She opened her eyes. She was blind.
No, it was the fog, thicker than ever, obscuring everything.
It was swallowing up Mr. Smith. She could hear him struggling, shouting to escape.
She had to do something. She had to pick herself up off this ground and get away. As her brain became clearer, she considered jumping up and running. But no, her feet were tied.
Sit up? Perhaps that was possible. By slow inches, she wiggled so her head rested against the trunk. She raised it, winced as her neck throbbed.
She screamed.
She thought about that. No, she hadn’t screamed, but someone had. She smiled. It must have been Mr. Smith. Perhaps he was being chewed.
Up the tree trunk she crawled, halting when she half sat, half reclined. That was enough.
Mr. Smith’s shrieks were music. She didn’t worry about being eaten herself. El padre s fog would be just. Abruptly, Mr. Smith and his yells faded. All the noise stopped. She was alone in the swirling grey.
She must have slept, because someone picked up her hand before she knew anyone was there.
“Catriona.” He spoke sweet and low, like someone calling the dead.
Her eyes popped open. “Don Damian.” Her lips formed the words.
He looked beautiful, with his hair dank and a scratch of blood on his cheek. He knelt beside her, her huge stick grasped in one of his bloody hands. The bark had been stripped from it in places; it was cracked down half its length, but she recognized its width. Damian was the mouth in the fog; the stick was the teeth. Damian was the one who’d made Mr. Smith go away. She’d known it, but she was glad to see her stick had been the instrument of revenge.
“Catriona.” His hand reached for her neck. She flinched; she couldn’t help it, and his hand fell away.
Tears flooded her eyes, raced down her cheeks. She tried to cry silently, because the sobs hurt her throat and made her cry more. He reached for her as if she were a delicate flower, taking her into his arms.
Finding strength in the shelter of his body, she burrowed into his chest.
“You’re safe now. There’s nothing here to hurt you,” he told her. “Smith is unconscious.”
She touched the stick, touched her head in pantomimed query.
Understanding, his hand touched her hair. “No, that’s not where I hit him. He might die from where I hit him. Most men would.”
She couldn’t stop her grin, but Damian winced with reflex male empathy. “I tied him just in case he didn’t die. I tossed his gear into a creek. I didn’t tie your worthless cousin, though.” He tugged her jacket closed. “When he wakes from his drunken stupor, he’ll run, and if I never see him again, it will be too soon. How could he drink himself senseless, when he should be protecting you?”
He glared at her fiercely, expecting an answer, but she just shrugged.
“Can you stand?”
She shook her head.
“I’m glad. I wanted to hold you.” He pulled her closer, hugged her as if he would never let her go.
She was content to rest there, to let her mind clear. He had come barely in time. Wetting her lips with her tongue, she tried to talk and found a whisper. “Your head?”
“Hurt a bit.”
She nodded, tried again. “Long wait.”
“We would have been here sooner, but we got lost in the fog.” He rubbed his head against her hair. “You knew I would come, didn’t you?”
She hesitated. The doubts of the night scurried through her mind like unwelcome rats.
“Didn’t you know I’d be here to rescue you?”
She hid in his arms.
“Catriona?” His voice warmed with concern mixed with indignation. “We’ve been up all night in the dark, trying to get to you. I walked so I wouldn’t lose your trail, and I lost your trail, anyway. I’ve got a headache and I’m hungry because that bastard took my food and you didn’t believe—”
Tugging at his jacket, she whispered, “Illogical.”
“Who? You or me?” With gentle hands, he thrust her back against the tree trunk. Running his fingers through his hair, he closed his eyes as if he were hurting.
She touched his arm. “Sorry.”
He looked at her. “I’m sorry, too. I thought that you would realize—”
She widened her eyes in question.
“Nothing.” He turned away.
She understood that she’d hurt him. She wished she’d lied. She wished she could have told him she believed he’d be there whenever she needed him. Even now she was thankful he didn’t know the extent of her doubts. She wondered if she’d ever have the nerve to tell him, to question him about his intentions, about his tender feelings. Twining her fingers in her lap, she discovered how deep her streak of moral cowardice extended.
“Vietta,” he called into the fog. To Katherine, he said, “Vietta followed us from Monterey because of the rumors. She brought food and a horse. She agreed to back me up in case I couldn’t handle it.”
His voice failed, and Katherine looked up.
Like a phantom at the edge of vision, Vietta stood cloaked in fog. Her black hair faded into the dimness, her pallid skin glowed. Her scarlet riding costume attracted the eye, and the ornate silver decorations looked grey. Then Katherine realized why Damian no longer spoke, why he stared at Vietta with such intensity.
In one scarlet riding glove, she held a pistol pointed at Damian.
Damian’s pistol.
“Vietta, put that thing down,” he ordered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She said nothing, answering with a crooked smile.
He stepped towards her, his hand extended. “Vietta, I’ve taken care of Smith. Give me my revolver.”
“Thank you, Damian, for getting rid of my mistakes. I should never have hired Smith, but life’s full of poor choices and loathsome consequences.” Sympathy dripped from her voice. “You’ve found that out.”
“Vietta?” he said, puzzled.
She aimed the gun at his chest. “Let’s go after my treasure, shall we?”
From her pocket, she lifted an object. Katherine’s breath caught in her throat, held as tightly as if Smith still choked her. She lifted her hands in rejection, twisting away from the sight of the knife Vietta held. A knife whose handle was black, whose blade shone black, with a tip so sharp it could slit a man’s throat—or a woman’s. She wanted to speak, to warn Damian of his peril, but she could only moan, “No.”
Damian couldn’t understand Katherine’s violent reaction, didn’t understand anything right now. Why was Vietta smiling at his wife like that? Like a sorceress pleased to be recognized?
Why was Katherine contorted in a protective shell like a victim of torture forced to confront her executioner?
This was Vietta, his little friend, not some monster.
Katherine begged him to step back, using her damaged voice, and he waved a hand. “What? You believe her? She wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Don Damian,” Katherine croaked. “The knife. That is the knife.”
He stared at his wife, and she touched her throat.
“You better pay attention to your Catriona,” Vietta warned. “She remembers that night in the boardinghouse.”
He looked at Vietta again, then back at Katherine. She nodded urgently. “Vietta, where did you get that knife?” He sounded like a scolding father, but he couldn’t help himself. This situation was ludicrous. How could Katherine believe Vietta was capable of such an act? How could Vietta threaten them with a gun in her steady hand?
“It’s my knife.” Vietta displayed no defiance, no guilt, only a warm delight in his skepticism. “Julio gave it to me.”
“Julio.” He stroked his mustache.
Vietta shook her head at him reprovingly. “Julio gave it to me years ago. Remember? When we were children, and the vaqueros taught you boys to use a knife, I cried because I didn’t have one. Julio gave me this one. His vaqueros had made it for him of the black glass stone. He thought
it wasn’t as good as your steel blades.” She flipped the knife, catching it in an efficient fighting hold. “I practiced just like you did, and I found this black stone blade is better than your steel blades. It can slice anything.”
Sure he’d unraveled the puzzle, he suggested, “Julio’s had it.”
Her mouth puckered and she shook her head.
Incredulous, he stared at the knife, expecting to see incriminating blood dripping from it. That couldn’t be the knife. “Have you lost it recently?”
“No.”
This couldn’t be the person.” A man attacked you,” Damian said to Katherine.
Vietta laughed, low and rich, while Katherine denied it. “No, I never said a man attacked me. You assumed a man attacked me, and I was so confused and upset, I couldn’t put my finger on the discrepancies I’d seen.” Her tortured voice turned hoarse, dwindled to a whisper. She gulped in moist air before she could continue. “It’s Vietta. Her voice, her height. They deceived me.”
“Women don’t kill people,” Damian said in desperation, his confidence tumbling as his precepts shook.
“I never killed a person before I killed Tobias,” Vietta reassured him. She glanced down at her hand with a sort of distaste. “It’s not easy to kill a man. I planned carefully, but I hadn’t realized how messy it would be.”
“Messy?” Damian stared at this woman he thought he knew. It was as if she were evolving before his eyes: changing from a genteel lady to a freak who had no morals or sense of virtue. “You kill a man, and you call it ‘messy’?”
“I attacked him from behind, jumped on his back. If my first stab hadn’t hit that blood vessel, I would never have got him down.” Like a matador recounting a difficult fight, she reminisced with the assurance of their avid interest. “Then I had to saw through his windpipe.”
Katherine put her hand on her throat, as if the memory of Tobias’s death and her own disfigurement were too close.
With a defensive edge in her voice, Vietta told Katherine, “I couldn’t have him identify me in his death throes. I had to cut his throat.”
Sickened, Damian asked, “Could he have identified you?”
“Oh, yes.” She sounded as delighted as a girl with her first posy as she slipped the knife in her belt and patted it fondly. “He ripped the scarf off my face. I’ll never forget that look on his face when he realized who it was.” Confiding to Katherine, she said, “He never liked me, you know.”
Turning his back on her with insulting deliberation, Damian scrubbed at his face with his hands. Right now, he understood the ancients’ custom of tearing their clothes in the event of a death. Hearing this, he’d lost Tobias once more, and his soul wallowed in guilt. He’d argued with Tobias about this woman, refusing to see her evil, and Tobias was dead because of his willful blindness.
He’d lost Vietta, too, his memories of her destroyed forever. With her, he’d lost a piece of his youth, his trust—and he’d almost lost his Catriona. “Why would you have repeated your crime with Katherine? She knew nothing. She was a victim of Tobias’s curiosity.”
Vietta’s voice lost her nostalgia and gained a defensive edge. “She was never in any danger. It’s not that easy to kill someone with a knife to the throat, but I knew she’d be terrified after losing Tobias. It was just the best way to find out what I wanted to know.”
Katherine stared, her eyes round.
“Oh, Katherine, would you stop holding your throat and whimpering like that?” Vietta said in disgust. “I told you, you weren’t in danger. I could have cut on your throat for a long time before I killed you. Just stop whining. I never even would have killed Tobias if he hadn’t taunted me.”
Damian jumped, whirling around. “What?”
“Oh, Damian.” Never removing her gaze from him, Vietta slid over to a boulder and perched on it. “Tobias knew what I wanted. He was no fool. Tobias showed an interest in the treasure, and he interested you in it, also. That’s when I discovered my girlhood affection for you renewed. I knew if I just kept close to both of you, the gold would be mine.”
“The treasure of the padres is nothing but a legend.” He corrected himself. “We thought it was nothing but a legend.”
“I always enjoyed reading.”
Unable to follow her garbled logic and not caring, he knelt at Katherine’s feet. Reaching for the rope the vaqueros had tied to bind her, he tugged and frowned. Looking down, he gave the knots his fullest attention, intent on loosening Katherine.
“Didn’t I always enjoy reading?” Vietta insisted.
He nodded absently. Katherine had to be free, to run if possible, to flee this situation.
“My family’s been in California longer than yours, and one of my ancestors left a diary. She had actually seen a chunk of the gold. She wondered what happened to it. She deduced its importance.”
“Someone else saw the gold?” Katherine whispered.
Vietta’s attention abruptly switched to Katherine. “You’ve seen the gold?”
Damian closed his eyes in brief exasperation. Katherine had given away information. Right now, he wanted to keep Vietta starved for information.
“You have,” Vietta breathed. “How wonderful for you. No matter how carefully I’ve researched, no matter how thoroughly I’ve pursued my findings, I’ve never seen the gold at all. Was it beautiful?”
Katherine shook her head. “No.”
“Did you find it in Tobias’s possessions? Well, of course you did. You must have. Yet I searched his room, his trunk.”
Unable to maintain eye contact, Katherine dropped her gaze, and Vietta crowed. “It was in his trunk! Now where—it wasn’t one of those chunks of rock was it? It was, wasn’t it? One of those rocks contained gold, didn’t it?” Her laughter rang with a sleuth’s excitement. “I held it in my hand and never realized. . . .”
“What would you have done if you realized?” Damian asked.
“There was nothing more I could have done. I couldn’t find a clue as to the treasure’s whereabouts, but I knew Tobias had been in these mountains. I followed him, you know, until he lost me. So after I killed him and Katherine disappeared, I came up here to search. That’s when I fell. That’s when I hurt my leg.” Vietta’s voice still rang with its deep, pleasant tone. No bitterness, no unhappiness tainted her voice; it seemed that for her, the gold was worth any sacrifice. “I would have been back for Katherine sooner, only the fall from the cliff hurt me badly.” She rubbed her thigh in remembered pain, and the pistol sagged.
Damian leaped for her, and the pistol went off in Katherine’s direction. Unable to help himself, he flung himself back at Katherine, seeking to give her his belated protection. In the tree trunk above her head, a hole smoked. He grabbed up his wife, holding her with his body between her and the gun.
Vietta held a pistol in each hand now. Her pistol had been discharged; Damian’s shone clean and bright and deadly. “I’m not going to kill her. Do you think I’m a fool? I know you, Damian, better than you know yourself. You’ll do anything to protect that woman.”
“Why don’t you let Katherine stay behind? She can hardly walk.” Damian assisted his wife over stony ground, through the fog that defied the sun.
“Keeping your beloved Catriona in my gun sights is a guarantee for your good behavior.” Vietta followed them, keeping her horse well back from Damian’s grasping hands. Her pistol remained in a holster by her horse’s neck. “I like guarantees.”
Katherine stumbled, and he put his arm around her waist. She murmured, “Thank you,” but he didn’t dare look at her. She must hate him. He was the patron. He should know best, make the correct decisions, see the most clearly, and he’d gotten them into this damnable mess.
Now he wondered how he could have doubted the ferocity of the cultured California lady he grew up with. What an idiot he’d been. Driven by a curiosity he couldn’t contain, he asked, “Was your love for me ever genuine?”
Katherine glanced at him, startled, but Vietta mocked
him. “Are you talking to me, my hero? Your poor, lonely, scorned friend!”
“That is an answer in itself,” he answered. She chuckled. The sound was so comforting, he couldn’t believe her menace, yet she’d trained the pistol at Katherine.
“I did love you once. Who doesn’t love you, Damian? You’ve got everything. You’re handsome, charming, competent. Everything I’m not.” She chuckled again. “Oh, and you’re rich. How could I forget that most important thing? You’re very, very rich.”
He glanced around at the encircling cloud, depressed by his stupidity and the continuous gloom. “Yes, I’m rich.”
“Tactful, too. When I was so young and silly with love, you tactfully turned me away. You were so kind.”
“I was always kind to you.”
“Yes, you were. You were kind when no one else was, because I wasn’t privileged like you. Do you know, you were my inspiration to find the treasure?”
He lifted one foot, put it in front of the other. His head throbbed; he wanted to shout at her, but old habits kept him sane. “How could I be your inspiration to do this?”
“Because if I’d been rich, it wouldn’t have mattered that I was charmless, homely, unaccomplished. We would have been betrothed.”
He stopped, turned, and looked at her.
She faced him from atop her surefooted mare and used every inch of her height to impress him. “I was a proper lady years ago, but I’ve lived in genteel poverty for too long. I’ve been on the edges of society, taking the crumbs tossed to me and pretending I was grateful. I’ve listened to my father moan about his bad luck at cards, about how we’d be living on the rancho if he hadn’t lost it. I’ve heard my mother sigh like a martyr while she dresses in secondhand silks. I’ve heard them nag me, tell me if I would only flirt like an idiot, I could get a rich husband and lift them out of their ghastly destitution.” She stared at him with satisfaction as he stood in the middle of the trail. “You made a mistake when you refused to wed me because I was poor.”
Deliberately, he pushed Katherine out of the way. “I would never have wed you.” He gazed at Vietta, telling her the truth with his proud rejection.
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