Saint (22 page)

“I’m used to the chill in the air at night,
you’re not. If they can get across the quarry and up the bank without me
hearing them, I deserve to be shot. Now get out of those clothes.” He pitched a
knapsack to her.

“And into what? Everything’s soaking wet
from sitting at the bottom of the quarry. And I’d rather not be shot if you don’t
mind.”

“The duffels are lined with a special
plastic. It would take a couple of days for the water to seep through the
zipper enough to ruin everything inside. Strip.”

She wished, for just a few seconds, he
would be wrong about something just so she wouldn’t feel like an idiot every
time she opened her mouth. Just as he’d predicted, the clothes were dry. This
time she didn’t worry about modesty when he pitched her the clean shirt and
jeans. It was dark now, the ankle and sole of her foot hurt like hell, and she
was shaking from the cold. She stripped off the wet clothes, including bra and
panties, and threw them at Harris.

He caught them and turned away immediately
to root through his own duffel, but not before she glimpsed the brief flicker
of impatience in his eyes. Untangling the ribbon from her hair, she ignored him
and bent to work out the impossible mass of curls. He walked into the
surrounding woods and returned minutes later in dry clothes, carrying an
armload of kindling.

Digging a blanket from one of the duffels,
he pitched it to her. “Wrap up.”

“I don’t need a fire to get warm. This
blanket is plenty. You’re taking an unnecessary risk.”

“Every minute I spend with you is a risk,”
he muttered beneath his breath.

Maria huddled deeper into the blanket,
savoring its added warmth. Let him build a fire if it made him happy. For the
moment there were no bullets whizzing past her head and she was still alive.
That’s what she’d learned to live for now—the moment. Juarez no longer bothered
to disguise the attacks as accidents. All pretense had been cast aside in his
quest to find and silence her. She had become the fugitive, while Juarez sat in
his grand Spanish-style casa—high in the hills above Hollywood—enjoying the
freedom of buying off the very justice sworn to imprison him and those like
him.

When the small fire was burning solidly,
Harris brought the first-aid kit and came to sit beside her. She guessed his
intent and her tone wasn’t in the least appreciative. “Leave my foot alone, it’s
fine. I’m fine. I’m not made of glass and I’m not helpless.”

“I never said you were helpless, but Joan
can’t carry you constantly, I need him to backtrack and cover the trail. If I
have to hold you down to bandage that foot, I will. Your choice.”

And there it was. It was her fault they’d
been cornered on the other side of the rock wall. If Joan hadn’t been forced to
carry her they could have made good time and gotten through the tunnel safely.

All five of them.

She stuck out her foot mutinously. Seth
flipped open the box and extracted an antibiotic ointment and some sort of
elastic sport wrap. She flinched several times as he cleaned and wrapped the
appendage, wondering how long it would be before Gabriel and the others caught
up.

If they caught up.

“Tell me Francis and Gabriel and Joan are
very good at what they do.”

“They are.” He finished wrapping the
bandage, testing its secure fit so as not to cut off the circulation. “They can
waste an entire unit in their sleep.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she
said more to herself than him, gazing off into the enveloping darkness.

“It never is.”

“Juarez doesn’t care how many people die,
just so he can protect his empire and get to me. I can’t stand the callous
wasting of lives.”

“Don’t think about it. You’ll bear what you
have to bear in order to stay alive. So far, you’ve managed to wrap three
hardened soldiers around your little finger. That’s no small accomplishment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She noticed
he left himself out of the group supposedly dangling from her pinky.

“It means in any other comparable
situation, they wouldn’t give you the time of day. Comes with the territory.”

“Does Gabriel’s wife know where he is, what
he’s doing?”

“No. She only knows he’s on a mission. Prop
your foot up and keep it that way.” He repacked the supplies and left her alone
with her thoughts.

Dinner consisted of rations brought from
the bunker. The taste wasn’t so bad once you got used to it.

She dozed off, waking with a start sometime
later. Harris placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, pulling her back down
against him. “Just an owl.”

She didn’t know when she’d fallen asleep,
or when he’d propped himself against the tree behind her, acting as a pillow. “What
time is it?”

“After midnight.”

“What’s taking them so long?”

“They won’t follow ’til they’re finished.
Go back to sleep.”

“What if they don’t catch up?”

“If they don’t catch up, they’re dead, and
before you don the cloak of guilt, it’s not your fault.”

“Every bit of it’s my fault. I was too
stupid to realize how well-connected Juarez really is. He’s not just some
two-bit drug pusher sending out his homies to beat up the competition. He has
an army of assassins at his disposal.”

“You have me and the boys.”

“And you call that even odds?”

“No. But Juarez will have to make do with
what he has.”

“That’s not even remotely funny.” Her tone
sounded brittle, but at the moment that’s exactly how she felt.

“I know it seems like you’re always in the
dark, but believe me when I say it would shock you to your toes to know what we’re
capable of. We’re not hired-out mercenaries, we’re soldiers, trained in the art
of covert warfare. The training stays with you, like a second nature. Tomorrow
we start making our way down the mountainside. Gabe and the others will have to
catch up if they aren’t back by then. Those are the rules of war.”

“I thought the rules of war said you never
left a fallen man.”

“Not on the kind of missions we’ve made.”

She turned to stare out over the quarry.
They would make it. She wouldn’t think about the alternative. “I take it you’re
not the finger-wrapping kind.” Not that she cared.

“It would only be sex, Maria,” he replied
evenly. “And you aren’t that kind.”

“I’m learning.” One day at a time. One hour
at a time. While watching Harris dive for the lost equipment it had come down
to one minute at a time. Once she’d thought of life in terms of months and
years. Not now. In the blink of an eye it could all disappear.

He shifted to a more comfortable position. “When
you get it down pat, let me know.”

* * * * *

The first splash jack-knifed her into a
sitting position. Maria listened intently for another, sensing Harris was doing
the same. She didn’t have to see him to know he was wide-awake and alert.

The second splash came seconds later.

Where was the third? There was no third
splash. Could there have been two at the same time, too close to differentiate?

“Seth?” she whispered anxiously, clutching
a handful of his shirt in her fist. She strained to see in the darkness, to
hear footsteps, voices, anything that indicated friend or foe.

“All three. One’s wounded.” He lifted her
away from him and rolled to his feet. “Stay here.”

Stay down. Sit. Be quiet. Give me your
foot.

She’d had enough of feeling sorry for
herself and hanging off Joan’s back like a trophy deer. It was past time she
contributed to this effort instead of being the burden. If she could make it
through DEA agents dying at her feet, two explosions and jumping off cliffs,
she was capable of getting through this.

Maria threw the blanket off and crawled to
the duffel she’d seen Seth pack the first-aid kit in, drawing it out to look
inside. It was more like a mini-surgical medley, containing supplies and
instruments for a variety of injuries.

She found a pack of matches in the tin and
gathered up the discarded pile of kindling Harris had laid aside to feed the
small fire. At her insistence, he’d let the fire burn out. Now she added a pile
of dried leaves beneath the teepee of wood and struck the match.

“Why didn’t I join the Girl Scouts?” she
muttered to herself after several failed attempts and two burned fingers. On
the third try the slim flame finally caught and held to the leaves.

“Oh goody, a real campfire,” Francis
quipped as Joan and Gabriel helped him into the clearing. “Got any marshmallows
hidden in that bag?” They lowered him to the ground against the tree she’d
vacated, with Francis grunting at their less-than-fragile handling.

Harris squatted beside him to rip away Francis’s
trousers at the thigh. Maria gathered up the first-aid kit and the flashlight
and hobbled over to hold the light so he could see.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Francis
insisted. “Nothing to get excited over.”

Maria gaped at the hole in his upper thigh.
It was puckered and ragged around the edges and oozing blood. “It’s not
nothing, Francis, you’ve been shot!”

“He damned near broke his neck when he fell
out of the tree,” Gabriel said darkly.

She was mesmerized for a moment by the
sight, then brought herself—and her nausea—under control. “Joan, get some water
so we can heat it over the fire. You can use the empty food containers. Gabriel,
grab that blanket and put it over him.”

Both men blinked at her dumbly.

Her hand went to her hip. “Well, don’t just
stand there like a pair of ninnies, he’s bleeding.”

“That’s the way to tell ’em, Angelface. I
could use that blanket, Gabe, if you’ve a mind to move your lily-white ass
anytime soon.”

Gabriel’s lips thinned but he did as
ordered while Joan moved off with the ration tins to pour water from one of the
canteens.

“Here.” Gabriel tossed the blanket down
next to Francis.

“Aren’t you going to cover me up?”

“I can put a bullet in your brain, then you
won’t have to worry about the hole in your leg, you dumb son of a bitch. I told
you to let me take the bastard out from behind. Serves you right.”

Maria pulled the army-issue quilt over her
patient and tucked it down around him.

Harris sat back on his heels. “The slug’s
still in there. Gabe, get out your knife. When’s his grace period up?”

Francis didn’t care for the idea. “You’re
not going to let him dig around in my leg, are you, Colonel?”

Gabriel bent to pull the knife from his
boot. “Grace has come and gone, brother. And there’s no drugs or booze to kill
the pain. You better find something to clamp down on.”

“Stop teasing him,” she demanded. “Can’t
you see he’s in pain? There are blunt-edged tweezers in this kit.”

“He wouldn’t be in pain if he’d let me take
out the cocksucker.”

Harris angled a look up at her, shaking his
head. “I have to cut a slash across his thigh in order to get the tweezers
inside, so I’d rather you didn’t stab Gabe with them.”

“Water’s hot,” Joan called from the fire.

“Maria, soak the tweezers in one of the
tins and bring the water. Gabe, you about ready with that knife?”

“Oh yeah, I’m ready.”

“Find a stick for the hero the clamp down
on and let’s do it. Joan, hold him down.”

Everyone took their places. Maria stood
behind Harris holding the tins, one with the tweezers, the other to bathe away
the blood and dirt. She watched him stretch the skin taunt while Gabriel made a
perpendicular cut above and below the hole. Francis bit down on the stick
Gabriel shoved between his teeth, growling savagely as the white-hot metal
seared through his flesh.

Seth paused to loosen the crude tourniquet
applied earlier to let the circulation flow and give Francis a chance to get
his breath. Then he tightened it again and went to work with the tweezers.

“Gabe, hold his leg, dammit. Francis, be
still. You act like you’ve never taken a bullet before.”

Francis mumbled something to Joan.

“What’d he say?” Maria asked.

“He said those times didn’t count ’cause he
wasn’t sober.”

It was amazing Francis didn’t pass out from
the pain. Maria became woozy just watching, but she concentrated on the fact
that the bullet had to come out or poor Francis would be worse off. He’d taken
that bullet for her, the least she owed him was to help any way she could.

“Did you get him?” she asked the question
to no one in particular.

“Him who?” Gabe asked without looking up.

“The cocksucker.”

Gabriel chuckled under his breath. “Right
now he’s sucking air through his navel. The others ran like rabbits.”

“How many?” Seth grimaced, working the
tweezers deeper.

“Three, minus their guns and ammo. One won’t
make it back down the mountain. The other two…” Gabe shrugged, as if their fate
wasn’t worth worrying over.