So where are we going?
She opened her eyes again to scan the road for mile markers.
The only thing she could see was a speed sign that said “Speed limit 60.”
That meant they were not on a major interstate where traffic usually was ten miles more per hour. Plus, the three-lane highway, she could now see, curved. And it ran up and down abrupt hills. Those black ugly ones she saw in the distance. We’re headed for them. Okay…
Every few seconds she would open her eyes to see if she could find a mile marker to the next town, whatever it was. Dusk shaded the horizon like a gray veil and soon, she wouldn’t see anything from this vantage point because she was outside the range of the car’s headlights.
But what if you’re not going across a border? What if they’re taking you to a hideaway here in west Texas? She assumed, from the timing, they were still in Texas and had not gone north. Not by this landscape, we haven’t.
The Gonzagas had safe houses in many parts of south Texas. If this was Big Bend, then a hideaway here in the most deserted, least populated counties of the state would make sense. The familia would like this godforsaken landscape. Especially to run a headquarters.
And if we arrive at their headquarters, I won’t live long after that.
She fought down a groan of terror.
Feeling for the handle of the door, she wondered if she could open it. But her fingers were numb from the ropes binding her wrists together. Was the door locked? Dare she try to force her fingers to move? Would they notice? And then could she open the door and hurl herself out of the car?
What then?
Would she break an arm? A leg? Hit her head?
She could hope she would be in good enough shape to run. Run like hell. And where could she hide in this primeval world? There were no trees. No big fat ones to hide behind. Plus there were wild boars out there. Huge pigs with long scraggly black hair and sharp white tusks to gouge and kill people. Bobcats, too, who liked a good meal of human now and then.
Worst of all, she had no gun. No knife. No weapon. Only her meager training in karate. Her feet and her hands were her most lethal weapons. And hardly dangerous enough to set her free.
She prayed that when she got to use them, she had enough strength in her limbs to deliver a violent blow.
The car slowed, the driver lit a cigarette, then said something to the other two men. She felt the car turn onto a rough road as all three of her captors began to chatter in Spanish. She couldn’t understand much, but she did hear, “Manuel.”
And she tried not to tremble. Tried not to freeze.
To meet the head of the Gonzagas, she would need every bit of her courage and stamina. Manuel was known to have the greatest number of notches in his belt. For the women he had bedded. And the enemies he had killed.
Chapter Seven
The driver and his honcho buddy who had sat in the front seat hauled her by the wrists and neck from the backseat of the car. They laughed and joked to each other in Spanish. Skye didn’t need an interpreter to tell her what they meant. Their sneering, salacious looks told her everything she needed. Her Anglo looks fired them up. Their jefe was going to like raping her. Before, of course, he killed her and…she was pretty sure one of them said, then fed her to the dogs.
She expected no mercy from any of them. After all, she had cozied up to their second-in-command. She had planned that flirtation, intending it to be colorful but brief. Plus, she never expected Jorge Gonzaga to like her too much. But he had considered her an Anglo prize. Blonde. Buxom. A trophy girlfriend. She had never slept with him and the night of the murders, she’d planned to leave him. Leave town. Return home to Chicago and disappear from his life. He’d changed that when he’d killed those women. Oh, she had disappeared from his life all right. Immediately running away from him. Reporting it to the local office of the Rangers, Skye had bypassed the local sheriff, knowing that man was in league with the Gonzagas and accepting bribes from them.
Now here she was. Thrust inside a rustic log cabin to stand in the center and watch the head of the brutal Gonzaga Familia walk around her like a rancher inspecting a prize horse.
Manuel Gonzaga was tall, dark and painfully ugly. With a scar that cut the left side of his face from hairline to chin, he was the very vision of a savage criminal. His black hair was greasy. His body smelled of salsa, cigarettes and sweat. And his clothes—his jeans and t-shirt—spoke of a man who thought skintight was sexy and dirty was in.
He approached her, grabbing the hair that wended over her shoulders. “Very nice. You are even more pretty than Jorge said. Your name?”
She stared at him.
He yanked her hair. “Your name?”
“Skye.”
He repeated it, the brief syllable poison on his tongue. “The eyes for the sky, si? And the hair?” He pulled again. “For the stars?”
She glared at him.
“Answer me!” He tore at her hair.
“Yes. Whatever you think, that’s what it is.”
“Your mama and papa would not be happy to see you here with us, would they?”
“No,” she replied because she didn’t want to become bald talking to this creep.
“Why would you even come here to fuck Jorge, huh? Why?”
“I didn’t come here to do that,” she said, her peripheral vision taking in that Manuel had only one other person with him in this cabin. “Untie me. I can’t run from you. You know it. I’m numb.” She put out her hands. “Please.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I am not stupid.”
“Neither am I. I know what you plan for me.” She stared at him, daring him to do as she wished. Then she thrust out her hands again. “Where can I run to? How far, eh?”
He tipped his head, lifted a knife from his back pocket and sliced through her ropes.
“Why then? Is it true that you write books?” Manuel asked, edging closer to her and repelling her with his stench.
“Yes. I do.” She wiggled her fingers freely now, and the pins and needles were diminishing. She widened her stance, her feet feeling more stable now. Could she walk? Run? Stand up to this jerk? “I write novels.”
“About us?” Manuel spread his thin lips in a gruesome smile. “Eh? Tell me!”
“No. Not about you. I was researching gangs that work the Rio Grande border for a fictitious group I created.”
“What is this, fik-shous group?”
“Fictitious,” she corrected him, watching the three who had captured her, head for the kitchen and return with bottles of beer. They stood behind their leader and guzzled their drinks, listening and grinning like fools. “It means I wasn’t writing about the Gonzagas but creating my own gang.”
The five of them doubled over with laughter.
Manuel’s hand tightened on her hair as he came closer and slid his crooked nose along her throat. In Spanish he said something soft and low that made her swallow hard and step back.
He wouldn’t let her escape but followed her, crushing her body close to his wiry one. “I have had no woman in a long time. You will be mine tonight. All night. As you were once Jorge’s.”
She licked her lips, forced her head back to look him in the eye and declared, “I was never Jorge’s.”
Manuel cut her a disbelieving look. “He said you have a tight cunt. That you took him all. Liked him rough.”
“He lied.”
“He would not do that. Not to me.” Manuel was definitely cocksure.
An idea formed in her mind. If she could not use her body to run from him, might she use her brains to save herself? “No? You think not? What else did he tell you about me?”
“That you have big breasts.”
She snorted, braver suddenly though she had little other than her instinct about his predatory nature to tell her why. “Anyone can see that. You did not need Jorge to tell you.”
Manuel ran his hand down her spine and pushed her to him with his hand on her ass. “He said you have a
birthmark on your leg—” Manuel touched her inner left thigh. “Here.”
She let a small smile curl her lips. “He lied.”
Manuel flinched.
“Did he tell you, too, that he didn’t want to introduce you to me? That he kept putting off the meeting because he said he would have to kill you when you wanted me?”
Manuel cursed. “Now you lie.”
“Why would I?” she asked him, though she knew if she could keep him talking to her, every minute was another one to live. “I know he planned to show me off to the others in the gang,” and this was true. “He wanted the others to envy him.”
“Good for him.”
“Bad for you,” she shot back. “He wanted to use me to let the others think he would be a better leader than you.” He certainly smelled better. “That he could get a blonde Anglo. That he was stronger, wiser.”
Manuel shoved her against the wall. She stumbled, but caught her balance, her palms to the rough timbers.
He whirled on his men. Shouting in Spanish, he was grilling them about what she’d said. Skye knew because Jorge was in every vitriolic phrase he uttered.
And as the five of them yelled at each other, denying, proclaiming, asserting their own truths, she stepped slowly toward the front door. A foot away, almost there, she froze.
Directly ahead, she spotted the only window in the cabin. And outside, shadows—long, tall shadows—rippled across the window panes.
Did these five see that?
No. No!
Were those shadows friendly to her?
Oh. God.
She couldn’t wait to find out.
She spun, her legs lunging for the door and just as she got there, the thing swung open and in charged two huge men.
Rex!
Rex!
She cried out in joy as he rushed into the cabin, Jose right behind him, both of them firing their guns, yelling at the Gonzagas.
Gunfire split the air.
The sharp cracks told her to drop to the floor, crawl away, outside. She scrabbled on her hands and knees. Frantic, she got to her feet and ran toward the gang’s car. Spying two huge trucks in the gloom at the far end of the drive, she ran like hell toward them. One was marked with the Ranger symbol.
From inside the cabin, she heard men shouting at each other. She bit her lips, wondered what the hell she should be doing to help.
Then she scrambled inside the Ranger truck, slinging open the glove compartment. She stretched and in the backseat spied and a long wooden box. Ah, this was what she wanted.
A rifle. No handgun, but that seemed like a small matter at the moment.
She had fired a rifle a few times in Chicago at the shooting range she frequented. Now if she could just freaking remember how to use the damn thing, she’d be golden.
Hefting it up to her shoulder, she stood outside and opened the barrel. Loaded. There was only one shot in the barrel but she had to use what ammo she had, didn’t she? Cocking it with one sure shove, she sited down the barrel, smiled, then hooked it under her arm and strode toward the house.
Scuffling was still going on, but she felt the weapon in her hand would soon end that bit of mayhem. “No one messed with a woman with a rifle,” her handgun instructor had told her. “Just know, with a rifle in your hands, you have to use it fast…or the other guy’ll wrestle it from you and use it on you.”
Up on the porch, she strode to the wide open door and scanned the room. Rex had Manuel by the scruff of his shirt, aiming his fist for the gangster’s jaw. Jose held a gun on three of the men. But the fourth?
Where are you?
She sought him out amid the ruins of the furniture.
Just then her missing man ran out from the kitchen firing full blast—at Rex! But Skye had a clear shot of him. Aimed, fired and blew a hole in him that had all of them turning to stare as he fell to the floor, a mess.
Rex went down on one knee, blood gushing down his shirt.
“Noooo!” she screamed and aimed her rifle at Manuel.
But he threw his hands up while Jose yelled at her to put her weapon down. “Down! Down!”
Manuel took the order as one for him. He sank to his knees, his hands up, his snake’s eyes on her, primly pleading for his life.
Dropping the rifle to the floor, she ran to Rex who looked stunned as he sank to a sofa, one hand over his shoulder.
Skye yanked at the buttons on his shirt, pulled it open and pressed him to lie down. “Let me,” she ordered him as she spread the material wide and saw that the bullet had entered his shoulder. “Thank you, God,” she murmured as she examined it for proximity to a major vessel. “I think you’ll live, Ranger, sir.”
He gave her a cockeyed smile. “Am I living with you, author, ma’am?” Then his eyes went a little loopy.
And Skye saved her response for a time and place where few others would hear the conversation this answer required.
Big Bend Regional Hospital in Alpine might be small by Skye’s big city standards but the emergency care was fast and efficient. That was all she needed to feel confident handing Rex over to the ER team who met them at intake.
“He’ll do just fine, ma’am,” Jose told her as they walked toward his truck in the small parking lot. The night was silent, dark and deep, only the stars dotting the velvet of midnight. “He’s strong, healthy. And he knows how to take care of himself.”
“I’m grateful his wound was only the shoulder.”
“We all are. And that you weren’t hurt badly, too.” Jose opened his door for her, closed it and walked around to climb up in the cab.
She shifted in the seat. Her limbs were sore, her hands and wrists aching from the rough handling and the ropes, but with the nurses’ help at the hospital, she felt better. But tired. Exhausted, actually. “I have no idea how you found me.”
Jose turned the ignition and they were off, down the road through town. “West Texas might look gigantic, but when it comes down to it, there are only a few roads and a few ways you can get around. We knew from Rex’s phone message what direction those Gonzaga boys took off. It was easy to do process of elimination and track them without them getting any idea we were on their tail.”
“Knowing there were three men who took me, I’m surprised you and Rex didn’t call for more help.”
Jose’s dark brows shot high. Then he chuckled. “You don’t know the Ranger motto, do you?”
She shook her head. “No. Rex didn’t tell me.”
“I’m not surprised. We do try to be modest.”
She snorted. “Right. Humble, too, I hear. What’s the motto?”
“One Ranger. One town.”
“Earned by some Ranger who stood off a whole mess of varmints, I suppose.”
Grinning, Jose nodded at her attempt at Texan twang. “It’s not unusual. I was on my way to your house and passing close by to where they attacked you both, so I came along with Rex. We figured we might need lots of firepower, knowing how the Gonzagas kill first and ask questions later.”
She shivered, clutching her arms. “Thanks, Jose. I needed that.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He put his gaze on the road and frowned. “While you were in the ER with Rex, I received orders for the next few weeks.”
“Oh?” She sat back, ready for the news. Amid her worries about Rex’s gunshot wound and his recovery, she expected that local law enforcement would have a new plan for her until the trial. Rex needed time to recuperate and taking care of her should not be high on his to-do list. But she had hoped they could stay together and she could take care of him. “What do the Powers That Be have in mind?”
“We have no idea if your house was detected and we can’t let you go back there.”
Sad for that, missing Rex already, she rubbed her hands down her jeans. Torn and dirty, her clothes were a wreck. Like my state of mind. “So what’s the plan?”
“I’m your new housemate.”
Rex had told her that Jose was engaged and his fiancée was a v
ery possessive redhead. Skye gave him a horrified smile. “How will that go over with your girlfriend?”
“She knows it’s my job. Besides, it’s only for a few weeks.”
“Two until the trial.”
“Right. Maybe one more in court for you to testify, and then you’re done! You go back to Chicago.”
Skye glanced out her window to watch the muted grays and blacks of the rugged landscape. What if I’m not going back to Chicago? Can I live here? Did Rex mean what he said, about living together? “Then where are you taking me?”
“Farther west. A safe house we run over near El Paso.”
“What happens to the other house?” she asked, wondering who would go in, see their bed and know what happened there. She certainly wasn’t ashamed of how they’d made love, but the intimacy of it was so real, so raw, it should be only hers and Rex’s. “What happens to my clothes, my belongings?”
“We’ll have an officer go in and supervise while we get your things and get a maid service to clean up.”
“And Rex?”
“What about him?”
“Will he know where we are?” Where I am?
“Best not to, no.”
“I need to know how he is, Jose. Can I call him and—”
“Not a good idea. Sorry.”
“Right. Got it.” She turned away, lost suddenly without Rex. As if he were my anchor. And I’m drifting away.
“Don’t worry. He’s going to be at the trial. And I’m sure you’ll be able to talk there in the courthouse.”
She bit her lower lip to stop herself from crying like a kid. Must be nerves from all the terrors of the day. “Sure. Good.”
Jose reached across, took her hand and squeezed it. “Know what the other motto of the Texas Rangers is?”
Sniffing back her tears, she inhaled and smiled at him. “No, tell me.”
“One Ranger. One woman.”
StrongArmsoftheLaw Page 6
