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A Wolf In The Desert
Bj James


Kidnapped!An enigmatic stranger had claimed Patience O'Hara as his woman, protecting her from the gang that had taken her hostage. Now she had to pretend to be his lover, or face harm at the hands of a group of lawless drifters. But something about her rescuer made him different from the rest - he just didn't act like an outlaw.Abducting Patience hadn't been part of secret agent Matthew Winter Sky's mission, but she'd gotten herself into trouble, and he couldn't just let her suffer. But now he had to choose: Would he complete his dangerous mission, or escape with the beautiful woman he'd sworn to defend with his life?












A Wolf in the Desert

BJ James





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Contents


Prologue (#uaa7df54a-c0ff-5d93-8eef-61145689ba8b)

One (#u86db87af-4ad6-562a-8d0f-2a0f1b791d62)

Two (#u8c47307e-142b-53a8-8b67-1bb821aa3b3d)

Three (#ub0377315-5458-5993-9363-5687c156334e)

Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue


“Yes... We have a renegade.”

There was silence after the reluctant admission. In the solitary darkness of his Spartan office Simon McKinzie braced the telephone between shoulder and jaw. His face was wooden, one fisted hand rested on his knee, the other clenched a crumpled message. A message delivered by special courier, intended for his eyes only. With his back to a window that commanded an impressive view of Washington by night, his bleak stare looked blindly at a barren wall.

As he listened to the pedantic lecture of a power hungry bureaucrat wielding what the foolish creature perceived as his own special bit of authority, only the creak and groan of the chair warned of the veiled tensing of Simon’s formidable body. In what could have been misconstrued as a languid gesture, a massive hand lifted from his knee, blunt, square-nailed fingers captured the receiver in a bearlike grip. No hint of change flickered over his features, but deep in his hooded eyes seethed cold, barely leashed rage.

“Of course I know it’s an explosive situation.” The damning scrap of paper drifted to the floor as he snarled into the receiver in response to a repetitive statement of the obvious. “He’s my man. I know better than anyone what he’s capable of.”

Reining in his anger Simon leaned forward, eyes like lasers now, scanned his office. Once, twice, then once more, his gaze lingered here, there, probing his memory of his sweep of critical niches. With a curt nod, pleased with his last discovery, he picked up the lighter that occupied a place of honor on his desk. As the voice at the other end of the line droned on, he flicked a broad thumb over it and a flame danced and swayed in the invisible currents of climate control. A small light in the darkness of his soul.

“I have admitted we have a renegade.” Heavy shoulders taut, a frown wrinkling his forehead beneath a closely cropped silver mane, his words were dangerously spaced as he looked into the calming center of the flame. “Where and why is our concern and no other’s. The Watch takes care of its own.”

Distaste supplanting anger in his hooded eyes, Simon listened again. A calculated stratagem more than respect for the speaker’s political authority. The covert organization for special investigations had been instigated by a past president. The monumental task of making the dream of fail-safe protection above the vagaries of politics a viable reality had been given to Simon. Through sheer willpower and stubborn dedication he made it reality, he made it viable. Without him it could not have existed. He was the organization, and the organization was his.

In twenty years that had not changed. The rigid rules and guidelines were set down by Simon. The extraordinary men who lived and worked by them were chosen by Simon. The assignments were accepted by Simon. The Black Watch was still his.

Simon McKinzie was a powerful man. There were those among his acquaintance who thought too powerful. Those who coveted and those who feared the ungoverned control. Such acquaintances had no concept of the true man. The man of honor and truth, without personal ambition, whose loyalty to his men was superseded only by his loyalty to his country.

Simon McKinzie had and would walk through hell for his men, and twice for his country. He knew his men, singled out for constancy as well as individual talents, would do the same. There had been mistakes over the years—agents who failed, who couldn’t cope, or simply opted out. But never many, never an agent trusted above all others. And only once, the threat of a renegade.

Until now, only David Canfield.

Cradling the lighter in his hand, Simon remembered.

David, the first, best of the best, a young idealist with a heartbreaking smile. Fifteen grueling years in the field robbed him of the smile, a final tragedy drew him to the brink, a step from disaster. There were enemies who wanted to hunt him down and, in destroying him, destroy The Black Watch. Simon fought for David and won. His ally, time and Raven McCandless.

Gentle Raven, master potter, creator of beauty. A woman who brought love to a bitter, heartsick man, and at long last, salvation and peace.

Simon had no gentle ally in this circumstance. He had only himself. Only he would be champion of the man and keeper of the secret. He could give his renegade that.

And time.

Balancing the telephone again between shoulder and chin, with a low growl rumbling at the base of his throat, he retrieved the yellow document. In a slow, deliberate move he dragged a corner through the fire, watching as the flame crawled the length of it to lick at his fingers. As heat singed the hirsute back of his hand, with a great sense of satisfaction and apologies to the meticulous cleaning crew, he dropped the crumbling ash into an immaculate garbage can.

Time, Matthew, he thought, keeping a careful silence as a coil of smoke drifted in an eddying current of air and disappeared. All the time you need.

The taut angle of his shoulders eased, grim lines that bracketed his mouth softened as he snuffed out the flame and set the lighter in its place. The bit of potter’s clay fashioned in a misshapen ball around a two-bit lighter was a six-year-old child’s first effort at his mother’s craft. A gift from Simon Canfield to Simon McKinzie, and the elder Simon’s greatest treasure.

A child. A very special child. Proof that circumstances weren’t always as they seemed, and no man was beyond redemption.

No man.

“Casper.” The name began as a growl and ended an intimidating bark. “Shut up.” The preening monologue that poured in a torrent through the line halted abruptly.

His patience at an end, smiling the infamous rictus of a smile that sent any sensible opponent running for cover, Simon set the record straight. “There will be no manhunt. No one could find the Apache unless he wanted to be found, no one could bring him in. No one except us. This is our problem, we’ll handle it.”

More stupidly dense than most, Casper chose to argue. Simon cut him short in a low drawl that left no room for underestimation. “There will be no search and destroy. I repeat, none! The Watch will handle this in its own way. Consider this a personal warning—if anyone disregards what I’ve said, you will answer to me.” Simon paused to let his promise and what it entailed register in Casper’s slow-moving mind. “You, Casper. First, last, always.”

Protests and denials spewed over the line. Simon ignored them, speaking into the outburst so softly there could be no mistaking his meaning. “How you control your cohorts is your problem. How I deal with my men is mine.”

As the pedantic voice turned shrill in babbled promises and denials, Simon’s smile grew colder. “Good,” he said at last. “I’m glad we understand each other.

“By the way, Casper, there’s one more thing.” Simon listened to a ragged breath caught and held, and knew he’d truly won. “As a show of my good faith, I won’t ask how you came into possession of this information.”

The receiver clattered into its cradle. “Have a good evening, Casper,” he muttered. With the first real smile of the day beginning in his eyes, in blatant disregard for the microphone tucked beneath the rim of the immaculate trash can, he added, “If you can.”

Wearied by the tensions of the day, Simon leaned back in his chair, allowing himself only a moment to rest. There was more to be done, much more. Not one precious moment would be squandered savoring his victory. The crucial point was time. Time he’d won for his renegade.

Time for Matthew Sky.




One


Beauty sighed. Beauty died.

In the first shade of nightfall, as darkness crept over a bloodred sky, her thundering heart stopped. Death came so swiftly Patience O’Hara had no time to think, none to comprehend. In one perfect moment they were barreling westward, racing at breakneck speed into the ebbing light of a fiery sunset. Patience sang. Beauty hummed, leaving a trail of boiling dust in her wake. Then nothing.

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

No power, no lights, no music.

Nothing.

On an obscure track in the middle of nowhere and no sign of life for miles, all three hundred, thirty horses under Beauty’s pretty aristocratic nose dwindled to a puddle of nothing. The whole herd of them, gone, in a heartbeat, without a second peep or whinny.

“Beauty! No!” Patience cut short her gusty off-key rendition of “Ghost Riders In The Sky” one note past failure of all systems. “You can’t do this to me. Not now. Not here.”

As she pleaded her lost cause, ingrained instincts overrode the inertia of surprise. In a conditioned response she mustered the last of Beauty’s dying momentum to wrest the Corvette’s cumbersome, unresponsive weight to what passed for the shoulder of what could only laughably be called a road.

Bumping to a halt, her hands resting loosely on the steering wheel, she sat nonplussed, dazed, feeling the void, the nothingness closing in. As one would feel at the loss of a friend.

The silly car, an impractical gift for her journey through the west from her ever-impractical family, had become her companion and confidant, assuming a personality in the long, solitary hours they shared on the road. She’d come to know and anticipate the growing list of idiosyncrasies of this sleek work of art in fiberglass. Even to regard them fondly as she would the endearing and often annoying quirks of her eccentric family. Of whom there were seven. Family, that is. Mother, Mavis; father, Keegan; brothers, Devlin, Kieran and Tynan; sister, Valentina; and lastly, Patience. Prudent Patience. Practical Patience. Boring Patience.

Seven O’Haras true to the breed, with thoroughly O’Hara quirks far too changeable and numerous to calculate. But Beauty’s idiosyncrasies? A different matter.

Patience had chronicled them, investigated them herself, and had them investigated in each new place, after each new occurrence. There was never anything. Neither she, nor any service center, or shade tree mechanic, no matter how competent, discovered a problem. After weeks of ignoring dozens of smug male smirks insinuating the peculiar and transient difficulties were in her imagination not the splendid Vette, after fending off a dozen and one too many passes, she stopped looking for trouble and coped.

Beauty had a problem; several problems, actually. Or maybe, as Mavis who was Irish to the core might say, she was inhabited by a leprechaun bent on a bit of mischief.

Whatever the cause, all the little transient problems had finally ceased being vague and transient, coalescing into catastrophe. And in that single soft sigh Patience heard the portent that this time the trouble wouldn’t be going away.

“Why now?” She glared at an ever-darkening sky. “Why here?” Turning a bleak gaze at the desert she gripped the steering wheel tighter, muttering, “And where the hell are we?”

She couldn’t remember a sign giving either name or road number telling where she’d been or where she was going. She couldn’t remember the last sign of life. She was alone in the middle of nowhere and not even a cow for company.

“So, Beauty, you got me into this, what do I do?” An unfair accusation Patience admitted, for it was she who had left their charted route on a whim. She who, in typical family fashion, had tired of the expected and opted for this little adventurous ramble.

“My mother’s youngest daughter.” Continuing her muttered harangue of all things O’Hara, she rummaged through the console for The Handy Dandy Tool Kit, Tools For All Occasions. A parting gift from brother Devlin.

“There you are.” Pulling the fine leather case from its spot of repose, she prepared to see what she could do about getting herself out of what she’d gotten herself into. If her gut feeling was right, attacking Beauty’s problem with The Handy Dandy Tools would be as effective as attacking a rhinoceros with a hairpin.

Climbing out of the Vette one slender, denim-clad leg at a time, she stood barefoot, feeling the rising heat of the ground and the descending chill of the night. In another hour she would be shivering. In less than that the last of the light would vanish from the sky. Since she didn’t relish holding a flashlight between her teeth while she delved beneath Beauty’s hood in the dark, she snatched her boots from the car, stamped her feet into them with the mastery of a seasoned cowhand and addressed the task she’d set herself.

Twenty minutes later, with a swipe of her forearm over her sweaty brow, she backed away, defeated. Whatever ailed Beauty remained a mystery, no more evident in extremity than before. This strange malady was far beyond the small knowledge imparted to Patience by brother Devlin whose life and love focused on family, especially his baby sister, fast cars, fast planes, fast motorcycles, and fast women. But not especially in that order.

After putting the tools away and closing the hood with a sense of regret, Patience leaned against a fender, absently scrubbing her hands on the thighs of her jeans as she considered her options. She could walk out, but which way should she go? How far back was the last settlement? How far ahead was the next? One mile? Two? Fifty? A hundred? The road was so poorly distinguishable from the desert itself, could she be sure she wouldn’t wander away from it?

Patience stared out at miles of nothing. The desert seemed static at a glance, a rendering in stone, the keeper of ancient secrets. But she knew there were creatures there, nocturnal creatures she couldn’t see. Since she didn’t know where she was, she wasn’t sure what creatures. Birds, mice, a sure bet. Javelinas, perhaps.

Snakes.

Suppressing the shiver rippling through her, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts, her fingers clutching at the shirt pulled taut over her ribs. Snakes. She hated them. Animals were her business, she’d studied them, learned how to care for them and treat them. Her purpose for coming west, beyond distancing herself from her beloved madcap family, was to find that perfect place to establish her fledgling veterinary practice. But snakes!

Unconsciously she shook her head. She’d never managed to conquer an almost paralytic fear of them. Her unreasonable response made no sense, but it served her well for once, tipping the scales to a more prudent decision. Snakes or no snakes, only a tenderfoot would venture into unfamiliar territory at night.

Patience hadn’t been a tenderfoot since she was seven and her first horse refused a fence, sending her flying braids over bootheels. She remembered the spill and how frightened she’d been as if it were twenty minutes ago instead of twenty years. In the expected tradition, after picking herself up and dusting herself off, she’d hobbled back to the horse, conducted a little heart-to-heart talk and climbed back on. He never refused a fence again. Once again, in family tradition, she would climb back into Beauty for the remainder of the night. At first light she would face any fears she must, do whatever she must to accomplish her return to civilization.

Decision made, she gathered up The Handy Dandy Tool Kit and in her long-legged, confident stride, circled to the door. Her hand was at the latch when a drift of sound made her pause. Head up, she turned, searching for something that would explain the disturbance.

Nothing.

The desert was still under the rising moon. Yet there was something, Patience knew she wasn’t mistaken. Executing a slow turn she looked out over the barren land once more, her stare probing, searching, then probing deeper. Nothing moved among clumps of stunted desert grasses. No shadow skulked about the prickly saguaro, pious giants of the desert with arms raised eternally toward heaven.

She could feel the stillness permeating the air.

And yet...

Stooping swiftly she gathered up a handful of pebbles and flung them into the brush. In a nearly silent flap of wings, so slowly it seemed in stop-action sequences, an owl lifted from the scrub, a snake writhing in its beak. Patience flinched and ducked, bumping her elbow against a mirror. Pain radiated down her arm, followed by a tingling numbness, but she hardly noticed. When the shock subsided she felt only profoundly relieved, chiding herself softly for a momentary revulsion for the owl’s dinner.

She was turning again to the door when some nuance, a portent, had her whirling around. Teeth clenched against an outcry, she turned cautiously in place, making another circular sweep of the land.

Saguaros stood as piously as before, grasses perched as tenuously in the sand. Above them the sky was an undisturbed expanse. Frightened and replete, the owl hadn’t returned.

What then? she wondered. What had her so spooked?

Had she heard something or only sensed it? Had she been disturbed on some subconscious level by the precursor of sound?

“Ah!” She shook her head in disgust. “God help ye, Patience, ye’ve been in the desert too long to fall prey to such buffoonery. Mayhap ‘twould be best to head back east at first chance.”

The parody of her Irish ancestors dropped like a stone from her lips as she felt it. At first it was only vibration, the subtle, immeasurable shaking of the earth in response to pounding sound. Like an electrical charge lancing through her, the vibration raced to her ears, becoming sound. Deep, pulsing sound. Sound she knew.

“Two,” she muttered, listening, her hopes rising with the sound. “Four.” Her heart raced a bit, a frown barely creased her forehead. Her hand pawed nervously for the latch, but her gaze never wavered from the direction of the invisible sound.

“Six!” The number sent terror racing through her like a ravenous fire. Her hand shook, her numb fingers wouldn’t obey as she fumbled with the latch. Frustration fed by fear erupted from her.

“God help me!” The cry was a muted scream as blinding lights rose out of a dip made invisible by the shadows of sunset. Patience wondered desperately what other secrets were hidden in the crude road that had appeared to be as perfectly level as it was straight. Spurred by the strength of panic, her nearly paralyzed fingers responded. The latch engaged and released.

Catching back a sob of pain, scrambling, stumbling, nearly falling in her frantic haste, she flung open the door and threw herself inside the dark interior of the Corvette. She managed to drag the door shut with her good hand and slap down the locks with her palm an instant before six motorcycles, six chromed and polished machines, riding in pairs roared around the car.

Savages of the modern world on modern steeds with throbbing V-twin motors circled a crippled wagon. Around and around in darkness that was complete, Harleys, Fat Boys, Electra Glides reared and spun and skidded, executing tight, sliding turns. Headlights flashed, one illuminating the one in front of it, a battery of monstrous machines, tattooed arms and brawny bodies revealed in their glare.

Patience sat woodenly, seeking refuge in a secret place of oblivion, ignoring catcalls and grinning faces leaning close to leer. Refusing to cringe as gloved fingers stretched out in their circuit to trail over the surface of the car and the windows, stroking them, caressing them, as they would the flesh of a woman.

Fighting back a shiver, she tried not to see, tried not to think. Pebbles clattered against Beauty’s smooth sides, dust spewed over her in grainy plumes, and spewed again. The air churned with it, fell thick and heavy with it, and in the flaring light, turned to suffocating haze. Patience was mercifully blinded, the riders, she was sure, would be more so. With all her might she willed them to tire of the choking dust and their game, prayed they would leave her to find her way from the desert in peace.

But the bikers weren’t so easily discouraged. In eerie silence, as engine after engine shut down and dust fell through the glare of headlights like settling fog, only a naive fool wouldn’t have realized this was far more than a bit of roadside hazing. Her body tense, woodenly stiff, in darting glances she watched them swagger toward her, strutting through blinding brightness in leathers and boots and shining chains, with thumbs hooked in the pockets of jeans, elbows bent, biceps bulging, and six smirking grins.

These were outlaws, the incarnation of every cliché. Mean-to-the-bone, born-to-be-wild, live-to-ride bikers. If she’d been lucky they might had been one of the many rubes like Devlin. Yuppies with deep pockets and gold cards living on the cutting edge. Clean-cut, clean-living country boys fulfilling dreams. The richer, older, gentlemanly urbanite out for a fashionable spin in the desert.

But she hadn’t been lucky. These weren’t rubes of any sort, and she knew she was looking at more trouble than she’d ever imagined.

“Hey, baby.” The first rider, a wiry man with a tumble of golden curls and goatee to match, slapped a palm on the window, jolting her from her thoughts. Rigid control kept her from cringing.

“You in there.” He bent near to peer at her through the window, a sudden grin splitting his face as he called out, “Jackpot! We got us a redhead this time.”

“Red?” a voice asked.

“‘S what I said.”

“For sure? You ain’t joshing us, Custer?”

“Red-gold and curly,” the biker called Custer assured them. “And lots of it.”

Patience stared straight ahead, her gaze fixed, focused on nothing. She refused to turn, refused to acknowledge him.

“Hey! I said.” Custer slapped a hand against the window again. The report rivaled the sound of a gunshot in the murky interior of the car. “What’s the matter, Red?” He bent closer, his goatee brushing the window. “Are you deaf? Blind? Cat got your tongue?”

Another rider joined him. Another face to peer at her. Patience didn’t turn, didn’t look.

“Funny,” the second observed, “she don’t look deaf.”

“How can you tell?”

“She’s wearing earrings. Deaf people don’t wear earrings.”

“Who says?”

“I dunno, me, I guess.”

“Maybe she’s not blind, either.” A third rider, a gross giant of a man running to fat, leapt to the hood, draping himself over it as he pressed his forehead to the windshield to smirk down at her. “Nah. She ain’t blind, I saw her blink.”

“Of course she’s not, dummy,” a fourth voice interjected. “Who do you think drove out here?”

“Who you callin’ dummy?”

“You, dummy. Who else?”

“That’s it.” Custer snapped his fingers, interrupting the budding altercation as if an idea just occurred. “She’s crazy. Gotta be. Only a crazy woman would drive in the desert alone at night.”

“Yeah, who knows what might happen?”

“Why she could even have trouble with her shiny new Vette.”

“And meet up with bad guys.”

“Or, if she’s lucky, good guys.”

Keeping her determined silence, Patience heard but couldn’t match voices to faces. She didn’t try.

A beer bottle glinted in the moonlight as it was sucked dry and tossed away. The drinker hitched his pants and smiled blearily. “Hey, Snake, are we good guys or bad guys?”

“That depends on what Red here wants.”

Another chorus rose in concert. Obscene speculations echoed, one after the other. In them Patience heard the howl of roving wolves stalking the first kill of the night.

She felt sick, her eyes burned in the unrelenting blaze of lights pouring at her from the darkness. She was afraid, but, oddly, fear had become a source of false strength. Like a spotlighted doe she was paralyzed, frozen in place, too frightened to tremble or cry for their pleasure.

The rider on Beauty’s hood squirmed and turned, sliding his massive body over the glass, craning his neck to see inside. “I don’t care what she wants,” he declared with a lecherous grin baring broken teeth. “I’m in love. Sweet Red has skinny hips. I love red-haired women with skinny hips.”

Patience clung to the steering wheel. Her palms were sweaty, her throat dry as she fought dread and despair. There was no way out. If she had a chance, it was to outlast them.

“Hear that, Sweet Red?” Custer’s voice was soft, cajoling. “Blue Doggie loves you. Why don’t you come out to play with him?”

Patience sat as she had from the first, rigid, unresponsive.

“Hot damn!” Blue Doggie giggled and pounded the hood. “I love it when a skinny-hipped woman plays hard for me to get. Makes it so much better when I do.”

“Sweet Red,” a new voice wheedled. “Come out, come out.” The singsong wheedle took on a hard edge. “If you don’t we’ll just have to come get you. Be nice, save us the trouble and save yourself the wear and tear on this nice shiny car.”

A fist slammed the car. “Dammit, Red, do you hear me?”

The vicious undercurrent in their banter was surfacing. Her time was running out. Feverishly she thought of the derringer in the console at her side. It was loaded and ready. The rifle lying in its case beneath her luggage would be better. The bikers wouldn’t expect a rifle, but she hadn’t a prayer of getting to it, taking it from the case and loading it before they got to her.

Maybe she hadn’t a prayer, but she would fight. As hard as she could, for as long as she could. But not until she had to.

Blue Doggie squirmed on the hood, trying to catch her attention. She stared blankly, her vision focused on a distant point through and beyond his bulging belly. Angrily he reared over her, arms spread, bare chest filling her vision, a snarl hissed through jagged teeth as he planted an obscene kiss on the glass.

Patience bit down on her lip to keep from turning away. He hadn’t touched her, yet she felt as soiled as the sweat-smeared glass. A coppery taste of blood was on her tongue. She ignored it, returning her stare to that distant point in her war of wills.

In frustration or anger, she didn’t care which, the giant slammed a ringed fist into the glass. Cracks radiated from the point of impact in a crazed star. The ruined glass held. Blue Doggie snarled a coarse promise and swaggered away for another beer.

She saw him then.

The seventh rider.

An ebony shadow caught in a swirling haze, etched against the paler darkness of the night. A remote figure, as watchful and mysterious as the desert. Only the bike he rode gave back the light of the rising moon. Not even the churning dust of ancient and forgotten trails could dim the subtle gleam of the excellently maintained Electra Glide. Were it not for that reflection, a small light in the blackness of the moment, she wouldn’t have seen him.

Riding alone a distance behind, the sound of his single engine masked by the throb of paired riders, his coming had been virtually silent. In her panic and in the frenzy of maniacal heckling she’d neither seen him nor sensed his presence.

Seeing him now, a rider apart, a man on the fringes and uninvolved, sent a frisson of something she could only call hope rushing through her. Like a blush it bathed her cold body in a glow of warmth. It made no sense, one more rider would not alter her fate. She was still a woman lost and stranded on a little used desert track. A woman with evil tearing at the door of her last sanctuary.

No, she thought as cold reality swept foolish hope from her heart, there would be no help from that quarter. No help from anyone or anything but herself.

Gripping the steering wheel tighter, without regard for cramping fingers and the mounting ache in her elbow, she stared vaguely ahead, denying her tormentors the pleasure of panic.

She didn’t intend it, didn’t want it, but he was there in the line of her unfocused vision. The seventh rider.

She couldn’t see his face, nor his eyes. But she knew he watched her. She felt the power of his stare keeping her from the oblivion she sought, forcing her to focus on him. Caught up in the erratic moods of terror, she hated him then. More than the others. More than anything. For the frisson of hopeless hope, for watching dispassionately and uninvolved. For engaging her emotions, intruding on her thoughts, and stripping away her one refuge.

She hated him most for destroying the last precious moments of sanctuary before the wolves tearing at her fortress destroyed her.

The slap of a palm against the windshield should have torn her from her bitter thoughts, instead she discovered newfound hate brought with it newfound strength. She was done with hiding. Tearing her gaze from the shadowy apparition, she stared coldly at Beauty’s assailant, her eyes seething with anger.

“Hot damn!” a new heckler crowed. “There’s life here, Blue Doggie. She may be dumb, but she ain’t deaf or blind. She moves, she hears, she sees. If looks were lethal, I’d be road kill.”

Wearied by his prancing and crowing, Patience turned away, her attention drawn again to the source of her strength.

As the moon chased across the sky, beneath its canted light the desert came alive, shifting, hiding, revealing, leaving nothing ever the same in the eye of the beholder. Only he hadn’t changed. Only he was as before, sitting astride his bike, legs bent, feet braced in dust. His hands lay lazily across chrome handlebars, his shoulders were back, his head up. Eyes hidden in shadow were turned to her. Watching.

“Hey.”

Patience didn’t react to Blue Doggie’s return.

“Hey! Look at me,” he demanded.

She didn’t turn.

“I said look, damn you!” Spreading his feet and bracing his hands on the top of the door, he rocked the car as he spoke. “You look at Hogan, you look at me.”

Which was Hogan? Was he the dwarf? The silent one with the scarred throat? She didn’t know, she didn’t care as she clung to the steering wheel to keep her balance.

Abruptly Blue Doggie stepped back, hands raised in an air of surrender. Startled by the conciliatory gesture and mistrusting peripheral vision, she turned to him in time to see his face contort into a rictus of rage. That slight turn saved her eyes, her face, perhaps her life, as a chain crashed down on the damaged windshield.

Glass cracked, breaking free at the point of impact, sending great deadly shards flying into the car. Before the chain whipped down again she scooped the derringer from the console, palming it with cool-headed expertise.

Curbing his swing, Blue Doggie deflected the path of the chain, letting it fall in a clatter over Beauty’s hood. He peered through the gaping hole. First he scowled, then he laughed. “The lady’s packing. A two-shot peashooter, no less.”

“Back off!” Patience warned, ignoring his mockery. As threat became true peril, fear gave way to unshakable resolve. The derringer was steady in her hand and aimed precisely at the center of the hole in the glass and the point between Blue Doggie’s eyes. “You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to crawl back on your hogs, or whatever you call them, and disappear.”

“Now, why would we go away and leave a pretty young thing like you alone in the desert?”

“Maybe because it’s the wiser thing, Blue.” The answer was low, the masculine voice composed. A voice of reason drifting out of the night.

“Wise?” Blue Doggie wheeled around, speaking to the darkness. “What’s wise about leaving now?”

“Because the lady asked.” A reasonable argument, a reasonable tone, lacking the indifference Patience would’ve expected. “Because even you would lose an argument with a derringer.”

“Hell, Indian.” Blue Doggie gestured impatiently, the chain dangling from a leather band at his wrist glinted in the headlights of the circled cycles. “She won’t shoot.”

Muttered agreement and more catcalls rose from the others, urging Blue Doggie on.

“If you believe that, you’re bigger fools than I thought.” In a cultured tone so unlike the others, he might’ve been dressing down a troop of Boy Scouts, not a band of cutthroats with wolf heads tattooed on their arms.

Shocked by the calm ridicule, Patience turned instinctively toward him, probing beyond the lighted circle, seeking to know what manner of man waited and watched in the dark.

“That’s what you think, huh? That I’m a fool?” Blue Doggie snarled. “Then we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

She recognized the threat too late. A murderous backhanded swing brought the chain down over the glass again, an instant before she turned and fired. The bullet went wide, creasing the top of her attacker’s ear, fueling his rage rather than ending it forever. The glass imploded, shattered splinters became minute daggers. Patience only had time to shield her eyes and face. The derringer slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor. Even as her hands were stinging from minute cuts, she whirled, reaching between the bucket seats, groping for the rifle case.

Another second and she would’ve had it, but there wasn’t another second. A fist buried in her hair, lifting her through the open door of the car. Through a haze of pain she watched as Blue Doggie smiled down at her. He shook his head as if he were dislodging a worrisome fly, a halo of blood arced from his torn ear. His fingers closed tighter, drawing her neck to an impossible angle. “You’ll pay. Before I’m through, you’ll wish your aim had been true.”

Grabbing his wrists, her hands slick with her own blood, she clawed at him, trying to break his hold. One nail broke, then a second; his grip tightened. “Let go, you cretin,” she demanded, too wild with pain and anger to fear retribution. “Let me go, I say.”

“Whooee!” Blue Doggie shook her like a terrier might shake a kitten. “The Wolves has got theirselves a redheaded wildcat, and I got a nicked ear and claw marks to prove it. She marked me,” he said with no little satisfaction. “That makes her mine.”

His claim sent up another rumble of protest. The loudest among them, Custer, Snake and Patience.

Catching Blue Doggie in an inattentive moment, she hacked his wrist with the side of her hand and pulled free of him. But her freedom was short-lived.

A second pair of hands seized her shoulders. Beer-laden breath was hot against her skin, a moist kiss missed her mouth as she was jerked away. She spun in the dust. Hands clutched, fingers clawed. Like starving creatures quarreling over a bone, bikers pushed and shoved. Each staking claim. Each challenged by the next.

Patience was fondled and kissed, pinched and bruised, and tugged from the grasp of one by the next. On and on, in a circle, still spinning, still turning until she was disoriented.

Snake, the youngest, pulled her from the crowd, drawing her hard against him. His body molded hers, leaving no room for question of her effect. “You’re beautiful, Red. Play your cards right and I’ll spend some time with you.”

“Play my cards?” Patience wedged an arm between them to gain breathing space. “You have to be—”

“Kidding.” Custer finished for her as he snatched her from Snake to repeat an embrace that threatened her ribs. “He’s kidding himself. Snake always kids himself.” Custer buried his face in her neck, biting the tender flesh, ignoring her flinch of agony. “You’re mine, I found you first.”

“You found her.” Blue Doggie peeled Custer away, the look in his eyes signaled the banter had ended. Custer led with cunning and quick wit. But cunning and wit, quick or slow, were no match for the assurance of the giant’s brutish strength. “But we ain’t playing finder’s keepers.” His grin reminded Patience he had a score to settle with her. “No, sir,” he mused. “Not today, and not for a while.”

There were protests, the most vocal from Snake. A look from Blue Doggie cut them short. He had just enough beer in him to be crazy. No one in his right mind challenged the giant when he was sober, and certainly not when he was drunk and hurting.

One by one the protesters drifted away. Some to their bikes, some to Beauty to plunder and steal. Patience stood passively in Blue Doggie’s grasp, wondering what to do next. When he rocked back on his heels enough to stagger, and listed to the side as he righted himself, she realized just how drunk he’d become.

She knew then she would try to escape. Her chances of making it were slim, but she’d rather face an inevitable fate knowing she’d tried, rather than regretting that she hadn’t. And if she made it? Being lost in the desert was better than being found by these creatures. Snakes that crawled were preferable to those who walked and called themselves wolves.

Her chance came sooner than she expected. In the flush of victory Blue Doggie’s confidence bloomed, making him careless. His hand rested at the nape of her neck, his fingers curled only loosely around the slim column. As he herded her into the darkness he stumbled again, losing his tenuous hold as he fell to one knee.

A second taste of freedom spurred Patience into action. Before he could climb to his feet, she planted her feet, locked her hands in a club of flesh and bone, and swung with all her might. The double-fisted blow that shattered her watch caught the kneeling Blue Doggie under the chin, the fragile bones of his throat absorbing the brunt. With a quiet wheeze he went down face-first like a felled ox.

Patience waited only long enough to strip the chain from his wrist and cast a quick glance to be sure no one had seen. No one had. They were too interested in plundering the Corvette. She turned to run, and had taken three steps when a hand captured her arm in an iron grip.

“Leaving us so soon, Red? When the party in your honor has just begun?” a familiar, melodious voice inquired.

The seventh rider. The one she’d forgotten.

She opened her mouth to scream, then clamped it shut. Scream? For whom? Who was there to help her? Silently, counting surprise as her best weapon, she launched herself at him. Battering with her free hand, scratching, biting, she fought wildly and desperately to escape the imprisoning hold.

“Stop. You’re only going to hurt yourself.” The command was a quiet entreaty. When she didn’t obey, she found herself enveloped in a close embrace. Her captor held her surely but gently against his bare chest. His arms were taut, his body hard and lean. He smelled pleasantly of wood smoke and evergreen. For a moment Patience was lulled by a strange sense of security.

“I have you now,” he murmured against her hair as she quieted. “I mean you no harm.”

“Liar!” she snarled, rejecting the kindness she heard. She could trust no one, would trust no one. In a resurgence of angry desperation she clawed at his chest and kicked his shins, taking bitter satisfaction in his nearly silent grunt of pain.

“Dammit, wildcat.” He caught her in a rib-crushing hold. To take a deep breath would crack bones. “Do you want me to give you back to the others?”

Patience couldn’t move, couldn’t breath, still she wouldn’t surrender. Lifting her head, she glared up at her captor. In moonlight he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. But even evil could be pretty. “Let me go,” she demanded. “You’re hurting me.”

“Only because you make me hurt you.” He bent nearer, eyes that could only be black bored into hers. “Listen to me, believe me. I mean you no harm.” He searched her face. “Will you believe me?”

She was off-balance, unsure. “I don’t know.”

“If I let you go, will you not fight me?”

Patience didn’t answer. She looked at Blue Doggie lying in the dirt, at the others squabbling over her possessions. What choice did she have but to give a conditional agreement. “Let me go, I won’t fight you.”

He didn’t release her. “Tell me your name.”

“My name?” She looked once more into the handsome face. “What does it matter?”

“Tell me your name,” he insisted softly.

“Patience,” she snapped. “Patience O’Hara.”

“Give me your word you won’t fight me, Patience O’Hara.”

“What is this? Honor among scum?”

“Honor, yes, between you and me.” His gaze was a black laser, leaving no hint of expression undiscovered. “Your word, Patience?”

Her ribs hurt, she couldn’t catch a deep breath. In another minute she would be swooning in his arms. Even a stubborn O’Hara knew when she’d lost. Patience shrugged and agreed. “You have my word.”

Once again the dark eyes searched her face, seeking the lie. “Good,” he said, and released her. “I think you’re a woman who keeps her word.”

She stumbled away from him, folding her arms around her ribs as she sucked in hungry breaths. He made a concerned move toward her. When she jerked away he stepped back, murmuring, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Think nothing of it,” she flared. “I knew there were snakes in the desert, until now I didn’t realize one was an anaconda.”

He didn’t smile. She hadn’t meant it as a joke. For a long moment he stared at her, his arms hanging at his sides. A trick of the moon painted his face in sadness. “I won’t hurt you again.”

Patience straightened, her breathing an even rhythm. Her head was back, her chin tilted at an angle. “Do you have a name?”

“I am called Indian.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Mine.”

“Indian and what else?”

“Just Indian, no more.”

It wasn’t his real name, she realized, nor his only name. But, perhaps, it was enough. Certainly it was fitting, even too fitting among this cabal who found anonymity in flamboyant and garish aliases. Custer was no soldier, and Snake no reptile that crawled. Blue Doggie was an animal, but not blue until she’d battered his larynx. This man, who walked the desert as if it were his home, looked the part of his name. With silvery black hair clubbed at his nape and his chiseled features, he could have stepped out of the pages of history.

“All right,” she said when her study of him was done. “If that’s all there is, it will have to do.” Her eyes narrowed, her gaze locked with his. “Give me your word, Just Indian.”

He smiled then, a smile that did wonderful things to his striking features even in the garish shadows of the moon. Another time, another place, another person, Patience would have been astounded, but not now. Not here. “Give me your word.”

His smile vanished. “I think you will prove a formidable adversary.”

“Count on it.”

“In that case, you have my word.” He offered his hand, when she took it his fingers closed over hers in a strong clasp. A flash of anger crossed his face as he looked down at broken nails and bruises and the drying blood of cuts from splintering glass. But when he spoke again the anger was hidden. “Come, there is more we have to do.”

“What might that be?”

“You’ll see.” When she resisted, jerking away from him, in the same quiet voice he’d used to reason with his companions he said, “You have a choice. Indian, or the rest of them, which will it be?”

She hesitated, weighing choices that weren’t choices. When she put her battered hand in his again, it was her life, as well.

“No matter what I say, no matter what I do,” he said softly, “remember I will never hurt you.”

He led her then to the center of the road, waiting in silence for the revelers to attend him. Slowly, one by one, they turned, curious looks on their faces. When all was quiet he spoke. “Blue Doggie lies there in the gutter, felled by the woman. She would have escaped, I stopped her. By our law that makes her mine to do with as I wish.”

“Law! What law?” Patience whirled on him, her protest lost in the roar of complaint from the bikers.

Indian ignored them, he ignored her. Keeping her hand firmly in his, he addressed Custer, the leader, with the stilted formality of a declaration. “She is a woman befitting a warrior. From now and for as long as I wish, she will be my woman.”

Patience stared at him, for once she was speechless.

Turning to her, meeting her stunned gaze, into a hostile hush he declared, “Only mine.”




Two


“All right, Just Indian, what the devil was that all about?”

As they moved beyond the hearing of capering, beer-guzzling revelers, Patience ripped away from the grasp that guided her over a nearly hidden stretch of rough terrain that separated his bike from the others. A grasp, if she could believe her own muddled perceptions and trust this man called Indian, that was solicitous rather than restraining.

But she didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t trust anyone until she walked out of the desert, free and unharmed.

Spinning around in front of his bike she faced him, bootheels digging into crumbling soil, fisted hands at her hips. “What was that gibberish about laws?”

“Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? Being called my woman,” he asked quietly. Before she could lash out again, he added just as quietly, “It isn’t gibberish.”

“It isn’t gibberish when a pack of lawless morons prattle about laws?” The moon was fully risen. A perfect leviathan ball hanging in the sky, half as bright as the sun, painting the desert in sharp silvered edges and inky pools. In an eerie moonscape he loomed over her, as somber as the land in the night shade of a saguaro. More than half a foot taller and an easy sixty pounds heavier, he was an intimidating figure, but she was too indignant to be intimidated. “Law,” she snarled. “From creatures who give themselves animal names and play at being human?”

His hands shot out of shadow, catching her shoulders in a firm hold. “I brought you out here to talk to you, not quarrel, you hotheaded little fool. So shut up and listen before you make matters worse than they are already.”

“Worse!” Patience flung back her head, her eyes blazing. “What could be worse? Stranded in the desert. Harassed, attacked. Pawed and fondled. Fought over by mad dogs. Parceled off like a...” She cast about her mind, searching for the ultimate insult.

“Like a squaw?” Indian supplied.

“Exactly.” Patience’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. “Why don’t you explain what could possibly be worse than being your squaw.”

“Hush! Now!” He shook her, just once, but it was enough to signal how near he’d come to the end of his tolerance. “Put a check on your Irish temper and shut that pretty little mouth or I’ll...”

“You’ll what? Hit me? Ravish me? Or do you plan to threaten me to death?” Her chin lifted a notch, her voice was laced with contempt. “So much for Indian’s word.”

“Damn you!” His fingers bit into her shoulders, driving closely trimmed nails into her flesh as he moved closer and into the light. His chest heaved in controlled anger, his body was as unrelenting as stone. “I’m not going to hit you, or ravish you. And anything I say will be fact or promise, never threat. Yes, I gave you my word on it before. I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”

“And I didn’t?”

“You promised you wouldn’t fight me.”

“I’m not Cochise.” She pulled away from him then and was surprised that he let her go. Crossing her arms at her breasts in a belligerent attitude she glared up at him. “I didn’t promise I would fight no more forever.”

His look moved over her in grudging admiration for her defiance, her courage against impossible odds. “No, you didn’t, did you?” Something akin to a smile ghosted over his lips and vanished. “It was Chief Joseph.”

“So?” Patience shrugged her indifference, neither understanding nor caring to understand the cryptic remark.

“You were quoting Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. The correct phrase is ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’”

“That’s just lovely.” Her drawl was saccharine. “I doubt there were six bikers and one Indian threatening him with every conceivable indignity.”

“No,” Indian answered thoughtfully, “there were no bikers.”

“Lucky man.”

“An intelligent man, who knew when to fight and when to stop.”

Her head moved abruptly side to side, rejecting the subtle overture. “I’ll stop fighting when one of us stops breathing.”

He sighed heavily, threads of frustrated tension frayed as he struggled against the urge to break his word and throttle her. If there was ever even a ghost of a smile it was forgotten and buried. His face was somber, a startlingly tantalizing mask of stark lines and planes. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian? Is that it?”

Patience should have heeded the savage undertone in his words, but she was too lost in her own hostility to hear. “Considering that you’re the only Indian I know, yes, that’s precisely it.”

He moved, then, like a striking snake. Quicker than the eye could focus, or the mind comprehend, he swept her into his arms. One hand locked around her waist, the other cradled her head in uncompromising control. Her head was yanked back, her face lifted to his. If the moon had been a strobe, the disgust he felt couldn’t have been clearer. “Considering your reckless mouth and your ungoverned temper, I’m surprised you survived this life long enough to lose yourself in the desert. Since you have, and since it’s my misfortune to be stuck with you, we have to do what we must and make the best we can of a bad situation.”

“Your misfortune?” She struggled against his embrace, but he was far too strong for her. “Yours!”

“Yes, mine. There are things you don’t understand. Things you can never know.” The words rumbled deep in his throat, a whispered growl rather than spoken. His hand tensed in her hair as she fought to turn away from a quiet anger more frightening than savage rage.

Suddenly he was silent, as motionless as the saguaro. As inscrutable. His posture did not change, nor his manner, his relentless black gaze never strayed from her face. Yet he seemed to be waiting. Waiting and wary, listening to sounds only he could hear. He held her, his body coiled and ready, yet his thoughts seemed drawn to some distant place.

His head lifted, barely a fraction. So little even Patience couldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been staring at him from less than a foot away. Slowly, as if the smallest shifting of an eye could be detected by some secret cabal, he lifted his covert gaze to the terrain at her back. For a second that could have been forever, he studied the desert grasses, the mesquite, the creosote, the paloverde, and no one but she would have witnessed.

A strange word, harsh and nearly silent, tore from his lips. A word she didn’t understand, in a language she’d never heard. Yet she recognized regret in it, and anger unlike before.

“Indian?” She was bewildered and confused, and the unbearable fear that never truly left her for all her bravado, added another weight. “What is it?”

“Be quiet, woman.” His voice was unnaturally harsh and loud, unlike the low melodious tone he’d spoken in before, even in anger. “I tire of your prattle.”

He bent nearer, so near she couldn’t see him clearly, yet his breathy undertone meant for her ears alone barely reached her. “I won’t ask your forgiveness for stooping to clichés, but it isn’t just your cookie that crumbled tonight, and not just you who wishes you were anywhere but here. Believe me when I say I’m not going to like this any better than you will.”

She realized too late what he intended. Too late to do more than cry out. “No-oo!”

He ignored her protest, silencing it with his kiss. His mouth closed over hers, quickly, expertly, catching her lips parted in a startled gasp. He held her closer, clasping her body forcefully to his. In startling contrast his lips moved softly over hers, seducing her into stunned submission. As he swept her with him to a dark place of utter helplessness, her muted cries died in her throat. Her wounded hands ceased their fruitless resistance to lie woodenly against his chest, as wooden as she, as she steeled herself to endure his intimate conquest.

She was dangerously lifeless in his arms, a mannequin without a spark of resistance or even outrage. Indian pulled away. Only a hairbreadth separated their lips, and only his cool stare filled her vision. “What’s the matter? Are you all talk? Is that it, you only talk a good fight? Where is that Irish temper now?” He smiled crookedly down at her, a triumphant look in his eyes, yet edged by something she didn’t understand. “Could it be you wanted my kiss after all?”

“You’re mad!” Patience stared up at him. “Stark, raving mad.”

“Am I?” He pushed her hair aside to brush his lips down the curve of her throat. “I don’t think so.”

“Indian, don’t do this.” She strained away from him, trying to evade him, trying to reason with him. “Please.”

“Please?” He laughed, a low sound that would have seemed oddly forced if she’d been conscious of anything beyond her struggle. “I like that.” He moved his hand from her hair to stroke her cheek. “You know you want me. Admit it, admit that you want me.”

“Want!” In abject fury, Patience came alive. Tearing one arm free from the iron circle of his embrace she delivered a vicious, openhanded slap to his temple. Burrowing her hand in his hair, her fingers closed over the beaded leather thong that held it back, with all her strength she pulled, wishing she could scalp him. Instead the tie broke free and she clutched it in her fist as she pummeled him wherever she could. “Damn you.” She panted in her struggle against his hold. “I’ll show you what I want.”

He dodged a blow that would have blacked an eye or chipped a tooth and he laughed the same strained laugh once more. “That’s it. Fight,” he muttered. “For your sake and mine, fight every step of the way.”

Reining in the little freedom he’d deliberately allowed her, he took her mouth then. His kiss was deep and hard, expertly thorough, and completely without passion.

Her mind was reeling. Her hands hurt and her head. His long, lean frame thrust against her, his hands were in her hair, on her body. The taste of him was on her lips, the scent of him in her lungs. He was everywhere. He was everything.

Danger.

Survival.

Life.

There was no escaping him.

In bitter denial of the truth she opened her mouth, clamped her teeth on his lip and bit him, wreaking what havoc she could, drawing blood at last. His smothered grunt of pain was a symphony to her ears, the taste of his blood was one small victory. Then, incredibly, he laughed as he pulled away.

“Fight, wildcat. Fight as hard and as well as you can.” Bending, he kissed the side of her neck, leaving a trail of blood on the collar of her shirt. “The harder you resist, the more pleasure for both of us when I tame you.”

“Never,” Patience declared, thrashing and straining, trying to distance herself from him. She was so intent on pushing him away she almost fell when he released her. Only his hand at her elbow kept her from falling in the dust.

“Easy,” he muttered as he helped her keep her footing. “The ground is unstable here.”

Patience whirled on him, peeling his hand from her arm as if it were scabrous. “Let me go. Don’t touch me.”

Because they were alone again he let her go. As he watched her walk away a little distance into the desert, he listened to a stealthy retreat. Snake’s step was familiar, and Custer’s slight limp unmistakable.

Taking little pride in his performance, he waited until the sounds faded completely before he went to her. “O’Hara.” He stood at her back, waiting for some sign, some reaction to his brutal burlesque of Jekyll and Hyde. “O’Hara, look at me.”

She didn’t turn. Her back seemed straighter, more rigid.

“This wasn’t what you think.” Indian touched her shoulder, meaning to turn her into his arms to justify, to comfort. “Let me explain.”

She shrugged him off, swayed with the effort, then straightened again, assuming the ramrod posture. Drawing a shuddering breath, with the back of a shaking hand she wiped her mouth viciously. Her hand dropped stiffly to her side as an unnatural stillness enveloped her.

Indian knew she was in pain, the silent, gut-wrenching, tearless pain of humiliating helplessness. Pain he caused her.

Cursing himself and the world, he turned her into his arms. When she fought him, he let her, stoically suffering the claw of broken and unbroken nails, the pummel of poor, sore hands. He knew it wouldn’t be for long. She’d fought him hard and well, as he’d wanted, but she was near the end of her strength. He waited for this last spurt of rebellion to end, speaking softly to her in a nearly wordless murmur as he waited.

When the inertia of mind-destroying fatigue overwhelmed her, when she was still again and quiet, he gathered her nearer. That there was not even token resistance proved how close she’d come to total collapse, how complete the despair that sapped the last of her vitality. Repulsed by circumstances that brought her to this, and for his necessary role in it, Indian tucked her head into his shoulder, stroking her hair, offering what respite he could.

He suspected this was a rare occurrence in any circumstance. An uncommon moment when this spirited woman faltered, in need of restoring peace to her ravaged mind and body.

She’d weathered more than he’d thought possible. When he’d caught his first glimpse of her pinioned in the glare of unmerciful headlights, she was small and fragile, her delicate heart-shaped face almost overwhelmed by a lioness’s mane of hair like flame. He wouldn’t have given a penny for her chances of outlasting the savagery he knew was coming. Yet he couldn’t intervene, not then. The odds in her favor escalated when she’d proven immune to the head games his fellow riders were so adept at playing.

The derringer was a surprise. He didn’t expect it, but from the moment she’d palmed it like a pro, he knew this woman was a breed apart.

The pièce de résistance was Blue Doggie. No one in his right mind would have believed that before Indian could reach her, this scrap of a woman, brutalized physically and mentally, could fell a man more than twice her size in one two-fisted uppercut.

She’d endured beyond human endurance and hadn’t broken, until Indian took it upon himself to see to her welfare. Until Indian, in his own inimitable style, brought her to the brink. To this silent suffering.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair, and the hard shuddering that shook her finally stopped.

With the flat of her palm, Patience pushed away from him, her face was bleak. “No, I’m sorry, for being weak. It won’t happen again.”

“This isn’t weakness, it’s being human and civilized. But if it were a matter of strength, I’ve seen men who considered themselves far stronger than you could ever be break under less.”

“You misunderstand me, Indian.” She turned a diamond-hard gaze at him. “I make no apologies for this. I’ve seen enough and done enough in my life to know that there are situations beyond our control, and times when the spirit and body fail us. My weakness was believing in you even a little. I won’t make that mistake again.

“I’m not a complete fool.” Her arms hung tensely at her sides, her fingers flexed, a scrap of rawhide tumbled to the ground before they curled again into tight fists. A mouth made for laughter thinned to a grim line. “As mercuric as you are, I do know what you’ve spared me.”

“Do you?” he interjected quietly. “Do you, indeed?”

“Yes.” She spat the word at him. “I know.”

“Such confidence,” Indian mocked. “Such blind certainty.” He took a step closer. With a finger beneath her chin he lifted her face to meet her gaze again. “They were out there, Snake and Custer, the worst of the lot, watching, slavering over a tempting morsel.”

Patience swung around to look to the road where six bikers lounged on Beauty’s hood, or hunkered around her on the ground. Bottles flashed in the light, drunken laughter spilled over the desert. Stumbling across her misfortune offered the perfect excuse for a binge.

“There are six by the car,” she said. “No one was here. No one was watching.”

“They were here.”

“How do you know? How could you?”

“I knew.”

“Ah! You’re psychic? Telepathic, perhaps? Superhuman?” The latter was drawled contempt.

“Neither.” He refused to rise to her baiting. “I’m a simple man, with simple skills.”

Regarding him, she remembered how he held himself aloof from the others. How no one challenged his claim. He rode with them, lived by their laws, but he was not one of them. She was sure of it. Even in rage and terror she’d perceived him as separate. Different.

Six bikers and an Indian.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”

“A simple man called Indian. No more. No less.”

“No,” she denied emphatically. “Not simple. Never simple.”

“All right.” He nodded. “If you wish, not simple.”

She recalled when she thought him as inscrutable as the saguaro, now she decided the saguaro lost, hands down. “Tell me how you knew these men were watching.”

Indian shrugged a shoulder, bare beyond the edge of his vest. “I’m a tracker. A good one. My grandfather taught me to see things others don’t see, to hear things they don’t hear, to know things they will never know.

“Custer and Snake came, not as secretly as they thought, seeking an excuse to take you from me. They will if we don’t play this right.” He stroked her hair. Mesmerized, he watched it glide through his fingers, glistening like dark fire in the moonlight.

Red hair was prized by the bikers. Because of it she was a trophy coveted by too many men. Regretfully his fingers tangled in silk, holding her, keeping her, ignoring her hand at his wrist. “I can’t fight them all.”

Patience ceased her silent rebuff of his caress. With her hand at his wrist and the steady throb of his pulse beneath her fingertips, she stared up at him. “Take me from you? They would do that?”

“Yes.”

“But your laws, your precious biker laws, what happens to them?”

“They apply, but only if we are believed.”

“You mean they have to believe that I’m truly your woman.” She caught a ragged breath, her tongue moved nervously over dry lips. “They have to believe that you’re my lover. Rapist, if you must.”

“Yes.”

Patience jerked her hand from his wrist as if contact burned her. In horror she backed away, ignoring the crumbling soil of a tiny wash. Whirling around, she stepped over the groove carved by some long ago rain. Her boots scattered coarse sand as she walked. Mesquite and creosote brushed at her jeans. Thorned ocotillo tugged at the sleeve of her shirt as if it wanted to hold her back. She ignored them.

But she couldn’t ignore the footsteps that echoed her own. She knew she heard them because Indian wanted her to hear. In a moment of distraction she stumped her toe on the exposed roots of a creosote bush. His hands circling her waist kept her from falling.

She jerked away, staggered on a few steps, and stopped, searching beyond her. There was nothing. Neither light nor living thing. Not to the east, nor the west. The south or the north.

“That’s right.” Indian stood a pace behind. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing for miles. You can’t walk out.”

Patience spun around, and in the moonlight her hair was a veil of gossamer. “I don’t believe you.”

She wasn’t speaking of the obvious desolation of the desert. Neither pretended she did.

“I can’t give you proof.” He stood stolidly in front of her, making no effort to touch her. “Proof could only come from Custer, or Snake, or one of the others. Then it would be too late.”

“You could let me go. Just turn around and go back to your bike and leave me to take my chances in the desert.”

“I can’t.”

“All you have to do is walk away.”

“It would be certain suicide. You wouldn’t last a day.”

“For that day I would be free and my own person, not a piece of property.” She’d stood stiffly in front of him, now she made a gesture of entreaty, or anger, or both. She didn’t know herself. “Have you ever been a prisoner, Indian? Made to be a lesser person?”

“I’ve always been free,” he said. “Different degrees of freedom, at different times, but free, nevertheless.”

“That’s what I’m asking for now, a different degree of freedom. The right to choose where I live and die, and how.”

“I can’t. You wouldn’t have a chance, and you wouldn’t have a choice. You would be hunted down.”

“Then I would have tried, that counts for something.”

“You wouldn’t think so if Snake got to you first.”

She gestured toward the road, so far away Beauty looked like a toy and the bikes like pawns of a board game. Even the bikers seemed innocuous from this perspective. Comic, toy soldiers scattered by a petulant child, waiting to be put away at the end of a hard day of play.

Appearances were misleading, the handsome man standing in front of her was proof of that. “Snake, Custer, Blue Doggie, the one called Hogan. The others.” Her arm fell heavily to her side. She returned her gaze to him. “You. Why would it matter?”

He showed no reaction to her scorn. “Then consider this. When all choices are evil, isn’t it wise to choose the lesser?”

“Something else your grandfather taught you?” She sneered.

“No.” His grandfather would have fought to the death. It was his way. The Apache way. Indian didn’t want that choice for her. He wouldn’t want it for any innocent, but especially not for Patience O’Hara.

“Then you thought up this tidbit of wisdom all by yourself?” Patience taunted recklessly. “In your tiny, screwed-up little mind?”

A muscle flickered in his jaw, his teeth clenched as he silenced a reply. “We will discuss the size and condition of my mind another time,” he said instead. “And, yes, the tidbit was mine.”

“Let me guess. The lesser of the multitude of evils I seem to have attracted would be...” She pointed a finger at his chest, as if it were a gun. “Of course! You.”

“For a woman who has more guts than brains, yes.”

“My choice is a man who gives his word, most solemnly, then waffles and bends his promise to suit his needs?”

“Enough!” The command underscored an imperious gesture. “It’s no wonder you have no husband! You would talk a man to death.”

“You don’t know that I’m not married,” Patience lashed back at him. “You know nothing about me.”

“You wear no ring.”

“Neither do you and for all I know, or care, you could have a dozen wives.”

“I have no wife. When I do, there will be only one.”

“Only one, huh? And you would wear her ring?”

Indian didn’t hesitate. “If she wished, yes.”

“Have you, in your great wisdom, considered that perhaps my husband is a modern man? A man not bound by ancient symbolism, who doesn’t wish it?”

“Never.” He wondered if she knew how mysteriously beautiful she was in the half-light. How magnificently courageous. “The man who becomes your husband will put his ring on you,” he said thoughtfully, “to show the world that such a woman is his.”

The response startled her, catching her with no caustic reply. “But you said—”

“I know what I said.” He cut her short, exasperated with himself. He wasn’t a man who revealed his thoughts, a natural trait and habit that had saved his life many times. He would need to watch carefully with this woman. She had the skill to draw from him more than he wished. More than was wise.

“Come.” Catching her by the shoulder, he pulled her to his side. “We’ve wasted too much time. By now the last of the beer from the saddlebags will be consumed. I should see that they move along before their mood turns ugly.”

When he meant to return to the road with her in tow, she resisted, digging her heels into the sand. “No!”

He spun around, his face a dark visage. “Don’t try me more. You’ve pushed your luck as far as it can go.”

“So?” She glared at him when he would not release her arm. “What do I have to lose? What have I ever had to lose?”

“A fight, then? To the bitter end?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“At given and appropriate times.”

“On cue?” She laughed, a sound completely lacking humor. “In your dreams, chief.”

He raised a sardonic brow. “I’ve been promoted? Good. Perhaps you’ll be happier with a chief than a lowly Indian.” He pulled her along the trail with him, ignoring her opposition.

“Wait.” She clutched at his vest, her fingers brushing the heated flesh beneath. “I haven’t made my choice.”

He stopped, turning to catch her in his arms as she bumped into him. His face was fierce, his eyes narrowed. “I made the choice for you.”

She gripped the supple leather as if she would tear it. Through gritted teeth, she spat, “You have no right.”

“I have every right, and you have none.”

When she would have lashed back at him, he silenced her with a look so savage her protest died in her throat.

“What? No grievance?” he taunted. “Has the wildcat finally sheathed her useless claws?”

She looked up at him, seeing a man she hadn’t seen before. “Who are you? What are you?” she asked, bemused. “How many men are you?”

Though he spoke sternly, the anger in him subsided. An anger addressing his weakness as much as her stubborn strength. “I’m one man. Who I am isn’t important. What I am, what I became the moment you chose to travel this path, is your only hope. With or without your cooperation I’m going to find a way to get you out of this. Unharmed and unmolested by anyone.”

“Does that little declaration include you?” The caustic gibe slipped from her tongue before she could recall it.

“Yes, especially me.” His expression was impassive. “There is one choice you have. We’re going to your car. If you have luggage—” a shocked and angry look confirmed his instinctive guess that she did “—you will select the clothing and necessities you might need at our camp. You can cooperate and come willingly, or I’ll carry you.”

“Like so much garbage.”

“Like a willful squaw.”

Patience knew the leeway he’d allowed her had ended. Painfully she admitted “allowed” was the proper description. Given his half-foot advantage in height, and the extra sixty pounds on his ruggedly muscular physique, allowed was exactly the right word. Now he was allowing her to make a choice. To do what she must with grace and dignity, or to be done with gracelessly as he wished.

She had few weapons, and dignity could be one of the few. She’d seen it happen. When needed, Mavis, her usually happily undignified mother, could dig deeply for an icy dignity that intimidated the surly as well as the arrogant.

Dignity, a weapon to preserve and protect. Uncommon and effective, perhaps even against Indian. She released her hold on his vest and stepped past his reach. “I’ll walk.”

He wasn’t a man to exult in his mastery, one lone, spare move of his head acknowledged victory. “I thought you might.”

The path he chose to return wandered through shrub and grasses. He didn’t look back or offer an assisting hand. He knew she would follow, that the oblique surrender pledged she would. He knew, as well, she would accept no helping hand.

“Indian.”

He didn’t slow or turn. “Yes?”

“I don’t trust you.”

His step didn’t alter.

“Indian.”

He didn’t answer.

“I never will.” Her defiance evoked no response. She expected none, suspecting taciturnity, rather than heated and lengthy discourse, was his true nature. She watched him, his honed body, his sure and easy step. He moved through the desert as if he were of it, an integral part, and all else was intrusion. And she wondered what manner of man held her life in his hands. Engrossed in thought, she put a foot wrong. The step jolted, but she righted herself with only little effort.

Indian slowed imperceptibly until he heard her steady step again. He smiled, visualizing her frown in her concerted effort to keep him from knowing her passage was not without difficulty.

Their trek continued, Indian leading, Patience following, saguaro lining their path like spine-encrusted sentinels. The scent of beer, peculiar smokes, and drunken mutterings reached out to them before the refracted light of headlights still burning.

“I won’t stop fighting, Indian,” she declared in a hushed tone. “Not ever.”

Indian stopped at the shoulder of the road, keeping his back to her. His shoulders lifted in a long, drawn breath, a breath exhaled in a resigned sigh. “I know.”

As he stepped into the light, a haggard Blue Doggie looked up at him and beyond. Virulent hate burned in rheumy eyes.

Indian reached back, pulling her to him. “Go to the car. Choose what you will need. Sturdy serviceable clothing as you’re wearing now, and no more than a couple of changes. A hat if you have one, but don’t bother with a bag, bundle everything in a shirt. When you’ve finished, tie your hair back and wait until I come for you.”

Patience nodded. When she moved toward Beauty, without looking away from Blue Doggie, Indian stopped her with a hand tangling in her hair, detaining her.

“Stay there, until I come,” he repeated.

“I will.”

“Promise.” There was a new, watchful tension in his voice, arcing through his body.

“I promise.”

“Thank you.”

Patience was surprised by the courtesy but wasted no time thinking on it. Beauty had sustained more damage, clothing and toiletries were scattered inside the car. Even that garnered little of Patience’s attention.

The rifle. She wanted the rifle. Where was it?

To the sound of revving engines, she picked her way gingerly through splintered glass. Her luggage lay in the back as it had. It had been opened and riffled through, the clothing tossed in all directions, but the bag had been moved little. Hoping against hope that the rifle remained undiscovered, she threw the bag aside, scattering clothing and glass more.

“Thank God!” Miraculously the case was still strapped in the special niche created for it by brother Kieran.

The sound of motorcycle engines was fading. She was alone with Indian. This was her one chance to escape. Hurriedly she attacked buckles and straps. Too hurriedly. Haste made her injured hands clumsy. She’d barely managed to yank the case from its place and slide the rifle free when she heard his footsteps circling the car.

There was no time to retrieve bullets and load. When he stopped at the broken window at her side, she faced him, the empty rifle pointed squarely at his chest. “Back off, Indian.”

“Ah.” He acted as if it were common to face a rifle. “The rest of the arsenal?”

“Don’t be cute. Cute doesn’t suit you. Do as I say, back off.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked down at her. He was perfectly calm and at ease. “You’re going to take my bike and ride out of the desert, and you’ll shoot me if I stand in your way.”

Patience shifted the rifle against her shoulder. “Precisely.”

“I don’t think so,” he murmured.

“Are you fool enough to challenge a rifle?”

“Yes.” He reached inside, closed his fingers over the barrel, taking the rifle from her. “When it isn’t loaded.”

She didn’t resist, there was no need. Burying her head in her hands, she faced failure and accepted it. Wearily she dropped her hands to her lap. “How did you know?”

“The derringer. If the rifle had been loaded, you wouldn’t have wasted time with it before.” He laid the weapon aside and extended his hand. “It’s time to go.”

The rifle was her last stand. The adrenaline that bolstered this last hurrah, vanished. She was hardly aware of leaving the car; like a puppet she walked mindlessly through gathering the clothing he felt suitable. All of it no more than vague perception.

When she struggled with her hair with hands grown unbearably stiff, it was Indian who bound it. As he did his own with a bit of fringe ripped from his vest.

She was astride his bike behind him when she realized she would likely never see Beauty again. “What will happen to her?”

“Her?” He glanced over his shoulder. “The Corvette?”

“She was a gift from my family. In a strange way, she had a personality. She was my friend.” Maybe it was crazy to consider a car a friend, but Patience didn’t care. She asked again. “What will become of her?”

“She’ll be stripped. Anything of value will be sold, what’s left will be pushed into a canyon and covered with dirt.”

“Poor Beauty.”

“There’s no hope for the car. There is for you. You don’t have to trust me or like me, but we must do this together. You’ve that choice to make. We have a couple of hours of hard riding tonight. Think on it.”

The engine revved; Indian turned his bike into the desert. To a place Patience knew she might never leave.




Three


Absorbed in her own fortune and in keeping her seat as the Electra Glide sailed, then flew over inhospitable terrain never meant to be traversed, Patience spared no energy on speculating what the camp would be. As Indian climbed one last incline, cut the engine and rolled to a silent halt, she realized no amount of thought or speculation would have prepared her for what lay before them.

Shifting in her seat she stepped down to stand by the bike to have a better view of the camp. It was a well-chosen site, a walled fortress carved into the mesa by wind and water and ancient cataclysm. On the boulder-strewn floor lighted by a single campfire, there were people. Men. Women. Some sitting by the fire, others moving frenetically on the fringes.

The orgy of drinking begun on the roadside continued, as if never interrupted, in this secluded place.

“We’ll wait here, until it’s calmer,” Indian said, his tone conveying no judgment of any kind. “In a while they’ll drink themselves to sleep or into a stupor. It will be easier on you that way.”

Easier? Patience wondered what about this could ever be easy as she studied the enclave. There were no cabins or tents. Nothing in the littered clearing suggested any sense of permanence. Through dry, weary eyes she looked down on a primitive and barbarous scene in a primitive and barbarous land.

“This is it?” she asked as she faced him. “This is what you call home?”

“We have no home, nor any of its trappings. Out of necessity we travel light, and often on a moment’s notice.”

“Leaving your litter behind.” This observation followed the shattering of a bottle tossed against a sandstone dome. “A delightful welcome when you pass this way again in your wanderings.”

“We never camp in the same place twice, but I try to see that we leave as little evidence of our passage as possible.”

“Oh, really?” Patience drawled. “Who cleans the litter?”

“The women do a passable job.” The crash of another bottle punctuated his response, the sound wafting to them on a rising current of cooler air.

Patience waited for the resonant clatter to fade. “Broken glass and all?”

“Yes.”

“Figures.”

Indian ignore her derision. “You’ll be one of them. The difference will be that you belong to me. You will ride when I say. Eat when I say. Sleep when I say, and where. Whatever I ask, you will do.”

“Ask?” Her tone was cynical.

“It would be easier if asking were enough.”

“Easier for whom?”

“The both of us.”

“Somehow,” she observed wryly, “the rationale for that escapes me.”

Indian swung off the bike, secured it and wheeled toward her. He was a darker shape, sketched against a dark sky. “I have explained.” With a motion he indicated the canyon below. “And you’ve seen.”

Patience nodded, not bothering to look down again. Sensing even from this distance, the inherent depravity. “I’ve seen. They’re like children. Vicious children, who make no secret of what they are and what they want.” She lifted her gaze to his. A gaze she could only feel. “You aren’t the same. There are secrets in your eyes.” She shook her head, despair rampant in her. “What do you want, Indian?”

“To keep you from their tender mercies.” The answer came quickly, without need for thought. “And, one day, to take you home.”

“Tender mercy.” Patience laughed shortly. With the bravado of Scarlett facing Armageddon she drawled, “My, how you do go on.”

“You won’t think this is a teasing matter when you see what men like Snake, and Custer, and Blue Doggie do to their women. Especially Snake.”

“Maybe I’ll take your word for what I think it’s worth,” she lingered on the last, giving it a disparaging emphasis. “And maybe I’ll take my chances with one of the others. Even Snake.”

He took a step closer, looming over her, shutting out the waning light of the moon. “You won’t.”

Her defiance blazed up at him. “Who will stop me?”

“You’ll stop yourself.” He walked away, to the edge of the mesa. “There is a young woman, little more than a child, really. An exquisite child with hair like corn silk falling to her waist. Her eyes are that rare shining violet of a desert sunrise after rain. Her skin is smooth and translucent, and, oddly, never burns nor freckles. She’s stunningly beautiful.” His fisted hands flexed and curled again into fists. “She was beautiful, until she displeased the Snake.”

“What did he do to her?” Patience stared at his back, reading horror in his posture. What, indeed, had Snake done to fill Indian with utter revulsion?

“Snake fancies himself an artist. His brush is his knife, his paint, ashes. His favorite canvas is a woman’s face.” He turned his back on the canyon, walking to the bike and Patience. “Tomorrow seek her out, see for yourself what Snake has done. Look at the other women. Learn who belongs to whom, and how they’re treated.”

His face was grim, his mouth drawn into a rigid line. “If you find one you prefer, I’ll give you to him.”

Another time Patience would have lashed out at him at the possessive arrogance, would have doubted what he said. But not now, when his every move and word were filled with bleak sickness. Now she could only stare up at him, imagining a beautiful girl, a knife, and ashes. Like tears, a sickness of her own welled in her eyes.

Indian felt a twinge of guilt for the heartache he saw. He’d spared her some of the story, but he wondered if it were kindness. Perhaps it would have been kinder to prepare her, but could he say or do anything that would prepare for Callie, for all that could be done to an artless child in a short, sordid existence?

The women were camp followers. Bikers’ groupies. None were like Patience. None was captive against her will. In her special unworldliness, not even Callie. None had been taken, innocent and unsuspecting. Not since he’d ridden the deserts and the mountains with the Wolves.

He didn’t dwell on Callie. Callie was another story, for another day. A day he’d promised himself long ago that would come. If there were any semblance of life in him when this was done, it would come.

Patience was his first concern. For now, for always. What he’d done to her was unforgivable. He’d pushed her to the end of mental and physical endurance, then pushed for more. Even in his shadow she was haggard and drawn, barely clinging to the last of her energy. Body and mind feeding on a spirit that burned like a consuming fever, at a cost that was all too easy to see. The bones of her face were more prominent, her eyes huge and seething with fear and hate. The taut, supple body beneath the flow of a clinging chambray shirt and tight jeans seemed to be shrinking, as if none-too-ample pounds melted from her in a matter of hours.

“I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek, drawing a finger down the smooth curve of it. When she turned her face away, his hand followed, curling at her chin, bringing her gaze back to his. “Dear God, I’m sorry.”

Again, when once she would have lashed out at him, she was silent, unwillingly beginning to believe a little what she saw and heard in him.

A night wind stirred, only a small, secret gust. Too little to feel or notice, but enough to tease a tendril escaped from the band he’d tied around her hair. Enough that the clean, fragrant perfume of it drifted to him.

He didn’t recognize the scent, couldn’t separate the blend of a woodsy bouquet. It was simply natural, unpretentious, honest. All things that had been missing in his life for so long.

Catching the fluttering strand, he wound it around the tip of a finger, reveling in the silken resilience, the soft strength. A woman could bind a man to her with hair like hers. Weaving a gossamer prison from which he would never wish to escape.

Stunned by the direction of his thoughts, hastily he tucked the strand behind her ear. With a mind of its own, his hand lingered to stroke her hair as he filled himself again with the scent of it.

“O’Hara.” He said her name hoarsely. For no reason but that it was like her fragrance, like her.

Reluctantly he pulled away. Resignation lay heavy on him as he looked to the sky and the desert, gauging the hour. Moon shadows were long around them now, for soon it would be setting. There was little left of the night, little time for her to rest before the ordeal of her first day in camp would begin.

He repressed a flinch as an enraged roar rose behind him. The sharp report of an open palm against bare flesh preceded a shrill curse. The coarse and vicious culmination of a drunken quarrel echoed through the canyon. Indian caught back a sigh. He was taking her into this. Into a culture few could imagine. A life-style she shouldn’t have to suffer.

Temptation was strong in him. The need to ride out of the desert with her, turning his back on commitment and obligation, nearly overpowered him. It would be so easy, if he were truly Indian. Truly the man she thought him.

But there was more to this than Patience O’Hara and a man called Indian. More lives at risk than hers. More than his.

He was so close to a truth that had eluded him for months. One he couldn’t turn away from. Not even for her.

“Indian?”

He heard the edge in her voice and forced his thoughts aside. “Yes?”

“You were so quiet. What were you thinking?”

“Only that soon it will be time we went into camp.”

She shook her head, gazing intently into the darkness that shrouded his face. “It was more than that.” She looked past him to the camp. “You hate this, don’t you? You hate my being here as much as I. You hate it for my sake, but for your own purposes, as well.”

“I have no purposes.”

“I think you do. And now you’re torn between that purpose and keeping me safe.”

Indian stood impassive. By neither gesture nor word did he reveal how near she’d come to the truth. Patience O’Hara was truly a woman to guard against. An intuitive woman, who saw and understood more than he would wish. He laughed, shrugging aside her suggestion as if it were nonsense. “Careful, if you endow me with such nobility, next must come trust.”

“Maybe.” She brushed a hand over her eyes, as if by brushing bangs from her eyes she could brush cobwebs from her mind. “Maybe I do trust you. A little, at least.”

“At least.” It was a beginning. He had his first concrete hope that he could make the best of this for both of them. She was frightened. She hadn’t stopped being frightened. He’d seen it through her anger, when she fought with him, or goaded him.

Patience was no stranger to fear—the gut-wrenching, heart-stopping fear that could paralyze and decimate. She’d learned to deal with it and function with it. He’d guessed it from the first, when she’d faced impossible odds with stoic courage. Now he was certain.

Where? he wondered. How and why? What circumstance had given her the stamina to deal with this? She’d wondered about him, and questioned. He wondered now about her. “Who are you, Patience O’Hara?” he asked, bemused. “What manner of woman are you?”

“A cowardly simple-minded one,” she answered. “If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Foolhardy, perhaps, but not simple-minded.” He smiled to himself, remembering a derringer and most of all a rifle that was not loaded. The bluff had taken more than courage. “Certainly not cowardly. I would say daring, even reckless.”

“Daring? Reckless? My family wouldn’t agree. I’m plain Patience, prudent Patience. A dullard with my books and quiet walks. Poor, placid Patience, jinxed by a placid name.”

“I think not.” She was anything but placid, anything but dull. “I should think your family would appreciate what you are, and love you for it.”

“Oh, they appreciate me, and they love me. There’s no question of it. They appreciate and love me to the point of suffocation. That’s why I’m here.” Patience stopped abruptly. A hand tugged at the spill of her hair tied securely by Indian. “If they could see me now, they’d think I was insane.

“I think I must be insane! Sitting astride a motorcycle, in the dark, in the middle of a desert, heaven knows where. My beautiful, impractical car stripped and dumped in a canyon. Ravening monsters at my feet.” She looked up at Indian. “And you. And what am I doing? Babbling on as if it were teatime with an old friend.

“My Lord! I’m losing my marbles.” With her fingers at her temples, she massaged muscles that ached from teeth clenched too long and too hard. “Why else would I forget that for all your soft words and your sweet promises, you’re still the enemy?”

Indian grasped her wrists in his, holding them, forcing her to look at him. “I’m not the enemy.”

She tried to pull away. When he wouldn’t release her, she stopped struggling. “No?” She looked pointedly at her wrists manacled by his fingers, then at him. “Then what do you call this? What do you call holding me against my will? Taking me where I don’t want to go? You keep saying you’ll take me home. If that’s true, if you really want me to believe you and trust you, take me now.”

Releasing her, he backed away. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Indian considered lying. He was sorely tempted. But if she was going to trust him, she needed the truth. “Both.”

“That makes no sense.” She gestured toward the canyon. “Look at them. Who’s to stop us from riding out now? Right this minute. Not one would be sober enough to follow. We could go, Indian.” There was a wistful note in her voice, a note of entreaty. “No one would be the wiser before morning.”

“I can’t.” Indian raked a hand through his bound hair, nearly tearing it free from the leather that held it. Where would he take her? Who was out there in the sparse settlements that dotted the fringe of the desert? Who could be trusted to take care of her? If the Wolves came looking, bent on taking back their booty, who could keep her from them? Who would? Who was innocent and uninvolved? And who among the innocent did he dare put at risk?

There was only one, but he was far from the desert. And Indian had too much to lose to go the distance. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry I can’t take you, and sorry I can’t explain. There are things you can’t know. But if you could just trust me.”

“Trust you! You ask too much.”

“I know, yet you told me you did before. Only a little, but it was a start.”

“Yeah, well I also told you I was losing my marbles. Trusting you to any degree is proof.”

Indian sighed, a low, weary sound, discovering he was tired as well. Before the gang stumbled across Patience, he’d ridden for half a day. A hard, taxing ride, adding one more name, one more contact to a growing list. Only one, when there were so many.




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