A Warrior's Vow

  Daggert nodded.

  "What are you talking about?" Jenkins asked. "Thompkins is in Rotary with me."

  Daggert ignored him.

  "How long has Leeza been up there?" Jack asked.

  Daggert was searching the ground for his knife. "A few minutes. Not more than five." He found it and dried the blade on his shirt.

  "Let me bind that shoulder," Jack said.

  "Forget it," Daggert said. "We have to move fast."

  From somewhere above them, Leeza screamed.

  * * *

  Leeza dragged on Belle's reins and the mare skidded to a stop, snorting and pawing the ground. Some thirty feet above them, Enrique inched along a narrow ledge, the storm trying to pry him from his already precarious safety. She wanted to call out in encouragement, but was afraid she would startle him into falling.

  But seconds later, Bill Thompkins burst from an opening in the cliff face almost directly beneath the boy. He was yelling obscenities at him and leaping up, trying to grab the boy's feet.

  Leeza screamed a warning.

  Instead of falling, Enrique shouted her name. "Leeza! Ayudame!" he yelled, even as he kicked out at the man clambering after him.

  Bill Thompkins whirled around and let loose a primitive growl of rage. His eyes were something out of a nightmare, the whites showing fully around the dark, crazed irises. She hadn't been impressed with the man's looks when she'd seen him in Annie's Café, but there he'd been in some semblance of control. Now his face was contorted with rage, his lips moist with his own spittle, his teeth bared and snapping. He flailed what looked like a glove at her, and she realized it was a mountain lion's paw, claws fully extended and glittering in the rain.

  Even as she wanted to gag in horror, Sancho launched himself toward the cliffs. Instinct drove Leeza, and she bent over Belle's neck and forced the mare to a full gallop. From a standstill to a dead run, the horse seemed to fly across the broad clearing leading to the cave pockets.

  Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rolled across the mountaintop. Leeza felt she was soaring on anger and fear, trusting the horse to wing her to Enrique's rescue, never taking her eyes from the tableau on the cliffs above her.

  "Leave him alone!" she yelled at Bill Thompkins.

  "You're not playing the game right," Thompkins screamed back as he lunged at Enrique.

  Belle came to a shuddering stop mere inches from the base of the limestone-and-iron wall. Leeza let the forward propulsion catapult her from her saddle. She caught at a protruding rock and scrambled toward the lowest cave.

  Sancho had already discovered a way up the dangerous ledges and was actually wagging his tail as he leaped from one narrow outcropping to the next.

  Enrique wriggled away from the madman, though to Leeza it seemed the man's insanity would lend him the power to claw his way up the rock face, as an animal might do.

  "Hey, Thompkins," she called out.

  His head swiveled in her direction and a flash of human recognition flickered in his eyes, only to be replaced by a fury so intense that Leeza involuntarily shrank back against the rock wall she clung to.

  He snarled at her and waved that battered and shedding claw.

  "You want to go after someone, try someone a little closer to your size," she yelled at him. Her voice was high-pitched with fear, but the words sliced through the storm's roar. She held out his own knife and waggled it at him. And she knew she could use it.

  A scream of pure rage came from him at the sight of his artifact in her hand. He didn't shift around as she'd anticipated, but pushed away from the cliff and all too nimbly leaped down to the narrow ledge she balanced upon.

  He swung his hand down in a slicing motion, and Leeza cried out as the vicious claws tore through her jacket.

  * * *

  Daggert felt as though he was running through quicksand trying to reach Leeza and Enrique.

  When she'd galloped straight toward the cliff, his heart had literally been in his throat.

  "Who the hell does she think she is? Annie Oakley?" Jack panted from behind him.

  Jenkins, lagging some ten feet behind Jack, let loose a girlish shriek.

  But Daggert didn't pause in his loping run. His eyes darted from the woman he needed, to the boy he had to save for her. If he could get between Leeza and Thompkins, he might be able to deflect the man's attention long enough to allow her to get to the boy.

  Then Thompkins seemed to perform magic, leaping from one of the cliff ledges to land on the outcropping below.

  Daggert gave a cry of primal rage as Thompkins slashed at Leeza's shoulder with his deadly trophy of another of his kills. "Leeza!"

  * * *

  For a moment, Leeza believed she'd conjured Daggert's voice out of the storm, her mind creating an auditory hallucination to help her survive this terrifying encounter with a man so crazed as to seem preternatural, a beast created from all nightmares combined.

  "Leeza!" Daggert's voice called again.

  With a shock wave of joy so intense that it seemed to steal every vestige of strength from her, she sank against the slick walls, realizing that Daggert wasn't dead, after all. Not lost to her. Not gone forever.

  Hot tears flooded her vision and her strength returned. She pushed away from the wall, holding out the murderer's knife, fully prepared to fight the man-creature with it.

  "Get Enrique," she commanded Daggert, not daring to look away from the madman in front of her.

  "Jump, Denzhoné! Jump down now!"

  Thompkins growled and swiped at her with those claws. To her horror, she now saw that he held a paw in each hand, and he hunched down, his low growling audible over the wind and rain.

  She waved his knife at him, taunting him, daring him, afraid of him, but more fearful of what he would do if she showed any sign of fear.

  * * *

  Daggert signaled for Jack to go after Enrique, and whistled at Sancho to have him stop the boy before he could clear the top of the cliff face. It was as equally dangerous up on the iron-and-glass peak of the Cima as it was on the ledges with a crazy man after him. Lightning wasn't fussy about who it struck.

  When the man lunged at Leeza, lion's paws outstretched and strangely terrifying, Daggert's heart seemed to freeze.

  "Oh my God," Jenkins said from behind him. "That really is Bill Thompkins. What does he think he's doing?"

  Daggert jumped for the lowest cave and missed, the wound in his shoulder throwing him off balance.

  Surprising him, Jenkins rushed forward and threw himself down on his hands and knees. "Here," he yelled. "Use me."

  The couple of extra feet of a boost Jenkins's back offered did the trick, and Daggert swung up and onto the ledge behind Leeza and Thompkins. And heard his knife clatter to the sodden bedrock below.

  Jenkins yelped.

  Thompkins had Leeza pressed against the rock wall and was flailing at her with those deadly paws. Even over the storm and the man's insane growling, Daggert could hear material being rent and slashed.

  He grabbed Thompkins by the back of his coat collar and jerked him around, then felt the claws tear through his shirt, scratching him. With a cry of rage, he drove his fist into the madman's face.

  Daggert shook his head, trying to rid himself of the image of this man pressed against Leeza, of the cuts she'd surely sustained. He hit the man again.

  For a split second the animal in Thompkins disappeared, to be replaced by a human look of fear and pain. His head snapped back and his lower lip burst in a splash of red.

  But when he lifted his head almost immediately, the animal had returned, and the snarling teeth, bloodied and red, were somehow more frightening in their garish color.

  Before Thompkins could fully recover, Daggert plowed his fist into the man's midsection, even as the deadly claws swiped at his face. He felt the razor sharp claws meet his cold skin and felt the immediate sting of contact. An upper cut to Thompkins's jaw sent the man tumbling back and slamming against the wet wall behind him. Bu
t he wasn't spent. As crazy people often did, he seemed to find a strength that defied simple laws of physics. He pushed away from the wall, and didn't lunge for Daggert, but for Leeza.

  She gave a short scream and raised the knife in a swift, defensive thrust as he rammed into her.

  A look of almost comedic surprise crossed Thompkins's face.

  He pushed back from her, his eyes scrunched nearly shut, his bloodied mouth blubbery. "But you're the one who's supposed to be hurt," he said clearly. "You need to learn a lesson."

  Leeza shuddered and shoved at him, pushing him directly into Daggert's hands.

  Almost dully, Daggert took in the serrated knife sticking out of the man's thigh. That has to hurt, he thought with surprising humor. Only three days in Leeza Nelson's company, and her wit had snaked into his head.

  "Good job," he told her. It was hardly a deadly wound, but certainly effective in that it had taken the fight out of him.

  Daggert spun Thompkins around in a ungraceful parody of a two-step twirl, and the man sank to the ledge with a keening wail, one leg dangling over the edge, the other tucked beneath him. "She hurt me," he cried. "She hurt me."

  Feeling sick, wondering about the vagaries of fate that had taken his knife from him just when he most needed it in the world, Daggert massaged his hand, keeping a wary eye on the madman at his feet.

  * * *

  Hugging a sliced hand to her side, Leeza watched as Daggert lifted one of his boots. She knew he could easily kick the man from the ledge and let gravity finish him off. And not a soul on earth would blame him for it.

  She thought of her own deeds that day, the dark rage she'd felt when she saw Daggert lying on the ground, the fury that had given her the strength and courage to fight the crazed Bill Thompkins. She would have killed the man herself rather than let him get to Enrique. Should have killed him for what he'd done to Daggert's son, Daggert himself.

  She had promised Daggert to let him go for Thompkins once Enrique was safe.

  She craned her neck and saw Jack Dawson on a ledge high above them, trying to coax the boy down to him. Sancho was barking at the boy from another point slightly up and to the child's right. The boy wasn't paying them any attention. His whole focus was on her, his eyes strained and his little face drawn with terror.

  She raised her hand at him and offered him a tremulous smile.

  He burst into tears. She felt like doing the same.

  Enrique was safe. He would be okay.

  She closed her eyes, knowing this was Daggert's moment. She willed him not to kill Thompkins, but she wouldn't stop him.

  After an internal struggle that left him shaking, he slowly lowered his boot back to the ledge. He stood staring down at the broken man beneath him.

  "Why?" he asked.

  Thompkins didn't look up, continuing to sit on the ledge, rocking in the diminishing rain, tears of pain smearing the blood on his lips.

  "Why did you kill my son?" Daggert elaborated.

  Thompkins shrank away from the quiet menace in Daggert's voice. "I had to," he whined. "You had to be stopped. You were crossing my boundaries. You weren't supposed to keep tracking me, but you did anyway."

  Leeza felt Daggert's painful intake of air as if the crazy man's words had pummeled her own body.

  "You sick bastard," Daggert said, and added something in Apache.

  Thompkins flinched.

  "How many?"

  Jack shouted down, "Bill Thompkins, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, for anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney. If you cannot afford one, the court will appoint one for you at no charge. Don't do anything, Daggert. Let the law take it from here."

  Below them, Jenkins ran into view, staring wildly up at the trio on the narrow ledge. "Are you okay up there?" he called.

  Thompkins leaned forward. "John. Are you here to get me?"

  A spasm of something akin to revulsion crossed Jenkins's features, but after a quick look at Dawson and Daggert, he nodded. "Sure am, buddy. Can you get down here?"

  "I don't think so. I'm bleeding. See? She stuck my knife in my leg."

  "How many others did you kill?" Daggert asked. His question was so filled with tension that it seemed to dry up the storm which, as quickly as it had burst upon them, suddenly abated.

  To Leeza it felt that even the heavens waited for the man's answer to Daggert's question.

  Thompkins hunched away, but turned a face so filled with hatred in Daggert's direction that Leeza felt herself go numb. "More than you'll ever find, half-breed, even if you track for a hundred years."

  Daggert almost gently pushed him from the cliff.

  "Oh my God!" Jenkins yelled.

  Thompkins screamed and swore when he slammed into the ground. "You hurt me!" he yelled up at Daggert.

  Leeza leaned against the wet rock face and closed her eyes. She fought the smile that threatened to come to the surface.

  "Denzhoné," Daggert said, and his callused hand caressed her cheek and slid into her wet hair.

  Chapter 13

  Jack Dawson used his cell phone—which miraculously worked—to call for a helicopter. He spoke directly with Chance Salazar, his former boss, and was promised a chopper would be in the meadow below the Cima in less than an hour.

  Leeza listened to his conversation with Chance as though a wall of glass separated them. How to get them home was the furthest thing from her mind; she was busy wrapping a blanket around Enrique.

  Typical of New Mexico storms, the one that had created such havoc less than thirty minutes earlier had blown itself out, and already the sun was beating down, drying the grasses, heating the rock wall she sat on.

  "I was pretty scared," Enrique said, and although his eyes were still too large in his face, he didn't look very frightened anymore. He was flushed with the aftermath of such a big adventure.

  She used a dry washcloth to blot the last of the moisture from his hair.

  "My knees are still knocking," she admitted with a smile.

  The boy's smile faltered as he looked up at her. "Are you mad at me?"

  She thought of him calling out her name and begging her in Spanish to help him. Still, she almost responded with the John and Cora Nelson litany of "What you did was wrong. I'm sure you see that—" Even as the words rose to her lips, she swallowed them. Except for Daggert, nothing else had ever tasted so right. "I was scared for you. I still am. I'm not mad, just relieved you're okay."

  He brightened, then frowned. "I thought Mr. Thompkins was nice at first. He gave me dinner. You just pull this thing and the dinner gets hot all by itself. And it had dessert and everything."

  "Better than tortillas and peanut butter, eh?" she asked, forcing herself not to imagine the boy exposed to the craziness in Bill Thompkins.

  "Much better," Enrique agreed. "But I got scared of him when he made me hide in that cave. He said you wanted to hurt me. That you were mean to me."

  She slid to the ground and pulled the boy onto her lap, ignoring the pain from the madman's cat claw scratches as the child nestled against her. "I would never want to hurt you," she said, and felt tears well in her eyes. She had hurt him. Not physically, but sometimes the withholding of affection could be far worse than a blow.

  She thought of Daggert, how he'd ignored her at the start of their search, how he'd given her everything she could possibly want after that.

  She looked around for him and spied him at the base of the clearing, checking Belle's legs and hooves. He moved to Enrique's horse, Dandelion, and did the same.

  "My parents are dead, aren't they?" Enrique asked. "They weren't really taken by aliens."

  "I'm afraid so, honey," she said, holding him close, drinking in the child smell of him.

  "I wanted them to be alive."

  "I know." She pressed her lips to his crown. "When my parents died, I looked for them everywhere. Like you, I even ran away a couple of times."
<
br />   "You? But you never do anything wrong."

  She smiled wryly. "Nobody's perfect."

  "But you…you are," he mumbled into her shirt.

  "No. If I were perfect, you never would have felt the need to run away."

  "I didn't run away from you," he said, struggling to sit erect so he could meet her eyes. The earnest expression in his dark brown eyes let her see how true his statement was. "I just wanted to see my mama again."

  "Oh, honey," Leeza said, and hugged him close, aching for him and, at the same time, feeling as if a huge weight had fallen from her shoulders.

  Thompkins yelled out, "I need a doctor. Where's a doctor?"

  Enrique shivered and huddled even closer. He whispered, "Mr. Thompkins is crazy, isn't he?"

  Leeza chuckled. "As a bedbug."

  "Why does he want to hurt people?"

  Why did anyone want to hurt others? she wondered, and felt a stab of guilt for all the cutting things she'd said over the years, all the distance she'd placed between her and those who worked for her, worked with her. For all the children she'd hardened her heart against, not because she didn't like children, but because she was afraid of liking them too much and letting them glimpse her vulnerability.

  It was impossible to love and not be vulnerable, she thought with sudden clarity. It wasn't a precept she would ever have been able to ponder before this remarkable journey; she would have had no frame of reference by which to identify the emotions or the single word that changed everything.

  She did now.

  She rocked Enrique and studied Daggert.

  He'd finished checking Belle and Dandelion and was talking softly with Jack Dawson. She saw him glance in her direction, and go still when he realized her eyes were upon him. Then he deliberately returned his gaze to Jack.

  She didn't know what it meant, but with Enrique in her arms, the sun warming her back and Daggert safe, albeit a little worse for the wear, she was content to wait.

  With the exception of Jack Dawson, who stayed behind to watch over Bill Thompkins, they all went down the mountainside to the meadow far below. Enrique rode in front of Leeza on Belle, and Sancho happily danced from rock to trail, his bushy brown tail a gaily waving flag. Daggert rode Dandelion, but kept a hand on Belle's bridle, and if his face was a little paler than usual and his left arm looked odd in the sling Jack Dawson had made for him out of Leeza's ruined jacket, he still looked every bit the rock-hard carving of a man she'd originally thought him.