by Cox, Deborah
"She was on her way back to Fort Bliss from Las Cruces," he began, his voice so soft she had to strain past the thundering of her own pulse to hear. "She'd been visiting my brother."
His powerful back expanded and contracted as he took a deep, painful breath. It was a long time before he spoke again, and as the brittle silence stretched on, she realized he'd been transported. He was reliving the past now.
"She was traveling under military guard, as always," he finally continued. "But that didn't matter to El Alacran and his men."
They had abducted his wife. They had abducted her and killed her. Rafe hadn't been able to save her. That was the source of his guilt. She closed her eyes, trying not to imagine the horror of being kidnapped by men whose brutality knew no bounds. How terrified she must have been, how profoundly helpless.
Her skin crawled as she tried not to think of the things they must have done. She looked up and met his gaze, knowing he could read her thoughts on her face. The expression in his eyes confirmed her worst fears and spoke of things beyond her realm of understanding.
"Christina and her escort were late arriving at the fort," he went on, his voice soft and calm, though the muscles in his neck strained to the breaking point.
Turning back to the saddle, he worked the girth strap through the metal ring.
"The day after they were supposed to arrive, I took a party and we scoured the road from Las Cruces."
He gave one last jerk to the cinch.
"When I arrived at the scene of the ambush, one of the soldiers was still alive – barely. He lived long enough to tell me that El Alacran and his comancheros had taken Christina with them."
He turned to face Anne again with the eyes of a man who has seen things no one should have to see.
"They crossed into Mexico," he said quietly, his voice taut. "The rules had changed since the last time. He knew the army wouldn't pursue, and he knew I would."
The muscle in his jaw tensed and flexed as he paused to rein in his emotions.
"And I did, even though I knew it would mean a court-martial. I trailed them through the desert for days."
She didn't know if she wanted him to continue. Moisture beaded on his forehead and he wiped it away with his sleeve, the motion causing him to wince in pain. His chest rose and fell with labored, rhythmic breathing. The violence in his eyes terrified her, but she dared not stop him now that he had begun.
"I kept coming across scraps of her clothing along the way." His voice trembled and nearly broke, as a shudder ripped through him.
"They wanted to make sure I didn't lose them. By the time I found her I was wild with fear and worry and anger."
Anne slid down the wall and sat on the floor, unable to support her own weight any longer, clenching her fists until her nails bit into the flesh. But the pain did nothing to protect her from the impact of his words. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped unheeded to her blouse.
"They'd left her in the back of the wagon they'd stolen when they took her," he said, his voice coarse and dry like desert wind.
He'd begun to massage his wrists in an unconscious gesture. She doubted he even knew she was there as he continued to relive the horror of that day.
"The sky was full of buzzards." He covered his ears with his hands as if to block out the sound. "I've never seen so many in one place," he added, shaking his head in wonder.
He raised his gaze toward the ceiling as if he could see them hovering overhead, watching, waiting. Then he dropped his hands from his ears.
"There must have been thirty or more."
Rafe looked back down at Anne. Nothing was left of the mask he had worn so carefully for so long. Lines of strain creased the corners of his mouth. A naked torment shone in his eyes, the eyes of a wounded animal.
"She was alive," he said softly, as if he still couldn't quite believe it.
There was a long fragile silence. His whole body seemed to slump. Anne had to strain to hear his words. His dead voice chilled her.
"Somehow, I don't know how, she was alive. They... they'd skinned her.... They'd skinned her alive from the neck down."
His words shattered her. A sob broke through her control and her body convulsed in reaction, trembling with horror at the images that flashed in her mind. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. She wanted to cry or run away or cover her ears and pretend he hadn't said it, pretend she hadn't heard.... It hadn't happened. It couldn't have. Things like that didn't happen.
"They were so careful," he went on, in a voice that trembled slightly.
"Please stop." Tears trailed down her cheeks, and she covered her ears to block out his words.
He reached her in two strides. He took her by the wrists, hauling her to her feet, pulling her roughly against him. She shrank inwardly from the awesome devastation in his eyes.
"They'd skinned her alive," he said between clenched teeth. "Is your curiosity satisfied now? I didn't know what to do. I don't remember how it happened, but I had my rifle in my hands. I raised it and put a bullet in her head."
"Let me go," she whimpered. "I don't want to hear—"
"It was a trap. They captured me and staked me out in the desert to die, and I would have died if not for Jose. The buzzards, they were in such a frenzy—"
She screamed to drown out his words.
"Not a night goes by that I don't think of her eyes staring at me as I pulled the trigger."
He released her and she fell against the wall. Then he walked to his horse, lifted the bridle, and slipped the bit into the animal's mouth.
"You didn't have a choice," she whispered. She felt too battered inside to offer more.
"Don't," he said, his back stiffening. "I had a choice. I had a lot of choices and I made all the wrong ones, and an innocent woman paid a terrible price for my stupidity. I thought I could change the world. I thought I could crush a man like El Alacran. I was a fool. You have to think like a monster in order to kill one, and that is what I have learned to do."
She walked up behind him and placed a trembling hand on his shoulder. She felt the shudder that ran through him before he jerked away.
"Don't, Annie," he growled. "For God's sake, don't."
He pushed her hand away, struggling for control.
"Let it go," she whispered, fighting her tears. "Killing El Alacran won't change anything. Can't you see this is destroying you?"
"Why couldn't you have let me die? Why couldn't you have done what I told you to do and left me behind?"
"Because I love you."
He smiled, the most bitter, hollow smile she had ever seen. "Annie, you can't love someone who's dead."
Slowly he led the horses from the barn.
She stumbled toward the open door and collapsed. Her head spinning, she clutched the door frame for support. A terrible ache filled the very depths of her being, as if her body and soul had been turned inside out. She struggled for air as she watched him stride across the stable yard.
He left the horses tied to the hitching post before the house and went inside. He was going to get Carlos Delgado.
She closed her eyes to block out the pain, but all she could see was Rafe lifting a rifle, sighting down the barrel, killing the woman he loved. He'd had to do it, but she knew that hadn't made it easier.
Easier? Dear God, the horror of finding someone you loved in that condition would be enough to destroy anyone, and then to have to end her life to end the pain, the unbearable, unimaginable pain.
She should follow him, stop him, but she couldn't. She could hardly move, and even if she could, he would never listen to her. He was going to meet his destiny, and there was nothing she could do.
Skinned alive!
He had said he couldn't forget Christina's eyes, so she had been conscious when he found her, conscious and aware that there was nothing left for her but agony and death, nothing to keep her company but her own tormented soul.
Anne shook her head to dispel the unbearable images. What would b
e worse, to be the victim or to be the one who found her? Christina's pain was over. She was dead. But Rafe had to live on.
She took a deep, ragged breath that ended in a sob. The memory had haunted him all these years. He hated himself for what he'd done, hated himself for failing Christina, for not saving her. She wanted to comfort him, to tell him it wasn't his fault.
How could he have known? Until that hideous day, how could he have known that men were capable of such horrors?
He was going to die, she knew with a sickening certainty. He hadn't been speaking figuratively when he'd called himself a dead man. Her blood ran cold as she realized what he planned to do, what he had always planned to do. He would kill El Alacran and die in the process.
Her control broke and she began to weep, silently, bitterly. The world seemed to be collapsing around her. Rafe emerged from the house with Carlos Delgado in tow, his hands bound behind his back and a gag in his mouth.
Rafe forced him to mount one of the horses before he swung up into the saddle himself. She watched them ride away until they were nothing more than a faint puff of dust on the horizon.
Chapter 18
Concepción shimmered in the heat reflected from the desert sand. A slight breeze stirred a cloud of dust and sent a tumbleweed careening down the street. A single buzzard circled high in the sky, its screeching the only sound in the stillness.
El Alacran held up a hand as he and the dozen men with him neared the edge of town. The place was quiet, empty, deserted, yet he could feel the pressure of eyes upon him. The hairs on his arms and neck pricked as he guided his horse into town. He looked up at a second-floor window of the deserted cantina, but he saw nothing beyond the dirty glass windowpanes.
Both sides of the street were lined with squat adobe buildings, one not much different from another, with high windows and open doors and crumbling staircases. At the far end of town stood a small church, its once-white walls now faded and dirty, one of the bells missing from the twin arches above the front door.
A movement caught his eye, and he swung his head to the left, noticing a wooden structure at the far end of the street near the church.
"What is that?" one of his men asked.
"A gallows," said Diego Munoz, who rode beside him. "He built a gallows. In less than three days he built a gallows—alone?"
"We will hang him on it!" El Alacran laughed loudly, and most of his men joined in.
Diego Munoz remained sober. "It's not empty."
A shiver of apprehension traveled down El Alacran's spine, but he managed to subdue it.
"Carlos!" He let out an animal growl and spurred his horse forward, but before he could make any progress, a bullet whizzed past his head so close he could feel the air on his cheek.
Bullets riddled the ground in front of the horses and the riders pulled back fiercely on the reins. Through a cloud of dust, he saw Carlos on the gallows. Another shot resounded and the trap door beneath his cousin fell away.
"No!" El Alacran bellowed.
Carlos's legs dangled in the air. He kicked frantically, screaming at the top of his lungs. His wrists were tied above his head to the same beam as the noose.
The chaos subsided and quiet reigned. El Alacran searched the upper windows in all the buildings but could see nothing. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his gut twisted in helpless fury. There was a cat-and-mouse game going on here, only this time he was the mouse instead of the cat, and he didn't like it one little bit.
"Come out, cobarde," he shouted.
"I don't see anything," Diego whispered.
"He said—he said—" Carlos shouted haltingly as he struggled to take the pressure off his throat, "he said he'll kill me if—if you don't tell your men to leave town. He said—he said he wants you alone. Help me, primo!"
Rage smoldered inside El Alacran, impotent fury. He clenched his teeth and weighed his options. He had none.
"You heard him," he snarled. "Leave me."
"But jefe—"
Another gunshot rang out. Carlos screamed, and one of his hands came loose. He coughed and choked, struggling to pull himself up.
Instinctively, El Alacran urged his horse forward and another bullet whirred past his head, this one taking his hat off. Trembling with anger and frustration, he watched as Carlos managed to take the pressure off his neck by grabbing hold of the rope that bound his other wrist and pulling himself up. He couldn't hang on like that for long.
"Get out," he murmured to his men in tight rage.
El Alacran had the advantage of superior numbers, but as long as Carlos's life was at stake, there was precious little he could do but play along.
"But—"
"Now! Go!" he shouted, then added more quietly, "Watch. You will find a chance to move back in. I am depending on you."
Diego swallowed convulsively. "Si, jefe."
He wheeled his horse around and signaled to the others, and they moved back up the street to the perimeter of the town.
El Alacran looked around him but still saw no one. "What now, Rafael?" he called out.
He waited for several minutes, always conscious of Carlos dangling from the hangman's noose. When there was no answer, he nudged his horse forward, moving slowly up the street toward the gallows.
The lone church bell began to ring, stark and eerie in the desert silence. El Alacran smiled as he drew even with the gallows, in spite of the grimness of the moment. Rafael was in the church. He was trapped, whether he knew it or not. He would never get out alive.
No one outsmarted the Scorpion. Rafael should have learned that.
The ringing of the bell subsided. El Alacran dismounted, his gaze fixed on the door of the church as he took a step toward Carlos.
"He booby-trapped the gallows," Carlos told his cousin. "If you try and cut me down, we'll both die."
Two gunshots exploded as the rope around Carlos's neck and the one around his wrist broke and he fell through the open trap door to the ground below.
He scrambled to his feet, tearing the noose from around his neck. He didn't move toward El Alacran but stood beneath the gallows, massaging his wrists.
"He said if I didn't hang, I was to walk down that street to the edge of town and not come back."
"Go, primo," El Alacran said.
Carlos walked past his cousin, then turned around to face him again. "Did you do it? Did you do what he says you did to his wife?"
El Alacran faced him unblinkingly. His expression hardened, and his eyes took on a maniacal glint. "This is not your fight. There are things you can't understand. It will soon be over. As soon as you are safely with the men, I want them to surround the church. Tell them."
Carlos studied his cousin's visage for a long moment before turning and running up the street.
"Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to ruin."
El Alacran looked up to the bell tower above. Rafael Montalvo stood leaning against a wall, his hat pulled down over his face so his features were indiscernible. A flame ignited as he struck a match and lighted a cheroot.
"Narrow is the gate and hard is the way that leads to life," Rafael went on. "In case you had other ideas, I'd go in through the front door if I were you."
El Alacran glanced briefly over his shoulder to see that his men still waited at the end of town. When he looked back at the bell tower, Rafael was gone.
“Perdition!" El Alacran ran a sleeve over his sweat-soaked brow. He told himself it was foolish to be uneasy. He had nearly fifteen men behind him. As soon as he walked through that door, they would move in. There was nothing to worry about.
As he pushed the door open, he heard an explosion that seemed to come from behind the church. Fire sped toward him around both sides of the building, two flaming paths that met behind him. Acrid smoke burned his eyes and caused him to cough. Quickly he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
Just inside the door, he paused, blinking until his eyes adjusted to the dimness, focusing on the man at t
he front of the church. Rafe sat on the altar, tapping his left foot, resting his left arm on his bent knee.
As the comanchero walked slowly up the middle, Rafe studied him closely. El Alacran had changed little over the past five years. He was tall and lean and clothed in silver-studded black. His aquiline features and high sharp cheekbones proclaimed the Apache blood that flowed in his veins. The cruel edge to the mouth was unmistakable.
In a flash, Rafe's mind sent him back five years to the desert. He was staked out on the ground, his body naked, the sun already beginning to sear his flesh. He was crazy with horror and fury and self-loathing. He could hardly see past the sweat that trickled into his eyes, the sun that glinted off the belt buckle of the man who knelt beside him.
"You are lucky, my inexperto niño." El Alacran's face had loomed over him, his lips curved in a demonic smile. There were other men there who had beaten him and stripped him and staked him to the ground, but they seemed inconsequential. Now there was only one: El Alacran. His face was emblazoned on Rafe's mind for all time.
"I don't want to kill you, pequeho. I only want to warn you. I'll even leave water for you." He laughed. Rafe turned his head to see the canteen on the ground ten feet to his right
El Alacran's laughter followed Rafe back to the present.
"Rafael—companero!" El Alacran exclaimed, taking another step toward him. "Your mother would be proud of you. You ride into town and the first thing you think of is going to church. I see you have been expecting me. I am impressed with your cleverness. A ring of fire? How—?"
"Not that it matters," Rafe said calmly, "but Concepción used to be a mining town. Sulfur. They manufactured gunpowder in a factory not five miles from here."
El Alacran laughed. "Very clever."
Silence stretched between them as they measured each other. Rafe had learned a great deal about judging an opponent since the last time he'd seen El Alacran. He'd learned how to read a man's eyes to determine how far he would go, how crazy he was or how frightened. The eyes he examined now held no fear, but he could see flashes of madness in their onyx depths, and he stifled a shiver. The madness did not block out the intelligence, however, and the two were doubly dangerous when taken together.