Читать книгу A Wolf In The Desert - Bj James - Страница 5

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.”