by BJ James
That wreck of a sign had assumed an inordinate importance in Patience’s thoughts. Tattered and curling, peppered with buckshot, and leaning at an impossible angle, it had become her lodestar, not to the north, but to herself. It was her orientation, the finding of herself. It had become increasingly important to know where she was, to document it even in the vaguest of terms. A necessary exercise to keep this real.
Terror could dull the mind, nature’s palliative turned reality to a nightmarish dream. Patience wouldn’t allow herself that luxury. Reality she could control, dreams she could not.
The pitiful derelict standing haphazard among the mesquite could have been a prank. Some desert dweller’s idea of a great joke. But for Patience it was truth. It had to be.
The little knowledge was hope. Hope for escape. Hope for a future. An exhilarating stimulus that swept paralyzing fear from the mind, sharpening muddled thought processes.
Clutching this cherished secret to her heart, Patience could look out on her movable prison with a new understanding. The sudden frenzy of moving twice in as many days, and the clandestine travel seemed confusing and more than strange after two weeks of idle days in the canyon. She realized now that the weeks had been a time of waiting, hiding and waiting, for some signal. But what? And why?
In those first days of her captivity few left the canyon, then only in pairs. Now all the men rode, and with them most of the women. Indian, who hadn’t left her alone in camp before, rode, too.
Only Patience never left her prison without bars. Each trip out, two of the women were left behind and set to guard her. Given the way some of them looked at her, the silent, sullen watching, she often wondered who would guard her from her guards.
Sitting apart now, as she always did, as Indian wished her to, she became a not-so-detached observer of the latest spate of activity. That they were readying to ride was obvious. If she hadn’t spent this interminable time with them she would know this was different, more than a joyride. Excitement ran through the camp like chain lightning. A spark leaping from one to another, as wanderers nailed to one place for too long made preparations for a serious ride.
Only Hoke, his triumvirate, and Indian did not see to their bikes. There was no camp fire now, with the midday heat too oppressive for it. Snake and Hogan and Custer crouched on their haunches around Hoke, listening, seldom speaking. A few paces away, out of range of their conversation, but keeping them constantly in his line of sight, Indian busied himself with the repair of a moccasin in perfect repair.
As she watched him watch them, Patience was completely convinced he knew what they were saying, as surely as if he heard them.
He’s reading lips, she decided. What did the foul four have to say that was so important? And why did Indian eavesdrop in such a covert manner?
Sighing, shrugging a shoulder beneath her sweat-soaked shirt, she turned away. The broiling sun bore down through the scruffy shrub that was her meager shelter. The air was stifling, so hot it seared the lungs with each breath. The bits of shade that dappled her skin offered no relief. In this crudest of camps, the most temporary and barren, Indian had neither time nor resources to construct a lean-to. A little shelter that would be welcome now.
Subconsciously she lifted her braid lying over her shoulder like a strip of heat. Brushing her fingers over the banded tips she found herself turning again to Indian, remembering his care and his tenderness as he’d worked with her hair, braiding it, securing it against the wind that beat at her as she rode behind him.
In seeming oblivion of her interest, he knelt at the edge of their sector, one knee on the ground, one foot firmly planted. His hair was drawn cruelly from his face, a glittering fall of all the iridescences of black. His features were cast in stark relief, angular and rough-hewn, its handsome harshness unrelieved by his dark, riveted gaze and the grim line of his mouth. Beneath his right eye, a bruise she couldn’t see faded to yellow as it blended into the coppery hue of his skin.
The bruise she’d given him with the butt of her head on the night that proved her suspicions. The night she knew Indian was more than he pretended to be. But who was he? What was he? And why did he travel with these men who viewed him with mistrust, if not total distrust, and afforded him only tentative acceptance at best?
As she puzzled about him, he stood, rising to his full height of six feet. He wore the buckskin vest, his chest and arms bare beyond its cut. Beneath the blazing sun, darkening skin that never seemed to burn shone red-brown. Only a light sheen of perspiration shimmered on his forehead and chest, when others, including Patience, sweated profusely. He was a being made for the desert, a man abiding with its exigencies, dealing with them in uncanny ease.
The riders called themselves Desert Wolves. A grandiose misnomer for the creatures they were. Swaggering marauders in a fragile, unforgiving land, but not of it. As Indian turned his probing, intelligent gaze to her, she knew that only he among them was of the desert, only he was the wolf.
Her thoughts faltered, her pulse quickened as he came to her in his easy, ground-eating step. With his back to the others he knelt by her, touching her face with his fingertips, smoothing a drifting tendril from her cheek. “We ride soon.”
She nodded in acknowledgment. “Everyone but my guardians.”
“Alice and Eva,” he complained under his breath. “I hate to leave you with them.”
Alice was the oldest, the roughest, the sliest. A beefy woman with tattooed arms. And Eva, a crude creature with hard, bitter eyes, who looked with evil intent at the world. A mockery of her own sophisticated name.
“I’ll be all right,” Patience assured him with a conviction far from the truth.
“You’ll stay close?” He meant the place he’d made for her, her place apart.
“I won’t budge an inch beyond our perimeter. And I won’t do anything to antagonize either of them.”
The promise didn’t satisfy him, but it was the best he could expect. The best he could have.
“I wish...” It did no good to wish. There was an alternative in the beginning—to take her out of the desert to safety, abandoning all he’d accomplished, or to keep her with him, salvaging what he could of a crucial investigation. He’d made the self-serving choice and now she, as well as he, must live with the consequences. Framing her face between his hands, he looked deeply into her eyes, into her soul, the source of her indomitable spirit and sometimes foolish courage. Willing her to keep herself safe, he growled a low demand, “Take care.” He pressed his lips briefly to her hair. Moving away, touching her only with his eyes, he murmured, “Please.”
Then he was away to his bike without a backward glance.
Long after the predominant roar of the Harleys had been swallowed by the desert, Patience sat as he’d left her. All that moved was her hand, stroking her hair. When she realized her fingers had by their own volition found the place his lips had touched, she yanked her hand away. Folding one over the other, keeping them stiffly in her lap, she sat with dread in the silence of the camp.
She missed him already, and insisted to herself that it was because he was her only ally. Because he was her gentle protector, more than her keeper. Because the women were her enemies, with the two set to guard her now, the worst of the lot.
“Hey, Red.” As if on cue the taunting call shattered the silence, drawing her almost gratefully from thoughts she wasn’t ready to accept. “You gonna sit all day and mope?”
When Patience didn’t answer, Eva joined her brittle call to that of Alice’s. “Miss High and Mighty ain’t so high or so mighty now, is she? Didja see her mooning after the pretty boy, Alice?”
Alice chuckled, an unhealthy rattling sound. “Face longer than a lonesome hound dog. Too bad the pretty one ain’t here to see. Make his heart go pitty-pat.” A crude expletive rolled off her tongue with a hideous naturalness, as she tossed back a lock of hair too sooty black. “Do more than that to Snake.” Poking Eva with an elbow, her face crinkled in a sly caricature of a gr
in. “That I’d like to see.”
“None of us was good enough for him,” Eva announced tartly. She called no names, but no one doubted that she spoke of Indian. “Only your ladyship here would do. Bet he wouldn’t think so much of her once Snake got through carving on her patrician face.” The way she pronounced it, breaking it into broad, derisive syllables, patrician became a parody of itself. A scornful insult.
“To my way of thinking, a little roughing up would improve more than your ladyship’s looks. Tone her down some, then she wouldn’t be so special, sitting over there all alone,” Alice observed a little too casually.
Patience didn’t like the direction their taunts were taking them. With her thoughts ranging, she searched for a way to diffuse the escalating situation. Drawing a blank, she took refuge in the only recourse left her. Passive resistance. Complete silence. If their remarks prompted no retaliation, she hoped they would find little sport in them. It hadn’t proven successful on a lost and lonely trail, but it was still her best and only recourse.
“Hey, you.” Eva sauntered closer, hips swaying as her boots scuffed the dust in her burlesque of the mincing steps of a grand lady. She was more slender by far than Alice, yet still bigger than Patience. When her call elicited no response, she stopped, hands on her hips, flat, cruel eyes flashing beneath a shock of close-cropped hair the color of platinum. “You!” She pointed a finger. “I’m talking to you.”
Patience knew she’d been mistaken in her silence. Mistaken because there was nothing she could do to diffuse this. These women had waited nearly three weeks for redress of some imagined dishonor and they intended to have it.
Concealing a rueful sigh, she turned to these hardened camp followers bent on malicious mischief. Lifting her chin a regal inch, she addressed them calmly. “Yes?”
“Yes!” Alice snorted. “She doesn’t know what you want and she’s already saying yes.”
Patience ignore Alice. “You were speaking to me, Eva?”
“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t talkin’ to myself.”
“How may I help you?” Patience wondered how many times she’d heard her mother use that phrase to discourage determined gossips. She hadn’t really listened then, but was surprised at how like Mavis she sounded. “Is there something you need?”
“Something I need!” Eva howled and slapped her knee. “That’s a good one. What would I need from you?”
“I have no idea,” Patience said as she stood to face the woman. “You came to me, not I to you.”
“Oh, my, what a pretty speech. Do you think you could teach me to talk like that?”
Eva was circling her now, and Patience turned as she turned. Alice had initiated this encounter, but Patience was convinced she was only the instigator. One who liked to stir the bitter broth, then stood back and watched it bubble. Alice would be no trouble; Eva was the one she must not take lightly.
“I could teach you,” Patience said, pretending she hadn’t heard the contempt in the gibe, “if you like.”
“And if I don’t like?”
“You asked, Eva, I didn’t offer.”
“You really think you’re something, don’t you?” Eva’s eyes glittered with hate, her words were filled with venom. “You waltz in here like Miss Perfect in the flesh, and have all the men panting after you. Including Indian, who wouldn’t give me a look.” She clamped her teeth down on a damning admission. And Patience understood at last why the woman hated her so.
Eva wanted Indian, and in her mind Patience had taken him from her. “You’re wrong, Eva. I didn’t waltz anywhere. I was brought against my will. I never wanted any part of this.”
“You think I believe that?” Brows many shades darker than platinum lifted nearly to her hairline. “What kind of fool do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re a fool at all. Mistaken, but not a fool.” Patience kept her voice steady, her face serene.
“Nothin’ ruffles the grand lady, does it?” Eva sneered. “I wonder how grand you’d be with that red braid hacked off at the scalp? Or your nose trimmed like a cheatin’ squaw?” The knife at her belt was suddenly in her hand.
The game was over.
Patience had no knife, but she was not without weapons. Her father had insisted long ago that his daughters not be without protection. Keegan determined that protection would be themselves and the skills learned from a great, hulking Oriental who had no speech, but moved like a dancer and taught physical mayhem with ceremony in a teahouse setting. What Kim taught Patience and Valentina was simple and deadly. With a single move either could disable or cripple a much larger assailant. But she had no wish to cripple Eva, nor to do her lasting harm. She wanted nothing more than to persuade the jealous woman to leave her alone.
As she backed away, hoping this little giving of ground would satisfy the woman, Patience readied for attack. Relaxed, her weight evenly balanced on both feet, arms at her sides as she leaned ever so slightly forward, she could move surely and quickly. Surprise and speed, and unexpected knowledge would be her forte. With regret for the need of it, she waited for Eva to charge.
Spurred by envy that was fueled by the cool composure of the smaller woman, Eva became like a wild animal guided by rage rather than thought. With a cry she launched herself at Patience, slashing savagely with the knife. She had only a millisecond to halt, glaring blankly at the space where Patience had been, before a booted heel crashed into the side of her knee. That very vulnerable and complex structure buckled, pitching Eva’s weight onto it, inflicting added damage in an instant before she fell on her face.
Patience backed away. That quickly it was finished. Not with the damage she could have done, but enough. Eva would be a long while standing, and longer repeating her threats. For a moment, as the crying woman cringed at her feet, Patience felt a strange compassion for her. Compassion she dared not reveal as she lifted her head to stare coldly at Alice who gaped as if her eyes played tricks.
“You started this, now come get your friend.” Patience’s command was harsh. “Take her back to your own camp. Tend her.”
“But h-how?” Alice stammered.
“Bind the knee, stabilize it. See that she doesn’t walk on it for a while. After this, stay in your own camp.” The last was flung over Patience’s shoulder as she walked away, distancing herself from her own havoc. Kim’s most devastating technique had served her well before. She never hesitated to employ it, but she never liked it.
When the women were gone, she returned to her seat beneath the scrub. Sunlight glinted on gray metal. Eva’s knife lay at her feet. Plucking it from the sand, she wiped it clean and tucked it in her belt. Taking her low-crowned cattleman’s hat from the tree limb where she’d hung it, she pulled it low over her forehead. Depleted in the unrelenting heat by the exertion of her encounter with Eva, she tugged the hat another notch lower and, with the brim shading her eyes, leaned back in the pitiful shade to wait for Indian.
She knew she couldn’t sleep. Shouldn’t sleep.
Not even after exhausting hours of wary vigilance, nor in the comforting assurance that Alice was too cowardly for another skirmish, and Eva incapable. As the balm of a soothing languor seeped into body and mind, she welcomed it, giving herself up to it, emptying her mind of everything but this day, this minute, the nirvana of capricious peace.
But she wouldn’t sleep.
Shielded by the precious umbrella of shade, as heat swept the chill of fear from her bones, she heard the rustle of tiny leaves stirring in rising currents of heat, the cry of a bird in flight, the secret scurry of small creatures. Insects raised their chorus, a summer serenade in this beautiful land, this land she called unforgiving.
Hours spun themselves away slowly, she drowsed and listened.
She didn’t mean to sleep.
* * *
Silence reached into a dreamless darkness. Silence in which there were no crying birds, no scurrying creatures, no serenading insects. Even the air was motionless, the leaves quiet. It
reached for her, drawing her from the darkness to the still light.
Alarm crept into the languor of sleep, padding across tender nerves like a lazy tiger. Releasing a long breath unconsciously caught and held, Patience stirred with guarded restraint, feeling the weight of oppressive heat, the touch of an unrelenting gaze upon her. Cautiously, making no sudden moves, with the tip of one finger she pushed the hat from her eyes. The sun was a white light, blinding her, turning the world to a glittering haze. Yet she knew someone was there, watching her.
Leaning away from the tree, her back straight, she blocked the glare with a hand beneath the brim of the tilted hat. The glare swam into a pattern of hot white and sooty blur. The blur became a shape crouching at her feet. Recoiling, she choked back a cry, her eyes straining, focusing. With excruciating concentration the shape became a body, a face. Ebony eyes studied her intently.
“Indian!” The word was a croak torn from a parched throat.
He didn’t move, nor turn his riveted stare. He didn’t speak or acknowledge the leap of grateful recognition in her voice. Slowly, with utter care, his probing scrutiny moved methodically over her, noting grimly a tear in her shirt before returning to settle relentlessly on her face.
Patience addressed him again, to prove to herself he was real. “I didn’t hear you come back. I didn’t hear the bikes. How long have you been here?” Her voice faded away; he wasn’t hearing her.
She stared up at him, seeing a far different man. There was a chilling light in the black depths of his piercing stare. A dangerous cast in the grim set of his features. For the first time she didn’t doubt that he was far more deadly than Snake, or Blue Doggie, or Hoke.
“Are you all right?” The question cut harshly through her worried concern.
“All right?” She blinked, and shook her head to clear it. “Of course I am.”