A Warrior's Vow

by Marilyn Tracy

  Leeza remembered the Rancho Milagro housekeeper, Rita, talking about warm El Niño winds and the monster they brought with them to the Carlsbad. A monster who stole children and ripped at them with sharp chubacabra claws.

  In the superstitious world according to Rita, this myth explained the very real disappearances of several children over the last ten years. It had taken a private and pointed reprimand from Leeza to make her stop. The children had taken the stories in stride—except for ceasing to play outside at night—but the tales had made Leeza acutely aware of the remote location of the ranch, the isolation, and most of all, her own sense of inadequacy as one of the house-mothers.

  "What's a chubacabra?" she asked Daggert now.

  He gave her an wryly sympathetic look. "A story to scare children with. Nothing more. Whatever killed Donny wasn't some mythological goatsucker."

  "It's a goatsucker? What's that?"

  "Not the birds, that's for sure. In truth, it's nothing. A myth. There's no such thing as a chubacabra. Just a tale."

  "So you believe whatever hurt your son was a man."

  "Flesh and blood, yes. A man? No, he's a monster."

  She hated to ask the question, but had to. "Do you think this man could have Enrique?"

  Daggert shook his head. "I've been watching for other footprints, other hoofprints. Nothing. So far, the boy is alone." He didn't have to spell out for her what might happen if the child did run afoul of this monster, and she clamped her mind shut on her too vivid imagination.

  "So you think he's okay tonight?"

  Daggert didn't answer and she realized he didn't need to. He couldn't possibly know for certain what had befallen Enrique. All they knew was that the boy was missing a glove and had tossed away gum wrappers.

  Leeza said, "He doesn't fit any pattern. He ran away."

  "He ran away, but into what?"

  "He just ran away. Please. It's simple." Why had she said "please"? Did she want him to stop, to keep a truth from her? She was the one who always needed every piece of data, refusing to embark on a venture unless every detail was laid before her.

  "Nothing's simple," Daggert said.

  Leeza felt something inside twisting into a tight knot. "Say there was such a thing as a cat with 'dead' claws, would you believe in the mountain lion theory then?" she asked.

  "No. Because a big cat seldom comes into town. Even if one did, a big cat won't drag its prey forty miles."

  "Forty miles!"

  "Donny went missing in Carlsbad. I found him on Cima La Luz."

  "Oh my God," Leeza said, instinctively reaching out to Daggert and touching his forearm. "I'm so sorry." A muscle jumped beneath her fingers and she withdrew her hand sharply.

  She couldn't imagine how difficult this trek must be for James Daggert—following the same path he'd followed to find his own son's mangled body.

  Finally, she asked, "And that's your life?"

  "My life?"

  "Vengeance. Justice. That's your life?"

  "Yes. It's enough for me," he said with bleak finality. Then, without looking at her, he added, "We better get some sleep."

  Sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. But she could accept his changing the subject. "I never asked what people call you," she said.

  "Pinnéniqua."

  "What?"

  "It's Apache."

  "That's your name? Your Apache name?" She thought how she'd imagined he looked every bit an Indian warrior with the hard planes of his face and his jet-black long hair.

  He gave a half smile, but there was nothing remotely friendly about it.

  "What does it mean? And how do you say it again?"

  "Pin-né-ni-qua. It means Bitter Man Who Walks with Ghosts."

  Leeza blinked. A man searching for and finding his own son too late would be a bitter man indeed. "Your parents gave you that name when you were born?"

  Daggert's smile warmed slightly. "No. Donny's mother did, after he was gone."

  "Pin-né—what?"

  "Call me Daggert or James. It doesn't matter."

  Somehow, she thought it might. He'd been the one to offer the information about his Indian name. She remembered something that Pablo, one of the ranch hands, had mentioned before she and the tracker set out on this trek. He'd said that Daggert didn't talk much to outsiders. She'd taken it as a slur against her eastern lineage, but now suspected Pablo had been referring to James Daggert's Apache heritage.

  Leeza wanted to reach out to him, not just physically, but emotionally, as well. She wanted to acknowledge the enormity of his confidence. Her friends and partners, Jeannie and Corrie, the fellow orphans she'd met in college and bonded with like none other, were the only people she ever allowed inside, the only ones who truly knew her. With them, she didn't have to pick over possible segues; she just knew how to talk, how to be open. With this man, with the tragedy in his past still so present in his haunted eyes, she didn't have a clue how to go about sharing a facet of herself in exchange.

  "Do you need some help?" he asked.

  Startled, she raised her gaze and met the full force of his unusual eyes. Though they had been sitting side-by-side during the entire aftermath of dinner, somehow he seemed closer now. Close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.

  "Getting into those shiny red pajamas," he drawled.

  She was sure she was every bit as red as the material of her sleepwear. "No, thank you, Mr. Daggert. I—I think I can manage."

  He leaned closer and lifted a hand to her chin, stroking her skin with a callused thumb. She felt the touch to her very soul.

  "I can be a very good assistant," he murmured against her bare throat.

  She moaned a little and let her head fall back to allow him greater access.

  "If I were to give you an Apache name," he said, pulling her blouse open slightly and pressing his lips to the ridges of her collarbone, "I would call you Denzhoné Bidáá."

  Despite the catch in her breath, she asked him to repeat it, thinking that the man's soft voice might have been created to speak the Apache phrase. He complied. It sounded slurred and silken, more of a hum than distinct syllables.

  "What does it mean?" she breathed.

  He kissed her instead of answering. His lips, warm and firm, captured hers and plied them gently, tenderly. Questingly.

  The fire paled by the comparison to the blaze he lit in her. She gave a small moan of acceptance, of undiluted pleasure, and leaned into the caress, into his hands. The kiss deepened, ripened into full passion. Because he was less conflicted this time, Daggert's mouth was hot with desire only, with a hunger pure and unfettered, uncomplicated and sincere.

  As he slid them lower to the ground, cushioning her head with one hand while slowly caressing her with the other, she found herself losing touch with the night, with worry, with everything but the feel of this man's growing fervor. And her own.

  Sancho barked and, abruptly, she was alone.

  Daggert, as if telekinetic, stood some five feet from her, on the other side of the fire, one hand holding his opened knife and the other splayed, ready for a fight. His legs were bent slightly and his head tilted to one side.

  Sancho growled.

  Leeza struggled to regain a seating position, still breathing raggedly from his kisses. Her eyes strafed the black countryside, frantically trying to ascertain what lurked outside the light of the campfire. "What is it?" she asked.

  Daggert waved his free hand, hushing her.

  A coyote howled somewhere very close. The peculiar yipping sounds sent chills down her spine and splashed gooseflesh across her skin. She must have made some noise, for both Daggert and Sancho turned cold eyes in her direction.

  The coyote gave another call, which was echoed by another farther away.

  Daggert bent to the fire, his knife tucked away and his tension reined in. He added more of the wood she'd gathered earlier. "Another lost pup," he said. "That's his mother calling him home."

  "Coyote, right?"

&nbs
p; Daggert lifted his eyes in her direction and smiled a little. The shadows played across the hard features, softening them. "Don't worry. I won't let them get you, Denzhoné."

  She couldn't remember anyone ever giving her a name before. Perhaps her parents had had pet names for her when she was a little girl, but she couldn't remember any if they had. And John and Cora Nelson didn't believe in such nonsense.

  Leeza gave him a slightly tremulous smile. "I'll hold you to that," she said.

  "We'd better turn in," he said.

  She felt a pang of regret even as she let her breath out in a sigh of relief. It was better to face the reality of the cold night than to give in to the bliss of the amnesiac quality of his kisses. She could lose herself in his arms and then who would worry about Enrique?

  Worse, who would save her from emotions she'd never encountered before and didn't know how to handle?

  Conscious of the coyotes so close to camp, she asked Daggert to walk with her to their rough toilet facilities and to turn his back as he had the night before. She told herself not to feel self-conscious, but did nevertheless.

  As she swiftly prepared for bed, donning her pajamas, she noticed that this time he didn't burn himself.

  But when she turned around she could feel his gaze on every inch of her. And her red satin pajamas might as well have been transparent.

  "Does Denzhoné mean 'red'?" she asked suspiciously.

  "No." He didn't elaborate.

  "What does it mean, then?" she asked.

  He slid his hand into her hair and pulled her to him. The kiss was no less tender, no less filled with carefully banked passion, but it also carried a note of finality.

  "Good night, Denzhoné Bidáá."

  "You're not going to tell me, are you?" she asked, a slight smile on her lips.

  "Not tonight."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because you'd seduce me and we'd get a late start in the morning."

  She was still smiling as she pulled the flap of her sleeping bag up to her chin.

  The stars didn't seem quite as heavy that night and she found herself relaxing into the rhythm of Daggert's slow and steady breathing. She stretched a hand out of her sleeping bag and tucked it into his curled palm. His breathing never changed, but his fingers tightened around hers.

  Sometime in the middle of the night she dreamed she heard him singing softly, and when she turned to look at him, he'd turned into a black wolf. The Daggert wolf stared at her for a long time, then, at some little sound in the darkness, turned and disappeared into the dark.

  She heard him call out her name with a long low howl.

  But the howl was lonely and filled with despair.

  * * *

  In a fireless camp, halfway between the site where Daggert and Leeza slept, and the place where the boy they sought huddled beneath a tall pine tree standing beside a narrow sliver of a tributary that would lead to the Rio Grande, the hunter played with his toys. A serrated hunting knife with an intricately hand-carved hilt, a pair of preserved mountain lion claws, a bear claw, a map. He set them on the blanket in front of him, scarcely able to see them in the darkness he needed to remain invisible. He didn't have to look at them; touch alone gave him great pleasure.

  A coyote howled in the distance and the hunter smiled. The woman and the boy would be frightened. They were on their way to learning their lessons.

  And when he was finished with them, Daggert would learn his.

  The hunter chuckled aloud.

  Chapter 6

  Leeza was up with Daggert, working beside him in the cold predawn. She fed the horses as he prepared the human breakfasts. She ate her meal with the same alacrity Sancho displayed. She sand-washed the plates afterward while Daggert rolled the sleeping bags.

  "You're a quick study," he said.

  As compliments went, it was moderately banal, but it suffused her with pride. It told her she was learning to hold her own even in the remote wilds of New Mexico.

  "Thank you," she said. "In another eon or two, I might just get the knack of this. How are you at financials?"

  "I've never heard that word in the plural before, so I'd hazard a guess I would be lousy at it," Daggert said.

  Leeza chuckled. His response was so silly it was funny. And so simple it had to be genuine. Hard core real. Her laughter evaporated. He'd never heard financial in the plural before. What did that tell her? That he didn't play the stock market? That he didn't have a mind? That he didn't have a portfolio with a tracker's retirement safely tucked away in some 401K drawer?

  It told her that in his world, perhaps the real world, such things didn't matter. That they suddenly didn't matter to her so much anymore was troubling.

  And strangely freeing.

  "We'd better hit the road," he said.

  "Fine," she answered. She felt stiff and was relatively certain that if this trek lasted much longer she would discover a whole new meaning of discomfort.

  Still, she felt eager to move out. If Daggert was right and Enrique wasn't far ahead of them, they could possibly find the boy by lunchtime and be heading back to Rancho Milagro shortly thereafter.

  Daggert's meticulous attention to breaking camp was vaguely annoying, as it seemed to take precious time. Enrique had been out in this wilderness for some fifty-eight hours now.

  Finally, Daggert turned and offered her a leg up onto Belle. Leeza all but flew onto the saddle. He helped position her stirrups, and Leeza's heart literally skipped a beat. His hand on her calf made her feel like a schoolgirl in the midst of her first slow dance. When he ran that same hand up her jeans and rested it on her thigh, she couldn't breathe.

  "We'll find him," he said. "Don't worry."

  She felt a stab of guilt that she hadn't even been thinking of Enrique. Not with Daggert's hands on her. It was all she could do to stay on the horse and not slide down into his arms.

  He patted her leg and turned to mount Stone. A few seconds earlier, she hadn't wanted to waste a single moment of time, needing to find Enrique. Now, perversely, a part of her wanted to stay right where they were, and test the proverbial waters of their mutual desire for each other.

  Even as she thought it, she realized he'd ridden out of their campsite, leaving her to catch up. As they rode higher and higher into the mountains, she caught the heady scent of pine, felt the chill of rising above five thousand feet, and heard the raucous calls of the Stellar's jays, the black-hooded mountain birds commonly called camp robbers. She relieved the pressure on her rear by standing in the stirrups. She often witnessed Daggert doing the same.

  Her cell phone worked for a few precious minutes along about midmorning, as they came out on top of a rocky ridge. No one at the ranch had heard a thing from Enrique. Chance Salazar's men had checked all bus stations and airports from Carlsbad to Roswell, and none of the employees at any of them had seen a little boy fitting Enrique's description.

  Leeza told Jeannie about Sancho bringing in one of Enrique's gloves and Daggert's analysis of what that might mean. Jeannie told her that some of the townspeople had also gone looking for Enrique. "It's a big wilderness. They know Daggert's the best in the business, but they're worried about a boy being out there so long. Mr. Jenkins from one of the grocery stores in Carlsbad. Jack, Chance's former deputy. Bill, the manager of Annie's Café. They're all up there, in the mountains, too."

  Jeannie was cut off while assuring Leeza that their collective faith lay in the two tracking Enrique into the mountains. "Just be careful, honey. People say Daggert's—"

  "He's what?" Leeza had called out. "What about Daggert?"

  She grimaced at the static-filled cell phone. It had been fully charged before she'd started on the trek, and she had an extra battery pack in her saddlebags, but she'd never dreamed the mission would take longer than a couple of days at most. But it wasn't batteries that caused the static; once again she was simply out of range.

  "They haven't seen him," Leeza said.

  "As long as the horse
hasn't come back to the barn without him, we're okay," Daggert said. "And even then, we'd have Sancho to smell him out."

  Surprising her, Daggert smiled. She couldn't help but smile back.

  "That's better. As you told me, you should do that more often," he said. "The river's up ahead and we'll stop there for lunch."

  Leeza wondered at Daggert's seeking her smile. She smiled easily and often. At least, with Jeannie and Corrie. She'd never thought about her smile before. There wasn't too much to smile about in venture speculation, except when a deal worked or a new business galloped toward earning a slot on the stock exchange. And she wasn't one to fraternize with her staff or other corporate sharks.

  She'd been stunned at the rich sound of Daggert's laughter and hadn't lied to him when she'd told him it literally stole her breath. Now he'd told her she should smile more often. Did her smile have the same effect on him that his laughter did on her?

  The mere notion brought a smile to her lips, and suddenly her heart felt lighter than it had in days. The hope that they would soon find Enrique buoyed her spirits every bit as much as did considering what it would take to make Daggert laugh again.

  Though they traveled for an additional few hours, it seemed to take mere minutes to descend a long escarpment leading to the river Daggert had said would be there. Despite the slippery bed of pine needles underfoot, the horses stepped livelier the nearer they came to fresh water. Leeza understood exactly how they felt.

  "What's the name of this river?" she asked.

  Daggert shook his head. "It's just a tributary. It's one of a hundred feeders for the Rio Grande. This one's bigger than some, smaller than others. I call it Rio Cima, because it's on this mountain."

  She thought about that as she held the horses' reins, letting them drink their fill in the gurgling, clear brook Daggert called a river. By comparison, the Potomac seemed an ocean.

  His words had seemed so prosaic and yet the meaning behind them somehow prophetic. It was similar, in a way, to those life statements her adoptive parents had fed her throughout her childhood years. Only Daggert's assessment of the tributaries threw everything into a tight perspective. Some troubles were bigger than others, some smaller. It was a remarkably simple way of dividing complexities.