Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

  “Until we find the treasure,” Tag said. “There’s no telling how long that will take.”

  “Then I guess we better get moving,” Mick said. “I ain’t sleeping on the ground forever.”

  “I am.” Alex pulled the packs off Jackass and dropped them. “Sleeping on the ground, that is. Just as soon as I take care of my horse. I was up all night. I’m not hiking this kind of terrain while I’m exhausted, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be any good.”

  Tag had to admit she had a point. They’d ridden pretty much due north from Casteel, bypassing her valley and leaving the pine forest behind. The terrain had gradually morphed from low, leafy plants and wood debris into an area of rocky outcroppings and low, scrubby underbrush.

  But it wasn’t just the landscape they needed to worry about. “There’s no telling who might be wandering around out there,” he said, “and since you won’t return our guns we have no way to protect ourselves.”

  “You don’t need a gun,” Mick said, “we’ll watch out for you.”

  Right, Tag thought, if it came to armed conflict Franky was likely to shoot them in the back and blame it on the other guys so he could get back to civilization.

  Tag looked over at Alex and knew she was thinking the same thing. They had to figure out a way to get rid of these bozos, or get away from them. But there was no way they could come up with a plan with Harper’s hirelings listening in, and it wasn’t just them overhearing the discussion that concerned Tag.

  He was walking a fine line. He couldn’t appear too friendly with Alex in front of guys, who would report it back to Harper, but he couldn’t let her think he was done with her, either. Because he wasn’t. Not even close. And if she thought he was done with her, she’d treat him like the enemy. He couldn’t afford to have her working against him, not if they were both going to get through this thing in one piece.

  He had to find a way to make it look like they were only putting up with each other for the sake of the treasure, nothing personal.

  He said as much to her when she laid their bedrolls out side by side, tipping his head toward Harper’s bad guys.

  “Nothing personal,” she repeated, looking at Mick, then Franky. Realization dawned, and she nudged the bedrolls apart a couple of feet.

  She didn’t look upset while she did it, so Tag figured they were on the same wavelength. Consciously.

  Subconsciously there seemed to be a different agenda altogether, and while a two-foot separation might be enough to fool Mick and Franky into thinking there was nothing personal between them, it wasn’t nearly enough distance for their libidos to overcome.

  Somehow during the course of the morning they wound up spooned around each other. At least Alex couldn’t blame him for it, Tag thought, since they seemed to have met in the middle, a compromise they couldn’t always manage during their waking hours. And there was nothing he could do about it. Except simmer.

  He wasn’t the only one, either. Alex was in one of her moods, pulled back into herself, completely uncommunicative—unless it was to hand out orders.

  They’d camped at the mouth of the valley where they should find the first site named on Juan’s map. La Cruz de Piedra, which translated to “Cross of Stone.” It sounded obvious, but if it was really obvious, Tag figured somebody would have found it before now. Bottom line? They had no clue what they were looking for. But Alex seemed reasonably confident they were looking in the right general area.

  It was a lot of territory, though. Alex led Mick, Franky, and Tag down one side of the valley, searching every nook and cranny big enough to hide a poker chip, leaving no stone unturned, literally. She enlisted the three men to move any boulders that might be hiding the mouth of a cave or small opening until Tag pointed out that Juan Amparo would likely have been alone when he hid the treasure. After that she let them take turns.

  It couldn’t have been much over sixty-five degrees, but the sky was cloudless, the air was breezeless, and the landscape was treeless. The sun had been beating down on the rocks all day, and the rocks were currently reflecting heat back in shimmering waves. They were sweaty, tired, and thirsty, and Alex had gone from grumpy to genial, her temper brightening the longer she watched them toil, although Tag wasn’t sure why she included him in the punishing work. Until he remembered how they’d met.

  “Getting a little retribution?” he asked a couple hours after they’d started their trek up the valley.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, grinning.

  “Retribution,” Franky repeated. “Does that mean she’s only doing this to get back at us?”

  “I’m doing this because somebody has to look behind the rocks, and since you insist on tagging along, you might as well make yourself useful.”

  Franky plopped down on a handy boulder. “I ain’t moving no more rocks. I’m tired and I’m hot and I’m sitting right here for a while.”

  “Okay, you sit right there, but if I were you I’d watch out for the wildlife.”

  “Wildlife?” Franky shifted his ass from one cheek to the other, checking underneath it and finding nothing but rock.

  “She’s just talking about rattlesnakes,” Mick said, “and you’d hear one of them before it got close enough to bite you.”

  “Sure, rattlers make noise to scare you off, but bears don’t, or mountain lions.”

  “Wouldn’t we see something that big coming?” Tag asked, although he was clearly amused.

  Alex shrugged. “Maybe, but there are lizards everywhere.”

  Franky’s gaze skittered to hers.

  “And spiders. Yellow sacs, hobos, black widows. But those are just the poisonous ones. And they especially like rocks. Nice warm rocks.”

  Franky yelped and jumped up. Mick rolled his eyes. “She’s just screwing with you, dumbass.”

  Franky didn’t sit back down. “What did I ever do to you?” he demanded.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Hey, lady.” He stabbed a beefy finger in her direction. “You ain’t the only one suffering. You think I want to be out here walking around in these fucking boots? Who invented them anyway? Why are the toes pointed and why do they hurt like hell?”

  “Aw, are your feet sore?” Alex asked. “I’m all broken up for you.”

  Franky lunged for her, but Mick held him back.

  “If we finish this site before dark,” Alex taunted, “we can ride to the next one in the morning.”

  “She’s asking for it, Mick.”

  “What? I’m only trying to get you off your feet.”

  “And on that damn horse again.” He cupped his balls and grimaced.

  “You know an ice pack would probably help that— Oh, we don’t have any ice out here, do we?”

  This time it took Mick and Tag to hold him back until he got his temper under control and shoved away from them.

  “You have a real mean streak,” Tag said, taking Alex by the arm and towing her off a little ways. “It’s fun to watch Franky’s face turn purple, but maybe you should try to remember they have the guns.”

  “They won’t shoot us.”

  “Mick won’t,” Tag corrected. “Franky is standing on the psycho ledge and you keep trying to push him off.”

  “I’m the one who’s being pushed around. I’m just pushback. Why are you so worried about toeing the line?”

  “I’m waiting for the right moment. The longer we’re out here, the more tired they’ll get. In the meantime we’re doing what we wanted to do anyway, and that’s look for the treasure. Jesus, Alex, try to see the big picture.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do since you fell in my valley.” She tore her arm out of his grip. “I know where they fit in,” she said, tipping her head toward Mick and Franky, “and I know where I stand. You’re the only shadow, Tag.”

  “If they know how… close we are, they’ll play us off against each other.” She didn’t look convinced. “I’m trying to buy some time until we can figure out how to get away from t
hem.”

  “Maybe if I had the first clue what you were up to, I could be a real partner instead of always playing catch-up.” She walked away and left him standing there with an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. Probably impending doom.

  “Let’s get moving,” she said for everyone’s benefit.

  “What’s your hurry?” Franky wanted to know. “Why don’t we just call it a day?”

  “We ain’t had very much sleep,” Mick chimed in. “You two got a solid six.”

  “Yeah,” Franky added, “and you looked pretty cozy, too.”

  “It was cold,” Alex said.

  “And I’m not above taking what’s offered,” Tag added. He could see, even though she knew what he was doing and why, that she was pissed off. But there were more important considerations.

  Mick and Franky had been in a hell of a hurry to get out in the field, but now they didn’t seem the least anxious to look for the treasure. Letting them sleep the morning away, for starters, proved they weren’t overeager. Sure, Alex hadn’t given them much choice, but they hadn’t even argued with her. And now they wanted to take the rest of the day off? True, they had to be tired, but Harper wasn’t a patient man. Mick should be pushing them, not holding them back.

  “This is stupid,” Alex said. “If you want to go back to camp, go ahead. I’m going to finish up here.”

  She headed off, not giving a damn if anyone came with her. Including him, Tag decided. Or maybe she’d taken his tongue lashing to heart, and she was putting on a show for the kidnappers. But did she have to be so damn good at it?

  He’d started the trek thinking this hostage thing wasn’t so bad. And sure, if Mick and Franky hadn’t been around he’d have been able to sleep a whole lot closer to Alex and there wouldn’t be this urge percolating constantly under his skin. But at least they got to sleep. Mick and Franky had to take turns standing guard. These guys weren’t rocket scientists to begin with; as the nights added up and they got more and more tired, sooner or later one of them would let something slip. Tag was betting on Franky, and he was betting on sooner. Of course, he’d have to make damn sure it wasn’t Harper’s name. That would be a huge mess. But he thought he could control that. He just had to keep Alex from provoking Franky into strangling her with his bare hands.

  Not a bad game plan. Now all he had to do was remember it. Alex wasn’t making it easy, striding along about ten yards ahead, arms swinging, ass swinging, well-toned muscles flexing in a way that made him think of sex. Hot, sweaty, any-flat-surface-handy sex. If she’d been trying to torture him, she couldn’t have chosen a better way. And then she notched the torture up to excruciating by stripping her T-shirt over her head, stuffing it in her back pocket so it flapped behind her like a flag, and walking off in nothing but her sports bra and jeans that had faded and shrunk to fit her like a second skin.

  He’d cooled off once they stopped moving; he reheated so fast he felt like a baked potato in a microwave. And somebody had forgotten the little fork holes. He caught up with her and ripped the shirt out of her pocket, holding it out before the top of his skull blew off from the pressure. “Put this back on,” he said, holding it out.

  She glanced at the shirt, then lifted her eyes to his face, giving him a look that would have singed his eyebrows, if he hadn’t already been at thermostatic overload. “No.”

  “This isn’t a game, Alex.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Put. This. On.”

  “I’m perfectly covered,” she said.

  “And leaving nothing to the imagination.”

  From behind them, Franky made a wolf whistle.

  Alex laughed, but when she spoke again her voice had an edge to it. “The imagination is highly overrated. I prefer the straightforward approach.”

  “What you see is what you get?”

  “More like what you see is what there is.”

  “But keep your hands off? That’s a game, too, one of the oldest.”

  Alex plucked her shirt out of his hand and replaced it in her back pocket. “I took my shirt off because I’m hot. You’re the one who’s making this into something else.”

  “You ought to be a damn politician,” Tag muttered.

  “I spent my childhood in Boston society, followed by eighteen months on the pageant circuit. I am a politician.”

  She clambered onto a pile of rocks and stood there, one hand on her hip, the other shading her eyes. If she was trying to piss him off it was working. Then she dropped her arms, and something about the tension in her body spelled excitement. Not the kind of excitement he’d been feeling since she took off her shirt. But the look on her face when she turned around made him forget about sex—okay, not entirely, but at the least the boil cooled back to a simmer.

  She beckoned him, and he climbed up behind her. There wasn’t much room; he had to plaster himself against her in order not to fall, looking over her shoulder so he could follow the direction of her pointing finger. The fact that she didn’t object, that she’d completely forgotten their argument, was pretty compelling.

  “There, do you see it?” she asked him.

  “What is it?” Mick wanted to know.

  “That rock formation at the head of the valley,” Alex said.

  “It looks like—”

  “La Cruz de Piedra. Cross of Stone.” She scrambled down, covering the last five hundred yards at a near-run.

  Tag was about a second behind, the two of them stopping at the end of a cross with three short arms and one long one, each about two feet wide, measuring about twenty-five feet in total length. It was made up of all different types and textures of rock, some smooth from being carried out of the mountains in a long, dried-up stream, others rough.

  “This has to be man-made,” Tag said.

  Alex was already moving rocks. “Definitely,” she said, adding when Mick and Franky arrived, “don’t just stand there and watch. Either the treasure is under these rocks or we can rule out this site.”

  The possibility of downtime, one way or another, was all the incentive Franky needed. He and Mick began to heave rocks, forgetting they were supposed to be adversaries. Once they got about half the cross dismantled, Tag and Mick set to work digging. It only took a couple more hours to decide there was nothing there—and work off the gold fever. They stood there in silence a moment, night falling, dejection setting in.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Alex said, slapping at a mosquito. “Why would Juan make this cross for no reason?”

  “He had a reason,” Tag said. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that he buried gold here. The Spanish were rampantly Catholic. This could be nothing more than a profession of faith.”

  Alex swung around and stared at him. Mick joined her in her consternation.

  Franky had a one-track mind. “Does that mean we can go back to town?”

  “We can go back to camp, at least.”

  They headed back down the valley, Mick and Franky lagging behind, not caring if they were in on the conversation.

  “There are four more sites marked on the map,” Tag said quietly.

  “It’s not Denver,” Alex said. “Even if Juan would have hidden the treasure that close to a settlement, we’d never find it after all the growth around the city since 1859. Same goes for Casteel.”

  “Was the town that big then?”

  “Probably not, but it was a big enough settlement to make it dicey for him to hide anything there without someone stumbling across him. And it would have been found by now anyway. Nobody knows where Juan lived, exactly, but he spent a lot of time in Casteel. There have been more holes dug around that town than there are in Franky’s head.”

  She said that loud enough to carry back.

  “Hey,” Franky yelled, “why you gotta say things like that?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know, you kidnapped me?”

  “You ain’t the only one been inconvenienced, you know.”

  “Inconvenienced?” She stopped and turn
ed around, planting her hands on her hips. “That’s what you call this?”

  “Everybody’s tired,” Mick said. “Let’s get back to camp, have something to eat, get some sleep.”

  “I don’t get to sleep,” Franky grumbled, “that’s a inconvenience.”

  “Listening to you whine is an inconvenience,” Alex said. “You not getting to sleep is poetic justice.”

  Franky opened his mouth, but the next sound they heard was a gunshot.

  Chapter Twenty

  ANOTHER SHOT RIPPED THROUGH THE STILLNESS, rolling through the hills like thunder. Tag and Alex ducked behind a handy rock. Mick and Franky hit the ground about thirty feet away, behind a rock of their own.

  “Which way did it come from?” Mick asked.

  “No telling, the way it echoed,” Tag said.

  It was big country, big enough to lose the entire population of Denver. Tag hadn’t realized that until they got out there, the landscape rolling off into the distance like a rumpled cloth, no matter which way you looked. A whole army could be hiding in the hills around them and they’d never know.

  Even if he hadn’t known that most of the other treasure hunters had stuck closer to Casteel or gone in a different direction, it seemed impossible that someone had stumbled upon them by chance. But not improbable that someone would have tracked them on purpose.

  Another shot rang out. The sound bounced around like before, but it was easier to pinpoint now that they were ready for it.

  “1 think it came from up ahead,” Alex said.

  “Between us and camp.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t hear the bullet hit anywhere nearby, and I’d imagine whoever’s out there is a pretty good shot. Probably a signal.”

  Probably for Dussaud, Tag thought. Alex proved to be right about their aim. Tag was wrong about their identity.

  “Hallo,” a man called out.

  Alex’s expression changed, starting with an eye roll and ending with a heavy sigh.

  “You know who that is?”

  “Yeah. So do you. Rusty Hale.”