Shots came from the barn. Enrique! But he was too far away to help her. Where was Pace? He should have made it to his rifle in the front room by now and should be firing. Pace!
I’m coming, Jo!
No! Stay inside!
He didn’t stay inside. In horror, she watched him rush from the house with his rifle, shouldering it and firing as he ran.
Joanna tried to scream, but nothing came out.
From the barn, Enrique fired as fast as he could, laying down as much cover as possible for Pace.
Suddenly another gun sounded from the west, and one of the riders galloping through her garden went down.
Someone was helping them! Who? Who? She looked, and couldn’t believe her eyes. But the wild Apache war cry he emitted confirmed it was her father, thundering straight toward her on horseback, coming at right angles to the raiders.
With Matt’s gun added to Enrique’s, Pace stopped dodging from one tree to the next and ran all out for Joanna, slowing only when he had to fire. Bullets peppered the ground and trees around him as he ran. Joanna held her breath and prayed like she’d never prayed before.
With fire from Pace as he ran, Enrique from the barn, and Matt as he rode in from the west, the Mexicans wheeled their mounts and raced back for the cover of the brush. A second rider went down.
Pace barrelled up to the protection of the log pile and swept Joanna up in one arm. Crouching below the top of the pile, he pulled her tightly to his heaving chest. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
“Yes. Yes. Oh, God, why didn’t you stay in the house? You could have been killed!”
“Stay in the house and leave you out here alone? Not if my life depended on it.”
Matt was almost to them when the Mexicans regrouped and burst from the brush, guns blazing. Pace rose from cover and fired as fast as he could cock and pull the trigger on his repeating rifle.
Barely slowing his mount, Matt gripped his rifle. When he was behind the woodpile he leaped from his horse. He hit hard and rolled into the logs, nearly knocking Joanna down in the process. Pace kept firing, and from the barn, so did Enrique.
The Mexicans rode for cover again.
“Daddy!” Joanna cried. “Are you all right?”
Matt grunted and struggled to sit. “I’m forty-five years old, a grandfather thanks to you, bullets are flying everywhere, and I just jumped off a running horse. Of course I’m not all right. I used to be able to land on my feet, not my backside.”
“You wanna save the jokes for later, big brother?” Pace stood with legs braced, his rifle and his eyes aimed at the brush where the Mexicans had disappeared. “We kinda got a little problem here.”
With a grunt of effort, Matt climbed to his feet. “It’s good to see you, too, little brother. You’re welcome, by the way. I don’t ride through Mexican bullets for just anybody, you know.”
The crash of brush told them the raiders were keeping out of sight while working their way around to come at them from behind. Shots came sporadically from the brush, keeping Joanna, Pace, and Matt effectively pinned where they were.
“They’re going to rush us from all sides this time,” Pace said grimly.
Matt swore.
From the west came a shot. A cry. A riderless horse burst from cover.
Gripping his rifle, Matt swore again. “I told you to stay put!” he bellowed.
“Who are you—”
The coo of a dove floated on the air.
Pace’s eyes widened. “Serena?”
“Who else?” Matt grumbled. “Damn woman never does what she’d told. I left her and the boys over the hill and told them to stay there.”
Joanna slipped Matt’s pistol from his holster, checked the load, then peered up over the top of the logs, as Matt and Pace were doing. “Surely you didn’t expect her to do it, did you?”
“I had hopes, because of the boys.”
“What are you doing?” Pace put a heavy hand on Joanna’s shoulder and pushed her to the ground. “Stay down!”
“How many are there?” Matt asked.
“There were eight. Should be down to six—no, five now,” Pace corrected, counting off the man Serena had downed in the brush.
“Who?” Matt demanded. “Who’d you piss off this time?”
“Daddy!”
“I recognized a couple of them.” Eyes narrowed, Pace continued scanning the brush.
“So did I,” Joanna said grimly.
“Let me guess.” Matt sighted and fired, but missed as his target darted through the brush. “Juerta, right?”
“You got it, big brother.” Pace reloaded while he scanned the brush. “I haven’t seen him, but those are his men.”
Another shot, this one from the east, near the barn. Enrique? No cry followed. Had he missed?
The rustling in the surrounding brush stopped.
“Get ready,” Pace warned.
Both men shifted into position. Joanna found herself pressed so close against the wood pile by two large male bodies that she could scarcely breathe.
“Think they made it around us?” Matt asked.
“No. Not this time. Next time, maybe,” Pace added.
“Is that, no, you don’t think they made it around us?” Matt asked. “Or no, you know they didn’t?”
Pace’s mind stalled. Was he sure? He didn’t know. God help him, he didn’t know if he knew, or if he was only guessing. Dammit, he should know.
Suddenly he did know one thing. This was what had troubled him this morning after he and Joanna had made love. This was what had kept him from feeling the elation that should have been his. He could not feel the knowing.
He had not felt it since he’d known he was dying in the old man’s wickiup. He’d known he was dying. Yet he’d been wrong—he had lived. The knowing had never been wrong before.
But I did die, he reminded himself. He’d felt it. He would have gone through The Opening had it not closed so quickly behind Thin Old Woman. Even then he might have lingered until The Opening reappeared, and gone then, but Joanna…Joanna had called him back.
Since that time, he had lost the knowing and not even been aware. It had been his from his earliest memories, yet he’d been so wrapped up in self-pity lately that he hadn’t even realized he’d lost it until now. There were things he’d been certain of in past months, but that wasn’t the same. He’d been certain he would never walk again, but that had been his fear talking, not the knowing.
He’d been certain he would never be a whole man again, would never be able to make love to Joanna again, but that, too, had been fear. A fear so great that he had done everything in his power to make sure his prediction came true. And it might have, but once more Joanna had refused to let him go, just as she had refused to let him die.
This, then, was what that off-center feeling had been about this morning. He’d thought that the doubts remaining after making love with Joanna had to do with the way he’d failed to keep her safe in Mexico, the way he’d failed to kill Juerta.
But he had kept her safe. He had sent her to freedom, and she had made it. He had failed to kill Juerta, but the bastard had hung back out of range until Pace was down and surrounded. He couldn’t blame himself for that. All a man could do was his best. There was no shame if he accounted well for himself.
He searched within again and still could not find the knowing. Perhaps he had left it behind at The Opening. Perhaps it was the price for finding his destiny in the flame-haired woman at his side.
He looked down and saw her watching him earnestly. “Have I told you lately, Firefly, that I love you?”
“Not in a couple of hours. If you could manage to look a little happier about it, it would greatly relieve my mind.”
So be it, he thought as a weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. If he had to chose between Joanna and the knowing, he would gladly chose Joanna over anything on earth or beyond. His smile came freely and felt good. Damn good.
Joanna touched his cheek, and he
knew then that they would be all right. They were going to make it through this, and anything else the world threw at them, and together, he and Joanna and Chance, and whatever other children they were blessed with, would triumph.
It dawn on him slowly that this was something he knew. He threw his head back a laughed. He’d lost the knowing, reconciled himself that it was gone forever, and suddenly, with Joanna’s touch, it filled him again.
“Pace?” She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. So did Matt. He couldn’t say he blamed them. They were pinned down practically in the open and bullets were getting ready to fly again, and he was laughing.
“No,” he told them. “I haven’t lost my mind. Not completely anyway. And yes, I know our backs are safe for now.”
A sudden crashing of underbrush was their only warning before the raiders attacked again. Not three this time, as they’d expected, but a full dozen.
Matt swore. “Did you know they had reinforcements?”
Pace grimaced. “I didn’t think to ask.”
Then they were too busy firing and ducking and trying to keep Joanna from getting her fool head shot off for any more talking.
Serena fired from the west, and Enrique from the east, but there were half again the number of original riders. Three went down, then a fourth, a fifth, but the others kept coming.
Since Pace and her father had Joanna pinned where she squatted between them, all she could do was watch their backs. One rider slipped through the gauntlet and made it around their barricade of logs. As Pace turned to pick him off, Joanna fired. Her shot hit the Mexican in the chest. Before he hit the ground, Pace had turned to face the others still coming.
Matt swore and staggered where he stood.
“Daddy!”
Blood stained his upper right arm. “I’m all right.”
But he couldn’t shoot. Without hesitating, Joanna tucked her pistol in her apron pocket, took the rifle from his slack fingers, and pushed him to the ground.
Shoulder to shoulder, she stood beside Pace and faced the last few raiders. She had killed twice before. She would rather not kill again, but these men were trying to kill her and her family. They threatened everything dear to her. She sighted down the barrel of the rifle, took aim at the largest target available—an oncoming chest with crossed bandoleros—and squeezed the trigger. The man fell to the ground as his horse wheeled and ran off toward the brush.
“Good shot,” Pace muttered as he took out the man next to Joanna’s. He fired again, and suddenly there were no more attackers.
They waited and listened, breath held. After three full minutes of silence, Pace turned to Matt and helped him up. He still had his rifle in his hand, his eyes still scanned the scrub.
Joanna examined her father’s arm. “It probably hurts like the devil, but it doesn’t look serious.”
“It’ll be all right.”
Pace held up his hand for silence.
“What is it?” Jo whispered, her nerves stretching at the intensity on his face.
Pace shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“It’s over, isn’t it?”
In the bushes to the west a twig snapped. The sound seemed unusually loud. Pace and Joanna whirled and aimed. Matt, realizing he was unarmed, cursed.
“Don’t shoot! It’s only me!” On horseback, Serena emerged from the concealing scrub.
Matt started toward her. “Woman, I oughta turn you over my knee,” he growled.
Serena sheathed her rifle and nudged her horse forward. “Big talk from a man with a bullet hole in his arm. You said you’d be careful.” At Matt’s side, she swung down from the saddle.
“You said you’d stay put.” Matt wrapped his good arm around her and they held each other close.
Joanna watched Pace carefully. For the last fifteen years, since Matt and Serena had been married, Pace had always walked away when Matt and Serena touched. Now he watched them with an indulgent smirk on his lips. Joanna wanted to shout for joy. Pace had finally let go of his anger.
“Give her hell, shik’is,” Pace told Matt.
Serena looked at her brother in shock. “Pace?”
Pace shrugged. “Well, you probably deserve it.”
Serena’s eyes misted. “Oh, Pace,” she whispered, the look on her face showing how much it meant to her that her brother was no longer at her husband’s throat.
“Leave him alone,” Matt ordered gruffly. “He’s got his own hellcat to deal with for the next fifty or sixty years.”
Matt and Pace grinned at each other.
Pace’s grin slowly faded. “It’s good to have a brother again.”
Matt, too, sobered. “Same here. Welcome home, He Who Seeks the Fire.”
In the calm stillness that settled around them, Joanna blinked to clear her vision. “Cut it out, you two. You’re going to have us all in tears. Where are my brothers?” she asked her parents.
“That’s a good question.” Matt eyed his wife.
She threaded her arm through his good one and they strode toward Pace and Joanna. “On the other side of the hill.”
“Where you’re supposed to be.”
Serena glared at Matt. “Watch yourself, mister. I covered your butt, didn’t I?”
“All right, all right.” Matt shook his head in surrender.
“What I want to know,” Pace said darkly, “is where Juerta got off to.”
“He wasn’t one of them?” Matt nodded sharply to the bodies strewn across the ground.
“No.”
“I’ll call in the boys, then we’ll decide what to do about that bastard once and for all.” Matt raised his head and let out a shrill whistle to call Will and Russ.
“Looking for something?”
The four of them had been so caught up in each other that they hadn’t heard the rider approach from the northwest—the direction of the hill. As one they whirled toward the heavily accented voice.
Matt reached for his pistol, but it wasn’t there. Serena had left her weapon in her saddle, too far away to reach.
Pace and Joanna were still armed, however. As one, they swung their rifles and aimed.
Don Rodrigo Francisco Alfredo Martinez Juerta sat his horse calmly, with the reins wrapped around the saddle horn. “I will kill him.” In one arm he held a terrified Will Colton. With his other hand he rested the barrel of his pistol against Will’s temple, guaranteeing that with one twitch of his finger, Will would not see his thirteenth birthday.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Pace’s blood chilled. He couldn’t begin to imagine what Matt and Serena must be feeling at the sight of their youngest son in the arms of a butcher. An icy rage filled him. His finger itched to pull the trigger, but he knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t take the chance of Will getting hurt.
“Son?” Matt’s voice shook. “You all right?”
Will’s Adam’s apple bobbed on a swallow. His eyes were wide and dark with terror. “Yeah, Dad.”
“Russ?”
If possible, Will’s eyes grew wider. “He conked him, Dad. Conked Russ right on the head and knocked him cold!”
“Enough talk,” Juerta growled. To Pace and Joanna he said, “Drop your weapons.”
“Let the boy go, Juerta,” Pace said. “Your quarrel’s not with him.”
Juerta nudged Will’s head with the gun. “Drop your weapons or he dies.”
With a keening sound of distress, Joanna tossed down her rifle. Pace did not. He knew Juerta planned to kill them all anyway, and Pace didn’t plan to go easy. But that wasn’t his son being held with a gun to his head. “Matt, it’s your call,” he said without taking his eyes from Juerta.
Across the distance of ten feet that separated the two stepbrothers, Pace could practically feel Matt’s stark terror for Will. He could feel Serena, frozen in fear for her youngest son.
“Do what he says,” Matt croaked.
So be it. Pace lowered his rifle and dropped it at his feet.
“Kick it away,” Ju
erta growled.
One chance gone. It had been worth a try. He kicked the rifle away.
Behind him Joanna whimpered in fear.
A killing rage filled Pace. How many times had she been terrorized by this bastard? One way or another, it looked like this would be the last time.
Damning himself to hell and back, Pace knew he’d never felt more helpless than he did in the next moment when Joanna threw an arm around him and pressed herself against his back.
“Don’t hurt us!” she begged Juerta. “Please don’t hurt us.”
Pace wanted to roar in fury that Juerta could reduce his brave, courageous Firefly to pleading for their lives.
Then he stiffened. What the devil? What was she doing at his back?
Suddenly he didn’t feel so helpless anymore. She must have still had Matt’s pistol in her apron pocket, for surely that’s what she had just tucked beneath his belt against his spine. Her terrified pleas had been an act.
Not that she wasn’t afraid, he knew. They all were. But now they had a chance. A slim one, but a chance.
Playing along with her, Pace shrugged her off his back. “Stop it, Joanna. Don’t you see that’s what he wants? For us to beg him? Where’s your backbone?” He felt her back away from him, giving him the room he would need.
“But I’m scared,” she wailed.
Pace caught Will’s eyes and held them. “We’re all scared, Jo. Right now,” he said, willing his nephew to get his message, “I’m so scared I feel about as limp as a possum playing dead.”
Will’s eyes filled with confusion. Pace new what he was thinking. His big, bad Uncle Pace wasn’t supposed to be afraid of anything, and here he was admitting he was scared.
I am scared, Pace acknowledge. His heart pumped fear into his veins with every beat. Come on, Will, think! Hear what I said!
Juerta laughed easily. “And dead you be. All of you, if you don’t do what I say.”
“Yes, sir,” Pace said. “I’m scared as a limp possum.”
Suddenly Will’s eyes widened.
“All of you, face down on the ground,” Juerta ordered.
No one moved.
“Now!” Juerta bellowed, nudging Will with the gun again.
Will let out a strangled cry, then went limp in Juerta’s arm. The dead weight startled Juerta and threw him off balance. Will slipped from his grasp, hit the ground, and rolled away from the horse’s hooves.
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