by Tess LeSue
Don’t think about how she’s getting the mud off herself . . .
He heard the singing stop. “What’s wrong?” she called, sounding impatient.
“What’s your real name?”
“What makes you think Cleopatra isn’t my real name?”
“Intuition,” he said.
“Well, your intuition is an idiot, because it is my real name.”
The soft sound of splashing water started up again, and his cock was still hot and hard against his stomach. He wondered about her stomach. He bet it was as firm as hell. A woman as active as she was, who spent so much time in the saddle, would be all velvety strength. He loved a hard stomach on a woman. And strong legs, the kind that could squeeze the breath right out of you when they wrapped around you . . .
Damn it. Look at him. He hadn’t been this out-of-control randy since before he was a warrior.
“Where are you from, Cleopatra?” He had to distract himself.
“Not here,” she said tersely.
“Where are you headed?”
“Can’t a girl have five minutes of peace?” she complained.
“I’m just curious about you.” She had no idea how curious.
“Curiosity won’t kill you. Now hush up while I wash my hair.”
He wondered what color her hair was. It could be gray for all he knew. He listened to her vigorously soaping and splashing.
He had no one to blame but himself for what happened next. He was so drowsy with stupid lust that his senses were dull. It didn’t help that he couldn’t see. But he should have noticed Dog barking and not simply assumed he was still terrorizing the chickens.
“Well, honey, it looks like you’ve been busy since we parted.” A stranger’s voice came out of the darkness at the stable door. Deathrider felt his hair stand on end. He had a bad feeling about this. There was blatant menace in the stranger’s voice.
At the sound of the intruder’s voice Cleopatra shrieked from behind the stall, and Deathrider heard the sound of her kicking the pail over. Deathrider couldn’t see anything except the golden glow of the lantern light through his blindfold; he twisted in his bindings, trying to catch sight of a shadow, a movement, anything. Why the hell had he agreed to be tied up? What a stupid goddamn thing to have done. He tried to work free.
Dog was barking fit to split the night open. How in the hell had Deathrider not noticed it? Because he’d been too busy having fantasies about the naked woman over there in the stall.
Adding to the chaos, Deathrider heard the village woman calling in Spanish from the house: “That dog had better not be at my chickens!”
“You might want to tell her not to come out here, honey,” the intruder told Cleopatra, speaking in a lazy drawl. Deathrider strained to see him, but there was nothing but light and shade.
The intruder kept talking, lazy as hell. “If she comes out here, I might be liable to shoot her.”
“Don’t you dare!” Cleopatra gasped. Deathrider could hear her hastily throwing clothes on. “If you kill her, I’ll kill you.”
Now a shadowy form slipped into the circle of lamplight. “I don’t think you will though. I think if you had it in you to kill me, you would have done it last time. Instead of just drugging me.”
Drugging him . . . Who the hell was this?
They heard the door to the house slam.
And then there was the unmistakable sound of the hammer being pulled back on a gun.
“Wait!” Cleopatra shrieked. Deathrider saw a shadow pass across his blindfold as she went dashing to save the village woman. “He’s tied up!” she burst out in Spanish, standing in the doorway to the barn and hollering into the night. “No need to bother yourself! See? All tied up. He’s just barking.”
“Well, stop him,” the woman said, sounding irritated. “Or we’ll never get any sleep.”
Deathrider kept wrestling with his ropes as he strained to hear what was happening. But then a shadow stepped directly between him and the light, and he froze.
“Well, well, well,” the intruder drawled. “Look at this. You’ve gone and hooked yourself a fish . . .”
“He’s not a fish. He’s an Apache. And I need him to shut the dog up.” A second shadow joined the first, as Cleopatra moved to untie Deathrider.
“Uh-huh, honey. I ain’t that dumb.” The intruder’s shadow grabbed Cleopatra’s shadow and hauled her back against him.
“But the dog!”
“Let it bark. She’ll just get irritated. The worst she’ll do is come yell at you again. And if she comes into the barn, I’ll just shoot her.” The intruder said it so casually that it turned Deathrider’s blood cold.
“So you got yourself an Indian after all,” the man said, sounding approving. “Good for you.” He laughed. “San Francisco’s going to be lousy with Indians by the time we get there. I ran into old Sweet Boy Beau, and he had one too. Yours looks a little worse for wear. You do that to him?”
“No,” Cleopatra snapped, yanking away from the man.
“He speak English, this one?”
“No,” she said hastily before Deathrider could answer.
“No one’s going to believe he’s the Plague of the West,” the man laughed.
Deathrider’s breath stopped. The Plague of the West.
Goddamn. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that she might be tangled up in the stupid Hunt . . . ? She’d known about Pete Hamble. She’d told him Bruno Ortiz had Deathrider (or rather some poor bastard he thought was Deathrider). She’d known all the details. . . .
Why hadn’t he twigged?
Because he’d been sick with dehydration and stupid with heatstroke—that was why. And because he hadn’t suspected that a woman could be one of the Hunters. The only woman he knew who . . .
Oh no. No. No no no no.
No goddamn way. It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t.
But it was. Five seconds later the intruder called her by name.
And that was how Deathrider learned that the woman who’d saved him, the woman who’d bathed him, the woman he’d been fantasizing about was the one and only Ava Archer. And the intruder was none other than Kennedy goddamn Voss.
Deathrider had met his enemies—when he was blind, weak and trussed up like a prize turkey.
Micah was right—he was definitely cursed.
17
DEATHRIDER CONSIDERED ESCAPING. That first night, as he listened to Ava Archer and Kennedy Voss bicker and bait each other, he made plans. Most of them involved violence. He wasn’t at full strength, so he’d need help to get out of this mess. Luckily Dog was trained to attack on command; Dog would destroy Voss before he even knew what had happened. And then Deathrider would have Ava Archer to himself. . . .
Ava Archer. It was a surreal thought, that he’d been with her all this time. That the woman who’d soothed him, fed him, bathed him and hauled him for miles across the desert was the very woman who was the instigator of all his misery.
But he had her now. The thought filled him with savage satisfaction. That woman had ruined his life. And now she was his.
Or at least she would be. Soon.
For now she had him. The bitch actually had him tied up. Just wait until he was out of these ropes. She’d find out why he was called Rides with Death.
With one whistle, Dog could turn the tables on this whole situation. Deathrider just needed to find a way to get Dog untethered. Or to get Kennedy Voss close to the animal . . .
That hideous sense of impotence struck him again, this time with even greater force. He hated being helpless.
He fell into a black rage as he sat roped to the pole, listening to two of the most hateful pests on the frontier sniping at each other. Both he and Dog were restrained while Kennedy Voss and Ava Archer were free. It was unfair, unbearable and unjust.
He comforted himself with visions of what he’d do to them once he was free of the restraints. He ignored the fact that he was still weak and blind, and indulged in every possible daydream of vengeance. As he did, he squirmed, trying to writhe out of the ropes. But she’d tied him too well.
“We don’t want to take a fake Deathrider to San Francisco,” Voss bitched at Ava Archer. “When I said that, I was talking about what the other idiots would do. I wasn’t giving you ideas.”
Deathrider could see their shadows moving. He wondered what their history was. Hamble had said they were traveling together. Were they lovers?
If they were, they were in the middle of a nasty lovers’ spat, because she radiated dislike. Even blind, Deathrider could tell.
“We want the real one,” Voss said disdainfully.
“There is no we,” she told Voss stiffly. She was scared of him. It showed in the brittleness of her voice. “And I was going to leave him behind anyway. He wasn’t meant to be a fake Deathrider. He’s just some Apache I found in the desert.”
“Now, don’t be hasty. Let me think it over. He might come in useful . . .”
“I’ll be whatever the hell I want,” she snapped. “He’s my Apache, and if I want to leave him, I’ll leave him.”
“Old Deathrider ain’t even an Apache,” Voss mused. “It’d never work to take him to LeFoy. He’ll never believe that an Apache is the Plague of the West. This is just the complete wrong kind of Indian.”
Deathrider snorted at the sheer idiocy of that statement. They were too stupid to even know that they had the real Deathrider chained to a post. . . .
“Ha! See, there!” Voss leapt at the fact Deathrider had given away that he understood them. “He may not speak English, but he definitely understands it. They’re crafty buggers.”
“What does it matter?” Ava Archer snapped. “He’s staying here, whether he understands English or not.”
Deathrider saw a shadow loom, and then Voss was crouching in front of him. “You speak English, buddy?”
What the hell? Deathrider thought. He didn’t appreciate being mute as well as blind. “Yeah,” he said, matching Voss’s lazy drawl, “I do.”
Voss laughed. “Told you, honey. They’re crafty buggers.”
“Jesus wept,” Ava Archer muttered.
Voss gave a horsey laugh. “I reckon we take him with us.”
“There’s no us, Voss,” Ava Archer snarled.
It reminded Deathrider of when she’d found him in the desert. She was fond of saying There’s no us. It must have reminded her too, because she set to muttering again. “What is it with you people and all this us business? First Becky, and then this Apache, and now you.”
The hawk is the best of hunters, Deathrider’s father always said, because he stays above and sees the way things are before he attacks. As he listened to Ava Archer muttering, Deathrider remembered his father’s words. He’d been caught up in his rage. It wasn’t serving him well. He’d lost sight of what was important. He needed to find Micah—that was his ultimate goal. Hamble was taking Micah to San Francisco, intending to pass Micah off as Deathrider. And judging from what Voss was saying, it wasn’t a new idea. So Deathrider needed to get to San Francisco . . . or men would be dying in his place.
But Deathrider was still mostly blind and very weak—he wouldn’t make it on his own, not in time to save Micah or anyone else.
But Voss and Ava could take him there. . . . Why not use them to get what he wanted?
It wouldn’t be easy keeping a lid on his fury, but it would be wise. Voss and Ava Archer could escort him north, and he could use the time to get well and strong. By the time they reached Micah, his eyes would have healed. And these two would be used to thinking of him as weak . . . which would give him the advantage.
Whereas right now he was weak. And he had no advantage whatsoever.
“I reckon we can use him as bait,” Voss said thoughtfully. “The others aren’t to know he ain’t the Plague of the West, are they? It helps he’s got his eyes bandaged too. What happened to him?”
“I was born blind,” Deathrider lied. He didn’t want Voss trying to snoop behind the blindfold. The swelling was going down rapidly, and his pale eyes were too distinctive. But the minute he spoke, he could have kicked himself. Ava Archer knew he hadn’t been born blind. She was liable to tell Voss about the stinging nettle . . . maybe. But she was clearly mad at him . . . so maybe she wouldn’t.
It was nerve-racking navigating this situation blind. He wondered what expression she was wearing.
What was she going to do? He waited to see if Ava Archer would call him out as a liar.
She didn’t.
“Bullshit you were born blind,” Voss snorted. “You look like a warrior. No blind man is as strong as you. And what were you doing out in the desert if you’re blind? Ain’t that where you said you found him: in the desert?”
“Spirit quest,” Deathrider improvised. “I’m a holy man.” He might as well take advantage of their complete ignorance. “I am blind to the world of man, but I have vision in the spirit world.” The rubbish he spouted in the name of survival.
Voss went quiet for a minute. “I don’t believe you.”
“He’s not completely blind,” Ava said. “He can see light and shade. He wears the blindfold because his eyes are sensitive to light.”
Voss grunted thoughtfully. “That makes more sense.” He grunted again as he rose to his feet. “It’ll work in our favor anyway. We’ll tell everyone old Deathrider here got injured. Who’s to say he isn’t the Plague of the West?”
“Ortiz and the real Plague of the West,” Ava said sourly. “They’ll have something to say about it.”
Voss let out that horsey laugh again. “Honey, we’ve been over this before. You’re the one who’s going to tell them who is and who isn’t the Plague of the West. But I ain’t thinking we hand this Indian to LeFoy. We’re just going to trick Ortiz into swapping with us.”
Hell. Deathrider didn’t like the sound of that.
“You aren’t serious.” Clearly Ava Archer didn’t like the sound of it either.
“Oh, but I am, honey.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“What? Honey? Would you rather I called you darlin’?”
She swore at him then, but he merely laughed.
“You got anymore rope?” he asked.
“No.” A spike of fear had entered her voice.
“That’s all right, darlin,’ I got some spare. Why don’t you sit yourself down on the other side of the post to that Indian?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, darlin’, that laudanum gave me a mighty headache. I reckon I still got traces of it hammering away up there. And I got no desire to be feeling that bad again. So I figure I’ll just tie you up for the night, so I can get some rest without worrying about what you’ll do to me.”
If that wasn’t poetic justice, Deathrider didn’t know what was. She was getting a taste of how she’d treated Deathrider earlier tonight.
Deathrider heard a scuffle break out. It sounded like she’d tried to run for it. There was the sound of bodies hitting the ground, and he heard hissing and spitting and swearing, then a grunt as Voss took a kick or two, and then a dragging sound.
“You goddamn bastard,” she yelled, and then she was muffled. It sounded like Voss’s hand had landed over her mouth.
“Hush it,” Voss ordered her, “or that woman’ll come out to see what the fuss is, and then I’ll have to shoot her. And if we end up with a posse after us because I shot some stupid woman, that’ll really slow things down.”
She kept struggling as Voss hauled her to the post. Deathrider winced as her flailing boots caught him in the ribs. As though he needed more bruises.
She gave a squeal, and Deathrider felt a pang of sympathy.
> “Hey,” Deathrider snapped, “don’t hurt her.” Although why he should care what happened to Ava Archer was beyond him. The woman was the bane of his existence.
Voss ignored him and shoved Ava Archer hard against the pole. “You’re only making this harder for yourself, darlin’.”
There was the sound of more struggling. Ava Archer didn’t say anything more, so Deathrider assumed she’d been gagged. He could hear her breathing heavily through her nose. He could also hear a disturbing hitch in Voss’s heavy breathing. . . . If he wasn’t wrong, the bastard was getting off on fighting with her.
“Goddamn you’re strong,” Voss said admiringly when he’d finally subdued her and lashed her to the pole. Deathrider and she were touching. It wasn’t a wide pole.
There was a muffled sound as Ava Archer cursed Voss.
“When all this is over, you and me have an appointment to keep,” Voss told her thickly. There was a wet sound and then a grunt. Voss snickered. “Good night, darlin’. I’ll wake you up a couple of hours before dawn. I want to be out of here before the villagers wake up. And we’ve got to ride hard to get to San Francisco before Ortiz rides off with the money.”
“Go to hell,” Ava Archer hissed as he walked away.
“You can count on it.”
Deathrider cocked his head and listened closely to hear what Voss was up to next. It sounded like he was bringing his horses in and getting them settled.
“Did he just kiss you?” Deathrider asked Ava softly. “Was that what that wet sound was?”
“He’s got a tongue like a damn lizard,” she said in disgust. He heard her rub her mouth on her shoulder.
“Old friend of yours?” Now that they were alone together—or alone-ish, as Voss wasn’t far away—he felt a surge of anger. It was stupid, but he felt betrayed.
“Kennedy Voss? Are you insane? Voss isn’t a friend to any woman. You know what he likes to do to them, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said tightly, unable to keep the anger out of his voice, “I’ve read your books.”
She went silent at that.
“I thought you said your name was Cleopatra,” he needled her.
