Must Love Horses

by Vicki Tharp

  She rubbed her hands together. “What do we got?”

  He folded back the corners of his shirt and dug his hand in. “This might take a while.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think this is a collection of every kind of bullet ever known to man. We’ll have to sort through each one to find what we need.”

  She flattened out a corner of the blanket and said, “Hand me what we can use and put the others over there.”

  The discard pile grew and grew and grew some more.

  “Shotgun shell,” Boomer said as he tossed it into the discard pile. “Buckshot and maybe dove.”

  He dropped some brass onto the pile. “7.62s for the AKs.”

  When he added three more rounds so small, the brass barely made a sound, he chuckled. “.22s. Not good for much besides squirrels.”

  “Holy cowboy, this one’s big,” Sidney said as she took one from his lap.

  He felt the round. “.50 cal.”

  He unloaded five more from his lap. “.45s long and short.”

  “Last one.” Sidney handed it to him.

  “Bingo. 9mm Luger.” And it wasn’t even a hollow point.

  He scrubbed his hands down his face and shook out the tension from his arms and hands. He needed to move, to pace, to shout, to damn well kick something.

  Instead he said, “We’re gonna have to make that one count.”

  She blew out a laugh that sounded sarcastic. “Perfect.”

  He loaded the round in the magazine, rammed it home, and racked the slide. The round failed to feed. The mag spring sucked worse than a dollar-store vacuum.

  He dropped the mag and cleared the round and manually loaded the chamber. Hard on the casing extractor, but they were shooting one bullet if they were lucky―or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.

  Then, as another round of nausea built, he took Sidney’s hand and brought it to his lips. What he had to tell her wasn’t going to be easy to hear, or say, but it had to be said, had to be heard.

  “If this is your way of trying to get lucky—” The teasing remark dropped from her lips when she saw his face. “I don’t like that face. That’s a your-dog-just-got-hit-by-a-car kind of face. What’s going on?”

  She slapped her free hand on his forehead, then made a grab for the pulse point on his neck.

  He pulled away. “Stop.” Her hand dropped and he held her other one in both of his. “I want you to look at me and listen closely to what I’m about to say.” If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she’d stopped breathing. He almost put an ear to her chest to be certain. “Keep the gun hidden in your boot. Remember, no safety to disengage. Just point and shoot.”

  “What do you expect me to do with one bullet? It’s not like I’m going to stage a revol—”

  “Irish.” His stark tone got her attention back on him. “I’m going to lay this out straight so there will be no misunderstanding. If it comes out cold or harsh, I apologize for that up front.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “We both know these next few days are going to be tough. I’m going to get worse. Much worse, before I get better. If there is an opportunity for you to run, you run. You don’t look back, you don’t think about me. We have no idea when or if El Verdugo is coming, or what will happen when he does. If we can’t get away before then it could get, especially for me…ugly,” was the word he decided on.

  “What are you saying?”

  He choked back an ironic laugh. For the first time since he’d returned to the states he’d found a reason to hope, a person that gave him a reason to put the bottle down and question his need for the pills.

  And now he was going to have to ask her to promise something no one should ever have to ask of another. A soul-sucking promise that would end any hope of recovery.

  Of a life together.

  His chest tightened, but his heart rate didn’t spike with the certainty of what he had to say. “If it comes down to the choice of putting a bullet in El Verdugo’s head and letting me hang, don’t let me hang.”

  “What?” She jerked her hand free and backed against the wall, rubbing her hand up and down on the seam of her jeans like she’d touched the living dead.

  “Shoot me.” It was as plain and clear as he could say it. There could be no misunderstanding.

  “You’re certifiable. I’m not going to—”

  “If I hang, if you put a bullet in El Verdugo’s head, there will be nothing to stop his men from doing whatever they want with you… to you. With him alive, you are under his protection.”

  “Won’t they just hang me too?”

  “You’re much too valuable of a commodity to waste like that. Trust me, for men like him, you have much more value alive.”

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  He grabbed for her hand, but she pulled it away. “If they are going to kill you, they will kill me too.”

  “No. A woman has value. They will keep you alive. Long enough for you to be found, for you to elude them.”

  “Let me put this to you in a way that leaves no room for interpretation: Fuck. No.”

  She turned to pace, but he caught her hand and sat her down. He slapped the gun in her hand and clamped her fingers around it. He pressed the barrel tight to his forehead. “You shoot me. Between the eyes. Not the chest. The head.”

  She tried to pull her hand away, but he held fast.

  “Got me?” His voice broke, not because he was sad.

  He was furious. Furious that they were in this position, furious that he couldn’t get them out, furious that he had forced her to make a vow no one should ever have to make.

  The gun shook in her hand. “You have no idea what you are asking of me.”

  “I know exactly what I’m asking. Promise me,” he said. A wave of nausea hit and he swallowed it back down. “Promise me.”

  She nodded. It was slight and hesitating. She gulped. “I―I promise.”

  Her words came out stronger than he’d expected and it brought a smile to his lips. He removed the gun from her hand, laid it beside him, and pulled her to him. She clasped her hands behind his head, their foreheads together.

  Then she kissed him on his cheek, on his jaw, on his lips. The pressure was painful, but he drank it in. The pain said he was alive. Right here, right now, in this moment, he was alive, and he was taking advantage of every extra second granted to him. Gently, she traced his lips with her tongue and he opened his mouth and invited her in. She tasted of charred meat and jalapeño beans, and that sweetness, that freshness, that was all her.

  When he deepened the kiss, her breath caught and she pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, though by the flames in her eyes, things seemed alright.

  “You aren’t exactly up for a vigorous workout.”

  He pressed her hand to the bulge in his pants. “He’s up for anything.”

  “Well, he may be, but the rest of you, not so much.”

  Then she leaned in, her lips near his ear, and she whispered, “Just so you understand: when we are free, when we are home, for extracting that promise from me, you are going to pay.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the shed, Sidney helped Bryan onto the blanket and off with his pants and prosthetic. The only good thing about being stuck in the shed and trying to heal from the beatings is that it kept him off his leg, which had allowed his stump to improve dramatically. It was a plus, even if you needed a microscope to see it.

  The whole time she was getting him settled for the night, he rambled on about all the things he wanted to do to her, with her. She half listened to the monologue, not doubting it was the truth but seeing past it to the distraction he’d wanted it to be. To him. To her.

  Even though it was hard to be distracted from the fact that the man you�
��d slept with a couple of nights before wanted you to promise to kill him if the buffalo chips hit the big-ass fan. About the most she’d promised other lovers was that she’d call them back. Even then she followed through half the time.

  Man you’d slept with. Practical Sidney chuckled, though Sidney didn’t see the humor. You say that like he’s some stranger you picked up off the street for a quickie. He’s not just a man. He’s the man you…you…

  Exactly.

  What was Bryan to her?

  Neither she nor Practical Sidney knew what to call him. “Boyfriend” wasn’t exactly right considering she’d made it clear his alcohol and drug issues were a nonstarter for her.

  How many nonstarters do you unusually have stellar cave sex with that forces a ripple in the space-time continuum? Scientists everywhere are no doubt having to recalibrate all their fancy equipment.

  He grabbed a fistful of her shirt and caught her attention. “You even listening to me?”

  “Sure I am.” In her head, she sounded like her mother used to when she was little and going on and on and on about her pony. That way parents have of listening with only one ear and a couple of brain cells. She set his stuff nearby and lay down beside him.

  “Then what did I say?”

  Heat crept up her face. “I don’t think I can repeat that in mixed company.”

  He chuckled, short and shallow to protect his ribs.

  Then she leaned up and whispered in his ear. “That doesn’t mean I’m disagreeable to your plan.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that if—”

  “When.”

  “When we get out of here.”

  He was quiet after that, though it must have taken a couple of hours before he finally fell into a fitful sleep. Sidney, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so lucky. When she couldn’t take lying on the hard ground any longer, she got up and covered Bryan with the blanket.

  Back and forth she paced the shed, counting trips to give her mind something else to focus on besides THE PROMISE. In her mind, it loomed, in a bold, capital, Gothic font with the ominous duh, duh, dum in the background.

  Her boot struck one of the rocks she’d found for Bryan to sharpen the knife. She picked it up, as well as the pocket knife, and sat down on the ledge to work. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well use her time productively.

  The cool night raised goose bumps on her flesh, but her anger toward Bryan rekindled and kept her plenty warm. As it was, if the opportunity presented itself, there was no question whose head was getting that bullet. Bryan could be mad about it later.

  So, you’d leave Bryan to hang. Literally? For what, vengeance?

  Crap. Her throat closed, making it hard to swallow when she sniffed. She dried her cheeks on her sleeve, caught a whiff of her body odor, and fought the reflexive gag. Though with the odor wafting off the baño/vomit bucket, she was shocked other smells could force their way through.

  Her goal was to somehow make sure she and Bryan never made it to the worst case scenario. She couldn’t shoot Bryan.

  Bryan called out in his sleep, moving fitfully. She stepped over and laid a hand on his forehead, his skin hot, feverish. She pocketed the knife, dumped the unusable ammunition from his T-shirt, and soaked the material with some of their water.

  She gave him a sponge bath from head to toe, without waking him, which both surprised and concerned her. She smiled when she thought about how pissed he’d be to find out he’d slept through the whole thing.

  Then she left him with the blanket off and returned to the ledge to put the finishing touches on the blade with the smooth stone.

  She was almost finished when he started hollering and batting at his leg. “Get it off, get it off!”

  Rushing over to him, she tried to shake him awake, but he was awake, his eyes open and wide with terror. He tried to sit up, but he fell back, groaning in agony.

  Fisting his hand in her shirt, he jerked her down until her face was inches form his. “Get it off!”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Tarantula. On my leg. Get. It. Off.” He trembled, but let her go.

  Were there tarantulas in Wyoming? She had to get him quiet before his cries brought the guards to check on them. With a stockpile of old ammo in the corner, she couldn’t take the risk they would come in and find their stash.

  “Okay, I’ll get it, but you have to be quiet. Understand?”

  He nodded, the moonlight glinting off the sweat pouring down his face.

  She crawled down his body, swiping her hands over the tops of his legs and down between his body and the ground. There was nothing there.

  “I don’t feel anything. It must have crawled away.”

  “It’s right-fucking-there,” he said, his teeth gritted as he raised his head to stare down at her.

  “Where?” The word rang high in the cold night air.

  “Right there. On my right foot. It’s the size of a dinner plate, how can you not see it?”

  Sidney froze. Cold, dank sweat formed a rivulet down her back. He didn’t have a right foot. He was hallucinating. Standing, she made a show of stomping the ground around where his foot should have been.

  With forced triumph, she said, “Got it. I got it, Bryan. It’s dead.”

  She scrambled up to his head and wrapped his hand with hers, his breathing shallow and rapid. Relief softened his face.

  “That was a big mofo,” he said.

  Sidney blinked the moisture from her eyes until it brought him back into focus. “Huge.”

  As his breathing slowed, his eyes drooped and Sidney said, “Get some rest, I’ll stay on tarantula watch.”

  His eyes were already closed and he didn’t respond. Sidney folded his hand over his abdomen and rearranged the corner of the blanket so it pillowed the back of his head. When she was certain he was asleep, she trudged to the ledge and palmed the rock and the knife. The few steps over felt like she’d walked through sludge as thick as a Wendy’s Frosty. Her body, her spirit, felt drained—the knife and rock weighed as heavily as fifty-pound weights in her hands.

  For all intents and purposes, Bryan was incapacitated. Beaten, fevered, suffering from acute withdrawal, and now hallucinations. Could it get any bleaker?

  Don’t answer that. She threw up a mental hand to stifle Practical Sidney. She had enough going on in her head without taking comments from the peanut gallery.

  * * * *

  Waking with a pebble digging into his shoulder blade, Boomer opened his eyes, but the filtered light from the shed’s slatted roof kept direct sun out of his eyes. He rubbed his face and slapped at his cheeks to knock the fog out of his head. Holding a protective hand to his abdomen, he raised up on one elbow. Moving still hurt like a bitch, but he couldn’t do anything but accept it.

  Sidney lay with her head on his lap and stirred.

  “Hey,” she said. Her voice was sexy when it was thick and raspy with sleep. “How you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been steamrolled and left to bake in the Iraqi desert. Got any more of that water?”

  She retrieved the jug and assisted while he drank. When his stomach didn’t heave, he drank a little more. His mouth felt dank and dry and the water only helped to a degree.

  He shook the jug. Almost empty. “What happened to all the water?”

  “You were burning up last night. I gave you a couple of sponge baths.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “You weren’t exactly all there last night.”

  His abdominal muscles burned with the effort of sitting up, so he laid back down. “What are you talking about?”

  “The tarantula?” She said it as if he should know what she was talking about.

  With his head spinning and everything looking warped, like he’d been on a five-day bender, it was hard to figure out wh
at she was going on about. “I’m not exactly functioning on all eight cylinders. You’re gonna have to give me a clue.”

  “Last night, you thought you had a plate-sized tarantula on your right foot…”

  His stomach flopped and his blood whooshed past his eardrums for a few too many beats.

  The hallucinations had started.

  “How long?” she asked. She sounded like she was on the far side of the shed but she couldn’t be more than a foot and a half away.

  Even with wool on the brain he knew what she was asking: how long the hallucinations were going to last. Too long, was the short answer.

  He hoped his lucid moments far outweighed the alternative. “A few days if I’m lucky. Longer if I’ve pissed off the man upstairs.”

  She just rolled over on her side and faced away from him. His pulse slowed, dread weighing it down, down, down…down. He hadn’t felt such a sense of dread since that dark day in Iraq that changed the course of his life forever. Only this time he’d brought it on himself. In that moment of complete clarity, between what he knew would be longer stretches without it, he could no longer deny his substance abuse.

  The worst part about it was that Sidney’s life was at risk because of his problem. Because of his addiction.

  He wasn’t the man he once was.

  Not by half.

  He would make it up to her.

  In this life or the next.

  He ran his hand through Sidney’s hair. It was oily and gritty with dirt, fueling his self-recriminations. If it wasn’t for him, she’d be back on the ranch, clean hair, clean clothes, full belly, maybe about to throw her leg over the saddle for the first training ride of the day.

  “I’m sorry,” he said for what little good that word ever did for anybody.

  She rolled onto her belly, propped herself up on her elbows, and stared down at him with an expression that was more puzzled than pissed.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. The sooner you get that through that thick skull of yours, the better.”

  “It’s my fault we’re in this mess to begin with.”

  She patted his cheek, not hard enough to knock sense into him, but hard enough to get his attention. “You in la-la land again?”