The four old people hurried toward her, their faces ashen with fear.
Zafiro ushered them behind the house. One look over her shoulder at Sawyer told her he believed she was following his orders.
Once at the back of the house she told her charges where to find the cave, then watched as they started toward the bluff. When they’d disappeared from her sight she did her best to conquer her terror, then she crept around the side of the house and peeked around the corner.
She saw no one. The yard was empty.
Sawyer was hiding in preparation for Luis’s arrival.
She would do the same. Returning to the back of the house, she opened the window that led into the great room and crawled inside.
Her nerves screaming with apprehension, she ascended the stairs and headed directly for Sawyer’s room. From there she would see the yard, where she figured the fight would take place.
She could barely wait to watch Luis die. To see years of fear be killed before her very eyes.
Still struggling to contain her dizzying fright, she made her way to the window and peered down at the yard below.
All was quiet. No one was about.
The tension that filled her caused her stomach to pitch. Her hands shook as she pushed her hair away from her face, and her heart beat so fast, so erratically, that she wondered if it would soon burst and kill her.
Footsteps in the corridor nearly caused her to scream. In the next moment she heard Tia and Azucar calling her name.
The two old women entered Sawyer’s room. Tia wielded an iron skillet, and Azucar held the large, smooth stone Tia used to grind corn for tortillas.
“What are you doing here?” Zafiro demanded. “I told you to go to the cave—”
“We are here for the same reason you are,” Tia answered.
“We want to watch Luis die,” Azucar added. She raised the rock, its weight causing her arm to tremble. “Pedro and Lorenzo, they did not go to the cave either. They came back to help Sawyer and Maclovio.”
“Yes,” Tia said. “Lorenzo, he is downstairs in the great room. But I did not see where Pedro went.”
Zafiro parted her lips to argue, but didn’t have the chance to utter a word.
A voice.
From the yard shouted a voice, one she’d prayed she’d never hear again.
“Zafiro!”
Luis.
He was here.
She turned to the window and looked through the glass.
And she saw him, the object of her many years of hatred and fear.
He’d hardly changed. His black hair was longer, and he’d grown an ugly mustache. But other than that he looked the same.
An arrogant smile touched his lips, and his dark eyes snapped with the glitter of danger.
He wore evil, Luis did. Like clothes. Like a hat.
Four men accompanied him, each as heavily armed as he, each almost as sinister-looking as their coldhearted leader.
Sawyer’s image flashed into Zafiro’s mind. She saw his guns, remembered his abilities.
Luis and his men made five.
Sawyer was only one.
Luis and his men were highly proficient.
But Sawyer was Night Master.
Zafiro prayed that he would live up to the skills that had made him a legend.
From the shadows in the forest Sawyer watched as Luis and his men entered La Escondida and rode into the yard.
Shock and a violent need to kill consumed every part of him.
The horse. Luis’s horse.
It was Apple Lover.
Memories of his slain father slammed into him.
Luis had killed his father. His mother. Minnie. And Nathaniel.
And Zafiro’s father as well.
He’d never felt such sickening hatred in all his life. Deeper resolve sifted through him. With single-minded purpose and absolute steadiness of the hand, he raised his Colt and sighted down the barrel.
He aimed straight at Luis’s chest, wanting to know that his bullet shattered the piece of ice that existed inside there.
But a sudden movement near the barn caused him to lower his gun.
Every profanity he’d ever heard of filled his mind as he watched Maclovio stagger into the yard with a brown bottle in his hand. In an instant he realized that when he’d seen Maclovio in the hayloft earlier, the man had been searching for a hidden bottle of whiskey.
“Luis!” Maclovio shouted. Still weaving, he dropped the bottle and fumbled for the gun stuck in the waistband of his breeches. “I am going to kill you, you damn son of a bitch!”
Sawyer bolted out of the forest, firing both his guns just as Luis and his men drew their own weapons. Sawyer killed the outlaw who aimed at Maclovio. “Maclovio, hide, dammit!”
While Maclovio stumbled toward the barn, Luis and the other three men scattered. One raced into the cabin, another ran around the side of the house. The third man found shelter inside the woodshed.
Luis simply disappeared. As if into the mountain air.
Instantly, Sawyer ducked behind one of the barrels of flowers at the edge of the yard. He knew exactly where Luis’s three remaining men were hiding and would make quick work of them the second they made a move.
It was Luis who worried him. Having no idea where the bastard had concealed himself, he could only pray he’d find Luis before the man had the chance to live up to his evil reputation.
Thank God Zafiro, Tia, Azucar, Lorenzo, and Pedro were safely hidden in the cave on the bluff, he thought.
“Sawyer!”
At the sound of his name Sawyer stared at the cabin, from where the shout had come. “Lorenzo?” he whispered.
No. It couldn’t be. Lorenzo was in the cave!
“I got him, Sawyer!” Out the cabin door Lorenzo wobbled, holding the Holy Crusades sword high into the air so Sawyer could see its bloodstained tip. “I killed him!”
Sawyer gritted his teeth. The daft old man stood on the porch in open view for anyone who cared to shoot him down. “Lorenzo, get down!” he shouted, but he knew the deaf thief couldn’t hear him.
He dashed out from behind the barrel, shooting at the woodshed and zigzagging across the yard as a barrage of bullets whizzed past him. Several feet away from the porch, he threw himself straight at Lorenzo, knocking the man through the open door and into the great room.
As he and Lorenzo landed on and slid across the floor, Sawyer suddenly saw the man Lorenzo had wounded with the sword. The outlaw was not at all dead, but stood in front of the staircase holding the flesh wound on his arm with one hand and pointing his gun at Lorenzo with the other.
Frantically, Sawyer tried to untangle Lorenzo’s scrawny limbs from around his body so he could lift his gun and fire. He did manage to perform the feat, but before he could pull the trigger, he heard a scuffle on the stairs, then a loud metallic bang.
Tia’s frying pan knocked the outlaw into total oblivion. His eyes rolling into the back of his head, he slumped to the floor, whereupon Azucar commenced to beat at his body with her large, smooth stone.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sawyer shouted at the two old women. He jumped to his feet. “I told you to go to the cave—”
“We are here to help, Francisco!” Tia shouted right back at him. “And it is a good thing we came back! This man was about to shoot you!”
“Where’s Zafiro?” Sawyer demanded.
Azucar pummeled the unconscious man one more time, bringing her stone down upon his shoulder. “Zafiro is—”
“Sawyer!” Maclovio slurred loudly from outside. “I lit the dynamite!”
“Dear God,” Sawyer muttered, so angry that he could barely think or see straight. “Get back upstairs!” he told the women. “And take Lorenzo with you!”
Quickly, he reloaded his guns, then crossed to the window and looked through the sparkling glass.
Fury and panic forced him back outside. Again dodging gunfire, he raced toward the front of the barn, where Maclovio was calml
y lighting a third stick of dynamite. Two more of the sizzling explosives smoked in front of his feet.
Sawyer tore the dynamite from Maclovio’s hand, snatched the other two burning sticks off the ground, and with all the power his arm held, threw them toward the woodshed.
They exploded within seconds of each other, one sending the shed into the air within a bright burst of fire and splintered wood. A body likewise flew into the air, landing in the midst of the burning wood with a dull thud.
“You killed the bastard who was hiding in there, Sawyer!” Smiling, Maclovio clapped Sawyer’s back in a gesture of congratulations, then reached inside his shirt and withdrew the bottle of whiskey he’d found in the hayloft. “Remembered I had one more bottle left. I found it in the hay—”
Sawyer gave him no chance to finish his statement. He forced Maclovio into the barn. Knowing that only the state of unconsciousness would keep the man from being killed, he knocked Maclovio out cold with one mighty blow to the side of the head.
When he left the barn and prepared to tempt Luis out of hiding, he failed to see the last man alive from Luis’s gang.
But from his spot at the window in his bedroom, Pedro saw the man. Saw him slink out from behind the cabin, stop directly beneath the window, and aim his pistol at Sawyer’s back.
With a strength that contradicted his frailness, Pedro opened the window, then lugged his knotted fishing net off the floor. His muscles straining with exertion, he lifted the heavy net to the window and pushed it into space.
The man’s surprise as the giant net fell over him, caused him to drop his gun. Frenzied with shock and the desperate desire to escape, he pulled, tugged, and yanked at the net, but his efforts only tangled the net more tightly around him.
Sawyer’s bullet put a swift end to the man’s struggles. The dead outlaw dropped to the ground, his body twitching within the intricate patterns of knotted rope.
Only Luis was left now.
His body as straight and rigid as the sturdy fence post he stood beside, Sawyer held his Colts in perfect readiness. “Luis!” he shouted, and the man’s name sounded horrible as it chanted through the mountains. “Come out of hiding and face me, you slimy son of a bastard and his whore!”
His nerves taut with tension and pent-up rage, Sawyer walked through the yard, silently daring Luis to make even one wrong twitch. Every instinct he possessed pulsed with vivid awareness, and no sound, feeling, sight, or smell escaped him. He swore that when he got near enough he would even taste the rancid flavor with which Luis’s foulness sullied the air.
His search ended with Zafiro’s horrified scream. The sound reached into Sawyer’s very soul, setting aflame the very essence of what made him who he was.
He didn’t remember his flight across the yard, his bursting into the cabin, or his breakneck trip up the staircase.
But all of a sudden he was there. In his bedroom.
Where Luis restrained Zafiro by holding her next to the front of his body. In one hand he clutched his gun; in the other he held a dagger poised at Zafiro’s throat.
The beast of fear bit at Sawyer like a rabid dog, but he quickly tried to tame his alarm. Fear could have no part in a confrontation such as this one with Luis.
He looked away from Zafiro’s wide, horror-filled eyes and concentrated on Luis’s ugly, black, laughing ones. His hatred toward the man effectively tempered the last of his apprehension.
“You look familiar to me,” Luis declared. Smiling, he spat a blob of spittle on the floor, then bent his head down to wipe his wet mouth on Zafiro’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
“Your killer,” came Sawyer’s icy response.
Luis pressed the tip of his knife into the tender flesh of Zafiro’s neck. Her sudden gasp and a quick glance at the thin rivulet of blood that trickled down her throat made him chuckle. He looked up at the big golden-haired man who stood on the threshold. “I will kill her before you can kill me. I might even have time to kill you. And then I will see to the four stupid old people who just came in behind you.”
Sawyer didn’t need Luis to tell him that Pedro, Lorenzo, Tia, and Azucar stood behind him. He’d heard the shuffling of their footsteps as they’d entered the room.
Dammit to hell, he cursed inwardly. Now not only did he have to see to Zafiro’s safety, he also had to worry about four of her elderly charges as well.
“So,” Luis snapped. “Who will be the first to die? Will it be my beautiful cousin, Zafiro?”
“You won’t hurt her,” Sawyer sneered. “You need her, remember? You need her sense for danger. It’s what you came here for, isn’t it? To take her away with you so she can warn you before any harm comes to you?”
Still keeping his Colts fixed in his steady hands, Sawyer forced himself to smile. “You, Luis Gutierrez,” he scoffed. “The most feared outlaw in two lands. And he needs a woman to protect him.”
Luis frowned and pushed the tip of his blade into another part of Zafiro’s throat, slicing a second nick into her skin. “Who are you?” he demanded. “I know I have seen you somewhere before.”
Sawyer raised one tawny eyebrow. “You killed my father, my mother, my sister, and my brother.”
Luis shrugged. “I have killed many fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. What you say means nothing to me.”
Sawyer’s fingers tightened around the triggers of his guns. “The horse you ride belonged to my father. It was I who followed you from Synner, Texas, and found you outside that Mexican village.”
At that information Luis recoiled, taking a few steps backward and pulling Zafiro along with him. He tried to wet his lips, but his tongue felt like something parched. “Night…Night Master,” he murmured.
“So I’ve been called on occasion,” Sawyer replied.
“I…I thought I killed you.”
“It would seem you aren’t as good a shot as you believe you are,” Sawyer continued to taunt the man. “Surely you didn’t think I’d let you kill me, Luis. I had to stay alive so I could find and punish you for what you did to my family. And while I’m at it, I’m going to avenge Jaime Quintana’s death as well. You’ve killed too many loved ones to be allowed to live.”
The Night Master spoke with deadly confidence, Luis thought, his anxiety intensifying. Realizing he had to escape before dread poisoned him with cowardice, he edged Zafiro toward the bedroom door, taking great care to keep a wide distance from the gunman whose skills he knew far exceeded his own.
Nodding his head to the side, he gestured for Tia, Azucar, Pedro, and Lorenzo to move farther into the bedroom. When the four people obeyed, he dragged Zafiro into the corridor, leaving his adversary inside the room. His back against the hall wall, he stopped.
And stared at Night Master.
Sawyer stared straight back.
“Sawyer.”
At the unmitigated terror he heard in Zafiro’s voice, Sawyer knew an inexorable desire to swiftly put an end to her fear. He raised the barrels of his Colts slightly, aiming for Luis’s forehead, the only truly vulnerable part of the man’s body that was not shielded by Zafiro’s shaking frame.
He pulled both triggers at once.
But Luis had already doubled over at the waist, nearly bending Zafiro in half. The two bullets smashed into the wall, causing several small paintings to fall from their hooks and crash to the floor.
Walking backward, and with his gun pointed toward the bedroom from where he knew the Night Master would soon emerge, Luis pulled Zafiro toward the staircase.
Sawyer did, indeed, come tearing out into the hall.
But so did Pedro, Lorenzo, Tia, and Azucar. The four terrified people ran straight into him, their combined weights knocking Sawyer to the floor. By the time he managed to pull himself out from beneath the heap of wiggling, wrinkled bodies, Luis and Zafiro had disappeared from sight.
He flew down the hall and the staircase, leaping over the unconscious man who still lay in front of the steps. As he raced out of the cabin he saw Luis drag Zafir
o across the yard toward Apple Lover, who stood grazing at the edge of the woods with Jengibre pecking at the ground beside him.
Sawyer ached to shoot and kill the man who had caused such misery to so many people, but he dared not even make the attempt. Zafiro struggled in Luis’s arms, her torso, arms, and legs twisting wildly.
Sawyer would not take the risk of hitting her instead of the scum incarnate who had her.
“Kill him!” Pedro shouted as he, Lorenzo, Tia, and Azucar poured out of the cabin. “Sawyer, he has almost reached his horse! You must kill—”
“Stay back!” Sawyer shouted at them. “Just stay back!” His every step whispering his fury, he stormed after Luis, praying for one solitary chance to kill him.
Jengibre answered his prayer. The ornery hen took extreme exception to the man who almost stepped on her. Squawking and flapping her wings, she halfway jumped, halfway flew off the ground and delivered a vicious peck to Luis’s cheek.
Shock and the sting on his face caused Luis to lose his concentration. With the hand that had held the knife to Zafiro’s throat, he swung out at the chicken, who continued to fly at his face, chest, arms, whatever part of him she could reach.
Zafiro took full advantage of Jengibre’s surprise attack, throwing herself out of his hold and lunging toward the ground.
Gunfire sounded through the mountains like a thousand cracking whips.
And Zafiro got her wish.
Luis collapsed to the ground, Sawyer’s bullets lodged within the ice of his frigid heart.
Chapter Nineteen
While a very contrite Maclovio collected the bodies of the four slain men and dragged them one by one out of La Escondida, Sawyer saw to the member of the gang whose head had met with Tia’s iron skillet. After gagging the man he wrapped a long length of rope around the man’s torso, pinning his arms to his sides. Unable to stand the sight of the bastard inside Zafiro’s home, he then dragged him outside and tossed him on the ground.
From the porch, Zafiro, Tia, Azucar, Lorenzo, and Pedro watched.
“He still lives,” Zafiro said. Her fingers wrapped around her sapphire, she stared at the man who littered her yard. He began to moan and move as he slowly came out of unconsciousness.
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