by Cox, Deborah
"The hotel's full," he told her, his voice raw with emotion. “Sorry. I know you were looking forward to a real bed.”
Anne shrugged, her heart lighter than it had been in weeks-maybe months-maybe longer. Music filled the air and she followed the sound to a small band that wended its way through the tables set up in the plaza. “I’ll manage.”
"I saw a good place to make camp by the river on the way into town." He nodded toward the plaza the townspeople were starting to fill. "At least we can get a decent meal. You go ahead, and I'll set up camp."
"Are you sure?" she asked, sensing that he wanted to be alone but also a little nervous the prospect of being on her own, remembering what had happened the last few times that had happened.
"I won't be long." He must have read something in her expression because he added, “It’ll be all right, Annie. It’s still daylight. Just stay with the crowd and keep that pistol of yours close.”
She watched him lead the horses off. He looked straight ahead, but she knew he was surveying his surroundings, looking for threats as he always did.
When had he stopped being a frightening gunfighter and become a man she had come to rely on so much that now, watching him walk away from her, she felt naked, defenseless, alone.
When had he changed from predator to protector?
Five years ago... a woman... El Alacran.
Threads that somehow made a whole, a whole so terrible they tormented his dreams and drove him to kill over and over. How could she call such a man protector? How could her heart have softened toward him? How could she actually yearn for him, miss him when he’d only been gone a matter of moments?
They were connected, she knew it. The woman kidnapped.
“What makes you think I rescued someone?”
She hadn’t wanted to think about the implication at the time, but it was clear. The woman had died, maybe like the woman they’d in the desert, a sight that still disturbed her sleep. He’d called it a trap. Was she someone he knew?
Was she Christina?
“No.”
She couldn’t let the images form. She didn’t want to know, even though she knew she had to. Or did she? Her relationship with Rafe Montalvo was finite. They would find the gold and she would use her share to buy her aunt’s house in Ubiquitous. And he would go on fighting the demons that drove him. She didn’t have to delve any deeper into his secrets than she had already.
And yet…
It was long moments before she tore her gaze from the place where he’d disappeared and made her way to the celebration in the plaza, her heart telling her to follow him instead and her head telling her to let it be.
***
Leaning against a tree beside the river, Rafe gazed toward San Juan Bautista. He could hardly see the town for the trees and the uneven terrain. But that was why he had chosen this spot: isolated, private, defensible. He could hear the sounds of music and laughter, of happy, shouting voices.
He closed his eyes, and his mind forced him back in time to another wedding. God, it seemed so long ago, a lifetime ago. She had been so beautiful, so ethereal in her flowing white dress, her face flushed and radiant.
They'd danced the first dance together. Then he'd lost track of her as the men vied for a dance with his bride, while he stood talking with his brother about duty and responsibility and family. Every now and then he'd catch a glimpse of her as she whirled across the plaza, and she would beam a smile like sunshine in his direction.
He wished he could remember her like that: happy, beautiful, innocent. He wished he'd never met her. If he'd never met her, she'd still be alive.
"Damn you to everlasting hell!" Michael's words still reverberated in his head. "If you had been a true husband to her, she wouldn't have had to come here."
He had reacted without thinking, striking out with his fist, hitting Michael hard enough to knock him off his feet. His brother had lain on the floor, gazing up at him with eyes full of loathing as he blotted the blood from the corner of his mouth.
"She wouldn't have been on that indefensible road," Michael had murmured.
"Just what went on here between you and my wife, brother?" Rafe had demanded.
He'd never really thought about it before: Michael and Christina. He'd been too busy to pay much attention to Christina's comings and goings, and he'd seen her friendship with Michael as a godsend. It kept her occupied, gave her something to fill her time when he was away.
But then he'd gone to Michael to tell him what had happened. It was six months after her death. He'd been more dead than alive himself, and he'd gone to see Michael as soon as he'd been able. Perhaps he wanted absolution, he didn't even know anymore. All he knew was that Michael had attacked him with such venom and such passion that he had been forced to examine that relationship for the first time.
Of course Michael had denied his accusations, but Rafe had spent the past five years wondering, vacillating between nagging doubt and the sure knowledge that there couldn't have been anything between his brother and his wife. His brother was a priest for God’s sake.
But it did no good to speculate. His brother hated him, and his wife was dead.
"You are no brother of mine!" Michael's words still reverberated in his mind, adding to the pain and desolation. Even his own brother had turned his back on him....
"Amigo."
Rafe spun around, his pistol drawn, to see Jose Carvajal standing behind him with another man, one who was bound, his face bruised and bloodied.
"Damn, Jose, I could have killed you! What the hell were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?"
Jose stepped forward, dragging his prisoner with him. When he was only a few feet from Rafe, he shoved the bound man forward and he fell to his knees in the dirt.
Rafe glanced past Jose to see another captive astride a horse, his hands bound behind his back and a gag in his mouth.
"I brought you a gift, amigo.”
“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on Annie.”
“Si, I was – both eyes. That’s how I found these two. They have been following her."
Fury surged inside Rafe. He wanted to kill them both right then and there. It took everything he had not to. He needed them to talk first.
Rafe walked to the captive on the ground, lifting him to his feet by the collar. The face he gazed into was much younger than he would have guessed. In fact, he was more boy than man, probably no older than fifteen or sixteen.
"Don't you recognize him, amigo?" Jose asked. "Look closely."
Rafe studied the boy intently: his dark eyes and boyish mouth, his high cheekbones and hawk nose. Realization dawned, and a cold violence settled on his heart.
"Carlos." Rafe breathed the word.
"Si, Carlos Delgado, El Alacran's cousin." Jose motioned over his shoulder. "The other one is Diego Munoz, El Alacran's right-hand man."
If there was one human being in the world whom El Alacran loved, it was his cousin. When his own son had died seven years ago, El Alacran had kidnapped the son of his mother's brother. Carlos had been eight years old at the time, and since then El Alacran had raised the boy as his own.
“Are they alone?”
Jose nodded. “There are others but I don’t think they are together.”
Rafe snapped around to face Jose. “Others?”
“A group of gringos. They’ve been trailing you since yesterday. But they are a good day behind and very disorganized. They can’t stop fighting long enough to make any progress.”
Satisfied, Rafe drew his knife, pressing the cold metal to the youth's throat, gratified by the look of terror in those dark Delgado eyes. It would be so easy to kill the whelp. Slit his throat and send him back to his uncle. Blood for blood.
"Why were you following the woman, boy?" Rafe ground out. When the boy didn't reply, Rafe increased the pressure, nicking the skin. "I'd like nothing better than to kill you, so if I were you I'd start talking."
Carlos Delgado began to pant in fea
r. "My cousin wants to... to talk to her."
"Kill him, amigo," Jose urged.
Rafe's hand flexed on the knife. The boy's entire body shivered with fear. The one person in the world whom El Alacran cared for was under his knife.
His vision blurred and Annie's face floated before his eyes. She believed in him. She saw something in him that no one else had seen for a very long time. What would she think if he did this? If he killed a boy in cold blood?
He imagined the expression in her eyes when she looked at him, when she finally understood what he was, a man without conscience, an animal. Damn her for trying to make him something he wasn't.
He pulled the boy up to his full height and lifted the knife.
"Do it quickly, amigo," Jose urged.
"No! Please!" the boy begged, his eyes bulging, his Adam's apple rising and falling as he struggled to swallow.
Rafe's hand began to sweat. His heart pounded violently in his chest. He would be justified. Christina would be avenged. An eye for an eye, an innocent life for an innocent life. The urge to kill pounded in his temples, coursed through his veins.
At last the time had come for sweet vengeance. He waited for the feeling of triumph and euphoria to wash over him. It didn't come.
Wasn't that how all this had started? If he killed Carlos Delgado to avenge Christina's death, would he be any better than El Alacran? Where would it end?
Annie's words returned to him. “I know what kind of man you are. You're the kind of who would hold me and comfort me yesterday in the middle of a scene that must have brought back your worst memories.”
With an anguished bellow, he flung the knife to the ground so that the blade stuck in the sand.
"Take him," Rafe ordered, shoving the boy toward Jose. "I won't have his blood on my hands too."
"I was right, amigo, you are going soft. What do you want me to do with them?"
Rafe couldn't think clearly. He could hardly speak. His breath came in gasps as he struggled to regain control.
"Just get him out of my sight," Rafe said. "I'll decide what to do with both of them tomorrow. I want them alive, amigo. Comprende?"
"Si, just as I thought. You are going soft."
***
Anne stood at the edge of the street behind a hitching post where she could get a good view of the horse races down the long, dusty street between the buildings. The tables had been cleared away after the fiesta, and now everyone lined the streets, many placing bets on whichever horse they thought to be the best.
Handsome young men in silver-studded finery lined up across the street on their spirited horses for each race, which would take them through the plaza, around the buildings in a wide circle, and back into the plaza for the finish.
When it began she clapped her hands and shouted for the winners along with the crowd, but as the riders returned after the last race, she began to search the sea of faces for Rafe.
She hadn't seen him since he'd gone to set up camp, and she was getting concerned. It shouldn't have taken him so long, unless he'd run into trouble.
Maybe he'd decided not to come back. Always when he was out of her sight there was that fear, though she knew he couldn't get the gold without her. But now she beginning to think he didn’t wanted the gold at all. There was something else driving him, something dark and disturbing.
Last night, when he'd told her about his nightmare, they had stepped across an invisible threshold. There could be no turning back. She sensed he had revealed more to her in a few moments than he had to anyone in a very long time—maybe ever.
He was so closed up inside, so guarded. In spite of her resolve not to become involved in other people's problems, in spite of the fact that Rafe Montalvo was the last man who could give her what she wanted, the last man she should care about, she was determined to break through that hard exterior of his. She wanted to know what caused the flashes of pain she'd seen in his eyes from time to time, what drove him to kill for a living. She wished he would just come back....
She searched the crowd again, but he was nowhere to be seen.
***
Rafe stood at the bar in the small cantina, a glass of tequila in his hand, his elbows resting on the rough-hewn surface.
How much would he have to drink to forget about Annie, to dull the pain that was becoming his constant companion?
Lifting the glass, he tossed its contents down his throat, then poured another from the bottle that the bartender had left in front of him. He was nearly halfway to the bottom of the bottle and still too damned sober.
It was his curse to have an unusually high tolerance for alcohol. When he'd been a young man in the army, it had come in handy. It was amazing what you could find out when everyone around you was drunk and you weren’t.
He pictured the faces of the men he'd known at Fort Bliss, his friends. He hadn't thought of them in years.
Why now? They hadn't been a part of his life since the day he'd fallen from grace. There was hardly a man among them who would sit down and have a drink with him today.
He tossed down another shot of tequila. As he lowered his head, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and scowled.
"Rafael Sebastian Holden y Montalvo," he murmured, raising his empty glass in a mock toast. "Fallen angel." He laughed, bitterly.
For a fleeting moment, he thought he recognized the man in the mirror, thought he saw something that reminded him of the young West Point graduate who had returned to the West to right every wrong and personally see to it that justice triumphed.
Then he turned away with a sneer. Justice? Men like El Alacran were beyond justice. Survival of the fittest, that was the law of the desert, and the only justice he'd ever found had come at the end of a gun—or a knife.
He still couldn't believe Carlos Delgado had been under his knife that very day, and still lived. The perfect vengeance for Christina's life, and he had not taken it.
Closing his eyes, he relished the vision of El Alacran's face as it would look when his beloved cousin's severed head was delivered to him. It would be a sight worth seeing—but somehow Rafe just didn't have the stomach for killing a kid, even if the blood of the Scorpion flowed in his veins. Jose was right, he was definitely going soft, and it would cost him.
He pushed away from the bar and stumbled toward the door. From outside, he could hear the sounds of laughter and cheering and music, and his mood grew even darker.
Annie was out there somewhere. She deserved to be happy. She shouldn't be here with a man like him, a man who could barely control his lust and wasn't accustomed to being required to do so. He didn't know how much more of her nearness he could take.
He tried to remind himself she was a pawn in a deadly game, but the words didn't ring true any longer. She had a name, she had a face he would never forget, and she had a body he wanted to know intimately.
Annie, Annie, why did you have to get mixed up in this mess? Why didn't you just stay in Louisiana or Mississippi where you'd be safe?
He pushed open the cantina door and stepped outside. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the waning sunlight, he began searching for the one face that could make him forget the horrors of the past, at least for a moment or two.
She was standing on the edge of the crowd, clapping and cheering with the rest of them, her face glowing with joy as he'd never seen it. His treacherous heart leapt into his throat as he made his way slowly toward the only ray of hope in his dismal existence—toward Annie.
Chapter 14
The sun began to fade, sending long gold and red streamers across the sky in its wake. The horses were tethered and lanterns lighted in the trees. Several men carried benches to the middle of the plaza and set them down to form a square. A small band gathered at one end and began to tune their instruments.
The women removed their mantillas and formed a line, while the men made a row behind them. For a fleeting instant, Anne imagined that Rafe was one of those young men, so innocent, so carefre
e. But that was absurd. There was too much darkness in Rafe, and she doubted he had ever been innocent. She couldn't imagine those eyes ever reflecting anything but pain.
A discordant blast from the band turned slowly into a sweet, haunting melody. The men and women stood watching as the groom led his bride in the first waltz.
Anne wrapped her shawl more closely around her, and watched the newly married couple glide gracefully around the makeshift dance floor, seemingly unaware of anyone but each other. She couldn't help the sigh of longing that escaped her parted lips.
Longing for what, she wasn't quite sure. She'd spent most of her life convinced that men were nothing but trouble and misery and that women were profoundly better off without them. Still, something about the way the happy couple moved together, looking at each other with such devotion and adoration, struck a yearning in the depths of her soul. What would it be like to be loved like that? Completely? Unselfishly?
She searched the crowd for Rafe Montalvo. He stood across the square, leaning against a rail of the corral, talking with a group of men. A shiver trembled up her spine as he glanced up and his gaze locked with hers.
Anger pricked her when she tried to imagine where he must have been—probably inside the cantina. But something in his face, even from this distance, sent a chill of apprehension and excitement down her spine.
As the first dance ended, a wild cry went up from the spectators, and the plaza erupted in applause. A feverish fandango burst quickly from the band. The two lines of men and women joined in the dancing with a wild abandon that took her breath away. The rhythm and pulse of the music flowed into Anne until she was clapping and tapping her foot with the other spectators.
Panic seized her when she gazed across the plaza to find that Rafe wasn't where he should have been. She looked around, but he was nowhere to be found. Some of her joy evaporated. Suddenly all she wanted was peace and quiet and Rafe by her side.
The frenzied tempo of the music gave way to a placid waltz, but Anne hardly noticed. The tiny hairs on her arms stood on end. She was strangely breathless, as if she, too, had been dancing. She didn't have to turn to know he had come to stand beside her. She could feel his presence as surely as if he'd reached out and touched her. She turned slowly to look at him.