Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Pace lunged at Matt and reached for his throat. Matt grunted at the impact, surprised by Pace’s strength. The kid was growing up. Matt used to be able to throw him off easily, but not anymore.

  “Stop it!” Dani pulled free of Travis’s arms and thrust herself between her son and stepson. Pace backed off instantly. Matt sat where he was and rubbed his bruised throat.

  “I don’t know what’s going on between you two,” Dani said angrily, “and right now I don’t care. We’ve got more important things to consider. When Serena is home and safe, you two can tear each other to pieces if you want.”

  Matt cringed inwardly. He hated to upset Dani for any reason, and she was under so much strain right now that he was ashamed for adding to her trouble. He lowered his gaze and caught a glimpse of something white on the floor next to his foot. He reached down and picked up the folded piece of paper.

  It was a note. It must have fallen out of the pouch when he and Pace struggled.

  “Read it,” Travis ordered.

  “It says…” God. No. That light-headed feeling threatened to send him to the floor. “‘A sister for a brother. She died the way he did—slowly, and with much pain. Her screams now echo across this canyon with his.’“The paper rattled as Matt’s hand shook. “It’s signed…’Caleb Miller Scott.’“

  “Oh, my God,” Dani whispered.

  “Abe Scott’s brother?” Travis asked, dazed.

  “Apparently so.” Matt swore viciously. “I should have known! Goddammit! I should have known it was too much of a coincidence.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pace demanded. “You know this bastard?”

  Matt closed his eyes and swallowed. “Rena and I met him in Tombstone. We only knew him as Caleb. But his eyes. God, I should have known those eyes. He said he wanted to come calling on Rena. Goddamn, I should have known.”

  Behind his closed lids, Matt saw once again Abe Scott riding from behind the trees. He shook the vision away. No time for that now. Angela was dead. Abe Scott was dead.

  And now Caleb Scott had Serena.

  Matt made himself read the note again. “Well, we can call off the search.”

  “But you said she was alive.” Travis’s voice shook. “You said that…thing…wasn’t hers.”

  “It’s not hers, Dad. She’s alive, and now I know where he’s holding her.”

  Pace nodded. “Cos-codee.”

  Dani frowned. “Chihuahua’s old hideout in Mexico?”

  “That’s where we caught up with Scott two years ago. He got himself trapped in there. Didn’t know there was a back way out.”

  “But there isn’t a back way out,” Dani protested. “That’s why it’s called Cos-codee, No Escape.”

  “Around the point, on the back side, there’s a pass up on the cedar ledge. It’s just wide enough to lead a horse through, as long as both you and your horse aren’t too wide. A loaded pack mule would never make it.”

  Later that evening, when it was finally settled that Matt and Pace would ride out at first light, the two men sat with their parents in the salon. Matt watched as Pace stared broodingly at the floor.

  Suddenly Pace jerked, spilling part of his drink. He turned abruptly and stared hard at his mother, something dark and unreadable in his eyes.

  Matt tensed. Something was happening. Something was wrong. “Pace?”

  “Do you feel it?” Pace asked his mother.

  But Dani didn’t hear her son, much less answer him. She sprang upright in her chair. Her glass of sherry fell from her fingers as her eyes glazed over. A deep moan of anguish rose from the depths of her soul. “Nooooo!”

  Pace jerked again. With a look of revulsion, he brushed frantically and repeatedly at his chest. “He’s touching her. Oh, God, I can feel him touching her!”

  Pace’s body became Serena’s. He could feel the cruel hands grasping at her, pinching, hurting, as he tried in vain to brush them away.

  Matt met his father’s gaze. Each understood what was happening, though it had never happened before. Pace was feeling on his body what Dani was seeing in her mind.

  Travis had never tried to free his wife from one of her visions before, but this time he had to. He couldn’t let her see whatever was happening to her daughter. If his suspicions were correct— The blood in his veins turned to ice. He shook with horror. He couldn’t let her see!

  “Dani!” He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Dani! No! You have to stop!”

  Amazingly, he got through to her. Her eyes focused abruptly on him. “Travis! He’s—he’s—oh, God!” Tears gushed down her face as she trembled violently in his arms. “My baby, Travis! He’s…raping my baby!”

  Travis tightened his embrace and buried his face in her hair, wetting it with his own tears. He’d never felt so totally helpless in his life.

  Something deep inside Matt twisted. With a gut-wrenching sense of dread, he forced his gaze back to Pace.

  Suddenly Pace stiffened. “Serenaaaa!” Breathing heavily, he jerked to his feet and stumbled toward the empty fireplace. He leaned against the mantle with outstretched arms, his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut. His face was that of a man suffering the worst torture imaginable.

  Matt wanted to scream. He wanted to kill.

  A moment later, gasping for breath, Pace sprinted from the room. Matt followed as Pace threw open the front door with a bang and dropped to his knees just beyond, where he promptly heaved the contents of his stomach into the flower bed.

  Matt felt his own stomach churn with the knowledge of what had just happened to Serena. As he turned away and walked to his room, his rage increased with each step, even as his vision blurred. He nursed the rage. It grew hotter and more powerful until it glowed white-hot in the pit of his stomach and threatened to consume him.

  In his room, with the door closed, he sat on the edge of his bed and gripped the mattress to keep from screaming.

  Soon, too soon, anger faded. Pain and guilt took its place.

  Rena! Rena, I’m so sorry. Forgive me. I should never have come home. I should never have let you stay in Tombstone. I should have known who Caleb was. I should have killed him. I should never have hurt you. I should never have touched you. I should never have held you, kissed you.

  I should never have let you out of my sight.

  Then slowly, selfishly, the unbidden thought came, I should have loved you while I had the chance.

  He pushed the thought away. It was wrong! She was his sister, for Christsake!

  No, she isn’t, whispered a devil in the back of his mind. Her mother was only his stepmother. Her father was some unknown Apache rapist. He and Serena weren’t actually related at all—not by blood.

  But they were related by law, and by love, and by virtue of having been raised as brother and sister since the day she was born.

  He remembered the day she was born as if it were yesterday. Godamighty. He had been nearly eleven. Even if they’d been raised as strangers and only just recently met, he was too damned old for her.

  His mind told him it was wrong, but his heart, and his body, too, he admitted, told him it was right. All the things he’d felt for her since she found him in Tombstone rolled over him, enveloped him, and not one of those feelings had anything to do with brother and sister. They were feelings a man had for a woman—the woman he wanted.

  Now, because of his own foolishness in refusing to recognize the truth sooner, she was out there somewhere, being tormented…because of him.

  He’d heard of women who’d been raped and could never stand the touch of a man afterward. Dani had been that way for a while, when he’d first known her. Would that happen to Rena?

  The thought crept forward again. I should have loved her while I had the chance. If he had, he could have given her pleasure like she never knew existed. He could have introduced her slowly and gently to the physical side of love. She’d wanted him, he knew that. And he’d wanted her—still did.

  But it was too late.

&nbs
p; He’d been so worried about what was right and what was wrong, and now all Serena would know of lovemaking would be violence and pain and fear. It was something she might never get over.

  Any way he looked at it, Serena’s pain was because of him. Caleb Scott was out to get even for the death of his brother. Serena had fallen into the bastard’s grasp because she was running away from the pain Matt had inflicted on her.

  With effort, Matt pushed the thoughts away. If he expected to find her, he had to get some sleep first. And he would find her. Or die trying.

  He lay in the dark for hours, trying to keep his mind blank, before he finally fell asleep. It seemed like only minutes later when he woke and cried out, cold sweat streaming down his heaving chest from a nightmare. The images kept playing over and over in his head of Caleb Scott forcing his way between Serena’s soft thighs and thrusting brutally into her virgin flesh.

  Even though they weren’t related by blood, Matt and Pace looked so much alike the next morning it was uncanny. One face was slightly darker than the other, with black hair surrounding it instead of blond. But their features, usually so different, looked as though they had been chiseled from the same piece of stone. Jaws were rigid, chins prominent and determined. Each pair of eyes, one pair brown, the other blue, was filled with cold, hard purpose. With death.

  Travis Colton stood with his arm supporting his wife in the predawn light and eyed his two oldest sons, one of his body, the other of his heart. No words were spoken. No words were needed. Be she alive or dead, they would find Serena and bring her home.

  And Caleb Miller Scott would die a slow, painful death.

  It was hours before either Matt or Pace spoke, but when they were finally forced to slow the horses for a breather, Matt asked the question that had tormented him all night. “Is she alive?”

  Pace took a slow, deep breath and kept his gaze on the trail. “She’s alive.”

  The reassurance those words should have brought didn’t come. “Are you sure? Can you see her? Can you hear her, Pace?”

  Pace shook his head in frustration. “No. I can only hear her when she wants me to…when she thinks of me. I only know that she’s alive.” He swallowed heavily. “She is alive.”

  Matt might have been a tad more reassured if Pace hadn’t felt the need to repeat himself. Was he reiterating something he felt, something he knew, or something he only hoped for?

  They didn’t stop long enough to prepare a meal until the next night. While Matt heated beans in a skillet over the small fire, Pace went to the nearby stream to wash up. When he came back, carrying his shirt in his hand, Matt stared curiously at his stepbrother’s smooth, bronze chest covered in bruises. “What happened to you?”

  Pace followed Matt’s gaze and looked down at his own chest. His eyes widened, then closed tightly. A look of pain briefly crossed his face before he schooled his expression into a hard mask. With jerky movements, he put his shirt back on and buttoned it. “They’re Rena’s.”

  Matt started to ask what he meant, then stopped. Their gazes locked, each man torn at the thought of other bruises, on other parts of Serena’s body.

  Matt’s voice echoed like cold steel. “As soon as the moon rises, we ride.”

  Pace merely nodded his agreement.

  When the moon rose, they continued south along the old Gila Trail. The sun rose just past Tubac, about twenty miles north of the Mexican border. By noon the trail angled southeast, then due east. Day after day the hot August sun beat down, only to rise again in waves of heat from the dry, baked earth. They kept to the Gila Trail until it crossed the Rio Agua Prieta, where they turned south.

  At this time of year, the only hint that a river ever flowed down the dry wash was an occasional muddy spot. Once in a while, a small trickle of moisture seeped down from the rocks along the east bank.

  When they were in sight of the junction of the Rio Agua Prieta, such as it was, and the down-Bavispe, they cut eastward across the canyon and waited until dark to move on.

  They were close now. After six rugged days and several nights in the saddle, Matt felt his weariness slide away with the knowledge that tonight he would have Serena at his side.

  A half-moon gave them ample light as they rode to within a mile of the hidden valley known to Apaches as Cos-codee, to Mexicans as Cañon de los Embudos. Matt and Pace hid their horses and went the rest of the way on foot, sliding silently, fluidly, from shadow to shadow until they reached the rocky crevice marking the entrance to the ancient hideout.

  Beyond that point, they were even more careful not to make a sound that would give them away. They wanted no announcement of their arrival.

  They split up and went in opposite directions. Each would cover half the area. They would meet at the base of the cedar ledge, which led to the secret Cos-codee Pass.

  Matt cursed the still night. A constant whisper and rustle of wind through the cedars would have helped disguise any sound he or Pace might be clumsy enough to make. He wasn’t worried that Scott would hear them—he and Pace had both been trained by the best Apache warriors. It was the horses, with their much sharper hearing, who might betray their presence.

  If there were any horses. If Scott hadn’t already fled, which was highly possible. He had plainly given Matt his location. The man had to know Matt would come after him. Would he be here, waiting? Was Serena still with him? Was she still alive?

  If she wasn’t…Matt’s blood turned to ice in his veins. If Serena was dead, he would find Caleb Scott, no matter how long it took. And when he did, he would make what he’d done to Abe Scott look like a friendly handshake compared with what he’d do this time.

  In fact, the bastard had a long, slow death coming even if Serena was alive. He was a yellow-livered coward who preyed on an innocent woman instead of confronting the man he was really after. Scum like that didn’t deserve an easy death.

  There was no hint of another person in the hideout as Matt made his way toward the back ledge. Disappointment and frustration ate at him.

  As he waited at the appointed spot for Pace, he realized that in all the commotion over Serena’s disappearance and the arrival of the scalp, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how Caleb Scott even knew of this place, or what had happened to Abe here.

  How had he known?

  His thoughts were interrupted as Pace stepped out of the shadows and joined him. With silent hand signals, they determined Cos-codee was empty. No Scott. No Serena.

  Matt and Pace agreed to camp back where they’d left their horses so as not to disturb anything they might have missed in the hideout. They would come back in the daylight and go over every inch of the place. They would search for any clue that Serena had actually been there, any trace of a trail leading away from the hidden canyon.

  The only things they managed to find in the canyon the next morning were the cold, week-old ashes of a campfire, and a nearby clearing where horses had been picketed. At the entrance, where the rock jutted up from the ground to conceal the canyon, they followed the faint trail through the lava and cactus. Faint, but not faint enough for just Scott and Serena to have come and gone. Too many tracks for just them.

  At the edge of the lava Matt and Pace found more than they wanted. They found two separate trails leading away in opposite directions. Both trails were cold.

  “We’ll each take a trail,” Matt said with a calm he didn’t feel. Scott had to be at the end of one of the trails. And hopefully, Serena. “Whoever runs into a dead end comes back here and follows the other trail. Agreed?”

  As it seemed their only choice, Pace agreed. It was inconceivable to him that Scott would head back toward Arizona, so he chose the trail heading east into the Sierra Madres.

  Having no reason to object, Matt went along with Pace’s choice.

  But the tracks Pace followed didn’t head east for long. By the first afternoon, the trail began to wind and curve through dry canyons and across high ridges.

  Whoever he was following had not bother
ed to conceal their tracks. Either they were confident that no one would follow, or they hoped someone would, or they simply didn’t care.

  The morning of the third day found Pace staring with frustration at the dusty little town of Fronteras. He’d chosen the wrong set of tracks for finding Serena. Surely Scott wouldn’t have brought her to a town. So who was he following? What did they have to do with Serena?

  He didn’t have answers to those questions, but he fully intended to before the day was out. He glanced down to make sure he wore nothing to identify himself as an Apache. His people were hated here just as much as above the border. But with his hair only reaching his collar, he could pass for Mexican—except for his eyes. No one would know his heritage. Everyone for miles around had skin as dark or darker than his.

  Satisfied with his appearance, he concentrated on finding the two riders he’d been trailing for three days. They could be long gone by now.

  When he rode past a small cantina halfway down the dusty street, he gripped his reins tight and felt his heart pound. It had been much easier than he’d anticipated. One of the horses tied to the hitching rail in front of the cantina was a gray mare with a familiar brand. The brand of the Triple C. It was the horse Pace had hitched to the buggy for Serena the morning she left for Tucson.

  He dismounted and tied his horse to the hitching rail across the street. He entered the cantina. “Una cerveza, por favor.”

  Warm beer in hand, Pace sat before the filmy, fly-specked window in the cantina and watched the street. He settled down to sip and wait.

  While Pace waited for the rider of the Triple C horse to appear, Matt was in the Cananea Hills, about a day’s ride south of Naco Springs. His gelding’s ears pricked forward. Matt drew to a halt. Then he heard it, too. A man-sound. The sharp ring of an axe on wood.

  This was it. He was close. Matt could feel Serena. She was near, reaching out to him.

  He tethered his horse in a thick clump of cedar and juniper. He removed his spurs and exchanged his boots for knee-high, tab-toed kébans, the moccasins worn by the Chiricahua. He tucked his pant legs inside. After checking his pistols, he tested the wicked, gleaming blade of his bowie knife. It was sharp and ready to bite. He slipped it back into the sheath on his belt.