The Texan (16 page)

“Sonofabitch.” He grabbed her hands and pulled them around his midriff. “Now hang on.”

Bay kept her breasts rigidly distanced from Owen’s back, but her nipples puckered anyway. It was that damned washboard of male abdominal muscle under her hands. The man could do commercials for those workout machines they advertised on TV.

The horseflies were a surprise. Where had they come from? She let go with one hand and swatted at one that seemed determined to bite her on the nose. And knocked Owen’s hat askew.

“That does it. Off.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Bay said. “I was getting bitten.”

“Off.” He grabbed her arm and levered her out from behind him and onto the ground.

“You’re not going to make me walk!” she protested.

He stepped out of the saddle. “We’re both going to walk, since the terrain here is mostly uphill, and give my horse a breather.”

Bay pursed her lips. She couldn’t very well insist that he let her ride, if he was going to walk, too. She wished she could change into her hiking boots, but they were tucked in her saddlebags, which were with her horse. He seemed perfectly happy in his lizard cowboy boots, but she knew they couldn’t be comfortable, since they weren’t meant for walking.

She followed him up the trail, a safe distance behind his horse. “I’ve been looking, but I haven’t seen signs of any tracks being brushed away. Have you?”

“Your horse destroyed whatever signs there were
when he came through here,” Owen said. “Maybe we’ll find some again after we find him.”

They traveled the two-plus miles to the cairn of stones marking the junction of the Strawhouse and Telephone Canyon Trails. From the hoofprints in the loose sand, it was plain even to Bay (and she was no tracker) that her horse had taken the turnoff to Strawhouse Trail, rather than continuing along the Telephone Canyon Trail. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“We need the water and medical supplies your horse is carrying. We’ll have to go after him.”

“What if the men who have my brother went the other way?” Bay asked.

“They did go the other way,” Owen said, as he pointed out the faint compression marking the definable sole of an army boot a good dozen feet ahead of them on the Telephone Canyon Trail.

“Why don’t I go after my horse, while you stay on the trail of the men who kidnapped my brother?”

He lifted a brow. “You mean you’re going to trust me not to shoot your brother on sight?”

“Don’t even joke about something like that.”

“You don’t know how tempted I am to be rid of you,” Owen said. “But I think we’d better stay together.”

“I’ll be glad to take the less full canteen of water. I won’t need as much as you and—”

“I said we’ll stay together.”

Bay realized she didn’t really want to be out here alone. “Fine.”

“Mount up,” he said.

She stared at him. “Shouldn’t you mount up first?”

“I think it’s safer if I ride behind you.”

Bay didn’t argue with him. Time was passing, and the
longer it took to find her horse, the longer it was going to take to find her brother. She mounted quickly, then extended her hand and took her foot from the stirrup.

Owen grabbed the saddle horn with his left hand and threw himself onto his horse behind her in a feat of such grace and strength that she only barely managed to stifle an admiring “Oooh.”

He surrounded her with his arms and took the reins from her, then clucked to set his horse in motion.

Bay realized as they entered a narrow creekbed choked with vegetation that there wasn’t much “trail” to the Strawhouse Trail. “Is the whole trail this bad?”

“No. It gets worse.”

They hadn’t gone very far before Owen reined to a stop. “The foliage in this wash is too dense to ride through. Which means we’re going to have to walk above it, along the side of the trail, and lead the horse.”

Bay took one look at the lechuguilla, sotol, and cat-claw cactus that rimmed both sides of the wash and groaned. “Good Lord. Why didn’t my horse stop here? This must have been impossible to travel through in the dark.”

Owen shook his head. “Beats me. Maybe he went a little loco.”

Bay was grateful for her cowboy boots when they began walking through the spiny cactus. “This stuff is dangerous.”

“Yep.”

Bay slipped, and Owen leaped to catch her before she could fall. “Thanks,” she said.

“Uh-oh.”

His voice was so quiet, Bay didn’t realize at first that in rescuing her, he’d slid into a lechuguilla. Several of
the needle-sharp three-inch spines had pierced Owen’s boot and were embedded in his calf.

“Stand still,” she said. “Let me help.”

She slid a pocket knife from her boot, where she’d sewn a leather holder for it, and used the knife to cut the spines away from the bush. One by one, she pulled each of the spines out of his flesh, then out of his leather boot, and finally through his denim jeans. “Did I get them all?” she asked at last.

He moved his leg and said, “Whatever’s left is more a nuisance than anything else. We’d better get moving. The sun is getting hot.”

Long before they reached a faint trail on the west side of the wash that marked the end of the heavy vegetation, Bay noticed Owen was limping. “Are you okay?”

“Hurts like hell.”

She glanced at the leg of his jeans above his boot. “You’re bleeding.”

“Probably a good thing. Get rid of all the dirt.”

Bay chewed on her lower lip. “Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that we haven’t found my horse yet?”

“Yeah, it does,” Owen admitted.

“What do you think happened to him?”

“We know he came this way,” Owen said, pointing to the recent hoof marks in the sand. All of a sudden, Owen’s horse jerked against the reins and began to whinny. “Whoa, boy. Easy, boy.”

Bay searched ahead to see what might have frightened him. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“My horse. He’s down. It looks like he’s been hurt.”

Bay hurried toward the spot where she could see bits of the chestnut’s body through the vegetation, anxious to
do what she could to help the animal, which was lying in the center of the sandy wash. As she approached, a half dozen turkey buzzards that had been dining on the concealed carcass were frightened into flight around her, their black wings filling the canyon from wall to wall.

Bay screamed in fear and backpeddled as fast as she could. Owen caught her, and she turned and pressed her face against his chest. His arms surrounded her and held her tight.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re okay. I have you.”

She clutched at him, her body trembling violently. She felt his hands smoothing her hair, heard him saying quiet words, but couldn’t make sense of them. As she calmed, she realized there was something odd about the scene she’d witnessed.

Suddenly, she leaned back and looked up at Owen. “There was no saddle. No saddlebags.” She pulled herself free, and holding her hand over her mouth and nose to stifle the smell of the decaying horse, crossed back to look at it. “Where are the saddle and saddlebags? What could have happened to them? Did he buck them off?”

Owen walked around the dead animal, examining the carcass and the ground around it. “He sure as hell didn’t buck off the bridle. And that’s gone, too.” His mouth formed a grim line. “Somebody else found your horse last night,” he said. “And left us a message.”

Bay gasped as she looked where Owen was pointing. Her horse had been shot—right between the eyes. “That’s horrible!”

“These are not nice men.”

Bay’s gaze slid uneasily back and forth along the trail, as she searched for some sign of the depraved soul who’d killed an innocent animal to make his deadly point. “Why didn’t we hear the shot?” she asked.

“Most likely muffled by these canyon walls.”

“You said they took the other trail,” Bay said accusingly.

“That footprint might have been put there to fool us into going in the wrong direction. Or maybe they split up.” Owen pointed to the compression of an army boot that showed beneath the horse’s tail. “At least one of them was here.”

“What do we do now?” Bay asked. “Go back? Or keep going?”

“If I were alone, I’d keep going. I think the smart move is to make sure you’re safe and then come back here on my own.”

“We can’t be far behind the men who took my brother. We can catch up to them, if we keep going.” Bay knew she was a liability now, but any delay might endanger Luke’s chances for survival. If the two men they were hunting would shoot a poor defenseless animal, she didn’t want to think what they might do, or might already have done, to her brother.

Owen shielded his eyes and peered up at the scorching sun. “We need to get out of the sun during the heat of the day.”

Bay waited with bated breath, as Owen looked back in the direction they’d come, then forward along the Straw-house Trail.

“Hell,” he muttered. “I don’t like either of my choices.”

“Please, Owen.”

He met her gaze and frowned. “Let’s go,” he said brusquely. “There are some limestone caves up ahead.”

Bay sighed in relief when he continued down the trail they’d been following. As they headed south, the wash widened into the Ernst Valley. They no longer had to
dodge cactus, but now her calves ached from walking in loose sand. “How much farther?”

“Another couple of miles.”

Bay wasn’t going to beg Owen to stop. If he could keep walking—limping—on that injured leg of his, she could manage on her aching hip.

At least they didn’t have to worry about being ambushed. She could see for miles in every direction. “There must have been one whopper of a fire here,” she said as she surveyed the charred vegetation that lay ahead of them as far as the eye could see.

“Yep. ’Bout ten years ago. Started by lightning in the spring. Burned for four days, then petered out on its own.”

“What was there to burn?” Bay asked, looking at the desert landscape.

“Sotol. Yucca. Brush. Grass.”

“Why hasn’t it grown back?”

He shrugged. “Not enough water, I guess.”

Which reminded Bay they were walking in the desert with less than three quarts of water between them, when they ought to be drinking a gallon of water a day—each. “Where’s the closest water?” she asked.

“The Rio Grande. But I’m not sure you’d want to drink that.”

“How far away is the river?”

“Eleven or twelve miles.”

“We can walk that in what—maybe four hours?” Bay said, relieved.

“If we were traveling on a flat surface, maybe. There’s a place farther on where the trail is blocked by boulders. We’re going to have to do some climbing before we get where we’re going.”

Bay stared at Owen’s horse. “How is your horse supposed to get over country like that?”

“He won’t.”

“So you’re saying that eventually we’re going to end up carrying our supplies on our backs?”

“I’m saying we’re going to end up carrying our supplies on our backs
in the dark
.”

“Oh, shit,” Bay said.

OWEN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HIM. SOME
thing had gone haywire inside, and he couldn’t look at Bayleigh Creed without having sexual fantasies that were mostly visions of the two of them naked, with him buried deep inside her. Anybody looking at the waif in blue jeans and a ripped shirt, with one cheek scabbed over and a handkerchief bandaging her hand, would think he’d gone loco. Maybe he had.

There was nothing remotely sensual about her appearance. Except he couldn’t look into those violet-blue eyes of hers without getting a fluttery feeling in his stomach. The memory of her nipples stabbing him in the back made his groin draw up tight. And watching her fanny move in those butter-soft jeans as she walked along the trail in front of him had made him hard as a rock. It was not a comfortable way to travel.

Owen swore, low and soft.

Sunlight gleamed off her auburn ponytail, as she glanced at him over her shoulder. The auburn curls at her temple had been tickling his nose when he’d woken up in the tent with her. He imagined what all that silky auburn hair would look like draped across his body. And felt about a hundred butterflies take flight in his gut.

“Keep moving,” he said curtly.

The guttural sound that came from her throat made him think of hot, sweaty sex.

Owen didn’t want to contemplate the difficulties of getting involved with the daughter of a man his mother—or maybe his father—had arranged to have murdered. That alone should have been enough to discourage his interest. He couldn’t understand how she was having this effect on him now, when their situation was so fraught with danger. But maybe that was exactly why he was reacting the way he was. Danger heightened sexual tension. Yeah, that must be what it was.

Owen knew the significance of the message that had been left for them back in that dry wash, even if Bay didn’t. They were being warned off, given a chance to get the hell out of Dodge. He knew he should have backtracked, especially since they’d lost half their water, along with the rubber suits and gas masks that would have protected them if they ran into any VX nerve gas.

Fortunately, he’d put the atropine-oxime autoinjectors into his shirt pocket to keep them handy, figuring that if they needed them, they’d need them in a hurry.

Unfortunately, the hijackers weren’t going to need anything as deadly as VX nerve gas to kill them. Or even a couple of bullets. If he and Bay didn’t keep moving, if one of them got injured, or if anything delayed them from getting to the end of this trail—like a standoff with the hijackers who’d taken this same route—they would die of thirst.

They’d been walking through a broad valley, and he began searching the limestone walls above them for one of the caves that had been inhabited by some prehistoric people—in a day when there must have been water here.
He spotted one of the lower caves and pointed it out to Bay. “We’ll stop here and wait out the heat of the day.”

He watched her stare down the valley ahead of them, knew she was calculating whether they could make it without stopping, and saw the small shake of her head as she turned back to join him.

“How much farther will we have to walk when it’s dark?”