A Wolf in the Desert

by BJ James

  There was much he didn’t know of Devlin, who could outride and outfight the best of the Wolves on his worst day. Or of Kieran, a jack-of-all-trades and skills, with a penchant for tackling any problem in a heartbeat, solving it logically and almost as quickly, and becoming master of it in the process. He didn’t know that Valentina could take a horse where most men would fear to tread, and on the run, shoot a twig from a tree that few could even see.

  But mostly he didn’t know about Tynan. Ty to the family. A poetic Irishman down to his boots, with the handsome good looks of their father’s Black Irish heritage. Yet in skills and temperament and countenance, were it not for dancing blue eyes and the curl in his black hair, he could have been brother to the Indian.

  “But Ty is my brother,” she muttered absently as her feverish plan began to take shape. “And his favorite pupil, his baby sister.”

  Shading her eyes beyond the brim of her hat, she scanned the skies, judging time and weather. The day was fair and young. The Wolves had risen early, with an important ride ahead of them. They would be gone soon, and only those chosen as her keepers would remain. Patience had already discovered that all were complacent and careless in their surveillance when the others were absent. Slipping away would be no problem. She could be well on her way before anyone knew she’d gone.

  There was one thing that must be done. One consideration she owed Indian.

  Going to her pack, she searched until she found a small notepad and pen grabbed up without thought in the hurried packing he’d allowed her for this captive journey. The note she scribbled was short and quick. An apology for what she was doing, an explanation, and a wish that without the complication of her presence he could do better and more freely what he’d come to the desert to do.

  Reading back what she’d written, flat, inadequate words, little more than a jumble of letters floating on a sea of white, she wished for the power to make him understand that by leaving she was giving him freedom. “Freedom,” she muttered, crumpling the paper in her fist. “How can a captive give her captor freedom?”

  Torn by indecision, feeling the weight of the danger of what she was planning, she stuffed the note in a pocket. Then, seized by a claustrophobic restlessness that defied the vastness of the land and endless sky, she paced again. An animal on an invisible tether. A lioness locked in a secret cage.

  It was Callie’s ululating cry that pulled Patience from the abyss of indecision. Spinning on booted heel, delaying what she was certain she would find, she searched for Callie. Callie, with long silver locks and eyes like cornflowers sprinkled with dew, her tear-streaked cheek pressed to the broken, lifeless body of her kitten.

  The small distance between the camps didn’t keep Patience from seeing how the tiny head dangled, nor the misshapen body that had once been plump and vital. A glance at the soiled and worn knapsack, lying on the ground, then at Snake glowering down at the heartbroken girl, told a ghastly story.

  As if he hadn’t done enough, and the pain etched on Callie’s face weren’t sufficiently pitiful, he reached for the kitten again. No one expected Callie’s reaction, least of all Snake.

  While Patience and even the camp were still frozen in shock by the untenable tableau, Callie’s second scream ripped the still air. Time slowed and blurred to monstrous freeze-frame motion as she fought back, desperately, impotently, but fiercely defending the broken creature she loved. Snake’s seething rage escalated, turned deadly. Patience sensed the malevolence pulsing through him in black, pitiless waves. Her eyes saw, her mind comprehended, but her body was too leaden with horror to move.

  Only Indian moved. Only he was quick enough to stop Snake from tearing the kitten from the gentle hands that held it. Only he dared to stand between a man who’d become a raving maniac and a cowering woman who was only a child.

  “Damn your soul,” he snarled as a lashing backhand knocked the callous Snake to the ground. Chest heaving, hands fisted, he was the savage Apache as he stood over the still, sprawled form while Callie stumbled to the only one she trusted. Listening to broken sobs muffled by Patience’s embrace, he dragged Snake roughly to his feet. With a stare belied by the hush in his voice, he asked, “What more would you do to the child? Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Enough or not, it ain’t your say.” Snake was sullen as he tried to shrug off Indian’s hold. “She’s mine, to do with. Keep her, or trade her, rid her of that pesky cat, or slap her silly, it’s nobody’s business.”

  “It is now. I just made it mine.” Indian’s grip threatened the fabric of Snake’s shirt. “Hurt Callie, or anything that belongs to her again, and I’ll kick you to death just as surely as you did her kitten.” Black eyes narrowed with promise. “The slower you die, the better I’ll like it.”

  When he shoved Snake away, no one in the silent camp mistook his words for idle threat. The truth was etched into the cold savagery of his face. But as he searched for Patience, his gaze colliding with hers over Callie’s huddled form, she recognized a familiar sadness, a bitter impotence, lying beneath the glacial mask. Indian felt he’d failed Callie, and in some way, herself, in not protecting a cat. A foolish thought. Indian had failed no one, but how could she make him believe?

  It will be easier for him when I’m gone. The words rose unbidden from the deepest recesses of her mind, and she knew her decision had been made. Stroking Callie’s hair as the girl cried out her grief, Patience’s gaze never left Indian as she committed to memory this last moment. There were tears he couldn’t see gathering in her own eyes, for her own grief, when he finally turned away.

  * * *

  The kitten was wrapped in an emerald blouse and flowers from the century plant sprinkled over her grave, and Callie summoned away by a calmer Snake, before Patience took the crumpled note from her pocket. Smoothing the wrinkles from it she read once again what she’d written. In retrospect it seemed even colder and more dispassionate, but could any words say what was in her heart? If she had the words, were they not better kept to herself?

  The sounds of a revving engines warned the Wolves would soon be riding, and Indian would come to say goodbye. Scribbling her name, and then, impulsively adding a postscript, she folded the paper carefully and slipped it into the pocket of her shirt.

  She was standing with her hand over her heart and the pocket that held the note, when Indian rolled his bike into camp.

  “Time to go?” she asked as he dismounted and walked to her.

  “Past time.” He stopped so close to her the scent of the soap he’d given her drifted through his lungs like sultry smoke, bearing memories of better times. He touched her face, cupping her cheek, brushing his thumb over the fullness of her lips. “What you did for Callie, and the kitten...” He lost the thread of what he meant to say, the need to hold her was too strong. But taking her in his arms would only be a beginning, and this was not the time for beginnings. With a shake of his head, putting longing and memories behind him, he continued. “The little ceremony, the funeral, Callie won’t forget it.”

  “I’m sorry about the blouse, I wanted something pretty for Callie’s sake.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If it helped, I’m glad.”

  “What will happen now? I didn’t want her to go when Snake called for her. Yet, with what he’s done to her, it frightened her more not to go.”

  “An old habit. In her simple mind they’re easiest, even when they hurt.”

  “Callie shouldn’t have to hurt.” She caught his hand, lacing her fingers through his. Her lips grazed the first evidence of a bruise beginning to discolor his knuckles. “No one should.”

  “In a perfect world, perhaps not.” With their joined hands he lifted her face to his. “In a perfect world we would have met, but not like this.”

  Patience was spared the need of dragging an answer from a mind in turmoil by Hoke’s demanding call for Indian.

  “My canteen.” Indian didn’t release her. “Have you seen it?”

  “I filled it and put it in
the lean-to out of the sun.” She could have fetched it for him and had it waiting at the first sound of his engine, but then she wouldn’t have the diversion she needed.

  Squeezing her fingers, he stepped away. “I won’t be a minute.”

  Patience folded the hand he’d held over her breast as she waited for her chance. He moved with the unhurried, ground-eating step, the quiet step that never seemed to change. The supple vest swung with a barely detectable motion around his slim waist, leather trousers clung to his hips and thighs. A bare arm bunched as he grasped the support of the shelter and ducked inside. The moment for which she waited.

  Throwing off her distraction, she rushed to his bike. There was a pouch for the canteen attached closely to the base of the handlebars, she slid the note to the bottom of it. He would find it there when he drank the water she’d taken from the swiftest part of the stream that flowed by the camp.

  She was still at the bike when he stepped from the lean-to. A brow tilted in question and his lips curled in a half smile. “Hurrying me along?”

  Patience shook her head, and when he came near, took the canteen from him. “Warm,” she said as heat from it filled her palm. Carefully, she slipped it into the pouch, shielding the note from his sight, insuring it wouldn’t be found too soon.

  “Warm, but not boiling as it would be from full sun.” Indian wondered why they were speaking of canteens and water at all. He wondered at her strange mood. “What is it, O’Hara?”

  The tenderness in him nearly destroyed her resolve. It would be so natural to go into his arms, to comfort and be comforted. But if she allowed that moment of weakness, could she do what she’d planned? Even if it were best for him, could she go if they shared a single kiss? Her mind knew it was senseless superstition, but her heart insisted that the hidden canyon was an enchanted place, where everything had been beautiful, and nothing binding. But here, beyond the enchantment, if her control slipped, could she ever leave him?

  “O’Hara?”

  Rousing from her concern, she found he’d mounted his bike and watched her curiously. “It’s nothing. It’s Callie.” Both thoughts spilled from her in haste. Raking back the bangs that tumbled over her forehead, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m babbling.”

  “Four words could hardly be called babbling.” He took her hands in both of his, sensing her turmoil. “Which is it? Nothing, or Callie?”

  “Both. Neither.” She was nearly frantic for him to leave.

  “Double talk? To hide what you’re feeling?”

  She looked into his face, his beloved face. “Double talk,” she admitted honestly. “Because I don’t know what I feel.”

  He accepted her excuse, recognizing it as partial truth. “Magda and Lou are staying behind. You’ll be all right?”

  She knew both women only by sight, but enough to recognize that one was lazy, the other stupid. A providential choice of jailers. Perfect for her plan. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You will, won’t you,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Indian.” She was reaching for him, her hands nearly touching him, fulfilling one last need, when she realized what she was doing. With an exaggerated flutter of her fingers, dismissing the gesture, she tucked them firmly into the back pockets of her jeans.

  Something about the urgency in her voice, and in the bittersweet gesture disturbed him, but he didn’t ask again. Only a frown and a slight narrowing of his eyes expressed his concern.

  “I’m just being temperamental and anxious,” Patience insisted.

  “Are you?” he asked, for he couldn’t remember her ever being temperamental. “Anxious about what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Again the brow arched, he wasn’t making this any easier.

  Her shoulders lifted inarticulately, her nails scored the insides of her pockets. “You’ll be careful?”

  “Always.” He flashed his smile, accepting the abrupt change of subjects, filing away his questions for another time. “This is a short trip, I’ll be back before you know it.”

  As the increasing tumult of roaring engines signaled their time was done, he smiled again and waved. He was lost in a rising swirl of suffocating dust before Patience turned away to begin preparations for her own venture.

  * * *

  The ground shifted beneath her feet, the small slide threatened to become an avalanche as Patience fought to keep her balance. With a tumbling lunge she caught the twisted branch of a stunted juniper and slowed her descent. Wiping sweat and dirt from her eyes, she peered up at the wall of red rock. On closer inspection it was steeper and more treacherous than it appeared when she’d begun her climb. Now it was clear she couldn’t climb it in boots and bare-handed.

  “Where are you when I need you, Kieran, you and your bag of tools and sure solutions?” Wearily admitting defeat, and regretting the time lost to poor judgment, she let go of the limb. In a race with falling shale, she leapt and slid down the steep incline. Once on firmer ground, she beat dust from her clothing, and weighed her options.

  “You go around, Patience, me girl. There are no other options.” Going around the massive mesa, searching for a better way to the top would add hours to her trip. She would fall far short of her goal for the day, but there was no remedy for it. And agonizing over lost time was only more lost time.

  Hitching the chafing strap of her pack to another position, she tucked her head down to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun and took the route she should have in the beginning. Though the path was demanding, and her progress slow, there was still time to think. To keep her thoughts from turning to Matthew, she concentrated on Magda and Lou. Had either roused from her lazy stupor to investigate Indian’s too-quiet camp? Or realized that the form lying in full sun as shade shifted beneath the tree with the aging day, was only shirt and jeans filled with brush? Patience regretted the hat she’d left tilted over the scarecrow figure as she felt the tight pull of the sun burning her forehead.

  If time and distance weren’t critical, she would have followed the path of wisdom and rested in the heat of the afternoon, traveling in early twilight and into the first of night. But time was a luxury, and every step would bring her closer to help. As she moved away from water, she drank sparingly from her canteen, and scanned the surrounding terrain for signs of more. A natural tank, a cloistered stream, a teneja.

  Though the sky was clear, and summer rains rare, she stayed clear of gravely dry washes. A sudden gathering of thunderheads, a cloudburst, and a wall of water would roar down the chasm, filling it, taking with it anything and anyone in its path.

  The land she crossed was wider, less confined, with rocks and boulders scattered among the eroded rubble of millenia. Shrunken cacti in need of water marked her path, and a Gila woodpecker eyed her suspiciously from a hole carved in the highest saguaro. Overhead a scavenging, wide-winged vulture waited for something to die. If not the peculiar biped so rare in his territory, there would be other prey. There always was.

  As the day wore on, the trail grew rougher and began to climb, while her feathered companion kept his vigil. He shouldn’t have disturbed her, but he did. She caught herself glancing up when she should be watching the trail. After she’d stumbled for the second time, and her canteen tumbled down the precarious slope she’d just climbed, her temper flared. Snatching up a handful of loose stone and shrugging from her pack, she lurched to her feet.

  “Go away!” A stone sailed into the sky, then plummeted harmlessly to the ground. The vulture swooped and circled, arrogantly unconcerned.

  “Shoo!” Another stone flew. “Scat!” An angry huff sent her sweat-soaked bangs from her forehead. “One last chance.” The largest stone was drawn back, threatening, desperate. “Do you hear me, bird?”

  An arm hooked through hers, the stone was taken from her hand. “I don’t think he does.”

  “Matthew?” She blinked, wondering if the sun had baked her brains and the wilderness stolen her sanity. Then as her vision cleared, she
whispered, “Why are you here? I thought...”

  “You thought I would be miles away by now, foolishly believing you would be in camp when I returned.” He tossed the stone away and pulled her roughly to him. “But that’s the extent of your thinking, wasn’t it? You didn’t think once that you might die out here, lost and alone, did you?”

  “I didn’t plan to be lost or to die.”

  “Your feathered friend doesn’t agree.”

  “My feathered friend is in for a long wait.” She pulled away, only then questioning how he’d come here.

  “You could have fallen, or been caught in a slide.” He was angry and fierce, and implacable.

  “Don’t forget raging coyotes and hairy tarantulas, or an attack from a mad saguaro.” Frustrations forgotten, with her feet planted firmly now, her chin rose to a fighting angle. In the unforgiving light, with red dust caked to her shirt and leather jeans, and her face flushed from heat and exhaustion, she was magnificently furious. “Why did you come here?”

  “Why?” Matthew’s face was ashen beneath its normal coppery hue. His gaze heated and his mouth stark. “You wander into the hills alone, and you ask why I came after you?”

  “I didn’t wander anywhere,” Patience snapped. Something in his stance warned her that he was at the end of his control, but she goaded him anyway. “I made it clear in my note that I wanted nothing so much as to get away from you, so why are you here?”

  “I haven’t read any damnable note,” he said in a voice so quiet it sent shivers through her. Before she could dodge away, he locked his fingers at the back of her neck, letting her feel the pressure of each pad as he pulled her back to him. “Perhaps this will explain why I’m here.”

  His mouth covered hers, ravaged hers. She stood woodenly beneath the assault, but as the passion beneath the anger touched her, a shiver of response fluttered up her spine and the flush of desire swept her own anger away. She’d feared one kiss beyond the canyon and she would be lost. One kiss, and she was.