Bed of Roses (32 page)

And stifled a scream of terror.

Three mounted men followed on horseback, their mounts ripping up great clods of dirt. The horses ran at a breakneck gallop, their riders leaning low over their necks.

Without a hint of hesitation Zafiro changed her course, turning to her right toward a grove of oak trees. Panic tore at her insides at the thought of the men following her into the woods, but she did not know what else to do.

It was the only thing she could think of that might save Tia.

“Run!” she shouted again, hoping the wind would carry her instructions to Tia. “Run to La Escondida, and do not stop, Tia!”

Tia did as bade, scrambling toward the safety of La Escondida as fast as her fat legs could move. When she was but several yards away from the entrance, she turned and reached for Zafiro with the intention of pulling her into the hideaway.

She clutched at handfuls of air. Shock struck inside her breast, burning her into near collapse. Dazed by fear, she scanned the area where she’d last seen Zafiro.

The mountains repeated her scream many times over.

But the men who had captured Zafiro rode on.

T
he scream Sawyer heard was
like a live thing. An invisible monster, it clawed into his ears, lunged through his mind, and began to eat at his gut.

He lunged out of the stream and grabbed up the towel from the shore. Dread pumped steadily through his veins, but even as his apprehension mounted so did his strength. He bolted through the forest as if blown and guided by the unerring breath of the wind herself and finally ran into the yard in front of the cabin.

What he saw bewildered him and deepened his alarm.

Tia stood by the barn, jumping up and down, screaming and weeping, Azucar by her side doing the same. Lorenzo was dragging a box out of the barn. When he opened it, Pedro began searching frantically through its contents, throwing various items every which way until he found what he’d been looking for: two pistols.

Sawyer watched Pedro thrust one of the guns into Lorenzo's hand. The weapon promptly fell apart and spilled pieces of iron onto Lorenzo’s feet.

Lorenzo hurried back into the barn just as Maclovio emerged with a saddle and a bridle in his hands. Thrust into one of the saddle trappings was Jaime’s rifle.

“Maclovio, no!” Knowing full well that Maclovio was about to try to mount and ride Coraje, Sawyer raced toward the barn. Just as he reached the old man, Lorenzo came out of the barn again.

Sawyer’s mouth formed a wide O.

Lorenzo rode the little burro, Rayo.

But Lorenzo rode backward, with his back facing Rayo’s head.

Sawyer had to force himself out of his state of disbelief and confusion. “For God’s sake, Lorenzo, what the hell are you—”

“Sawyer!” Azucar cried. “They have taken Zafiro!”

Her information chilled Sawyer’s blood. “Taken—”

“Do not bother Sawyer with this, Azucar!” Maclovio boomed. “He cannot shoot because he cannot make himself handle guns! Zafiro told me so herself!” Saddle and bridle still in his hands, Maclovio turned to Sawyer. “Stay here and keep Tia and Azucar calm, Sawyer. I will go after Zafiro.”

A shred of logic stabbing through the chaos in his mind, Sawyer grabbed the tack out of Maclovio’s grasp.
“What happened to Zafiro?”
he roared.

“We were gathering berries right over that hill!” Tia pointed to the bluff, behind which grew the berry patches. “Three mounted men arrived out of nowhere, and one of them caught Zafiro as she ran into the forest! She… She… Oh, I know she led them there to keep them from catching me!”

“Caught Zafiro.” The words escaped Sawyer’s lips like a shot of flame.

She was in danger. She could be killed.

In danger. Killed.

Hadn’t other people been in danger and killed?

In his mind he left La Escondida and went back. Back to Synner, Texas, where the house with the white curtains stood.

He remembered them. Everything about the people lying on the floor in the house.

They’d been murdered.

Because he hadn’t been there to save them.

Every memory he’d killed and buried made a violent resurrection. He dropped the saddle. And the bridle. He thrust his fingers through his damp hair, and he gritted his teeth. He wanted to scream, but the scream clogged in his throat, thick, awful, too big to choke down, too horrible to release.

He hadn’t been there to save them, and they’d died.

He wanted to crumble to the ground. His knees began to shake.

And then into his mind, shining through all the darkness, appeared a pair of sapphire eyes. They weren’t closed in death, but danced with vibrant life.

Zafiro.

With a will he’d never realized he possessed, he fought himself free from the crushing grip of grief and ran into the barn. There he found his trunk. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.

He knew now.

Lifting the chest, he felt along its splintery bottom until his fingers found a crack in the wood. From the fissure he pulled out a key, then quickly opened the trunk.

Inside lay his Colts. They gleamed in the dim light of the barn, and he knew they were fully loaded.

He reached for them, then suddenly remembered that he wore only a towel. There was no time to go to the cabin for clothes. He would have to wear the clothing in the trunk.

In only moments he was fully dressed, his feet and calves encased in shiny black boots, his Colts lying alongside his thighs.

He grabbed a coiled rope off the floor in the corner of the stable and quickly fashioned a lasso. As he left the barn and strode outside, his sable cape flowed behind him.

Maclovio, Pedro, Tia, and Azucar gaped at him. Lorenzo fell off Rayo’s back and tumbled to the ground, but never took his gaze away from Sawyer.

Maclovio groped for a fence post. “Saw-Saw-Sawyer—”

Ignoring the stuttering man, Sawyer climbed over Coraje’s paddock fence, tied the end of the rope to a post, and silently commanded the stallion to come to him.

And Coraje did. With his ears laid back flat on his head, his nostrils flared, the black horse charged straight toward him.

Sawyer stood as rigid as frozen steel, then tossed the rope toward the racing animal. Neatly, the lasso fell around Coraje’s neck, whereupon Sawyer shot across the paddock to the other side.

Coraje stopped, turned, and started forward, intent on hurting the man in his pen.

The rope halted his progress. He fought the rope, muscles bulging in his neck and hindquarters. And then he stood still for a moment, pawed the ground, and began to run in the directions the rope would allow—to the left and to the right.

Sawyer crossed the paddock again and grabbed the rope. Walking his hands up the heavy twine and pulling with all his might, he shortened its length and gradually made his way nearer to Coraje.

The horse stood motionless, watched warily as Sawyer approached, then lunged out his neck to deliver a vicious bite.

But Sawyer was ready and faster. His motion a blur, he reached out, caught Coraje’s bottom lip, and firmly twisted the bit of flesh. He knew his action didn’t actually hurt the horse; it only delivered enough of a sting to render the animal incapable of concentrating on anything else.

Coraje stilled instantly, his only movement the shudder of his nostrils.

“Maclovio, bring me the tack!”

Maclovio didn’t move. He simply stared.

“Maclovio,
now,
dammit!"

Pedro was the first to come out of the spell of astonishment. He snatched the bridle and saddle off the ground, opened the paddock, and took the tack to Sawyer. His eyes never leaving horse or man, he then backed out of the enclosure. “Do I shut the gate?”

Working quickly, Sawyer made no reply. He slid the bit into the horse’s mouth easily, then drew the straps of leather over the horse’s ears and buckled the fastenings securely. Just as quickly, he saddled the steed.

A pair of sapphire eyes glowing in his mind, he grabbed Coraje’s thick mane and swung himself onto the horse’s back.

Dumbfounded, Maclovio, Lorenzo, Pedro, and the women watched Sawyer subdue Ciro’s savage stallion, unable to comprehend how Sawyer would manage to stay on the bucking, rearing, and totally enraged horse.

But Sawyer did stay mounted, and Coraje soon realized he’d been mastered. The horse surrendered to Sawyer’s skills, pawing the ground gently and letting out a soft nicker.

Sawyer glanced at the gate and saw that Pedro had closed it. His long legs wrapped around the steed’s barrel, Sawyer pressed in with his thighs and sent Coraje soaring over the fence.

The powerful horse cantered out of the yard and began to climb the steep, pebbled hill that led to the hidden exit. Once outside La Escondida’s confines he responded to his rider’s commands, veered sharply to the left, and headed down a slope that spilled into an open meadow surrounded by oak and pine trees.

Sawyer leaned low over the stallion’s neck, giving him his head and urging him into a ground-eating gallop. He knew exactly where to go.

The riders who’d stolen Zafiro away had left a trail of beaten earth in their wake.

A long time had passed since Sawyer had handled a gun.

But as he continued to follow the path to Zafiro, he vowed that he would kill the men who’d taken her.

Z
afiro lost all sense of time
as her abductors rode through the mountain passages. Her capture seemed to have happened only minutes ago, and yet La Escondida seemed hundreds of miles away.

The man who held her next to him, his arm fairly crushing her ribs as he kept her in place on his thigh, wore his long, reddish-brown hair tied back with a strip of frayed rawhide. A filthy black hat on his head and streaks of dirt striping his face and neck, he’d narrowed his eyes against the sting of the wind and the lash of her hair, and he kept licking his thin, cracked lips.

He smelled of roasted meat. Obviously, he’d eaten recently. She wondered where he’d gotten his meal, wondered if it had been good, and wondered if he’d consumed large portions.

She didn’t understand why such trifling thoughts occupied her mind and tried to summon back her terror. She’d fought the man wildly when he’d caught and lifted her from the ground in the forest, but he’d subdued her instantly with a sharp blow to the side of her head. And now the fingers on the arm that held her were tangled in her hair. Every time she moved he yanked so hard that her scalp felt as though it was on fire.

I am afraid, she told herself, and she knew that deep down she really was. But she couldn’t think properly, couldn’t concentrate on what might happen to her as soon as the men stopped their horses.

It was as though she’d buried her fear. Laid it away beneath thoughts that were easier to bear. Insignificant thoughts like what her captor had eaten.

The noise of the horses’ hooves as they sped over the ground drummed into her ears, but in her mind she heard only one thing.

The sound of Sawyer’s voice.

One day a man will teach you everything you want to know and more, Zafiro.

Like a fist, sorrow bashed into her heart. Sawyer would not teach her everything she wanted to know.

She would never see him again. Nor would she ever see Tia, Azucar, Lorenzo, Pedro, or Maclovio. No one would find her. No one could save her.

Because no one at La Escondida could ride or shoot.

“Here!” she heard one of the other men shout, and the sound of his voice made her feel as though he’d poured ice water down her bare back. She began to shiver, and shiver by shiver her fear returned.

The men stopped their horses, and the animals panted wildly, their necks lathered with the white foam of exertion. One horse, a pretty chestnut mare, seemed to be in serious distress.

Zafiro wondered if she would die along with the abused horse.

Her captor released her suddenly. She slipped to the rocky ground, bruising her knees and cutting the palm of her left hand. The air jarred from her lungs, she remained on her hands and knees trying to breathe until one of the other men grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet.

His handsomeness surprised her. Although not as handsome as Sawyer, his features were pleasing, his hair was a rich shade of dark brown, and his body was well built with muscle.

His cool green eyes roamed the length of her frame, finally settling upon her sapphire. He reached out to touch the large jewel, running his finger around its sides.

“I’ve never seen a sapphire like this,” he declared, and when he spoke Zafiro noticed his straight white teeth.

“I’ve never seen a woman like this,” another man said.

She watched the second man approach her and could not quell a shudder of revulsion. While the man who touched her sapphire was handsome, the man walking toward her now was the ugliest human being she’d ever seen.

He looked like a hog. A wide pug nose, thick lips, eyes like dark, round stones, and fat all over his face made him truly hideous.

She didn’t want him to touch her, but he did. Her stomach pitched when she felt his hand on her breast.

“I get her first.”

The man who announced his place in line was the man with whom she’d ridden, the man who’d caught her as she’d fled through the woods. He was the biggest of the three, as big as Maclovio.

The men would rape her. The big one would be first, then the other two would fight over who would be second.

She flinched when the big man pulled a button off her blouse. Then he pulled off two more.

Her mind blinded her to what was happening, and in her thoughts, her heart, her soul, she pondered the fact that she’d offered her virginity to Sawyer. He hadn’t taken it in the barn, the dirty, mouse-infested barn.

And now she would lose her innocence on a bed of rocks. To three men she didn’t even know.

She didn’t know when her tears began, but by the time she noticed them, her face was wet with them.

The big man pushed her back down to the ground, and while she lay there on the stones she watched him fumble with the fastenings of his breeches. The reality of her situation burst through the daze that clouded her mind.