The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (21 page)

She held out the lantern, peering down at the sensual arc of his cheekbones, the hard, flaring jaw and tawny skin. An irreverent thought entered her mind. Johnny Starhawk was gorgeous, she realized, smothering a quick smile. Too bad she was already in love.

“Chase left me an urgent message.” He continued to rub his knee as he stared up at her. “Why do I have the feeling it has something to do with you?”

“Maybe I should explain,” Annie suggested. She started with profuse apologies, hastening to add that she’d taken him for a rustler who’d escaped custody, and then informing him that she’d already met him once, five years before. “Do I look at all familiar?” she asked, holding the lantern up to her face.

“I could take a better look if you got me out of here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She glanced around the cavern, realizing she had no idea how to get him out. “Chase has a rope ladder, but I don’t know where he keeps it.”

“Forget that for now,” Johnny said, staring up at her as though he might be remembering. “You said we met?”

“Yes, in Costa Brava. I could tell you how it happened—”

“Please do.”

Annie decided she rather liked the dry forbearance in his tone. The Indians she’d known in Costa Brava, though primitive by American standards, had been a very gentle people. This man looked anything but gentle, yet there seemed to be a streak of charm hidden under the pantherish darkness. Still, she was rather glad she had no way to get him out of the pit. It felt a little safer with the big cat in his cage.

There was a sensual indolence in the way he rested his head against the wall of the pit, watching her as though he was waiting for the games to begin. Annie found herself talking quickly, urgently, as she recounted the details of their rendezvous on the way to the border. She described the jeep Chase was driving, the clothing they wore, Chase’s knife wound and bouts of delirium. By the time she’d finished, Johnny had risen to his feet, and his expression had transformed from dispassion to rapt disbelief. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said, sharply disappointed.

“I feel like I’m staring at a ghost.” He searched out the details of her face through the murkiness. “So you’re the kid Chase married? Annie ... Was that your name?”

“Yes.” The word shook on her lips. Emotion roiled up inside her so suddenly, she couldn’t control it. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her taut facial muscles crumbled with relief. She knew he must think she was crazy, a woman gone completely out of her mind, but he was the first person to recognize her. He’d actually said her name, and that simple acknowledgment felt like an affirmation of her existence.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m Annie—Annie Wells.” Mingled with the joy, the pain, the shaking relief, Annie had the oddest sense of being given the right to reclaim her identity and her life, of being reborn in some way. “Forgive me,” she said, profoundly embarrassed. “I was just so afraid you wouldn’t remember me, that no one would ever remember me again.”

“Nothing to forgive.” He waited a moment, studying his hands, respectful of her need to recover privately. “We found Chase unconscious in the jeep after it went over the embankment,” he said quietly, “but you’d been thrown free. All we ever found was one of your shoes, floating on the river.”

“I know. Chase thought I was dead all these years.”

“I’ll bet you gave him one hell of a surprise.”

“Yes. I did.” Annie’s smile went crooked. She could feel tears threatening again, and she fought them back, determined not to embarrass herself any further. But she couldn’t stop the sigh that welled up when she spoke. “Chase doesn’t remember me. Or anything that happened between us down there. He wants the marriage ... dissolved.”

Johnny studied her. “And you don’t, right?”

“I love him,” she said, the words tight, aching. “I guess it shows, huh?”

“You can’t even say his name without sounding like you’re praying. Yes, it shows, Annie. What’s going on?”

Annie needed very little encouragement to pour out the whole sad story. Somehow she held her hurt and anger in check as she gave Johnny Starhawk a blow-by-blow account of the chaos that had erupted since she’d arrived. But the more she talked, the more she realized anew how thoroughly she’d disrupted Chase’s life. “I guess it’s no wonder he wants me gone,” she said. “I’ve brought him nothing but misery. He said so himself.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Johnny said, grinning.

“What do you mean?”

As Johnny Starhawk registered the strange, changeless beauty of the child-woman hovering above him, the sweet suffering in her blue eyes, he couldn’t imagine how any man could resist her, even a hard case like Chase Beaudine. “No promises, Annie,” he said, “but I’ve got a couple of ideas on how to handle my ex-partner.”

“F
REEZE,
B
EAUDINE!
You even blink, and I’ll shoot you where you look the biggest.”

The harsh command came from just over Chase’s right shoulder. Chase hesitated in midstride, his boot crunching down on a chunk of broken glass. “You always were a lousy shot, Jack. Even with a life-size target.”

“At this range I could blow your head off blindfolded.”

Dead to rights, Chase thought, his lip curling with disgust as he surveyed the rotting innards of the mining shack. The bastard had caught him dead to rights. Jack must have seen him coming around the back of the cabin, snuck out the front, and come up behind him. Chase considered some kind of countermove, like going for the rustler’s gun. But Jack did have a point. Even he couldn’t be expected to miss at such close range.

“Drop the bullwhip, Beaudine.” Two sharp clicks sounded as Jack slammed a shell into the chamber of the bolt-action rifle.

Chase released his clenched fist, letting the bullwhip drop to the floor.

“How’d you know I had a stash buried up here?” Jack asked.

“A hunch,” Chase said. “You know how that is,

Jack.” As he spoke, Chase noted the shattered glass on the floor of the shack, as if someone had thrown a bottle against the wall. A gaping hole in the shack’s floorboards revealed a corroded metal box stuffed with paper money. Now where the hell would a dumb brute like Jack get all that filthy lucre? he wondered.

“As I recall,” Chase said evenly, “you had fresh dirt on your boots the last time I hauled you in. Dust is one thing. Fresh dirt, that’s another. That means somebody’s done some digging.”

“You’re too smart for your own damn good, Beaudine.” The rustler’s voice cracked with edgy laughter. “Which is why I’m going to have to do something I’m already beginning to regret. I’m going to have to pump some lead into that skull of yours. Slow you down a little. Give us less fortunate folks a chance.”

The tendons of Chase’s neck stiffened as Jack spoke. The rustler might be dumb, but he was plenty vicious enough to commit cold-blooded murder. “You don’t want a homicide rap on your hands, Jack. There’s no percentage in that.”

“Depends on who’s doing the calculating. You see, what I don’t want is to get caught again. I’m getting real sick of that. It’s startin’ to eat away at me.”

As Jack began an embittered analysis of the various and sundry times that Chase had apprehended him, Chase himself came to an unsettling awareness. The information filtered back to him from the tension in his fists and the sledgehammer blows of his heart. It burned along his nerve endings, galvanizing his thoughts and awakening him to an insight so fundamental, he wondered why he’d never experienced it before. He didn’t want to die. Not on this misty summer morning, and not for a very long time if he could arrange it.

It wasn’t fear triggering the insight. He’d stared into the eyes of death plenty of times, but never with such a keen sense of needing to survive, of wanting to beat the odds. Now, with a gun at his back, he didn’t have the time—or the inclination—to examine the reasons, he just knew there was something he had to keep breathing for. The future seemed to be beckoning to him, holding out some crazy promise of happiness.

It almost made him dizzy, that eerie feeling of destiny. He felt as if he’d been given a glimpse of his own fate. And on the heels of that realization came the unavoidable “reason” for his reawakening. A mental fanfare of trumpets announced her name: Annie.

He moaned. Annie? She was the reason he wanted to keep on breathing? The woman was his hanging judge, his jury. She’d made his life a living hell. But even as he tried to convince himself that she wasn’t his manifest destiny, he could feel the truth crowding in on him, strangling all his objections.

Annie Wells was a bottle of bad liquor he couldn’t keep corked, but God help him, he couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing her again. He might as well be dead as live with that kind of emptiness.

A gun barrel nudged Chase’s shoulder. “Beaudine? Are you listening to me?”

“So help me, God, I didn’t hear a word you said. Jack. I was thinking about a woman.”

“A woman? At a time like this? Hell, you need a bullet in the head.”

Cold metal dug into the base of Chase’s skull. The deadly soft click of the rifle’s hammer exploded in his mind. He lashed back savagely with his bootheel, landing a blow to the rustler’s shins. A shot rang out as Jack stumbled backward, firing wildly. Chase dropped, hitting the dust and grabbing for his whip at the same time. He wrapped the rawhide thong around Jack’s legs so many times, Jack toppled like a piece of rotten timber.

“Looks like your streak is over,” said Chase, scooping up the gun the rustler dropped and aiming it at his heaving chest. “I ought to be pissed at you, Jack. Hell, I ought to empty this rifle into your black heart ... but I’m just not in the mood. Take a gander at me,” Chase said, giving in to a roguish smile that would not be subdued. “You’re looking at a man with a future, Jack, and that’s the only blessed reason you’re alive.”

Chase swung off his horse, lifted the bullwhip from his saddle horn, and took the front steps of the cabin two at a time. “Annie? Where are you?” he called. She’d scared the hell out of him, disappearing from their campsite. Her horse was gone, too, which meant she’d probably come back to the cabin. Either that or she was lost somewhere in the hills.

Shadow followed on Chase’s heels, barking excitedly as Chase entered the cabin and made a quick visual search of the area. There was no sign of her anywhere, and nothing to indicate that she’d been there. “Come on, boy,” called Chase, motioning the dog with him as he headed out to check the barn.

But Shadow refused to follow. Whining excitedly, he urged Chase toward the bedroom. “Oh, God, not again,” Chase said, spotting the open vault door. “Nobody falls in the same pit twice.”

The lantern he’d taken off the kitchen wall flickered in Chase’s grasp as he made his way down the tunnel. Annie’s voice came to him, echoing faintly as he neared the cavern, but he couldn’t make out the words. It sounded as if she was talking to herself, which relieved his mind, but only for a moment. What if she’d hit her head in the fall? What if she’d gone crazier than a loon?

“Annie?” He burst into the cavern, the lantern swinging wildly as he reached the pit. “Are you all right?”

The beam illuminated her surprised smile. “Chase!” she said, squinting up at him from the depths of the pit. “When did you get here? Johnny and I were just—”

“Are you all right?” He hesitated, registering what she’d said. “Johnny? Who—”

“Right here, buddy.”

“Starhawk?” Chase held out the lantern, searching for the face to accompany the familiar voice. He nearly dropped the lantern into the pit as the angular features of a man he hadn’t seen in five years materialized in the flow of light. “Starhawk? What are you doing here? What are you doing down there? With her?”

“He fell in the pit,” Annie explained. “It’s a long story, but I was trying to help him out. And I fell in too.”

“This is some woman, Chase,” Johnny said. “She’s as gutsy as they come. Why have you been keeping her such a secret?”

Johnny’s dark smile gave Chase a moment of true consternation. He might have been more pleased to see his long-lost partner if he hadn’t known all about Johnny’s heartbreaker reputation with women. Starhawk was half American Indian, and the renegade-with-a-cause image had worked miracles for him since he’d become a civilian, with both women and juries. A recent landmark Supreme Court decision in his favor had made him the hottest civil-rights lawyer in the country—as if members of the female sex needed any more provocation to fling themselves at his feet.

“Hang on,” Chase said brusquely. “I’ll get the ladder.”

“No hurry,” Johnny called back. “Annie and I were just discovering that we had some things in common.”

“What does that mean?” Chase asked suspiciously.

“Nothing to get excited about. She likes spicy food, and so do I, that’s all.”

“You’re sure? That’s all?”

“Well, yeah, other than western novels. We both love those, don’t we, Annie, and—”

“And what?”

“Chase!” Annie broke in, “could you get us out of this pit?”

“Not until I get an answer,” Chase said. “And what?”

“You sure you want to know, Beaudine?”

“Spit it out, Starhawk.”

“Okay, cowboy, but remember, you asked for it. Annie here tells me she likes men of the Indian persuasion. Says she was raised in a rain forest where the natives were as quick and agile as cats.” Johnny’s handsome face broke in a wide grin. “The lady has impeccable taste, Chase. If you’re not going to marry her, I might. You ever notice her eyes? Amazing. I didn’t know eyes came that blue.”

“I’ve noticed.” Chase thrust out the lantern, but not so he could get a look at Annie’s eyes. He wanted to see her reaction to Starhawk’s disgusting load of bull. Annie beamed up at him, blushing like a spring bride. Hell, the woman was glowing. She looked as if someone had hooked her up to an electrical power plant. “You forget, Johnny,” Chase said, his voice deadly soft, “I’m already married to her.”

Starhawk’s smile broadened. “You forget, Chase. I’m a lawyer. I can have that marriage annulled.”

“Too late for that, my friend. The union’s been consummated. Annie and I slept together last night.”