A Wolf in the Desert (19 page)

Patience pushed back the brim of the hat she'd adjusted to look up at him. “You didn't read my note?”

“No.”

“Then how?” She sighed, not understanding. “How did you know? What brought you here?”

“I turned back. We were halfway to the ranch where we were expected, but the sense that something was wrong was so strong I had to come back to camp. When I discovered your ruse, I followed your trail.”

“Just like that? The Wolves let you leave them, as suspicious as they've been of you?”

“It wasn't a question of letting me do anything. I did what I had to, and no one was going to stop me.”

“What about your investigation?”

His face was bland. “What investigation?”

“We're playing that game again?”

“None of this is a game.”

Patience shrugged aside his comment. It did no good to argue with Matthew at his most obstinate. “What about Callie?”

“She'll be okay for a while. There are snags at the other end.”

“Across the border, with the illegal aliens?”

“I'd forgotten that you knew.” He questioned what else he might have told her in a weak moment and then forgotten. It wasn't like him to talk, and even less like him to forget. Patience O'Hara was a dangerous woman. Dangerous, indeed.

But dangerous or not, they needed to move. Assessing the path she'd taken, he found he approved. She'd chosen wisely and with thought. She would do well in his country.

“We need to move on.” Gruffly, he sidestepped new needs and new desires. It didn't matter how well she suited his country or him, when she knew all the truth, nothing would matter. Taking her hand, he pulled her to her feet. “We've a lot of ground to cover. The more distance we can put between ourselves and the others, the better.”

“They'll come looking?”

“With a vengeance.” He pondered telling her the complete truth, deciding quickly that she should know. “The penalty for escape is death, Patience.”

She paled beneath the shading brim of her hat. “For both of us?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the reason you aren't taking me back? Because you can't?”

“We aren't going back for a lot of reasons,” he answered cryptically. “We need to move. Now. To make the most of the daylight we have left.”

“What about your bike?”

“I ditched it in a canyon a mile from here. When your trail was fresher and I knew I was close, I didn't want to draw any more attention to you.”

“I tried to cover my tracks.”

“You did.”

“But not from you.” Indian, master tracker, she should have known he would find her, no matter where she went. Without another word, slinging the pack over her shoulder, she turned to continue her climb over the small hillock, with Matthew only a pace behind.

* * *

They halted in a small clearing, one of nature's surprises. In a rocky realm that seemed shrunken with thirst, suddenly there was water. First, it was the sound of only a trickle. But as they'd drawn nearer, the trickle became a quiet fall spilling over algae-draped rocks, then slipping into a quiet pool. Vertical cliffs cast deep shadows, hurrying the night. A breeze channeling through this small corridor danced among the limbs of a huge sycamore and rattled the daggerlike leaves of a sotol. And as the sun glided beneath the west ridge, dusk fell over another canyon.

“This should serve,” Matthew decided as he listened to tree frogs just beginning to croak. “We'll stop here for the night.”

Patience sank down on a boulder, letting her pack slip from her shoulder, too tired and too thirsty to comment.

“I'll check the grounds, then make camp.” Matthew set his pack aside as he watched her in concern.

Patience got to her feet, trying to shake off her fatigue. “I'll help.”

“Stay. Sit.” His hand at her shoulder stopped her from a purposeless, headlong rush.

Anger flashed in her eyes, and the spark restored her spirit. “Sit! Stay! Next you'll pat me on the head and call me Rover. I can help. I
will
help.”

“You're tired, O'Hara. You've walked a long way.”

“No further than you.”

“It isn't the same. The Apache was born and bred to survive where others perish of hunger and thirst and sunstroke. It's no great feat of my own, simply part of my heritage. If you'll rest, I promise not to pat you on the head.”

Patience smiled then. “I'll rest when you do, Matthew, and not before.” Taking off her hat, letting the breeze cool her sweat-soaked head, she looked around. “Firewood?”

Even an Apache knew when he'd met his match. He knew as well that the smallest light shone for miles in this lightless land. The Wolves hadn't found their trail yet, he'd covered it too well and it was too soon, but caution was not easily put aside. “We'll risk a small fire, so long as the fuel is dry and the flame is shielded well.”

“The deadfall by the pool should be dry enough to make little smoke.”

“We'll make camp there.” Then he could save her a few steps.

Making camp was simple when one traveled fast and light. Matthew had the chosen area cleared, a pit scraped out for the fire, and their blankets spread by it before Patience finished with the wood. Deciding he would wait until the fire was lit to prepare the little food they had, he went to join her in her chore.

As he crossed to her, a sound, one that couldn't be mistaken, sent fear roiling in the pit of his stomach. “Patience!” She didn't answer, didn't move. The rattler coiled at her feet buzzed angrily. Coils tightening, rattles moving faster than the eye could see, its head pulled back, weaving, ready to strike. “For the love of God, Patience, don't move.”

“Matthew?”

He heard the panic, the abject terror, in a second she would bolt. His handgun was still in his pack. He reached into the lacings of his moccasin for his knife, it wasn't there. Cursing, he remembered it lay on a stone by the fire pit, with the sticks he'd cut to fashion into lances. There was no time to go back.

“Matthew!” Terror was shrill in her voice.

“I'm here.” Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled in his eyes. In an agonizing journey, he put one foot carefully in front of the other as he eased in a half circle. If he could just reach the deadfall and a branch.

Rattles buzzed, coils loosened, the triangular head stopped weaving. In a blur the snake struck. Matthew's lunging interception was quicker. As her frenzied scream reverberated from canyon walls, fangs meant for Patience buried deep in his forearm.

Shaking free, catching the recoiling snake at the back of its head, he flung it away. Patience was safe from it when he turned to her, blood welling from twin wounds in a distended vein, the pain and vertigo already beginning.

“O'Hara?”

“I
‘m here.” Patience acted quickly, with a cool head, every shred of terror obliterated by fear for Matthew. “Don't move.”

Guiding him to the ground, she lashed her belt around his arm a few inches above the bite, pulling it tight enough to impede circulation, but not enough to block it completely. “Your knife!” she cried when she found the sheath inside his moccasin empty. “Where is it?”

“By the fire.” The venom had gone directly into his bloodstream, the shock and sickness moving swiftly.

“Do you have antivenom?” She felt his gaze on her, losing its focus. “Matthew.” She touched his face, drawing his attention back to her. “Do you have a snake bite kit?”

“Kit.” He drifted away, then, with agonized effort, refocused. “Not for me.”

“Are you sensitive to the serum?” If he were, to inject it would cause immediate death. “Matthew.” She called his name again, keeping him with her. “You can't take the serum, can you?”

“No.”

Patience slumped with the burden of her fear for him, but an instant later she was straightening, calm and clinical, the professional. “Then we'll do it as it has been done for hundreds of years.”

Racing to the camp he'd made, she searched through his pack for the kit. With it and the knife, she hurried back to him. Kneeling by him, with suction cups for extracting the venom, and antiseptic to clean the wound, she made the first cut.

* * *

Matthew muttered and thrashed. Patience was instantly by his side, gathering him in her arms, holding him tightly, keeping him from doing greater injury to his grotesquely swollen arm.

“O'Hara?”

“I'm here. I'll always be here.”

He subsided against her, his breathing erratic. “Sibella?” He frowned, his eyes moving rapidly beneath bluish lids. Then in French,
“Ma mère?”

Sibella. Mother. Matthew's mother.

In the hours of the night, Patience had come to know them all. His Apache father, Daniel Gray Sky, the dashing attaché of the American Embassy in France, who died in a terrorist attack; Sibella, the very young, the very spoiled, the very winsome daughter of a wealthy French scholar; Robert Morning Sky, shaman, teacher, beloved grandfather, Matthew's family from the age of seven.

There were other names, Jeb, Mitch, Jamie, finally Simon, and then The Watch. From guttural half sentences, and frantic warnings, she walked with him through vivid recreations of a dangerous, clandestine life. Putting bits and pieces together, she deduced that The Watch was a secret, investigative government agency. Simon was its commander, Jeb and Mitch, and Jamie, like Matthew, were fellow agents. More than that, they were trusted friends.

In his delirious ramblings she heard the names of places, familiar and unfamiliar. Places where he'd spent his life after the reservations and the University of Arizona. In the passage of night marked by fever and agony, he grew oddly preoccupied with faces. The hurt, mutilated faces of Callie and someone called Jocie. In rare moments of respite, it was impotent concern for them that ultimately disturbed his feverish stupor. Their names tumbled repeatedly from cracked lips until in Patience's mind they were one with his agony.

It was her name that sent pain lancing through her. O'Hara, the name that had become dear to her, called time and again. Always with mutterings of guilt for what he'd done to her by keeping her prisoner in the desert. Pleading that she not hate him.

Keeping her vigil through the night, tending the fire, holding him when he grew restless, she listened to the life of Matthew Winter Sky.

“Winter Sky,” she murmured as dawn broke over the rim of the canyon. A strong name for a strong man. An uncommon name. A man of uncommon honor.

When he fell into normal sleep, fearful she would disturb him, she left his side at last, going wearily to her own blanket. Lying across the fire from him, she watched as the light of the blaze flickered over his ashen features. Tears streaked in glittering paths down her face for a keen mind wandering in a blacker darkness than any night, for a silent tongue that babbled intimate thoughts. For the magnificent body made suddenly gaunt by shock and raging fever, and for an arm once powerful, bloated and discolored.

If Matthew survived at all, he could lose his arm to the venomous destruction of the walls of blood vessels. Then to atrophy, the withering of the strong to useless monstrosity. He'd known the consequences. Matthew was too in tune to this formidable land not to understand the risk he took. Yet he hadn't hesitated.

“He knew.” She watched him through the flames. Indian, Matthew, lover. In the balance—the little freedom he'd taken, the care he'd given, the love, the life—she questioned how, even in hallucination, he would believe she could ever hate him.

Stirring, stretching, shaking feeling back into a shoulder constantly numbed by his weight, she reached for the coffee, her only sustenance through the night. The murky brew warmed her, but she found little comfort in it. She was watching the morning star fade into dawn when she felt Matthew's gaze. His sooty eyes glittered with fever and were lucid.

“Have to move.” His throat strained with the effort of coherent speech. “Too open here, they'll find us.”

Patience acknowledged his alarm, he'd put into words the thoughts she'd avoided. “There's a ranch or a sheep farm somewhere out there. When you're better, I'll go for help.”

“No!” He struggled to sit up.

Patience flew across the fire to stop him, her tin cup clattering against a stone. “Be still. If you want to live and keep your arm, be still.”

He was too weak to fight as she pushed him carefully back to his blanket. “Can't take risk. They're everywhere.”

The Wolves' contacts, patrons in their unholy commerce. They could be anyone, rancher, sheep herder, farmer, shopkeeper. A wrong choice and she could deliver Matthew into a murderous grasp. There was another way, the only way. As she soothed him, her assurance that she would abide by his wishes becoming a mindless chant, she made desperate and agonizing decisions.

It was still very early, but with the sun fully risen and temperatures soaring, when she ceased her labors and appraised the result. The already obscure trail was blocked by a fall of rock, one nature had been readying, hurried along by one propitious shove of human hands. Every lingering mark of the campsite had been obliterated, brushed clean of any tracks and with ashes buried. She'd wished for more and better, another landslide. Nature hadn't cooperated a second time. Backing away from her handiwork, stepping on carefully positioned stones, she made her way across another, wider expanse to a hidden shelter formed by a jutting overhang and thick vegetation.

When she knelt by Matthew's side as he leaned against a stone, she was gratified by the coolness of his skin, the clear concentration in his steady gaze. Moving the filled canteen nearer to his good hand, she queried, “Can you manage alone?”

Matthew nodded. “The worst is ended.”

But only the worst. Patience knew this was a reprieve, a testament to his monumental strength. There would be hours of agony when she'd gone. Lonely hours, with no one to comfort him. No one to care. For just one moment she questioned the wisdom of her venture, but only a moment. Touching his cheek to keep his attention, she promised, “I won't be long.”

Matthew's hollow-eyed gaze held hers. “If there's nothing, keep going. Due north to Sedona. Call McKinzie, Simon McKinzie.” He searched for a telephone number, a coded password, both were buried too deeply in a glazed mind.

“I won't be going to Sedona or calling Simon,” she assured him. “When you're better, we'll do it together.”

“No!” He tried to argue.

“I won't leave you behind, Matthew.” Brushing loose tendrils of fever-dampened hair from his face, she tried to smile. “I'll be back before you know it.”

His eyes fluttered as he tried to keep them open, but the effort was too great. He'd slipped into comatose sleep when she kissed his forehead and rose. One last check on his supplies and her own, and she had no reason to delay.

By her reckoning it was just past seven when she moved from the overhang in a slow jog. From a safe distance, she scanned her back trail for signs that could lead a clever Wolf to Matthew. There were none readily apparent, but time and a lucky guess could nullify her best effort.

Time was precious. Wasted time was her enemy.

“I'll be back for you, Matthew.” She repeated the promise as she set out on her solitary quest.

* * *

An unmerciful sun was high, defeat and despair a heavy weight in her step, when she virtually stumbled over a well-worn trail. There were hoof marks in the dust. Shod hooves. A band of horses had passed this way often and not so long ago. On a hunch, she altered her course to follow where their path led. Just when she was sure she'd made a costly error, that she was destined to traverse this wasteland forever, the trail turned down into a hidden ravine carved by the waters of a raging river. For now, in the driest summer on record, that same river was a peaceful, meandering stream, the riverbed a lush oasis. Best of all, tucked close against the opposite wall, out of the path of all but the highest waterline, was a small shack fallen into disrepair.

A line shack, a relic from the early days of ranching, before trucks and planes and helicopters became the norm? A luckless miner's claim? A squatter overpowered by the stronger landholder? Or a greenhorn farmer who'd watched his crops wash away in torrential floods, leaving disaster in its wake?

Whoever built it, for whatever reason, it was abandoned. It could be godsend or deathtrap. She couldn't know until she took a closer look.

Taking the path of the horses, she'd only begun the little descent when she found the fresher tracks of a single horse. From her vantage, she searched every uncloistered inch of this natural fortress. “I know you're here, horse. I'm going to find you, and when I go for Matthew, you'll go with me.”

She found him in the narrow chasm of the north end of the ravine, grazing in grass that flanked a towering waterfall. He was big and rangy, a sturdy workhorse. Judging from the marks worn into his coat by saddle and bridle, part of a cowboy's winter string. Able and hard used, then turned out on the range to rest. He started in surprise, twitching nervously as he caught sight of her, but he didn't bolt. “Easy, boy,” she crooned. “I'm not here to hurt you.”

He backed away, rearing and dancing, his eyes rolling. Still he did not bolt.

Gathering all the forbearance at her command, Patience inched toward him, the soothing patter never ending. “Found yourself a nice, lonely place, boy? Are you the vanguard? Will the others be along later, or are you always solitary?”

She wasn't sure what she said to him beyond that. Words didn't matter, only the tone. She must have him, the trip to the ravine would be more direct than her fanning search, but Matthew would never make it. In the exigency of need, she moved carefully. Gradually the horse relaxed with her constant, lilting chant, and stepped a little toward her. As she offered a leaf plucked from a sycamore, he stretched his neck to nibble curiously at her hand. From then it was a simple matter to discover he liked to have his nose rubbed and his ears scratched. He was a pet. One of those rare, loyal creatures more in tune with his human than his kind.

As she scratched and stroked, he whickered softly. If he'd been a kitten, he would have purred. He nuzzled at her neck, she laughed and dodged away, but only to pet him again.

When she went to the shack, to put it into what order she could for Matthew, the horse was her shadow. He would have followed her into the cabin if the door hadn't been set so low. “If you'll wait, like a good boy, I shouldn't be long.” When she assessed the little that was possible in the tumbled-down cabin, she sighed, amending, “I
won't
be long at all. An hour at the most.”

She was wrong, failing to take into account her own degree of exhaustion. It was two hours before she rode bareback from the ravine with her canteen refilled, but her short supply of food depleted. Dread that she'd been gone from Matthew too long, was answered by a need in the horse to please her. The journey that had taken five hours of difficult hiking was accomplished more directly in two, as he picked his way among the rubble of fallen stone and dry earth with the sure-footed confidence of a mountain goat.

The day was waning, but twilight was hours away when she pulled the horse to a halt a little way from the shelter. Denying the urge to rush to him, she waited and listened, half expecting the Wolves would be there. But there was no sign of trouble. All was as she had left it. Quiet. Still.

Too quiet? Too still? Had his condition worsened?

“Matthew.” She was dismounted, running, bursting through clawing shrub to the shelter. His bed was empty. “Matthew?”

“Here.” With tottering steps he moved from the gloom far from his bed.

“What are you doing? You shouldn't be moving around.” She was poised at the entrance, frozen in fear for him.

“I heard the horse,” he explained hoarsely.

It was then she saw the knife in his left hand, and the little strength with which he held it. In an instant of empathy she lived the horror of a vigorous man stripped of strength, waiting for an unrecognized enemy. Going to him, she took him in her arms, supporting him as much as holding him. She didn't bother with apologies as she led him to his blanket, for she knew he would have none of them. “I've found a place where we can be safe for a while. Long enough for you to regain your stamina. There's water and shelter.”

“And horses?”

“Just the one, for now.” She gathered supplies as she spoke. “We'll need a little more than two hours riding double. It will be near dark before we make it, but the horse knows the way.”