“Those are gonna have to be doctored,” he said flatly, confident that his voice, like his features, would give away nothing. He sat back on his heel again, his forearm once more draped across his knee, and met her eyes. He found them bright as stars, blazing defiance. “You got ’em on your butt, too?”
She responded in a valiant whisper, “You are not looking at those.”
After a long electric moment, it was he who looked away and let out an audible breath. Damn. Now what was he going to do? The medical supplies were in the cabin. To get her taken care of, he was either going to have to make her get dressed and go down there with him, or he was going to have to leave her while he went to fetch what he needed. He didn’t care for either option. The thought of her walking all the way down that hill with her jeans rubbing against those sores made him feel light-headed. On the other hand, to leave her alone in a tent, unguarded, seemed, at the very least, risky.
Then he remembered the handcuffs.
He’d put them on the floor of the tent beside his bedroll along with his boots and the flashlight, things he liked close at hand in case he needed them in a hurry. He reached for the cuffs now, laid them across his lap while he pulled on his boots. Fully dressed, he rolled his bed, pushed it away from the entrance and stood up. From there he regarded his prisoner, keeping his face devoid of all expression as he told her, “I’m going to have to go get something to put on those sores. Under the circumstances, I think it’s best if you stay here.”
She nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the stainless-steel bracelets dangling from his left hand. She’d dragged the top half of the sleeping bag back over her knees, covering her legs but leaving her feet and ankles peeking out. They looked vulnerable and delicate as a child’s. He fastened his gaze on them so he wouldn’t have to watch her face. “I won’t be gone long, but just to be on the safe side…”
She caught her breath and blurted out in a rush, “It’s not really necessary to handcuff me, is it? I mean, my God, where am I going to go? You saw-I can barely even move. I won’t try to run away, I swear.” Please, her eyes begged him; her pride wouldn’t let her say the words. Please don’t.
Bronco stared at her in a crackling hissing silence. Dammit, what was he supposed to do? He knew she wasn’t going to run-all logic told him she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. But in his gut…what if she did? He’d been wrong about women before. What if? If anything happened to her, not only would his ass be grass and his career toast twice over, but what was infinitely worse, he’d never forgive himself.
He gave a soft sarcastic snort. “What, am I supposed to take your word for that? Just…leave you here on your honor?”
She nodded eagerly, her eyes luminous and pleading. “I promise, on my word of honor. I won’t go anywhere. Not even to the latrine. Swear to God. Please-can’t you just trust me?”
It was the word trust that got him. He let go a laugh that was like the sound of a whip striking leather. “Lady, I haven’t trusted a woman since I was seven.” He knelt and with a deft twist of cold steel, snapped the cuffs on her ankles.
Then he was outside the tent and moving fast, leaving it and the woman behind him as quickly as he could. He felt cold through and through. And unbelievably shaken-by the words he’d spoken even more than by what he’d done.
…since I was seven. Ah, God…how could it be? It was as if no time at all had passed. He was that seven-year-old boy, running across the summer-scorched earth while the desert wind dried the tears on his cheeks to a salty crust. Inside he’d felt so cold-cold and small and unworthy. Just like he did now.
He could hear his voice, asking through shameful childish tears, “Why, Mama? Why are you leaving me? Why do you have to go away?” But in his heart he’d known the answer.
It was because she didn’t love him. Because he wasn’t good enough, brave enough, strong and handsome and smart enough to deserve her love. He knew it must be so. Because if she loved him, how could she leave him?
That was the day he’d started running. And he’d gone on running, chased by a demon of his own making: a steadfast belief in his own unworthiness. He’d run and run-eventually with a football in his hands, often as not with a bottle of booze, sometimes the steering wheel of a fast car-until one day, with his back against the wall and nowhere left to run, he’d been forced to confront the demon face-to-face.
There’d been only two possible outcomes of that battle. If the demon had won, it would have destroyed him completely. Instead, he’d stood the test and exposed it for the lie it was.
It had been a battle hard fought and hard won, and the man he’d become, John Bracco, knew he owed many debts to many people who’d believed in him even when he’d lost all belief in himself. He knew that one of those people was Gil McCullough, and that he was about to repay the debt with betrayal.
Bronco paused for a few moments where the trees ended, to recover both his breath and his senses. To remind himself that the boy with salt tears on his cheeks was only a memory, as was the woman with soft brown hair and sad blue eyes he’d once called Mama. He listened to the voices of the wind whispering in the pines, of the hawk circling overhead, of the stallion, Cochise Red, calling to his mares in the log corral on the edge of the meadow. When his spirit and his breathing felt quiet and strong again, he continued down the cleared slope to the cabin.
He knew the second he stepped inside that something was wrong. It was in the air, just barely discernible to the senses, like an odor, a puff of smoke, a breath of wind, though at first glance everything seemed as it should be. McCullough was in the corner hunched over the radio, while Ron Masters stood behind him looking on, one hand braced on the back of his chair, the other on the tabletop. Gil didn’t look up when Bronco came in, but Ron shot him a dark glance that sent a little frisson of warning down Bronco’s spine.
The two men on KP duty nodded unsmiling greetings as they went about preparing the first meal of the day for fifty or so hungry men-stirring oats into the pot of water simmering on the wood-burning cookstove, setting stacks of tortillas to warm on racks above, heaping pans full of crumbly sausage and scrambled eggs and putting them in the oven to keep hot, pouring coffee from the enameled pot into insulated containers. The smells of sage and fresh coffee made Bronco’s stomach growl, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since early the day before.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and strolled across the cabin to join Ron and Gil at the radio. “Trouble?” he asked, sipping the black brew while his stomach protested audibly.
This time Gil glanced at him while Ron straightened and planted himself at his commander’s elbow, with feet apart, arms folded across his chest. The macho body language amused Bronco. Even so, he would never make the mistake of underestimating Ron Masters.
Gil’s eyes were glittering with anger, but instead of answering Bronco’s question, he made a jerking movement with his head toward the back of the cabin and raised his eyebrows, asking a question of his own.
“She’s secure.” Without looking in that direction Bronco was aware of the hungry gleam in Masters’s eyes, the cold little smile that was almost…anticipation.
Gil nodded, appearing distracted. Ron provided the reason, saying with obvious relish, “Feds have the ranch surrounded.”
Bronco gave a casual shrug. “What’d you expect?” Gil snorted a mirthless laugh while Masters shook his head. “Katie okay?” Bronco asked then. He knew how Gil felt about his wife.
McCullough’s eyes lost their brightness as he released tension in an exhalation. “She knows better than to try to reach me-they’ll have everything tapped. Why she insisted on staying…I wanted her to go to her mother’s, but she said-” his voice became a singsong imitation of a woman’s “-she wasn’t about to have the FBI tromping around her house, pawing through her things while she wasn’t there to keep an eye on ’em.” He gestured toward the silent radio. “I’ve got my people looking into how she’s doing.” He shot a glance at Bronco. “Just hope she keeps that I
rish temper of hers in check.”
Bronco nodded. He knew who Gil meant by his “people.” A couple of White County sheriff’s deputies, the same pair who’d been in Smoky Joe’s the other night and who he knew for a fact were loyal members of SOL.
He wondered how much time he had before all hell broke loose.
Chapter 6
Johnny Bronco didn’t carry a gun.
That was one of the conclusions Lauren came to after a thorough search of his saddlebags and bedroll. Left hobbled and alone, she’d wasted perhaps a minute feeling sorry for herself, after which she’d gotten down to business. The first order of which was to find herself some sort of weapon. If she could find one, something she could hide away, she’d bide her time…
He hadn’t had a gun on him when he’d left the tent, she’d swear to that. Because where would he have hidden it? In those Levis that hugged his hips and thighs like skin, or under the faded blue shirt, washed so thin it allowed the subtle sculpting of the muscles in his back to show through?
An ankle holster, perhaps? But she’d watched him pull on his boots, and hadn’t seen any evidence of such a thing.
So, if he had a gun, a weapon of any kind, she reasoned, it must be here among his things.
The search hadn’t taken long; how many hiding places did a tent offer? Which was a good thing, Lauren thought, considering how hard it was to navigate even the short distance from her sleeping bag to his. With her ankles cuffed together she had to improvise a sort of crablike movement, scuttling on her side while attempting to keep the insides of her knees from touching each other. It wasn’t pretty, and she worked up a good sweat, but it got the job done.
The first thing she did was roll out his bedroll, which, unlike her puffy zippered modern sleeping bag, consisted of a thin waterproof pad and a single woolen blanket that, even with the added bulk of the poncho, would roll up tightly enough to tie onto the back of a saddle. She took the pad, blanket and poncho, one at a time, and shook them. That netted her nothing but some golden dust motes to swirl in the shafts of sunlight that were just stabbing through the pine trees.
Next, she hitched herself onto the blanket, gingerly pulled the saddlebags across her lap, unbuckled the flaps and dumped all the contents onto the blanket beside her. She wasn’t careful; so what if he knew? Serve him right for leaving her.
One by one she explored and returned each item to the saddlebags. First the clothing: several pairs of socks, rolled into hard little bundles; two pairs of plain white briefs; one plain white T-shirt, an extra pair of jeans and two more long-sleeved cotton shirts; two large bandanna-type handkerchiefs. All these, which were very clean and neatly rolled, she shook out and then carefully rerolled-except for one of the shirts. Some unforeseen impulse made her bring it to her face, bury her nose in the soft folds and inhale the clean-laundry smells of strong detergent and desert sunshine.
Yes, she thought, as her breath caught, that was part of the scent she remembered, dancing with him. Indefinably stirred, she hurriedly wadded up the shirt and stuffed it back into the bag.
From the odds and ends on the blanket beside her, she picked out a bar of soap wrapped in a clean washcloth. It was green with whitish streaks in it and had been about half used up. She held that to her nose, as well, prepared this time for the jolt of recognition. It smelled faintly herbal.
Yes-that’s part of it, too. He’d smelled so good-of soap and clean laundry, desert sunshine and new sweat, traces of horse and a hint of tobacco smoke from the bar.
She paused, frowning. Something about that seemed wrong. Something… But she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
And then a crow began to squawk indignantly somewhere in the pine trees, reminding her of the task at hand and the passing of time. She stuffed the remaining items back into the saddlebag-the soap once again wrapped in its washcloth, a toothbrush and battery-operated shaver, a plastic-bristled hairbrush.
Finally, only one last item remained. She hesitated, then reached for it, picked it up and held it in her hands. Turned it over, felt the smooth texture of old leather with her fingertips. His wallet, slightly curved, molded to the shape of the masculine buttock against which it normally rested. Did she only imagine that it felt warm, almost as if it had only just come from that intimate contact?
No, she thought. I can’t. It’s unconscionable. It couldn’t possibly conceal a weapon. There’s no earthly reason for me to look in his wallet.
But all’s fair in love and war-and this was definitely war!
With her heart thumping, she opened the wallet. And found herself staring at an Arizona driver’s license. How weird to think of Johnny Bronco with a driver’s license! She associated him with horses, and getting tossed out of a saloon on his backside, and Gil McCullough saying to his men, “See he gets home.”
John Bracco. So that was his name. Not Johnny Bronco, after all. And no surprise there. It was such a theatrical name, come to think of it, not a real name at all.
How weird it felt, strangely disorienting, sobering, to see the man summarized like this-like his clothes, all rolled into one neat package. To Lauren, raised by society’s rules, educated to believe in its conventions, trained in the practice of law, this commonly accepted proof of identity seemed like a verification of his humanness. It made him real, finally. Not only that, it made him ordinary. Not the Indian mystic on horseback, the cowboy charmer in the honky-tonk bar. Not a misguided revolutionary quoting the Declaration of Independence, or heartless kidnapper. Only a human being. A man named John Bracco.
There were credit cards in that same name-American Express and a VISA that was also an ATM card-and a discount card for a supermarket. A social-security card. And tucked away out of sight behind an expired hunting license, a tattered military ID. Forty-seven dollars in cash and two folded-up credit-card receipts for gasoline-and a single photograph.
It was a black-and-white snapshot, old, the corners softened and bent, of a man and a boy. The man was narrow-hipped and barrel-chested and had the broad cheekbones and faintly Asiatic features of the Apache. He wore dark jeans and a long-sleeved dark Western-style shirt, with a lighter-colored bandanna tied around his neck, and a light-colored straw cowboy hat with the brim rolled almost to a point in front. He was smiling, and he faced the camera with a cocky impatient air, as if he was only humoring the photographer for that one moment, no more. Come on, take the picture already. One hand rested on the head of a boy, probably six or seven, with thick straight black hair chopped short but defying discipline. The child had fierce dark eyes and a shy sweet smile.
Half-breed. The word flashed unwanted into her mind, shaming her. It was a hateful term, as bad as any of the ethnic slurs she’d been taught all her life to loathe and reject, but in spite of that, she couldn’t make it go away. Half-breed.
All right, since it wouldn’t leave her alone, she would think about it, plunge into the enigma that was John Bracco.
He was half Apache, half white-she already knew that. For some reason-and at that moment she couldn’t think why-she’d just assumed it was his father who was white, his mother Apache. But the man in the photograph was almost certainly Bronco’s father, the drunk who had died in a car crash, according to Gil McCullough, when Bronco was twelve. Probably, Lauren mused, it was his mother who had been the photographer, indulged by her menfolk out of love and familial obligation. Lauren had seen the same smiles, fixed and long-suffering, on her own father’s and brother’s faces.
Where was his mother now? McCullough hadn’t mentioned her. So what had become of her? As she stared down at the photograph in her hands, Lauren was seized by a certainty that the answer to that question was somehow important.
“Find what you were looking for?”
She started violently and uttered a sharp swear word, one her own prim-and-proper mother would never have tolerated but still one of the most satisfying available. Instinctively, she had flattened the photo against her chest as if to hide it from view. I wo
n’t apologize, she thought. I won’t.
“Dammit, you scared me.” She glared indignantly at Bronco, crouched in the tent opening with a cardboard box balanced on one knee. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”
“Looks to me like maybe I should,” he said mildly as he set the box to one side, clearing the way for his own entry. He rose but had to duck his head as he came through the opening.
Lauren followed him with her eyes, heart thumping, primed for battle.
But he barely glanced her way and didn’t acknowledge the photograph at all. Instead, he crouched beside the box once more and began taking things out of it, one by one. His movements were unhurried, businesslike. Did she only imagine the unnatural stillness, as if he held himself, his temper, his emotions, even his life force, under a tight rein? The thought sent pulses of excitement through her, and her heart, already beating hard and fast, seemed to thunder in her ears.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Her voice came with less force behind it than she might have wished. Trying to recapture her bravado, she shoved her feet belligerently toward him and waggled them back and forth.
He did glance at her cuffed ankles finally, then, taking his time, let his gaze travel upward from there until it reached her face. A shiver rippled over her skin, as if his fingers had made that slow journey rather than his eyes.
The tilt of his warlike eyebrows was sardonic. “I didn’t forget. I’m thinking maybe I ought to leave ’em on you, considering…” He nodded toward the saddlebags still draped across her thighs.
“What did you expect me to do?” she snapped. “Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?”
To her surprise he gave a soft grunt of laughter. “You’re pretty mouthy for a prisoner of war, you know that?”
The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda Page 9
