considerations took precedence over the danger he represented. They needed water and a relatively safe place to spend the approaching night. His job, he thought. His responsibility.
When he spotted the cave, which from below appeared like a dark slit high on one of the rock faces, he knew it was better luck than he could have hoped for. The mountains that stretched down northern Mexico were honeycombed with caves cut into the limestone by the action of the runoffs. Some of them were majestic, multiroom caverns. The one they had stumbled upon was small, but roomy enough for the two of them. There was water left in a shallow depression in the floor at the back of the cave to rehydrate them and even enough to save for tomorrow morning. The cave itself would offer some shelter from the cooling temperatures of the mountain night and from whatever predators were out.
He debated about building a fire and then decided that they had come far enough that they should have lost any pursuit. The fire would offer protection from the night roamers, and if the light attracted human interest, the odds weren’t great that the person who came to investigate would be the rifleman. It would be better to take the chance than to do without the warmth and protection of the fire.
There was enough dried plant material and deadfall on the ridge around the cave to provide a small but steady flame. As night fell around them, full of both familiar and unfamiliar noises, the small glow was more than worthwhile in terms of morale, despite the slight danger it might represent.
He hadn’t seen any game although he knew there was a wide variety of wildlife in these mountains. Chase wasn’t sure he would have fired his gun even if he had seen anything that might provide them with a meal. Hunger wouldn’t be a problem for a while, and there was always the ubiquitous prickly pear, which with the spines removed could be grilled over the fire. That wasn’t a task he relished, and besides, they could live a long time without food as long as they could find water. So far, they had been lucky—mostly the luck of being in these mountains so soon after the rains.
Through the narrow opening of the cave Chase watched the stars pop out against the indigo backdrop of sky, their brilliance undiminished by any competing glow from the artificial lights of human habitation. As darkness fell, it was as if the two of them were the only people on earth, surrounded by the whispering night sounds.
He looked back into the interior of the cave. Samantha was sitting cross-legged before the fire, her hands lifted and working by feel, replaiting the long braid that had loosened in the course of the day. The firelight touched her face with mystery, subtly highlighting the contours of its perfect bone structure.
She must have felt his gaze. She turned to face him, her eyes lifted in question. This was still not the time to tell her, he thought. Not before he had completed the job Sam Kincaid had hired him to do. Not before he had found her baby. But the words he wanted to say crowded his throat until it ached with the need to make it all right. To try to explain to her why he had done what he’d done nearly five years ago.
“Chase?” she questioned softly. “What is it?”
“We probably need to take turns,” he said, choosing to articulate those words instead of the ones that had echoed in his head since he’d faced the realization of his own mortality this morning. “Sleep in shifts.”
“Okay,” she agreed, but her eyes were still searching his face. “You want me to take the first watch?”
“I’ll go first. I’ll wake you.”
Her hands had stilled. “You think we’ll be able to find them tomorrow?” she asked.
He had expected that kind of question all day, and been grateful that he hadn’t had to answer it. He tried to decide exactly what he wanted to tell her about their chances. Finally, he took the coward’s way.
“Probably,” he said. “Find them or the river. Eventually, if we keep traveling north, we’ll hit the river.”
She nodded, and then her hands resumed the task she had started. He watched them moving through the curling strands and wanted to replace them with his own. He could picture his fingers, callused and dirty, touching the porcelain satin of her skin, brushing over the small curve of her cheekbone as his thumb skimmed the arch of her brow. He swallowed against the force of that image and deliberately looked down into the heart of the fire, burning the picture off his inner eye with the heat of its flame.
“The man who shot out the tire, the man with the rifle,” she said, and he looked back up. “I’ve been thinking. It must have been the man you recognized. The man in the shop. If he recognized you, he’d know you were carrying money. He’d guess what you were down here to do.”
“That’s what I figure.”
“It probably had nothing to do with Mandy. Just somebody who thought…” She hesitated.
“Who thought if he could get rid of me, he’d collect on a ransom that he hadn’t worked for.”
“The one thing that bothers me is how he could have known where we were heading.”
“Maybe he followed us until the turnof
f and then took another trail to get ahead of us. Maybe someone listened in on my conversation with the kidnappers. Or maybe they talked too much and word leaked out.”
“It seems to me that the more often you come down here, the more likely something like that is—running into someone who knows what you do.”
“It’s something I’ve considered,” he agreed. “The danger of too many people learning my face. A professional hazard,” he added dismissively.
“Then…each trip becomes more of a risk.”
“Probably.” He wasn’t blind to the possibility of that happening. In the beginning the money had been so important it had overridden any other consideration. But now, things seemed to be changing, needing to be reevaluated.
“Have you thought about giving this up?” she asked. “About doing something else with your life?”
The silence stretched. He couldn’t tell her the things he had been thinking about during the last five days. Most of them involved her, and he knew she wouldn’t want to hear them. More of his dreams. His fantasies.
“I sold my half of the ranch,” he said. “I don’t think I can go back to law enforcement, and that has nothing to do with Sam’s suggestion that it doesn’t pay worth a damn. If I eliminate those two things, I guess I don’t know how to do much else.” Although his voice was self-mocking, he knew that what he had said was true. And a little frightening. Where did he go from here?
“Why did you sell out, Chase? I know how much that ranch meant to you. Owning McCullar land. If anybody can understand what that meant,” she said softly, “I guess Sam Kincaid’s daughter can.”
He thought about what to tell her, and while she waited for an explanation, the night sounds and the soft crackling of the fire enfolded them.
“I couldn’t go back,” he finally confessed. “Not after what happened. I tried to convince Jenny to let Mac’s half go, too, to move away, go on with her life, but she was determined to stay. She seemed to feel that she had to hold on to the McCullar legacy.”
His laughter was softly ironic, and he knew Samantha would understand. The McCullar land wasn’t like Sam’s. Despite its proximity to the Rio Grande, it was rocky and desolate, too arid for farming, and a struggle even to ranch successfully.