She told herself that some of this came from the darkest part of her childhood, that because she'd always been regarded as a rescued orphan, she'd wound up with some sort of provider complex.
But she knew that a larger measure of it came from beginning to seriously respect James Daggert's opinion. Discounting her unfortunate words, her reaction to his kisses—their kisses—she realized she no longer viewed him as a hired guide, but as a man. A man who could help her locate a missing child. Help her find Enrique Dominguez.
Daggert's dog, Sancho, came racing into camp, carrying something black in his mouth, his brown coat covered with burrs and dried grass. Leeza's heart jolted when she recognized what he carried, and her fingers shook as she removed one of Enrique's gloves from the dog's teeth.
"Daggert," she called.
The man materialized beside her and took the glove from her nerveless fingers. "This the boy's?"
She nodded, and found herself pressing her hands against her mouth to keep from assaulting the man with questions.
"This is a good sign," he said.
Her hands fell from her mouth. "How can you say that?" she asked, irrationally furious with him for being so calm.
"He lost it in the heat of the day, didn't even notice it. We started out twelve hours behind him, and Sancho brought this in tonight. That means we're not that far behind him now."
His tawny eyes met hers squarely. Trust me.
Her fury dissipated as swiftly as it had risen. "Really? You're not just saying this to make me feel better?"
He gave her a look she interpreted as meaning such a thought had never crossed his mind. For some unknown reason, instead of angering her, this particular expression pleased her. It could only mean he was telling nothing but the absolute truth.
She asked, "Then shouldn't we keep going?"
He shook his head. "Too dangerous. Even if it had risen early, the moon's not quite full enough to provide enough light, and the horses could stumble. It's a wonder the boy got so far the first night. He must be a pretty good rider. Anyone else we'd have caught up to earlier today. Still, he's been going steadily slower with each passing hour."
Frustration nipped at Leeza, trying to get her to ignore the dangers and push on.
"Relax," Daggert said. "The boy will stop, too. His horse will make him."
"What makes you think so?"
"He didn't bring water for his horse, and no oats. The horse will demand a rest. He's leading the boy to water. They're probably camping on the bank of a river up ahead right now."
"If he's okay."
Daggert held up the glove and turned it over. "No blood. No scratches. The only marks on it are from Sancho's teeth. The boy just dropped it. People who are hurt don't drop things, they abandon them, and whatever happened to them usually shows."
Leeza drew a deep breath, as grateful for Daggert's calm now as she'd been angry with him for it before. She searched his face, trying to see if he was telling her everything. She suspected he wasn't, but she could also read a measure of relief on his features.
Sancho's bringing Enrique's glove had made him relax for some unknown reason.
She leaned down and petted the animal. "You are the most amazing dog in the world," she said.
She poured him some water.
Sancho grinned at her before slurping up the liquid, stretching, then dropping his finely shaped head on Daggert's saddle. The very fact that the dog was lying down, waiting for his dinner, forced her to accept the fact that Daggert was telling the truth and there was nothing more they could do that night.
Within minutes, the fire popped and crackled. Sparks shot into the nearly pitch-black sky; flames danced in the rapidly cooling breeze. Sitting beside the circle of stones, Leeza knew the sight should have warmed her, but it didn't; Enrique had been missing now for some forty-five hours.
She was barely surviving the journey. How could a little boy who'd taken some tortillas, peanut butter, a container of milk and a bag of cookies possibly be faring after forty hours? Especially with only one glove on a cold September night.
A small moan escaped her.
"What makes you think Enrique's going to Cima La Luz?" Daggert asked, bringing her attention back to their warm campsite. And how did he always seem to know exactly what she was thinking? To her certain knowledge, no one had ever been able to read her before.
She'd faced down dozens of young sharks at boardroom tables. When she was younger, a baby in the venture capital game, they'd eyed her like a tasty treat they were prepared to devour. Later, when she'd become the head shark, they'd swum around her very cautiously, even obsequiously. But no one had ever been able to read her.
He handed her a plate of beef stroganoff that smelled surprisingly delicious. He nodded at her. "Cima La Luz?" he prompted.
"The other night, when I was showing him the constellations, he told me his parents were up there. I thought he meant in heaven."
"You don't think so now?"
"Yes—I mean, yes, they're certainly deceased. But I don't think Enrique is accepting this. I think he meant somewhere specific. In his journal…Corrie makes all the children keep journals. Supposedly they can download all their anguish on to the pages and become healthy."
Daggert gave a half smile. "You don't believe it works?"
She hesitated, then shrugged, thinking about her own notebook jottings. "Anyway, there were all sorts of references to this Cima La Luz. He seemed to think it a place where spaceships land and take or bring back abductees. I know it sounds crazy—"
"Not so crazy. People have been seeing weird lights at the Cima for years."
Leeza wasn't struck so much by the news of unusual lights on a mountaintop as she was by the sheer magic of actually conversing with James Daggert.
"So little Enrique believes his parents were abducted by aliens?"
"I'm afraid so," she said. He'd called the boy "little Enrique." What did that say about the man? That he cared? That he felt something about the child he sought? That he was reminded of his own lost son?
"What happened to his parents?" he asked.
"They were apparently killed in a skirmish with a very real bad guy calling himself El Patron."
"Apparently?"
Leeza made a face, "According to Chance Salazar, one of my partners' husbands—"
"I know him," Daggert said, but he didn't elaborate. Leeza couldn't tell from his tone if the knowledge was good or bad.
"Chance said this El Patron compelled people to do things for him by holding family members hostage. And if they refused, he would either kill the hostage or have the people killed outright."
"And that's what happened to Enrique's parents?"
"Police think so. They didn't find them, but they disappeared, and there was enough DNA evidence in El Patron's garden to include them in another charge of murder against him."
"And Enrique escaped?"
"He was with his aunt in Mexico when it happened. She couldn't keep him, which is how he came to be with us."
"And now he thinks his parents weren't killed at all, but abducted by aliens."
"Denial can be an attractive piece of real estate," she said.
Daggert gave her an odd look, one both measuring and slightly rueful, but he said, "True. Reality's ground is much stonier."
She gave him a shallow smile instead of doing a double take, as she wanted to. He'd followed her thoughts so completely that she felt off balance.
She sampled the stroganoff. Not quite as tasty as the primavera, but certainly edible. Within seconds, she'd cleared her plate and momentarily envied Sancho's freedom to lick his dish. Nodding at the dog, she asked, "Why do you give him a different dinner than we have?"
Daggert smiled slowly. "He doesn't ask for seconds this way. If I give him the same thing I eat, he's convinced he'll be able to con me out of half of mine. Since he's usually right, I give him something else."
She scrubbed her plate with sand, as she'd seen Daggert do
the night before, and wiped it clean with a dry napkin. She did the same for Daggert's and Sancho's, still slightly amazed that the procedure did such a thorough job.
It wasn't until Daggert poured them each a cup of hot coffee that the tension between them seemed to come back full force. She'd been hiding behind the routine camp tasks to avoid thinking, and talking with him had allayed her fears.
But now, with their stomachs full, the night fully black and stars once again beating down on them, she was assaulted by the awareness that she was alone with this man, a man she wanted, a stranger with chasms of conflicting emotions hiding just beneath the surface.
Despite the night's chill, the warmth from the fire apparently prompted Daggert to roll back his sleeves to his elbows. He performed the task with the slow deliberation he applied to everything, and Leeza found herself mesmerized by the movements of his hands.
She noticed abrasions on his wrist. "What happened there?" she asked.
He gave her a questioning look, then followed her gaze to his wrist. "It's nothing," he said.
"I've got some cream in my bag," she said, and rose to retrieve it.
"Don't bother," he said. "I'm fine."
She didn't stop. She rummaged in her pack, found the narrow tube of Neosporin cream and went back to sit beside him. She concentrated on opening the tube and squeezing a bit of the thick cream on to her fingertip.
She motioned for him to present his wrist. He did with a shadowed expression on his face, his eyes unreadable, though they flickered with reflections of the fire.
She smeared the cream on to the abrasions. "When did this happen?" she asked.
"I looped the horses' reins over my wrist. Belle stepped sideways. No big deal."
Leeza vaguely remembered his jerking back when he'd been carrying her from Belle the day before. She wasn't sure what to think about the fact that he'd been injured while helping her, no matter how much he considered it insignificant.
She smoothed the cream in, aware of little else but the velvet feel of his skin beneath her fingertip.
He moved his wrist out of her reach and she felt as if he broke a spell. She was glad the shadows would hide a blush from him. She tossed the tube of antibacterial cream into her bag and picked up her coffee. The silence between them felt heavier than it had before.
Daggert sighed as if he'd lost an argument with himself. When he spoke, she knew what the internal war had been about. "My son Donny was a couple of years younger than Enrique when he disappeared," Daggert said. He sipped at his coffee, not looking at her.
Everything in Leeza grew still, waiting for him to continue. She wanted to hear the story, and dreaded what she might learn about the man who told it.
"That was four years ago. He'd be eleven now. Not even a teenager yet." Daggert clenched his hand around his coffee cup hard enough to bend the aluminum. "He'd been over at a friend's house. It wasn't far. He'd walked the path home with me at least a hundred times."
Leeza wanted to close her eyes against the sight of Daggert's face flickering in the golden firelight. A sorrow too deep for words clouded his features, darkened his eyes.
People who worked with her believed she had a heart of stone, or made bets on whether she possessed one at all. She'd heard the jokes about the head of the corporation who couldn't feel for an employee because she had a hole where her heart was supposed to be.
She'd always known she had the hole, and maybe a heart. She just hadn't felt it twinge before. Not until Enrique. She felt it wrench now with Daggert talking about his little boy. Oh, please let this be a happy ending, she begged silently, even as she knew from his earlier anger that it couldn't be.
"I'd persuaded Alma not to worry about him. That he was a big boy and a little walk alone was good for him. She believed me. Sometimes I've been angry with her for that."
Even as Leeza wondered who Alma was, Daggert startled her by tossing his coffee into the flames. The fire sputtered furiously for a moment and sent sparks spiraling. "Donny never came home," he said starkly.
Daggert poured another cup of the hot coffee and set the pot back on the rocks. Leeza suspected he'd all but forgotten she sat there beside him, needing to hear the rest of his terrible story, fearful of its conclusion.
"I found him." His eyes flicked to hers. "That's what I do, find people." He looked away. "But I found him too late."
Leeza closed her eyes, unable to continue to watch the muscle working in Daggert's tense jaw. She ached to reach out and just touch him, a humanistic stroke of compassion, but somehow knew he needed to get through this revelation without hindrance.
"He hadn't run away. He wasn't lost. He was stolen. A madman took my little boy and killed him. And left him cold and alone in these mountains."
"Dear God," Leeza said, opening her eyes.
"I'm not telling you this to scare you about finding Enrique. I'll find him. I swear to you I will. I'm telling you this because…" Daggert didn't finish his thought, just stared into the flames. "Damn," he said.
When he didn't say anything for what seemed an eon, she prompted, "Because?"
"Because I held a knife on you today."
A knife? He'd kissed her. That was the bigger issue. The main trouble. "It's okay," she said swiftly. "I understand."
"No," he said sharply, his eyes cutting to hers. "It's not okay, and no, you don't understand. I'll bet everyone told you that I'm one of the best trackers around. But I'll bet they didn't tell you that I've always got a hidden agenda. You can't know that I'll never stop searching for the man who hurt Donny, and you can't know what that means. You don't know that the anger in me is always there. Always. I wake up with it. I eat with it, sleep with it. It's the most real part of me."
And as he spoke, she could see it. Feel it radiating out from him. The fire jumped as if it were fueled by it.
Leeza shook her head, not negating what he was saying—who was she to argue with what motivated James Daggert?—but denying that it was the most real part of him.
"Vengeance is mine…" she murmured.
His eyes burned into hers. "Sayeth the Lord? Save it. Vengeance is mine. You want to call it justice? My people would call it avenging Donny's death. Call it by any name and it's the same to me. The man who stole my son, the man who killed my boy, that man deserves to die," he said roughly. "And I'm the man who's going to kill him."
When she didn't say anything—couldn't say anything—he continued. "It's a fact. And this fact burns anyone I come in contact with."
The fire in front of them crackled and sent a spark toward Daggert. He waved it away as he might a stray insect. "It drove my wife away. My friends. Or rather, I drove them off."
Leeza knew he was trying to warn her, telling her that she could be burned by this rage ablaze in him.
She'd tasted it. The passion, the fury. The pain.
And survived.
So far. "And so you continue searching for lost children," she said calmly, relieved that the night hid her trembling from him.
"And the man who stole Donny, who stole others."
"What others?"
"Over the past ten years? Fifteen of them."
"Fifteen! And no one's told me about this?"
"Most people don't believe it's the same person. Some are called accidents. Others, animal attacks."
"But you think it's a serial killer." And she didn't make it a question because she knew that he didn't think of it as one. For James Daggert, there was no room for doubt. His was a world of absolutes. Blacks and whites.
And hers?
A world of numbers—reds and blacks.
"Yes. A serial killer." He sounded almost relieved at her prosaic statement.
"Tell me," she said.
"A hiker. A housewife on an afternoon stroll. A couple out to neck in the woods. Donny. A kid who went hang-gliding. Others. Some were mauled like Donny was. Authorities claim it was a mountain lion. A rogue."
"They were all killed this way?"
; "No. They claim the hiker just fell."
"They?"
"The authorities. Your partner's husband, others like him."
She understood Daggert's flat tone when talking about Chance Salazar now. "But you don't believe this?" she asked.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because there was another set of tracks on the ledge above the point where they discovered the hiker's body," he said.
"And the others?"
"The housewife was like Donny, just out for an afternoon stroll, and she never came home. I found her about two weeks later. The authorities called it an animal attack."
"But you don't believe that?"
He gave what might have been called a ghost of a chuckle, except there was nothing humorous in his demeanor. "That same rogue? No. They even called in the Forest Service animal control. One of the men told me later the body was clawed by a mountain lion, all right, but not one like anyone's ever encountered before."
"Doesn't that prove the rogue theory?"
"No," Daggert said tersely.
Leeza waited, hugging her arms to her body.
"It wasn't like any lion because the claw marks were anomalous, running in patterns and directions a lion wouldn't make unless thoroughly enraged. As in rabid or worse. And beside that obvious fact, the point was moot. Cats—all cats, big or small—have what they call living claws. They shed DNA all over the place. This one didn't. It was dead."
"I don't understand," Leeza said, fighting the gooseflesh prickling her skin at his words.
"A live lion doesn't have 'dead' claws. The matter they found wasn't from a live lion, but from one that was long dead. They even found a few stray hairs from the fur. And some lint." He stopped speaking for a while, then said, with a shake of his head, "Lint."
Leeza asked, "And this wasn't enough to launch an investigation?"
"The Forest Service guy was only one man on a team and no one seemed to think his findings very important. What's discovered in a test tube couldn't hold up against what they could see with their eyes."
A Warrior's Vow Page 6