Tracker’s Sin

by Sarah McCarty

  “And keep climbing.”

  “You’ve got it. It’s your job to get Miguel out of here.”

  She touched her fingers to Tracker’s hair, holding it in her fist as Miguel did, wishing she had his blind faith that everything was going to be all right.

  “And yours is to come back to me.”

  “Mine is to keep you alive.”

  She shook her head, knowing there was no time left. She had to leave. “You owe me a night in your bed.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now.” She pressed her fingertips against his lips. Her fingers were shaking. She didn’t care. This couldn’t be the last time she saw him. It couldn’t. “Promise me you’ll make it.”

  “Ari…”

  She pressed harder, cutting off the truth he always gave her. “A full night. You and me together in a bed with nothing but love between us. Promise me that.”

  For a second, he didn’t move or say anything. For a second she couldn’t breathe. Then he pressed a kiss against her fingertips.

  “Deal.”

  It wasn’t a promise, but she’d take it.

  “Now, get Miguel out of here.”

  Clever of him to put it like that. For herself, she might not try so hard, but for Miguel? For Miguel she’d do anything. She scaled the canyon wall as fast as she could, heading toward the notch Shadow had pointed out, taking chances on footholds and handholds, scrambling to keep her balance on the loose rock and narrow ledges. Tracker was right behind her all the way, his big body shielding her from the few bullets sporadically hitting around them, as Shadow laid down intense cover fire.

  Her foot slipped. Her knee slammed into a rock. Pain shot through her leg. Against Tracker’s warning, she looked down. Oh my God, they were coming up fast. More bullets pinged off the rocks around them. Tracker grabbed her shoulder and shoved her to the right, into a channel carved between the rocks. It offered protection.

  A rapid rattle started immediately. She froze. A knife blade flashed over her head. Blood splattered her face. A snake’s head dropped beside her. The rattle continued as Tracker grabbed the snake’s body and tossed it down.

  “Climb.”

  Nodding, she swallowed her gorge and did as she was told. As fast as she could. Keeping her gaze on that notch in the canyon wall that signified safety. As fast as she climbed, she wasn’t as fast as the men behind. Between Miguel’s screams, she could hear their shouts getting louder. The Comancheros were going to catch them. She was too slow. Her poor baby. All the memories she had revolved around him. She tugged on the rope, getting Tracker’s attention.

  “Cut me loose.”

  He ignored her and kept climbing.

  “I’m slowing you down.”

  “Climb.”

  She slid her arms out of the cradleboard straps, turned around and leaned back against the wall. Tracker’s body came over hers. Miguel’s screams filled her ears. “Cut the rope and save my son,” she whispered in response to the concern in his eyes.

  “All or nothing, sweets. It doesn’t matter what might happen. This is what it is. You and me. And they’re not getting our baby.”

  He was right. What had she been thinking? Together. They had to stay together. “I’m sorry.”

  He stood back and handed her the cradleboard. Her arms screamed when she slid them back into the straps. She climbed as quickly as she could, ignoring the pain in her shoulders and legs, knowing Tracker protected her back, her baby. She wouldn’t let them have Miguel. They couldn’t have her baby.

  She was concentrating so hard on climbing that she didn’t even realize when she reached the notch. She reached up and there was nothing there. Her foot slammed down hard enough to snap her teeth together. Shadow surged past and pulled her up. She screamed. Miguel screamed right along with her. She tore the cradleboard off her back, ignoring the pain in her shoulders, and checked him over.

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Don’t let him be hit. Please, Lord, don’t let him be hit.

  Tracker was right behind her. “Son of a bitch, was he hit?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She tore at the knots that held the baby to the cradleboard. Again there was a flash of a blade in front of her eyes, and Miguel was free. She snatched him up and held him to her, pressing his face to her chest. His screams subsided. Too soon he was snatched out of her arms.

  “Let me see.”

  She didn’t have a choice. Tracker inspected him, then anchored him against his chest.

  “It’s time to go.” He grabbed her arm and started running. The path was narrow and treacherous. So narrow she wasn’t sure if they could get through it in places. Awkward also, because Tracker held her hand, dragging her along faster than she might have run on her own. The lights started flashing behind her eyes again.

  One step at a time. One step at a time. Just one step.

  As soon as they were away from the ledge, Tracker pulled his knife from his boot and cut the rope binding them together. He handed Miguel to her. She could only stand there and stare at him, feeling her world fall away. “What are you doing?”

  After another hard kiss, he said, “Run, baby.”

  Climb, run. He was always making her go away from him. She grabbed his hand. “You come with me.”

  “I can’t let Shadow have all the fun.”

  The lights flickered faster. He was leaving her. “I’ll wait.”

  His fingers squeezed hers. Past the forced smile on his lips she could see the sadness in his eyes. “I’m glad we had that kiss.”

  “I want more.”

  “Me, too.” A volley of shots, then a whistle rose above the cacophony. “I’ve got to go. You’ve got to run.” He pointed. “That way to your sister.”

  The only thing he didn’t say was “have a good life,” but it was there in his voice. He didn’t expect to survive.

  “You come back to me, Tracker Ochoa. I’ll be waiting.”

  The lights flickered faster, consuming her vision. In the back of her mind, she heard other voices yelling, screaming. She couldn’t lose another person who loved her. She couldn’t face another person leaving her behind.

  “You hold on, Ari. Be strong for your son.” Tracker’s thumb brushed her lip. “Make me proud.”

  “Wait!” She searched for an excuse to keep him with her. “How will I know they’re Hell’s Eight?”

  He touched the pocket of her blouse. Paper rustled. “Ask them for their letters.” His eyelids flickered. He handed her a pistol. “The chambers are full. You’ve got—”

  “Six shots,” she finished for him.

  He gave her a hard look. “Don’t waste them. Pace yourself.”

  The first Comanchero came over the edge. Tracker snatched the gun from her hand and put a bullet between his eyes.

  Shoving the gun back into her hand, he yelled, “I have to get to Shadow. Run.”

  She did, stumbling over rocks and ledges. Listening with everything in her for another shot. A war cry echoed behind her. A volley of bullets pinged off rock. Another war cry came from down below, answering the first. Shadow? Did that mean the first was Tracker? She looked back. There was nothing to see. Just the bend in the narrow passage, hiding from sight the chaos behind.

  Miguel screamed. She wanted to scream along with him, but she didn’t have the breath. Her ankle twisted. She didn’t stop. The war cries echoed in her head, growing louder and louder, joining the flashes of lightning. She stumbled over a rock and fell to her knees. Miguel’s screams tore at her. She had to get up. Had to find the strength to go on.

  Men loomed in front of her. She jerked the pistol up. Her thumb slipped off the hammer, so she tried again, unsure whether this was real or not. Not even caring. She had to protect Miguel.

  The gun was snatched from her hand. A voice as smooth as molasses drawled, “You don’t want to be doing that, ma’am.”

  He had no idea how much she did.

  She gasped out, “Hell’s Eight?”

/>   “Caine Allen at your service.”

  “Tracker. Shadow. Need help.” Her whole body shook. The light obliterated her vision. There were only shadows left to see. “So many. So many.”

  So many she couldn’t see. So many shadows haunting her mind.

  “We were just heading on through when we ran into you.”

  Hands grabbed and lifted her. She was passed from one set to another as men pushed into the opening. A sea of men flowed past her. All lethal, all deadly, all armed to the teeth. The last one paused and tipped his hat before waving her in the direction from which they had come. “They’re waiting for you.”

  They? “Who are they?”

  No one answered.

  She walked in the direction indicated, her feet like lead weights, fighting the oblivion that beckoned. Four more steps and she was in sunlight. She saw horses. Four men. Three women. Two of the women came rushing forward. The third hung back, a small, slender silhouette restrained by a man’s hand on her arm.

  Desi! Oh God. Don’t leave me, Desi!

  The lights flashed. Pain exploded behind Ari’s eyes. She fell to her knees, holding Miguel. The gunshots reverberated all around. Miguel continued to scream. Behind her, Tracker fought for his life.

  The slender woman took a step forward. Ari couldn’t look away. Sunlight shone off the blonde of her hair, reflected from the blue of her eyes. Her hair hung in a thick braid down her back. The severe style exposed the perfection of her skin and the fullness of her mouth. She was slender and short, and she was crying as if her heart was breaking.

  “Desi?”

  “Oh, my God, Ari.”

  The pain was unbearable. Ari couldn’t hold on. Memories she couldn’t stop surged forward, riding emotions she didn’t want to feel. Agony. Shame. So much shame. So much harder to bear than the pain. Betrayal.

  The ground beneath her shifted. She tumbled forward into the darkness. She didn’t fight, didn’t resist. There was peace in the darkness. It didn’t demand answers, didn’t ask questions.

  “Why?” she whispered, as Desi’s face swirled in and out of the darkness. “Why did you leave me with them?”

  11

  He didn’t need this. Tracker stood on the front porch of the small house Desi had built for Ari. No one had argued when she had insisted. Everyone wanted the miracle of the reunion. Everyone wanted Desi happy. The overhang shielded him from the sun. He wished it would shield him from Desi. The woman was on a mission and no one could equal her single-mindedness. She’d cornered him as soon as he’d ridden into the barn, waited impatiently while he got Buster settled, and then hauled him here. Now, she stood in front of him, arms folded across her chest, toe tapping, ready to explode. The big redbone hound that followed her everywhere plopped at her side.

  “Can I talk yet?” she demanded.

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “You! You threatened me!”

  “I said I’d kill for a bit of peace.”

  “And I gave it to you.”

  “So now I have to listen to you?”

  “You’re being very rude.”

  Yes, he was, because he didn’t want to hear Desi tell him that Ari didn’t want to see him anymore. As unrealistic as it was, he wanted to hold on to the sweet memories a few more hours, before they drowned under the bitterness of hatred. Which only proved he could be as big a fool as anyone.

  “What took you so long to get here?” Desi demanded. “We’ve been back for two days!”

  “I had to get my horse.”

  “We have lots of horses.”

  He took off his hat and wiped his brow on his sleeve. On top of everything else, he was hot. Zach had had to abandon the extra horses to escape. There was no way Tracker was going to leave Buster with the Comancheros. “Buster is my horse.”

  She waved her hand. “Fine. I understand. That whole what’s-mine-stays-mine Hell’s Eight thing.”

  He nodded and agreed drily, “Yeah, that. So what are you champing at the bit to tell me?”

  “It’s about Ari.”

  “Don’t worry.” He settled his hat back on his head. “I’ll steer clear of her.”

  “No!”

  He paused, his hand on the brim of his hat. “No?”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Zach said her memory came back.”

  “Yes. At the canyon, in the middle of all that chaos, she remembered.”

  He slowly lowered his arm. “What more is there to talk about?”

  “Getting her well!”

  Son of a bitch. Everything inside Tracker went cold. “Ari’s sick?”

  “She won’t talk to me, Tracker,” Desi whispered. “She won’t talk to anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing she said when she saw me was to ask me why I had left her with them.”

  The agony in Desi’s eyes tore at Tracker’s heart.

  “I didn’t leave her, Tracker. I wouldn’t. I chose her, but it was a trick.” Tears filled her eyes. “They said they would let her go. I just had to choose…”

  There was nothing to do but pull her into his arms. When it came to Desi, he didn’t have much defense. She was too much like Ari. He patted her back awkwardly. “I told you before, it was just a game to them. They never intended to let either of you go.”

  “But Ari thinks I left her.”

  “No, in her heart she doesn’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He wasn’t sure of anything, except he knew if it were him and Shadow, he’d never be able to believe such a thing for more than the minute it took to get his head clear. “Yes.”

  Desi sniffed and rubbed her face in his shirt. “She won’t talk to anyone. She won’t even let Miguel in.”

  “She sent him away?”

  “Well, no. She was so exhausted we thought it best to keep him while she slept.”

  That sounded reasonable. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know.” It was almost a wail. Desi never wailed. She might demand, she might order, but she never wailed. For such a dainty thing, she had a backbone of iron. “Ari asks about him every day, but she never asks for him.”

  Tracker took off his hat again and ran his fingers through his hair. Christ, had no one talked to Ari? Simply sat down and talked to her? “What have you been doing?”

  Desi shrugged and stepped back, wiping her face on her sleeve. “Respecting her wishes. What else can I do?”

  Talk to her. Listen to her. Ask her questions. Desi and Ari shared the same past, the same horrible experiences. But dammit, letting her hole up in the house that had been built to make her happy? No one talking to her? No one even knowing what was going on with her, just assuming that leaving her was the right thing? That sounded like a lot of chickening out to him.

  He ran his hand over the back of his neck, the small store of patience he had trickling steadily away. “What do you want from me?”

  He was tired, sweaty and feeling every one of his thirty-one years. He’d spent two days chasing down his horse, a night stealing him back and another two days getting here. He hadn’t rushed to return home, because the inevitability of Ari getting her memory back had put a drag in his step. His time with her had been a taste of the forbidden, a taste of the magic that others took for granted. A taste of love.

  Her face red and splotchy from crying, Desi still managed to look beautiful as she pointed to the door. “I want you to go in there and make her better.”

  And next they’d be asking him to make the sun rise in the west. “You too chicken?”

  Her head snapped up. “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

  “You’ve got a point?”

  Desi folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t get sarcastic with me, Mr. Ochoa, or I’ll sic Boone on you.”

  Tracker looked at the big redbone hound at Desi’s feet. The dog cocked a wrinkled brow at Tracker, moaned and flopped onto his side. “Hell, I think that dog has gotten ev
en lazier.”

  “Don’t swear, and he’s just conserving his strength.”

  “For what? Dinner?”

  Desi bristled predictably. Her devotion to the dog was as complete as his was to her. “If I tell him to, he’ll attack.”

  Tracker didn’t doubt he would. Boone had proved his loyalty to Desi the day she’d been kidnapped. He’d attacked her attackers, received a knife wound and been left for dead. But he hadn’t died. Limping and bleeding, severely injured, with no direction from anyone, he’d started to trail his mistress, his baying a battle cry that had echoed through the hills, calling the Hell’s Eight to Desi’s aid. Without him, no one would have known where she was until it was too late. The act of courage and devotion had forever earned him a place at Hell’s Eight. And when he’d sired puppies, there hadn’t been a family within a hundred miles that hadn’t clamored for one of his offspring. Boone was a legend. The why of it just baffled a person when they looked at him.

  “If you tell him to attack, I’ll have to defend myself.”

  She gasped. “You’d hurt Boone?”

  Tracker thought she was going to throw herself over the dog’s body. The hound opened one eye and looked at Tracker. Tracker shook his head. Boone moaned, and damned if it didn’t sound like reproach. Shit, the two of them were too much.

  “And have Caine kick my ass? I don’t think so.”

  “He would, too.”

  “But not because he loves Boone.”

  “He does.”

  Desi had a way of overlooking things that didn’t serve her purpose.

  “He loves him because he loves you, which is also why he’d be kicking my ass.”

  Desi smiled that gamin grin that was so infectious. “See? He loves him.”

  Tracker pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Is there a point to this discussion?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited. She bit her lip. Never a good sign.

  “Just tell me. I’m too damn tired to pull the information from you.”

  “Someone has to confront Ari.”

  He had a horrible feeling what was coming. “So?”