by BJ James
An impatient jerk of his head and a silent curse banished the errant recollection. He would not risk the distraction. He could think of nothing but taking Courtney from the brutal hands that held her. Complete concentration must be centered on this day. Second of three desperately precious days.
“It’s time, Irish.” He said the name softly. The name that had summoned her from the hell and horror of a dream. “Do you lead? Or shall I?”
“I lead, it’s my job, my responsibility.” Valentina had sensed a difference in him, but as she touched a spur to Black Jack, in a fleeting glimpse she saw the familiar unyielding austerity in his face. Startled that it should matter, to assure herself that it didn’t, she called over her shoulder, “Stay close. Fall behind and I’ll leave you. Get lost and you’re on your own.”
“Just do your job, Miss O’Hara, and don’t bother looking back. I promise you I’ll never be more than a step behind.” There was no sign that she heard, and Rafe said no more as he guided his mount in Black Jack’s path.
His trust was not misplaced in the hours to come. The gelding lived up to his reputation, scrambling, lunging, dodging, with canny instinct, stones that tumbled into his path. Ever pursuing the stallion, trampling in his tracks even as dust crumbled from the sharp-edged fault left by pounding hooves.
The day was timeless. One hour slipped into another with only the sound of their passage and the scurrying flight of animals breaking the silence. When she called a halt in a clearing at the base of a butte, though there was daylight for yet another hour or more of riding, Rafe made no objection. The horses were done.
Valentina dismounted, unsaddled Black Jack and left him ground-tied to forage through the brush. It took her only minutes to find the tank, a small holding of water trapped in a worn depression of tall stone. A life-giving phenomenon of this land. Though she’d never been this way before, she knew it existed, as those who had briefed her promised. Tanks, or tanques, were marked in minds and memories, rather than on maps. Only word of mouth and honor guided the unfamiliar high desert traveler.
Crouching by the oval worn in stone over time and serving now as keeper of its small store of treasured liquid, she let her gaze wander to Rafe. He’d done as he promised, keeping up, keeping quiet. He knew the country well in general, if not this particular trail. He knew its exigencies and its quirks. He understood its demand on human wayfarers and conducted himself in accord. In harmony with the land, not against it.
A surprising circumstance, when she let herself think of it. An extraordinary man, a ruggedly handsome man, if she would let herself admit it.
Refusing the intruding thoughts, she shifted her attention to the terrain and the site of their final camp before they reached the rimland. As the land they’d left behind, it was barren, stark, with a ghostly beauty. Yet it was more. More barren, more stark. In inexorable beauty, more dramatic. More deadly.
A land in which water was rare and yet its master sculptor, its demon, its gift. Today there was only the small tank and red dust. Other days, with a swift gathering of clouds unleashing violent and sudden torrents on the earth, flash floods could come roaring from mountain and through deep canyon. Water most savage, bringing with it a surge of trees and boulders, turning dust to silt, and peace to death and chaos.
Some days, but not this day. The pristine sky was clear and calm. No great wind snaked through the canyon, whipping trees and shrubs or toppling stone. The air did not bear that prickling, electric prophesy of storm. There was no respite, good or bad, from the sun.
Laying her hat aside, she scooped a palmful of water from the tank. Touching her tongue to it she found it brackish, but not bitter, and no danger to them. With a satisfied nod, she sluiced the palmful over her face and neck, reveling in the transient cool.
A shadow fell before her. Longer, leaner, an embellished replication of Rafe, cast over stone. She didn’t look away from it as she spoke. “We’ll camp closer to the rim, but refill our canteens here before the horses drink.”
Though she couldn’t see, as before on the trail, Rafe nodded his agreement.
“When the day cools and the sun sets, the animals will come to drink. By the rim we won’t obstruct their way.” Valentina realized she instructed him as if he were a tenderfoot. Something that couldn’t be further from reality. She was discovering Rafe Courtenay was an unusual mix. A man as at ease in the wild as the conference table, and much like her brothers.
“I assume tonight will be a cold camp.” Rafe’s voice was rusty from trail dust and disuse.
“The chances that we would be seen are slim to none, but for the sake of caution...”
“A cold camp,” Rafe finished for her. Once again admiration for her insight and her skill outweighed a faltering antipathy.
Valentina looked up at him, not as tall as the shadow he cast, not as dark, but far more handsome. Far too handsome, with eyes that seemed to see into her. Fighting back a defensive shiver, she took her hat from the stone to tilt it low over her face as she rose. “We’ve some time yet before nightfall, I suggest each of us puts it to good use.”
She was facing him, their gazes level, for once without challenge. “If Jim’s memory serves, there’s a small cul-de-sac that will make a temporary corral for Black Jack and El Mirlo. There should be another tank and grass.” An absent gesture skimmed back tendrils escaped from the heavy coil that she’d pinned to her crown and covered with the Stetson many hours before. “Enough water and grazing for two horses for a couple or three days. By then someone should have come for them.”
There was no need to add that in little more than a day the hostage situation would be ended. For better or worse, for all of them.
As she moved away, crossing over rock and down incline as if she had not been in the saddle interminably, she was aware again of Rafe following closely. She was aware, as well, that she had grown comfortable and even grateful for that. Unusual for a woman such as she, with a profession such as hers. Once again she related this uncommon trust to his similarity to her brothers. The only men she trusted other than her father and Simon.
And David.
But she couldn’t think of him. Thoughts of David opened the door to failure. “I can’t fail,” she whispered in labored breaths as she skidded down the last incline to the clearing where Black Jack was tethered. “I can’t,” she said again. “Not this time.”
The stallion whickered and nibbled at her sleeve as she caught up his reins. “It’s the long way around for you, fella. But after what you’ve done today, the rest of the way should be a snap. Then it’s a day or so of rest and grazing for you.”
Black Jack whickered again and shook his head.
“Sorry, fella, not this time.” She stroked the long, handsome nose, the powerful neck. “You think you’re a mountain goat, but you’re far too splendid for that, so this is the end of the trail for you.”
The jingle of a bridle and the eager tramping of the gelding’s hooves signaled El Mirlo’s greeting to Rafe. The man moved silently, swiftly, like a tracker, a hunter. Like Tynan.
“Do you always do that?” Rafe was a pace away, reins in hand, listening, watching.
Because he had been so silent, speaking so rarely, his question was unexpected. Stopping in mid-motion, her fingers tangling in the blue-black mane, she glanced over Black Jack’s back at him. “Do I always do what?”
“Do you always talk to horses,” Rafe explained. “Or only this one?”
Valentina had no answer. He questioned something she hadn’t considered. Something she did without thinking. After a moment, with a lift of her shoulders, she asked, “Doesn’t everyone?”
“No, not everyone,” Rafe said thoughtfully. “At least, not with the same result.” With a cock of his head, he looked from Valentina to Black Jack and back again. “This half-wild beast would walk through fire without a blindfold, if you asked.”
“Maybe.” She hedged. “And maybe it’s simply that he likes the tone and cadence of my vo
ice.”
“Maybe.” Even as he agreed, Rafe knew it was more than tone and cadence, more than her voice. It was the rare kinship some few shared with the wild beasts. He’d seen it at the base camp. He saw it on the trail as a horse offered up a great heart at her bidding. He saw it now. The human tip of an iceberg and the one saving grace of an aloof and rigid warrior? Or another facet of the tormented woman he’d glimpsed in the dark? A woman who cared too deeply, and hurt so badly she kept her emotions under lock and key. Who appeared to have no recall of shattered locks and broken dreams whispered poignantly as he’d held her in his arms.
“I would doubt it’s that simple.” Then speaking of locks and broken dreams, he muttered, “But is such ever simple?”
With a curious glance at his bemused countenance, Valentina dismissed the subject for surer ground. “In any case, we haven’t the time to make sense out of nonsense. We’ve plenty of daylight left, but we’ve plenty to do as well. By the time we water and tend the horse, then construct a corral, we should both be ready for a quick bite and an early bedtime.”
“You plan an early start tomorrow?”
“As soon as it’s safe to climb. We haven’t far to go, but it will be precarious, and I’d like to be in place before mid-morning.”
She’d had little sleep, and that had been unsettled. Rafe questioned how much more she could do. How steady could her hand be, how true her aim, when the time came? “Rough day tomorrow.”
“The roughest,” she agreed. “But the shortest.”
“Then we should make quick work of the rest of this one.” Gathering the reins tighter, Rafe turned El Mirlo toward the path that would skirt the detritus of an ancient avalanche, the path to the second tank.
For once, he led the way, guiding his mount past the fallen rock and rubble before leaving the gelding to drink. When both horses had drunk their fill, and the clinging mementos of the trait had been curried away, he was first to begin cutting and gathering limbs and brush for a makeshift fence.
He labored relentlessly, shouldering more than his share of the task. Taking from her what he could, leaving her to brace and hold when an extra pair of hands speeded his effort along. In response to her protest he told her firmly that she had not come to build fences. That would be his job. Hers was of more import, and her strength must be husbanded to that end.
Valentina could offer no disputing argument, but neither did she cease her own labors.
The sun was barely above the rim of the canyon when the corral was finished and the horses turned into it. Free of his tether, Black Jack galloped and pranced and explored, testing each boundary, finding cliff walls on three sides, and Rafe’s tripod-fashioned fence on the fourth. El Mirlo was only a little less curious as he snuffled at the tank and then the grass, trotting from clump to clump.
“He’s magnificent.” Valentina leaned an arm against the fence as she watched the gelding with ebony coat shining in the bright edge of twilight, mane flying over an arched neck, tail streaming. “Who would geld such a creature?”
“A fool who didn’t know what he had in the colt.” Rafe rested his forearms on the fence, his shoulders brushing hers. “In fact, he was only days away from being destroyed when Martin found him and called Patrick.”
“Martin?”
“Martin Tyree. The Anglo name given to the old Indian who manages Patrick’s stable.”
“Given?” Valentina turned her gaze from El Mirlo, letting it rest levelly on Rafe.
“After Martin Luther. Martin is from a time when certain religious factions took it upon themselves to civilize a nation they considered savages. These well-meaning, but totally insensitive people took him and other boys like him from their homes, set them down in another culture with no regard for their own. Cut their hair like white boys, dressed them like white boys and gave them names of religious or biblical figures to replace what they considered unpronounceable anathema of savages. With that they considered their duty done. A smattering of education and the name were all Martin reaped from their efforts before he ran away.”
“History repeats itself,” Valentina mused. “A child is taken by those who espouse their own twisted sort of religion.”
“Twisted and deadly.” The terse response closed the door to any other conversation. For a while they watched the horses in the red glow of the setting sun. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they turned, walking together to their cold camp.
The evening meal was a spartan affair of water and packaged food. As each leaned against facing boulders, a hush lay between them. A natural void, marking boundaries and personal space as a campfire had the night before. Silence, neither strained nor uncomfortable, reflecting concerns not of this time, not of this place, not of each other.
It loomed before them. The morning. The summit. Courtney McCallum.
Draining the last water from her cup, Valentina set it aside to be stowed and left behind. For the rest of the way, her canteen would be strapped to her side. Only the few personal items she needed and a case containing the disassembled rifle would be stored in the backpack she would carry. Out of necessity and meticulous nature, she mentally cataloged every item, mapped every move, leaving nothing to chance. A place for everything, everything in its place—everything within her control.
At last, weary from her thoughts, she tilted her head against the stone. Her hands lay loosely over her bent knees, her lashes drifted down to hover at her cheeks. Through their soft sable veil, her unseeing gaze rested on her companion. In a rare moment of peace, refusing to worry when worry would only lead to more, she let her meditation drift where it would. A small smile eased the grave, tired lines of her face as her brothers marched into her mind. Devlin, Kieran, and Tynan, strong, purposeful men. Each with his own strength, his own purpose. Different, yet so much alike. Each so much like Rafe.
“What are you thinking?” Drawn by her stillness, intrigued by an uncommon softness easing the strain from features that were really quite lovely, Rafe put his last task aside unfinished.
Rousing reluctantly from this safest of places, the sanctuary of her family, her look was empty and uncomprehending.
“What do you think of?” He asked again in a hoarse half whisper. Driven to ask, but loath, even as he spoke, to disturb the hovering hush of the rim. “Where do you go? What place within you preserves your sanity on such nights as this? What gives you that look of accord? Who?”
As he waited, Rafe, who was never impatient, was strangely impatient. Deep in his heart he wondered if the answer was David. Was it he who brought stillness and serenity on the white charger of day, and horror on the maddened mare of darkness?
David. She’d called his name in the black void of night. Would she now?
“What, Valentina?” There was vital need in the repetition that Rafe couldn’t define. “Who?”
“My family. Tonight, my brothers,” she answered quickly. Too quickly, and found she could barely restrain herself from adding...you.
“Devlin, Kieran, Tynan.” He supplied names from the dossier. In saying them something tense and binding unraveled in his chest. “Unusual names.”
“Irish.”
Rafe nodded and remembered again that it suited her to be Irish. That it suited him that she was Irish. “What sort of men are the brothers of Valentina O’Hara? Tell me about them.”
“There isn’t a lot to tell.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Shrugging away his dissent, she insisted mildly, “They’re good, but ordinary, men.”
“Ordinary by O’Hara standards, but, I would venture, by no others.”
Slanting a weary look at him, she speculated, “The dossier.”
Thumb and forefinger slipped his Stetson back a notch as he nodded.
“Did you memorize the damn thing?”
“Yes.” Unequivocal, no hedging the truth.
“Yes?” Her look turned incredulous. “Why? What earthly purpose would that serve?”
Unper
turbed by her demand, or the creeping sarcasm in it, he smiled, and in the dim light his face was transformed. “Just accept that it’s the way I conduct myself, and humor me.”
“Humor you? By telling you what you already know?”
Rafe nodded once more. “From your perspective.”
“Why?”
It was his turn to shrug with a detachment far from candid. “To pass the time in an evening that promises to pass slowly.” The smile flitted over his features again. “And, as I said, to humor me.”
She told herself it was not to humor him that she complied. And was as certain that not even his smile and the roguish teasing in it swayed her. It was more, she wanted to believe, that he was right. The distraction of conversation would pass a nerve-wracking evening far more quickly. And what safer subject than her family? “What would you like to know?”
“Everything. Anything. Whatever you would like to tell.”
She abandoned the study of her fingers as they moved with a restlessness of their own over the corded seam at the knee of her jeans. “I have a sister. But you know that from the dossier.”
“Patience.” Rafe did not say that he’d met her sister, briefly. In one of the strange coincidences of an increasingly small world, in the unlikely converging of different circles, the paths of Patience O’Hara and Rafe Courtenay had crossed. For an evening they had talked and shared a meal under the watchful eyes of Matthew Winter Sky.
Matthew, another of Simon’s own, Rafe’s friend as well as Patrick’s. Patience’s love and a fortunate man.
After that evening in Patrick’s hilltop villa on the outskirts of Sedona, Rafe had never seen her again. But he’d never forgotten her. Patience was younger than her sister, though by less than a year. She was not so quiet, nor so aloof, but the same strength was there. The physical resemblance was strong, even striking. One more explanation for the moment of déjà vu the first time he’d seen Valentina.
