Hot As Sin

by Debra Dixon

  The bitter edge in his voice was the only clue Emily needed. “But you don’t take charity,” she surmised as he stared at her. “You pay your debts, your bills.”

  “That’s right.” He stood up.

  “And that’s why Patrick was so certain you’d honor the dog tag. Not just because he saved your life, but because you hate to owe anyone anything.”

  He didn’t confirm or deny her off-the-cuff psychological analysis. Instead, he walked toward the next headstone. “We need several names to make sure we get one that hasn’t been issued a social security number. And to make sure we get a kid that was actually born in Washington State. Thank God no one was routinely fingerprinting for identification twenty-odd years ago. That’s one less thing I have to worry about.”

  Emily almost laughed when she realized why he was suddenly so talkative. The man was trying to steer the focus away from himself. She didn’t take the bait.

  Instead, she kept going over something Marsha Jean had said that first night. Something about not having to cut any of his trees for money. And then the significance hit her.

  “You’re a man who pays his debts. Is that why you have a hard time making payroll? You give a lot of your money to the nuns to pay them back for raising you?”

  “No. I have a hard time making payroll because there aren’t enough people bending elbows in my bar.”

  “Don’t you get a pension or something?”

  He turned on her. “Aren’t you being kind of personal?”

  “You’re asking me to put my life in your hands. Don’t you think I’m entitled to know a little something about you?” she asked. “Like what kind of man you are?”

  Gabe narrowed his eyes and walked away. “I opted out early. No pension, but I do all right.”

  “Patrick said you retired. So even leaving early you should have gotten a lump sum or—” She stopped and stared at his back. “You gave it all to them.”

  He kept walking. “No.”

  She hurried to catch up; making her way through a slushy patch of snow in cheap tennis shoes was like walking through wet sand. “Most of it, then.”

  “No.” Halting suddenly, he whipped around and told her the truth to end the ridiculous guessing game. “I gave them half of it. The rest was a down payment on the bar and my cabin—I use the term loosely—outside town. Can we drop this now?”

  Emily got the message and nodded. They marched off down the row again. “Bet they were proud,” she said softly. She thought what he did for the nuns was wonderful, but she knew he’d be mad at her for not letting it go.

  Closing his eyes, Gabe ground his teeth and exhaled a breath. Emma didn’t get it. She was raised in a different world. “No, they were not proud. Parents are proud. Sister Mary Joseph was grateful.”

  “How do you know she doesn’t feel like a parent?”

  “Because she threw me out of the orphanage the day I turned eighteen,” he said as he wrote down yet another name on the pad.

  “See there,” Emily said. “That proves my point.”

  “And how the hell do you figure that?” Gabe threw up his hands, amazed that he was even having this conversation with her. He’d never let anyone dig around in his past like this.

  “Mother birds always nudge the baby chicks out of the nest.”

  Gabe laughed. “I’m not a chick, and it wasn’t a nudge. It was a good swift kick. Plain and simple. She needed the bed.”

  “Maybe that’s just what you were supposed to think. By kicking you out she made sure that you’d go out into the world and not look back.”

  “Now, why would you make that assumption?” he asked with deadly calm. He hid his emotions perfectly, but instinct told Emily that she was on very shaky ground.

  “W-well,” she began, putting her hands in her pockets as she defended her position. “I assumed she knew how you felt about taking charity, and paying your debts, and being responsible. Maybe she wanted to give you a chance to find your own place in the world without having to worry about your obligations to them.”

  He tapped the pad against his thigh and shook his head. “Guilt is a nun’s stock-in-trade. They are experts at twisting the screws, so your version doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if she loved you, and I think she probably did—” Emily stumbled as she realized how easy it would be to love Gabe. He needed someone to love him. A split second later, she wondered if Gabe had ever truly allowed himself to love anyone.

  She plunged ahead before she could think about that anymore. “She probably does love you, and you should thank her. She knows you can’t chain someone to you by need. It’s much harder to love someone and let them go.”

  “On which idiot talk show did you hear that theory?”

  “Not a talk show, just personal experience,” she said bluntly. “That’s what my parents did. They chained me with guilt and made me chase their dream in the name of love. I never got to stand on my own two feet because they were afraid I wouldn’t choose to stand atop an Olympic medal platform.”

  “Were they right?” he asked, zeroing in on the issue she had barely begun to admit to herself.

  “We’ll never know now,” she lied, and flicked a glance at his pad. “Do we have enough names?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Hurry up. Being here gives me the creeps,” Emily confessed irritably. “I don’t need any reminders about death right now, or the past, or what it feels like to be alone.”

  “You’re not alone,” Gabe pointed out.

  “I don’t mean alone here. I mean alone. I think that’s what scares me most in this whole mess. My parents and grandparents are dead, but I had cousins, an elderly aunt in a nursing home. I had family, you know? Suddenly because of this mess, they’re gone too, and I am alone.”

  Gabe stopped abruptly in front of a monument topped by a stone angel. “Darlin’, family comes in two flavors—blood and chosen. Starting over doesn’t mean you can’t make a new family. It doesn’t take away your memories. I don’t even have those.”

  “How did your parents die?”

  “I don’t know if they have.” He looked away for a moment, as if making a decision. While he studied the trees in the distance, he said, “I was driven to a strange city and abandoned on a street corner. My mother said she’d be right back, and then she got as far away from me as she could.”

  Emily’s heart contracted at the hard edge in Gabe’s voice, and her jaw tightened with anger at the woman who’d abandoned him. “How old were you?”

  “Six.”

  Shocked she gaped. “Six! She left you on a corner? How could a mother do that? Something could have happened to you!”

  “It did.” Gabe pulled his attention from the trees and looked at her. “I got sent to the orphanage.”

  “She must have known that,” Emily offered, latching on to the first plausible justification. “Surely she believed you’d be adopted?”

  “Not likely. Six-year-old boys who don’t talk don’t usually get adopted.”

  “You couldn’t talk and she left you in a strange city?”

  “Not couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Not until I was ten. I was an ‘elective mute.’ A real hard case for the orphanage. Nuns ran my life until I was eighteen, and then the navy took over.”

  Emily’s blood ran cold as she realized that being abandoned at six might have been the least of Gabe’s childhood traumas. She tried not to visualize the circumstances that would make not talking a safer choice for a child than talking.

  “How’d they know your name? Could you write?”

  “No. Sister named me,” he said, but this time Emily thought she heard a grudging respect for the sister if not affection. “Don’t remember my real name anymore. When I showed up at the orphanage, Sister kept asking me if I had a Christian name, and I kept nodding my head to tell her that I did. She finally took all that nodding to mean that my Christian name was Christian.”

  Smiling, Emily said, “Of course. That makes perfect sens
e, as does Gabriel. I assume she chose it too?”

  “Oh, yeah. For a lot of reasons. Not the least of which was to remind me that one day I would want to blow my horn.”

  “Sounds like a wise lady.”

  “Wise enough. She knew that if there was any hope of my making it through this world in one piece, I was going to need a guardian angel.”

  The archangel Gabriel. Emily closed her eyes and felt a fresh stab of guilt for the secret she kept.

  Don’t tell the Archangel I caught a bullet. He thinks I’m invincible. Patrick wasn’t delusional. His last words were for Gabe. One last jest between friends.

  “Archangel,” she whispered.

  “Patrick calls me that,” Gabe said distractedly, looking into the distance.

  “I know. He told me.” Chosen, not blood, but brothers all the same, Emily realized.

  She wished she’d never started this conversation. Sharing pieces of their lives was dangerous. Understanding created bonds that weren’t easily cast off. Like now. She felt the weight of the secret she carried so intensely because she’d broken the golden rule—Never trust anyone. But she trusted Gabe. She trusted him to protect her.

  Now all that trust was backfiring, forcing her to tell him the truth about Patrick. Whatever happened afterward was his call, but she couldn’t let him risk his life with that secret between them. Patrick deserved better. Gabe deserved better.

  “Gabe, I need to talk—”

  “Don’t say a word. Don’t look around. Just walk over here behind this monument.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t argue, Emma. Just do it. We’ve got company on the ridge.” When she froze, Gabe pulled his gun, never taking his eyes off the heavily wooded crest. “If you don’t move now, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  As he intended, his comment and his action were enough to shock her out of the paralyzing fear that kept her rooted in place. Unfortunately Emma’s instinct for survival kicked in like Thor’s hammer. She practically dove behind the memorial in her haste to obey.

  “That was certainly subtle,” Gabe said as her body slammed into his. He made room for her by sliding to the left. “Let’s hope our boy’s sight picture was blurred at that moment. Otherwise, he knows we know.”

  “How do you know for sure? I can’t see anything but trees. So how can you see something that far away?”

  Gabe appreciated the fact that the lady didn’t fall apart. He could deal with momentary panic. He could answer questions, but hysteria would have gotten them both killed.

  “The sun’s striking something over there that flashes a reflection,” he explained. “Whatever it is, it’s moving. Up and to the north of us. My guess is a rifle scope.”

  Emma heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. I thought you saw a person. If it’s a rifle, then it’s probably a hunter like at Marsha Jean’s.”

  “Not likely.” Gabe concentrated, trying to calculate the distance from the ridge to the monument. Looked like a couple hundred yards. Tough shot for anyone but a pro. “Ain’t nothin’ in season on that ridge but us.”

  “How do you know that?” He could hear the disappointment and challenge in her voice.

  “Because our Uncle Sam owns that particular piece of real estate.”

  “Oh, my God. It can’t be. Not now. Not when I’m so close. How the hell did they find me?”

  “You tell me, darlin’. You laid the trail; you dropped the bread crumbs.”

  “But I didn’t. I was careful. I rented three cars and ditched them all around Boise. I ditched … the marshal’s car. I got the habit in a costume shop from a seventeen-year-old who never once looked up from his chemistry book.” She grabbed a handful of his jacket, clutching it until her knuckles were white. “I bought a piece garbage car from a guy so shady he had moss on his shoes. They did not follow me.”

  Not bothering to remove her hand, Gabe surveyed the landscape again. “Well, I beg to differ, Emma. They followed something, but they wouldn’t want to kill you in town. Too many witnesses. It’d be days before anyone found the bodies out here.”

  “But how did they follow us here without you seeing them?”

  “Transmitter on my truck would be my guess. He tracked us, and now he’s going for position.”

  Something’s wrong with this, Gabe thought uneasily. A pro wouldn’t set up a shot like this—not one through a loose maze of trees in a cemetery full of tombstones, which made excellent cover for his targets. So, what’s he up to? Gabe felt the adrenaline boost his senses as he marked the last spot he saw the light flash and then the truck in the parking lot.

  “He wants to drop us at the truck,” he said suddenly. “Figures he can get us both quick, with the first two shots. Fewer trees in the way. No maze of angels and granite memorials to mess up his shot. Yardage is a little shorter too. Not much, but enough to up his odds. And he won’t have to leave that heavy cover to do it.”

  Emma pulled away finally. She shivered and huddled in her parka. “What do we do now?”

  “We don’t do much of anything. You keep your head down and your feet ready. I’ll take care of the problem.”

  “How?”

  “Any way I can.”

  Gabe ignored the cold radiating from the frozen ground. Nor did he dwell on the discomfort caused by crouching in one position for far too long. The only thoughts he allowed himself were the ones that began with “what if?”

  What if there were two of them?

  What if he couldn’t approach without alerting the sniper?

  What if the sun didn’t catch the scope again?

  The game was Gabe’s personal version of twenty questions. Every conceivable scenario played quietly in his head while he waited for the sun to kiss the scope again and give him a location. When it flashed, the glint came from a spot slightly below a trio of ancient cedars. Gabe smiled. He had the bastard now.

  Before he moved, he glanced down at the cemetery. If the sniper wanted her, he was going to have to find a way to put a bullet through two feet of solid granite. Nothing of her could be seen from there, not the top of her head, not a shoulder, not a foot. Satisfied that Emma was scared enough or smart enough to hold tight, Gabe began to work his way around and above the cedars.

  Emily didn’t ordinarily believe in omens, but it was hard to ignore the obvious.

  The stone angel above her had broken wingtips and the battle scars of vandalism. From her perspective on the ground, flaws like that should have been easy to miss. Instead, the imperfections jumped out at her—a warning that no one was immune from violence. Nothing was sacred. Not holy symbols, and certainly not human life.

  Violence fed on itself and played by no one’s rules. It caught hold of people and wouldn’t let go until the urge to protect dissolved into the need to attack. The one slowly becoming the other.

  Like now.

  She wasn’t running. She was cornered. The only way to survive was to attack. Protecting her meant Gabe had to complete the circle of violence.

  Emily tried to ignore the cold, but she couldn’t. It was all around her. In the ground, in the granite, and in her heart.

  As she shifted, the sound of a shot drove the cold deep into her soul.

  TEN

  When the shot rang out, Gabe abandoned his careful, silent assault. His only concern was to prevent the second shot, in case the first one hadn’t torn through her.

  Why didn’t you stay down, Emma? Dammit, why didn’t you do what I told you to do?

  Heedless of the sting of icy evergreen needles, he practically slid the last fifty feet into the sniper’s base. A split second was all Gabe needed to let his concern for Emma fade and focus on the shooter. Time stretched, drawing out his actions in slow motion, a feeling that was so familiar to Gabe.

  The shooter was about forty and carefully dressed in a hunter’s worn-out camouflage coverall and flapped hat. Surprise registered on his face as he turned his head, but not the rifle, toward Gabe. Surprise matured into fear, a
nd the sniper’s hands convulsed on the high-powered rifle too late. There wasn’t enough time to bring it around or change his position to get the shot.

  “Don’t,” Gabe ordered. “Scoot away from it. On your belly.”

  “All right. All right. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Shut up.” Gabe risked a glance in Emma’s direction. He couldn’t see much from this distance.

  His gaze swung back to the man on the ground and registered the detail he’d completely missed. The guy’s rifle wasn’t aimed at the cemetery. Gabe didn’t like what he was thinking. Not at all. Odds were, he’d caught a poacher and not a sniper.

  “What the hell were you shooting at?”

  “Nothing.” The word was muffled against the ground. “I didn’t hit anything. I was just practicing with my new scope.”

  “That so? You’re either incompetent or a liar or both.”

  Walking closer, Gabe knelt down—the Beretta ready in his hand. The shooter—still on his belly—was silent, determined to play the tough guy.

  “So which are you? Incompetent or a liar?”

  “You a ranger?”

  “No.”

  “Then why the hell do you care what I shoot?”

  “I’m funny that way.” He checked the rifle, the scope, and the ammo. Then he looked at his man on the ground. “What kind of hunter carries this much firepower?”

  By the time Emily heard Gabe holler her name, she had made so many promises to God that she couldn’t remember them all. Most of them were about keeping Gabe safe. She hadn’t worried about escaping or whether the man with the rifle would close in to pick her off. What she had worried about was Gabe’s life.

  Something inside her had broken when she heard the shot.

  “It’s okay, Emma,” he called again.

  Relief surged through her, burning away the cold as she let go of the fear. She scrambled up as fast as her stiffened muscles would let her and peered over the monument base. Gabe casually pointed a rifle at a man who marched in front of him. Standing all the way up, she took her first full breath in half an hour.