A Wolf in the Desert

by BJ James

  Abruptly, without warning, he lifted his head to stare down at her. “What the hell do you mean, why? You know why. You know it was this.”

  When his lips reclaimed hers, it was more than a kiss; he staked a claim, branded, persuaded, possessed. The ground was unsteady, the world tilted on its axis. When his tongue traced the softness of her mouth, she lost her hold on reality and tumbled into a vortex of sensations. She was hot, and tired, and dirty. He was overbearing and a little cruel in his anger, but none of it mattered as he plundered and caressed with a savage pleasure.

  When she pushed away, to breathe, to think, he smiled down at her and her world tilted again.

  “That’s why I came.” With no further word, he bent to pick up her pack. Hefting it in his palm, his smile turned grave. “Traveling light?”

  “Light enough.” The rush of her heart was just returning to normal and her breath still came in gasps. When he turned down the trail, back the way she’d come, she blurted, “I’m not going back. Nothing you can do or say will make me.”

  Swinging around, he caught her face in his palm, his thumb brushed over her lips in a familiar gesture. “Nothing?”

  Patience shook free of his touch and stepped beyond his reach. “Nothing, not even that.”

  “That?” His voice was low, calm.

  “The kiss.” Slipping her thumbs in the belt loops of her trousers, she tried to match calm for calm. “That’s what it was about, wasn’t it? To persuade me to go back.”

  “No, it wasn’t. In fact it was never my intention that either of us would go back.” Leaving her gaping, he retraced his path to the floor of the canyon. His own pack was there, where he’d thrown it when he saw Patience fall. As the canteen slipped over the edge, and in the moment he thought she would fall with it, he’d lost all reason. As Matthew Winter Sky, the impassive Apache, had never done before.

  He’d charged up the rocky track, losing sight of her through its twists and turns, cursing and praying, and damning himself with every step. When he found her flinging rocks and shooing away a vulture as if it were a troublesome barnyard fowl, he wanted to throttle her for frightening him, and kiss her for being the irrepressible O’Hara she’d always been. In the end, he’d channeled every conflicting emotion into his kiss.

  Slipping his own pack over his shoulder, he realized he’d punished both Patience and himself with the kiss. Why? he wondered. Did he need to push her away even as he pulled her close? Was it guilt? Or simply that she made him feel things he’d never expected, or wanted?

  Wheeling around, he stared at the hillock where Patience waited. “Do I want this now? Is there room in my life for a woman?”

  He had no answers. All that was clear was that he had to take Patience out of the desert before the Wolves found her again.

  He covered the distance between them at a slower pace this time, making a detour down the slope to rescue her canteen. It would be needed before they reached a safe house and civilization. At the top of the rise, he found her resting under the broad-leafed shade of an ancient Arizona oak. Pulling free the hat he’d clipped to his pack, he set it rakishly on her head. “I thought you might need this more than the lady you left behind.”

  “She was a good likeness, wouldn’t you say?” Patience adjusted the hat, and was grateful for the protection she’d missed.

  “A few inches bigger than you, but a number of pounds lighter.” He matched his tone to hers as, by intuitive consensus, they skirted the real issue between them.

  Patience pushed back the brim of the hat she’d adjusted to look up at him. “You didn’t read my note?”

  “No.”

  “Then how?” She sighed, not understanding. “How did you know? What brought you here?”

  “I turned back. We were halfway to the ranch where we were expected, but the sense that something was wrong was so strong I had to come back to camp. When I discovered your ruse, I followed your trail.”

  “Just like that? The Wolves let you leave them, as suspicious as they’ve been of you?”

  “It wasn’t a question of letting me do anything. I did what I had to, and no one was going to stop me.”

  “What about your investigation?”

  His face was bland. “What investigation?”

  “We’re playing that game again?”

  “None of this is a game.”

  Patience shrugged aside his comment. It did no good to argue with Matthew at his most obstinate. “What about Callie?”

  “She’ll be okay for a while. There are snags at the other end.”

  “Across the border, with the illegal aliens?”

  “I’d forgotten that you knew.” He questioned what else he might have told her in a weak moment and then forgotten. It wasn’t like him to talk, and even less like him to forget. Patience O’Hara was a dangerous woman. Dangerous, indeed.

  But dangerous or not, they needed to move. Assessing the path she’d taken, he found he approved. She’d chosen wisely and with thought. She would do well in his country.

  “We need to move on.” Gruffly, he sidestepped new needs and new desires. It didn’t matter how well she suited his country or him, when she knew all the truth, nothing would matter. Taking her hand, he pulled her to her feet. “We’ve a lot of ground to cover. The more distance we can put between ourselves and the others, the better.”

  “They’ll come looking?”

  “With a vengeance.” He pondered telling her the complete truth, deciding quickly that she should know. “The penalty for escape is death, Patience.”

  She paled beneath the shading brim of her hat. “For both of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the reason you aren’t taking me back? Because you can’t?”

  “We aren’t going back for a lot of reasons,” he answered cryptically. “We need to move. Now. To make the most of the daylight we have left.”

  “What about your bike?”

  “I ditched it in a canyon a mile from here. When your trail was fresher and I knew I was close, I didn’t want to draw any more attention to you.”

  “I tried to cover my tracks.”

  “You did.”

  “But not from you.” Indian, master tracker, she should have known he would find her, no matter where she went. Without another word, slinging the pack over her shoulder, she turned to continue her climb over the small hillock, with Matthew only a pace behind.

  * * *

  They halted in a small clearing, one of nature’s surprises. In a rocky realm that seemed shrunken with thirst, suddenly there was water. First, it was the sound of only a trickle. But as they’d drawn nearer, the trickle became a quiet fall spilling over algae-draped rocks, then slipping into a quiet pool. Vertical cliffs cast deep shadows, hurrying the night. A breeze channeling through this small corridor danced among the limbs of a huge sycamore and rattled the daggerlike leaves of a sotol. And as the sun glided beneath the west ridge, dusk fell over another canyon.

  “This should serve,” Matthew decided as he listened to tree frogs just beginning to croak. “We’ll stop here for the night.”

  Patience sank down on a boulder, letting her pack slip from her shoulder, too tired and too thirsty to comment.

  “I’ll check the grounds, then make camp.” Matthew set his pack aside as he watched her in concern.

  Patience got to her feet, trying to shake off her fatigue. “I’ll help.”

  “Stay. Sit.” His hand at her shoulder stopped her from a purposeless, headlong rush.

  Anger flashed in her eyes, and the spark restored her spirit. “Sit! Stay! Next you’ll pat me on the head and call me Rover. I can help. I will help.”

  “You’re tired, O’Hara. You’ve walked a long way.”

  “No further than you.”

  “It isn’t the same. The Apache was born and bred to survive where others perish of hunger and thirst and sunstroke. It’s no great feat of my own, simply part of my heritage. If you’ll rest, I promise not to pat you
on the head.”

  Patience smiled then. “I’ll rest when you do, Matthew, and not before.” Taking off her hat, letting the breeze cool her sweat-soaked head, she looked around. “Firewood?”

  Even an Apache knew when he’d met his match. He knew as well that the smallest light shone for miles in this lightless land. The Wolves hadn’t found their trail yet, he’d covered it too well and it was too soon, but caution was not easily put aside. “We’ll risk a small fire, so long as the fuel is dry and the flame is shielded well.”

  “The deadfall by the pool should be dry enough to make little smoke.”

  “We’ll make camp there.” Then he could save her a few steps.

  Making camp was simple when one traveled fast and light. Matthew had the chosen area cleared, a pit scraped out for the fire, and their blankets spread by it before Patience finished with the wood. Deciding he would wait until the fire was lit to prepare the little food they had, he went to join her in her chore.

  As he crossed to her, a sound, one that couldn’t be mistaken, sent fear roiling in the pit of his stomach. “Patience!” She didn’t answer, didn’t move. The rattler coiled at her feet buzzed angrily. Coils tightening, rattles moving faster than the eye could see, its head pulled back, weaving, ready to strike. “For the love of God, Patience, don’t move.”

  “Matthew?”

  He heard the panic, the abject terror, in a second she would bolt. His handgun was still in his pack. He reached into the lacings of his moccasin for his knife, it wasn’t there. Cursing, he remembered it lay on a stone by the fire pit, with the sticks he’d cut to fashion into lances. There was no time to go back.

  “Matthew!” Terror was shrill in her voice.

  “I’m here.” Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled in his eyes. In an agonizing journey, he put one foot carefully in front of the other as he eased in a half circle. If he could just reach the deadfall and a branch.

  Rattles buzzed, coils loosened, the triangular head stopped weaving. In a blur the snake struck. Matthew’s lunging interception was quicker. As her frenzied scream reverberated from canyon walls, fangs meant for Patience buried deep in his forearm.

  Shaking free, catching the recoiling snake at the back of its head, he flung it away. Patience was safe from it when he turned to her, blood welling from twin wounds in a distended vein, the pain and vertigo already beginning.

  “O’Hara?”

  Ten

  “I‘m here.” Patience acted quickly, with a cool head, every shred of terror obliterated by fear for Matthew. “Don’t move.”

  Guiding him to the ground, she lashed her belt around his arm a few inches above the bite, pulling it tight enough to impede circulation, but not enough to block it completely. “Your knife!” she cried when she found the sheath inside his moccasin empty. “Where is it?”

  “By the fire.” The venom had gone directly into his bloodstream, the shock and sickness moving swiftly.

  “Do you have antivenom?” She felt his gaze on her, losing its focus. “Matthew.” She touched his face, drawing his attention back to her. “Do you have a snake bite kit?”

  “Kit.” He drifted away, then, with agonized effort, refocused. “Not for me.”

  “Are you sensitive to the serum?” If he were, to inject it would cause immediate death. “Matthew.” She called his name again, keeping him with her. “You can’t take the serum, can you?”

  “No.”

  Patience slumped with the burden of her fear for him, but an instant later she was straightening, calm and clinical, the professional. “Then we’ll do it as it has been done for hundreds of years.”

  Racing to the camp he’d made, she searched through his pack for the kit. With it and the knife, she hurried back to him. Kneeling by him, with suction cups for extracting the venom, and antiseptic to clean the wound, she made the first cut.

  * * *

  Matthew muttered and thrashed. Patience was instantly by his side, gathering him in her arms, holding him tightly, keeping him from doing greater injury to his grotesquely swollen arm.

  “O’Hara?”

  “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

  He subsided against her, his breathing erratic. “Sibella?” He frowned, his eyes moving rapidly beneath bluish lids. Then in French, “Ma mère?”

  Sibella. Mother. Matthew’s mother.

  In the hours of the night, Patience had come to know them all. His Apache father, Daniel Gray Sky, the dashing attaché of the American Embassy in France, who died in a terrorist attack; Sibella, the very young, the very spoiled, the very winsome daughter of a wealthy French scholar; Robert Morning Sky, shaman, teacher, beloved grandfather, Matthew’s family from the age of seven.

  There were other names, Jeb, Mitch, Jamie, finally Simon, and then The Watch. From guttural half sentences, and frantic warnings, she walked with him through vivid recreations of a dangerous, clandestine life. Putting bits and pieces together, she deduced that The Watch was a secret, investigative government agency. Simon was its commander, Jeb and Mitch, and Jamie, like Matthew, were fellow agents. More than that, they were trusted friends.

  In his delirious ramblings she heard the names of places, familiar and unfamiliar. Places where he’d spent his life after the reservations and the University of Arizona. In the passage of night marked by fever and agony, he grew oddly preoccupied with faces. The hurt, mutilated faces of Callie and someone called Jocie. In rare moments of respite, it was impotent concern for them that ultimately disturbed his feverish stupor. Their names tumbled repeatedly from cracked lips until in Patience’s mind they were one with his agony.

  It was her name that sent pain lancing through her. O’Hara, the name that had become dear to her, called time and again. Always with mutterings of guilt for what he’d done to her by keeping her prisoner in the desert. Pleading that she not hate him.

  Keeping her vigil through the night, tending the fire, holding him when he grew restless, she listened to the life of Matthew Winter Sky.

  “Winter Sky,” she murmured as dawn broke over the rim of the canyon. A strong name for a strong man. An uncommon name. A man of uncommon honor.

  When he fell into normal sleep, fearful she would disturb him, she left his side at last, going wearily to her own blanket. Lying across the fire from him, she watched as the light of the blaze flickered over his ashen features. Tears streaked in glittering paths down her face for a keen mind wandering in a blacker darkness than any night, for a silent tongue that babbled intimate thoughts. For the magnificent body made suddenly gaunt by shock and raging fever, and for an arm once powerful, bloated and discolored.

  If Matthew survived at all, he could lose his arm to the venomous destruction of the walls of blood vessels. Then to atrophy, the withering of the strong to useless monstrosity. He’d known the consequences. Matthew was too in tune to this formidable land not to understand the risk he took. Yet he hadn’t hesitated.

  “He knew.” She watched him through the flames. Indian, Matthew, lover. In the balance—the little freedom he’d taken, the care he’d given, the love, the life—she questioned how, even in hallucination, he would believe she could ever hate him.

  Stirring, stretching, shaking feeling back into a shoulder constantly numbed by his weight, she reached for the coffee, her only sustenance through the night. The murky brew warmed her, but she found little comfort in it. She was watching the morning star fade into dawn when she felt Matthew’s gaze. His sooty eyes glittered with fever and were lucid.

  “Have to move.” His throat strained with the effort of coherent speech. “Too open here, they’ll find us.”

  Patience acknowledged his alarm, he’d put into words the thoughts she’d avoided. “There’s a ranch or a sheep farm somewhere out there. When you’re better, I’ll go for help.”

  “No!” He struggled to sit up.

  Patience flew across the fire to stop him, her tin cup clattering against a stone. “Be still. If you want to live and keep your arm, b
e still.”

  He was too weak to fight as she pushed him carefully back to his blanket. “Can’t take risk. They’re everywhere.”

  The Wolves’ contacts, patrons in their unholy commerce. They could be anyone, rancher, sheep herder, farmer, shopkeeper. A wrong choice and she could deliver Matthew into a murderous grasp. There was another way, the only way. As she soothed him, her assurance that she would abide by his wishes becoming a mindless chant, she made desperate and agonizing decisions.

  It was still very early, but with the sun fully risen and temperatures soaring, when she ceased her labors and appraised the result. The already obscure trail was blocked by a fall of rock, one nature had been readying, hurried along by one propitious shove of human hands. Every lingering mark of the campsite had been obliterated, brushed clean of any tracks and with ashes buried. She’d wished for more and better, another landslide. Nature hadn’t cooperated a second time. Backing away from her handiwork, stepping on carefully positioned stones, she made her way across another, wider expanse to a hidden shelter formed by a jutting overhang and thick vegetation.

  When she knelt by Matthew’s side as he leaned against a stone, she was gratified by the coolness of his skin, the clear concentration in his steady gaze. Moving the filled canteen nearer to his good hand, she queried, “Can you manage alone?”

  Matthew nodded. “The worst is ended.”

  But only the worst. Patience knew this was a reprieve, a testament to his monumental strength. There would be hours of agony when she’d gone. Lonely hours, with no one to comfort him. No one to care. For just one moment she questioned the wisdom of her venture, but only a moment. Touching his cheek to keep his attention, she promised, “I won’t be long.”

  Matthew’s hollow-eyed gaze held hers. “If there’s nothing, keep going. Due north to Sedona. Call McKinzie, Simon McKinzie.” He searched for a telephone number, a coded password, both were buried too deeply in a glazed mind.

  “I won’t be going to Sedona or calling Simon,” she assured him. “When you’re better, we’ll do it together.”