A Warrior's Vow

by Marilyn Tracy

  "Me, too?" Corrie added.

  They rushed into her room as if anticipating her refusal. When had she ever refused either of them anything, except her confidences? And they'd had more of those than she ever shared with anyone else.

  Jeannie sat down on Leeza's bed, while Corrie took the antique club chair by the window. They looked at her as if they carried bad news.

  "What?" she asked, and felt her heart thud heavily. Something had happened to Daggert.

  "Thompkins is going to trial at the end of the week," Jeannie said bluntly. "Chance wanted you to know. The prosecution expects you to testify."

  "Fine," she said.

  Corrie, elfin little creature that she was, tucked her bare feet beneath her in a seemingly impossible twist. She pushed a stray strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. Her eyes filled with tears. "What can we do?" she asked.

  "About what?" Leeza looked away from the worry in her friend's eyes. Stay cool, she told herself.

  "About the fact that your heart is breaking," Jeannie said matter-of-factly.

  "Me? The shark without a heart?" Leeza asked, using one of her employees' favorite cracks about her.

  Jeannie sighed and Corrie wiped her chocolate-brown eyes. Leeza dropped her gaze to the sorrowful dog at her feet.

  "Okay, you want the truth?"

  "Yes," Corrie breathed.

  "Until I went after Enrique with James Daggert, I could have sworn everybody was right about me. I didn't have a heart, I had a lump of coal where my heart should be. Dr. Seuss met me before he wrote The Grinch Who Stole Christmas…the whole shebang. I was convinced that the reason Enrique ran away was because I was too hard on him."

  "Oh, Leez," Jeannie said. But she exchanged a swift glance with Corrie.

  Leeza smiled wryly. "You don't have to soft-pedal it. I was too hard. Every time I looked at him, I saw myself at that age, going from foster home to foster home and getting more hardened and more frightened with each one. By the time John and Cora Nelson took me in, I was a mess."

  Jeannie's face tightened. She'd never said an unkind word about them—about anyone, to Leeza's knowledge—but her face now spoke volumes.

  "Okay, they weren't the easiest people to cotton up to, as Chance would say. But they were doing the best they knew how, or at least what they believed was the right thing to do. And when I saw Enrique, I saw myself. I saw all his promise, and saw him throwing his chances away."

  "But Enrique loves you," Corrie said.

  Leeza studied her "little sister" and sighed. "Now, maybe. But he deserved more than I was dribbling out to him. He deserves the hugs, the kisses, the approbation, the everything I couldn't give him."

  "But you can give it to him now," Jeannie said.

  Leeza closed her eyes. "Exactly. Now. Because when I was out there on that mountain looking for him, a stranger showed me that I do have a heart."

  "James Daggert," Jeannie said.

  "As the only other choice was his horse or Bill Thompkins, yes, James Daggert."

  "Do you love him?" Corrie asked.

  Leeza remembered Daggert asking her that question about John and Cora.

  She'd used James Daggert to find Enrique. He'd used her to find solace. They'd needed each other. And wanted each other. And she wanted him still. And ached for him. And found herself learning more about her own emotions every day because of him.

  "Yes," Leeza said finally, and clenched her fist.

  "Does he know?" Jeannie asked gently.

  Leeza closed her eyes. "No. Not in so many words. At least, I never told him."

  "It's not like you had a whole lot of time, hon," Jeannie said softly. "You were only out there three days."

  "It was a lifetime," Leeza said, sighing. "I shouldn't have taken his dog. Sancho's miserable."

  As if understanding the gist of the conversation, Sancho released a groan of resignation.

  "Daggert will be at the trial," Corrie said hopefully, ever the optimist these days.

  "Great. So what do I do—waltz up to him and declare my undying love? Say 'Sorry to bother you when you've made it perfectly obvious you don't want anything to do with me, but you brought me to life out there and I'm addicted to you now'?"

  "Is that how you feel?" Jeannie asked.

  Leeza looked out the window at the open grassland. "I don't know how I feel. I've never felt it before. Don't you get it? Until those three days with him, love was just a word, a symbol for something I didn't even understand. I feel like I've been colorblind all my life and everybody else was extolling the virtues of red, when all I could see was a dull gray."

  Corrie slipped from the club chair and wrapped her arms around Leeza's neck. "It'll be okay."

  Leeza patted her friend's arm and met Jeannie's eyes across the room. "Sure. There's nothing but sunshine and roses on the horizon."

  Jeannie stood up. "James Daggert's ex-wife called this afternoon. She invited you to a sing for Donny this weekend."

  Leeza straightened and extricated herself from Corrie's arms. "Another one? And what is that—a sing?"

  "It's a cleansing ceremony," Jeannie said. "Anyone can do one, but sometimes they bring in a cacique, a medicine man, and he performs a highly stylized ritual. They call it a 'sing' because that's what the cacique does—he sings and chants until balance is restored."

  "And I was invited?"

  "Yes. She said to wear comfortable clothes, bring a coat and whatever you needed to stay overnight."

  "I'll go," Leeza said. She felt a surge of hope. If nothing else, it would at least give her a glimpse of Daggert's world, the culture he'd grown up in, the place he called home.

  "And she said to bring Sancho."

  Leeza's heart fell. She heard it shatter on the hardwood floor.

  Sancho growled, undoubtedly hearing it, too.

  * * *

  Daggert felt Leeza's presence before he saw her in the courtroom. He saw the heads turning, the sucking in of guts and the slack-jawed expression on the men's faces, and the straightening of shoulders and quick touches to their hair by the women.

  But then, Daggert was sure that even if he were blind, he would know when Leeza Nelson entered a room. He would feel it.

  As it was, it was as if the entire courtroom drew a stunned breath, shocked silent by her sheer beauty and command.

  He turned finally and joined the crowd with his own swift intake of air. He'd seen her in fancy riding clothes, scruffy from the three-day ride in the desert, battered by a storm, naked in an icy river, and warm and glowing in their makeshift bed, but he'd never seen her in her eastern business garb. She was dressed all in cream, from her form-fitting suit to her cream heels, which made her taller than most men in the room. A single strand of pearls that Daggert had no doubt were real caressed her neck in the exact same place he remembered pressing his lips. Her blond hair was swept back in a loose, tousled style that Daggert was sure would soon be the most popular hairstyle in Carlsbad. And her cobalt eyes scanned the room with just a hint of disdain and condescension. A faint smile clung to her apricot-colored lips.

  Lips that had met his with a passion such as he'd never encountered before. Lips that had served to wake him up as surely as the Prince had once woken Sleeping Beauty. Only in his case, it was Beauty who woke the heart-weary prince.

  She saw him and, for a single heartbeat, checked her smooth entrance to the courtroom. She nodded coolly and her eyes moved beyond him. Dismissing him. He remembered her telling him that he could talk to her, that talking was surely in the great tracker rule book. He heard her tired voice asking him if he was enjoying himself when his hand had strayed too deeply beneath her blouse. And when he'd answered that he wasn't dead, she'd said that was something to look forward to.

  She walked past him now, the sway of her skirt revealing her health, her beauty and her taunting of him.

  Daggert smiled.

  * * *

  Leeza didn't look back at Daggert no matter how much she wanted to. She'd spent
over an hour getting ready that morning, going through outfit after outfit, trying to decide just which article of clothing would drive him the most insane.

  She always dressed with care, but never with such obsessive need to make a statement.

  She'd wanted him to see that she was just fine. That the lack of a phone call or visit from a tracker from the wilds of New Mexico hadn't driven her out of her mind.

  But when she saw him she almost forgot her determination to appear indifferent to him. Her heart had tried to leap from her chest as though seeking the one person who could make it pound so.

  She'd never seen him in anything but jeans and Western wear suited to roughing it in the mountains. Standing there in a dark suit, his crisp white shirt a stark contrast to his earth-toned skin and jet-black hair, he stunned her with his sheer beauty. When they'd been out in the mountains, he'd reminded her of a lone black wolf. Strangely, with him in these formal clothes, stiffly standing there in a crowded courtroom, the image felt more accurate than ever.

  She saw something in his eyes when he looked at her, but couldn't tell what it was. She'd given him a small nod and thought she caught the faintest glimmer of a smile. But she'd passed him by without waiting for that smile to deepen.

  But she felt his eyes on her.

  Don't burn yourself, she thought, and smiled at the memory.

  As a material witness, she was only allowed in the courtroom during the opening session. The same rule applied to Daggert, but as they weren't supposed to confer on testimony, and she couldn't very well throw herself at his feet, she avoided him like the proverbial plague.

  When she was called in for her testimony, she gave a concise account of her encounter with Bill Thompkins. She looked directly at the man who'd tried to kill Enrique, who'd shot Daggert and who had leaped down a cliff side and left deep gashes on her, and pointed him out to the interested jury.

  No, she told the prosecutor, she hadn't known much about Bill Thompkins prior to her search for Enrique, only that he worked at Annie's Café. And yes, he'd frightened her. And yes, she'd believed he'd killed James Daggert. And no, she didn't believe any of them would have survived that day had Daggert not been alive, after all, and come after them to subdue Thompkins. Yes, Daggert had certainly helped the man to the ground, but kick him down? No. And as for the knife in the man's leg, she'd been the one to put it there, albeit unknowingly. She'd only been defending herself.

  When the defense attorney asked her if she thought Thompkins had mental problems, she shrugged, disclaiming any pretensions to being an expert in the field of psychiatry.

  "As a layman, Ms. Nelson, and a CEO who personally oversees the hiring and firing of a corporation employing more than three thousand workers, did you find something wrong with Bill Thompkins? Would you have hired him?"

  Leeza frowned. "Hired him? Probably not. Fired him, almost certainly. I tend to terminate the employ of people who threaten to kill a nine-year-old boy and who strike at me with cutoff mountain lion paws. Call me silly, but I'd find that a pretty good rule to live by."

  At the nearly apoplectic response from the defense attorney, her candid statements were stricken from the record, but she knew the jury had heard them.

  In truth, she agreed with little Enrique: the man was crazy. Did that make him above the law? She didn't believe so, but knew the way the indictment had been presented precluded any possibility that the man would be acquitted. He would either wind up in the state penitentiary, running from a nasty crowd of men who wanted to call him "Sugar," or spend the rest of his days trading crayons with Napoleon and George Washington in an unpleasant state-run institution and doing the Thorazine shuffle. Either way he would be taken off the streets and out of the precious mountains that belonged to everyone, not just one psychopath who had animal fantasies.

  She ran into Jack Dawson in the hallway, and though they didn't directly discuss the case, he let her know he'd persuaded the powers that be to reopen the investigation of Donny's murder.

  Chance told her later that Jack's investigation revealed that DNA results conclusively proved the claws in Thompkins's possession were responsible for Donny's death. He also told her that Daggert had moved the jury to tears when he'd described what he'd seen on that mountain four years ago.

  "And how was he?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

  "He was Daggert," Chance had said with a shrug. "Not much ruffles that man."

  Leeza had wanted to argue with her friend's husband. Had, in fact, been angry with him for not seeing that such a description as Daggert had been requested to provide must have ripped his heart out and laid it on the evidence table for everyone to examine.

  A lot ruffled Daggert.

  Too much had. And for far too long.

  What had Jack said—that shedding a four-year-long search took time?

  She ran into Daggert on the way out of the courtroom the morning before the verdict came in. She was wearing a peach suit and he was wearing a gray blazer. The wolf in him seemed trapped, and obeying a compulsion she was helpless to fight, she crossed the foyer to lay a hand on his arm.

  A war flared in his eyes, but no sign of it crossed his features.

  "You did well," she said.

  "Thank you," he answered, and looked as if he might say more. But just then a reporter shoved a microphone in front of his mouth and demanded to know if he thought the investigation into his son's death had been so delayed because he was Native American.

  He lifted an arm against the microphone, his eyes sharp and angry.

  "Be well," Leeza choked out, and turned away from him.

  "Denzhoné…"

  She stopped, tears filling her eyes.

  But he said nothing else, and she let the crowd buffet her out the door.

  Chapter 16

  "How long will you be gone, Leeza?" Enrique asked her, leaning against the running board of the Chevy Avalanche she was driving to Ruidoso and the Mescalero Apache Reservation.

  Leeza tossed her overnight bag into the jump seat and knelt down beside the boy. She dropped a hand on either side of his head, lightly gripping his thin shoulders. How naturally such a gesture came to her now. Only a month or so ago she hadn't known how to draw him onto her lap when he needed comfort; now small gestures of affection comforted them both.

  "Only tonight, kiddo."

  "And then you'll be back."

  "I'm planning on it."

  "I'll miss you," he said, and threw his arms around her neck, clinging fiercely and almost choking her.

  She closed her eyes, relishing the sun-kissed scent of him, the sandy texture of his hair and her own ability to accept that unvarnished love and return it without hesitation.

  She ruffled his hair as she stood up. She whistled for Sancho, who flew from the veranda into the front seat of the pickup's cab with a joyous bark.

  "He's happy to go," Enrique said enviously.

  Knowing the little boy ached to go with her, she said softly, "He hasn't been all that happy lately."

  Enrique nodded and looked thoughtful. "That's because he doesn't know what's going on."

  Leeza thought she wasn't faring any better than the dog.

  "When will you be back?"

  She sighed. Along with opening her heart to love, she'd opened it to a few other less pleasant emotions—like guilt. She unfastened her wristwatch and handed it down to the boy. "Can you tell time?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "Chance'll show you how," she said with an inner grin. "But what you need to know is that when this watch says the same thing it does right now—which is two o'clock—and when the sun is in the same spot tomorrow as it is right now, I'll be home."

  "Cool," he said. "Is this for keeps?"

  It was an Omega watch and had come dear. But it was only a watch, and she was, after all, a very, very wealthy woman. It was the first time in all her years of struggling to stay at the top of the venture capital game that she actually acknowledged the truth of her s
tatus, and the very first time she'd ever felt any enjoyment about it. It was only money. And spending it could be fun. She chuckled. "Sure, kiddo. Like us. We're for keeps, too."

  The drive to the mountains was accomplished in less than two hours. It was hard to imagine that it had taken Daggert and her three days of hard riding to locate Enrique on the backside of this same mountain range. But then, they'd been following his trail from the ranch, and now she was driving a high-powered Chevrolet on a four-lane highway.

  Sancho sat on the front passenger seat of the pickup, his face turned forward, grinning at the road stretching in front of them. As if he knew he would be seeing Daggert soon.

  Leeza couldn't think of any other reason that Alma TwoFeathers would have requested the dog's presence at a ceremony to restore balance, except to return Sancho to his master.

  Nervousness fluttered in Leeza's stomach and she drew a deep breath to steady herself. There was a slim possibility she would be seeing Daggert soon, as well. She hadn't seen him since the day before Bill Thompkins's verdict was announced.

  She hadn't gone to the courtroom to hear that the man had been sentenced to life without parole in a mental institution for the criminally insane. The news accounts focused on his macabre actions and the more gruesome details of young Donny Daggert's death four years earlier. Leeza hoped Daggert hadn't listened to them, had been outside brushing Stone or walking in the foothills, soaking up peace.

  Investigations were ongoing—the hiker, the housewife, the couple who had been necking in their car. In fact, most of the area's accidental-death cases and all of the animal-mauling cases had been reopened and were being thoroughly cross-checked.

  Following Alma TwoFeathers's directions—which consisted of such oddities as "turn south at the big tree with two dead branches on the top of the hill" and "when you see the rock that looks like a moose, turn west"—and stopping for help at least four times, Leeza finally pulled up in front of a bright pink house nestled among tall pines.

  Six or seven other cars were parked haphazardly around the unfenced yard. A pot of straggling mums sat near the front steps, the only colorful relief to an otherwise monotone expanse. Several dogs of varying breeds ran around her pickup barking happily.