Saint (24 page)

“Me.”

Chapter Eleven

Disgusted, Maria gave up trying to get at
the mud between her shoulder blades. “Give it up, Harris. We’ve been sharing
the same house and sleeping together, literally, for a couple of weeks now. You
think I don’t know what comes next? I’m not some silly little virgin with
grandiose dreams of a knight in shining armor. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old
healthy female.”

One who hasn’t had the pleasure of close
human contact for a very long time. Maybe it was pathetic that she was
attracted to him, but it was true.

“Once,” he grunted. “When we reach Joan’s.
Then you go your way and I go mine.”

She dropped her chin and stared at him. “Don’t
do me any favors.”

“It won’t be a favor, believe me.” He
pushed away from the tree he was leaning against and walked past her to
retrieve his duffel. “You know,” he said over his shoulder, “if you hadn’t been
so set on gutting Gabe, you might have noticed he killed that snake before it
touched you.”

“Like I care. I’m scared to death of
snakes, dead or alive.”

“So is Gabe.”

Even though his back was to her, he should
have felt the hole she drilled into him. If looks could kill, her irritation
alone would disintegrate him on the spot. And she certainly didn’t need him to
throw her a bone, figuratively or sexually. He acted as though she was twisting
his arm by stating the obvious.

As far as she was concerned, Seth Harris
could whistle Dixie when they reached Mississippi.

* * * * *

“Man, you could cook an egg on this
pavement.” Gabriel wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.

They reached the bottom of the mountain
with daylight to spare. Heat waves rose from the two-lane highway leading into
the small township, if three buildings could be called a town. A small grocery,
a bar and a gas station.

Seth halted the parade some distance from
the bar’s back gravel lot. “Get us some wheels, Gabe.”

“And don’t bring back a Chevy,” Francis
added. “Get a Ford. Four-wheel drive, preferably.”

Gabriel cocked a sarcastic brow at the
preacher. “Anything else, your highness?”

“Yeah. Make sure it has air. Don’t hot-wire
some old clunker.”

“Now we’re heisting cars?” Maria lowered
herself to the ground. Not that she cared, she was hot, sticky and miserable.
The rain had cooled things down for a short time, but soon the humidity took
over and the sun emerged again hotter than ever. She would give her right arm
to be on the beach right now. Any beach.

“It beats walking to Mississippi,
Angelface.”

She shouldn’t be complaining. Francis hadn’t
uttered one word about his injury on the hike down. Besides, at this point she
didn’t much care how they left these mountains, just so long as they did. She’d
had enough of camping out under the stars. “How’s your leg, Francis?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a scratch. But I
couldn’t have asked for a better nurse than you. Nowadays, you never know if
you’re going to get stuck with Frieda Feminist or Backdoor Sam. Your mom did a
fine job raising you on that score. One of these days I’m gonna get me a woman
like you.”

Gabriel returned shortly with their
transportation. The old Chevy Suburban looked like it had seen better days, but
at least they wouldn’t be sitting on top of each other. Francis muttered
something about Gabriel’s contrary nature and the price of hearing-aid
batteries as he climbed into the back of the wagon and propped his leg up on
the middle seat. Gabriel took the driver’s seat with Joan riding shotgun. Maria
was left sharing the middle seat with Harris.

The twenty-some-odd-year-old wagon had
obviously been used as a work truck. The seats were ripped in several places
and the carpet faded and frayed—what there was of it—but it had air and a full
tank of gas and that was all that mattered.

She stuffed her backpack up against the
corner of the window and leaned back, sighing. “Joan, please tell me your house
has indoor plumbing.”

“It does. But no air. The house is old. The
trees shade most of it, so it stays fairly cool in the morning and evening.”

“Fairly cool compared to what?” Francis
asked.

“Hell.”

Gabriel twisted the knob to crank up the
air conditioner as high as it would go. “That’s a piece of information I could
have waited a little longer to hear.”

The cab grew silent as each fell into their
own thoughts. Francis dozed, having room to stretch with the rear of the wagon
all to himself. Something Maria wished she could do.

About an hour later Gabriel broke the
silence, pulling off the side of the road. “To hell with driving all the way to
Mississippi. If there’s an airstrip of sorts around here, point me to it. I’ll
have my company jet meet us and we can fly in.”

“You’re doing that well, huh, cow puncher?”
Francis asked, the cessation of movement rousing him from his nap.

“It beats listening to you snore.”

* * * * *

The plane met them on what amounted to an
old crop-dusting strip.

The oilman had spared no expense to make
his flying hotel comfortable. He even went so far as to have a private doctor
waiting onboard to treat Francis’ wound, though it took some convincing before
the preacher would let the female physician close enough to touch him. The
woman was Frieda Feminist’s sister, a no-nonsense woman of approximately six
feet and no sense of humor.

The luxuriously decorated bedroom came
complete with bathroom. Francis and the doctor went first. No one asked how it
went when the pair returned to the main cabin, but Dr. Frieda was smiling a little
too satisfactorily as she put away the needle and syringe.

Gabe offered to let Maria go next, but she
declined, saying she didn’t want to have to rush. Both he and Joan could have
set a world record for all the time it took them to shower and change.

Seth insisted Maria go next. When he eased
open the bedroom door later, he found her sprawled on the bed, still wrapped in
a towel. He shouldn’t have stared at her well-shaped legs or the swell of
breast or the curve of her ass. But he did anyway.

After pausing momentarily by the bed, he
went in the bathroom and stood beneath the spray of hot water. As the steam
filtered into his pores he tried not to think about the exotic creature ten
feet away and the fact that he wanted to sink between her thighs as deep as he
could get. His cock hardened instantly.

Wasn’t that why he came in here? Because he
knew there would only be enough time to fuck her before they touched down,
while avoiding all the aftermath business?

He reached to flip off the lever marked
hot, cursing fluently as the cold water hit his overheated body. Not until he
had himself under control did he leave the chilling spray. He was just wiping
the lather from his face after a quick run with one of the disposable razors
Gabe kept on hand when Maria barged in the door, still wearing only the towel.

She let out a yelp as the door swung shut
and she spotted him. “Well, for Christ’s sake. Let somebody know you’re in
here, why don’t you.” She turned to make a quick exit, but he reached around
her to lean a hand against the door. “What are you doing? Open the door.”

“What did you come in here for?”

“I came in to change, but I can wait ’til
you’re finished.”

“I’m finished.” The urge to have her wouldn’t
pass. Not this time. He was already hard again.

Her gaze flickered over the towel riding
low on his hips and she shook her head slowly. “It’s not that easy, Seth. You
have to give something.”

“Tell me what you want and I’ll do my best
to accommodate.” He backed her against the door, his hand sliding beneath the
edge of her towel where it rested just below the juncture of her thighs.

She turned her face away when he bent to
capture her mouth. “No,” she rasped as his fingers caressed the inside of her
right flank, pushing his hand away just before it made contact with her heated
center.

His cock was throbbing painfully but he
understood the message. “I told you before, it would only be physical, Maria.
Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed. I’ve changed.
These last couple of months have brought home the fact life is too precious not
to rejoice in every minute of it. I don’t expect empty promises or sweet words.
You don’t have to say you love me or pretend to feel an emotion that doesn’t
exist. You don’t even have to waste time and effort courting my sensitive
female side. But by God, you’re not going to have cold sex with me as though it
were just another mission to be made and forgotten.”

“You want too much.”

“Maybe so. But I want to wring every last
drop of pleasure out of life that I can. I have enough bitterness of my own, I
don’t need yours heaped on top of it.”

He backed off and let her go. Images of
that fateful night flashed before his eyes. The smoke, the fire, the surprise
on Manuel’s face.

The chamber. He should never have gone into
it.

The blood. The smell of rotting flesh. The
bone fragments.

“I hope to God you never have to know my
brand of bitterness.”

* * * * *

Mississippi

The aging two-story mansion had seen better
days. It sat at the end of a winding tree-lined dirt drive, surrounded by thick,
green woodland and beautifully lush wildflowers. The exterior itself had long
ago faded from white to gray, its six porch columns peeling and scarred, but
still intact. Wild ivy and honeysuckle clung to the stone walls, their
tentacles reaching to obscure several nearby windows. The front lawn—littered
with magnolias, weeping willows and maples—was mostly bare of grass.

To each side of the crumbling steps, what
once looked to have been a manicured flower garden now sprouted a maze of wild
flowers, weeds and untrimmed evergreens. Maria fell in love with it instantly.
It reminded her of the famous war-torn house Margaret Mitchell made famous. “It’s
beautiful,” she breathed.

All four men turned to stare at her.

“Okay, so maybe it could use a woman’s
touch,” she allowed, “But it still has all the charm of the Old South.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “We didn’t fly all
the way down here so you could be charmed.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, cow
puncher. This house can satisfy a woman in ways you only can dream of.”

“Ding. End round one—back to your
respective corners.” Francis slapped Gabriel heartily on the back. “You walked
right into that,
amigo.”

Maria knew they were in Mississippi but
that was all she knew. They had driven for hours along winding back roads—in
yet another stolen vehicle, ditched by the side of the road about a half mile
back—with Joan sparingly giving directions like “Turn right at that tree,” or “Veer
left at the fork”. Apparently, Mississippi wasn’t known for its road signs.

“Where are we exactly?”

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you,
Angelface.”

“Why do I bother?” she muttered to herself
as they climbed the steps.

Francis dropped his bag in the living room,
settling into a threadbare wing-backed chair. “Beats me. You oughta know better
by now.”

Harris took a turn around the house with
Joan. When he returned a few minutes later, it was with instructions. “Francis,
take the study in the back. Gabe, you have the living room. Maria, the upstairs
bedroom on the right is yours. Don’t open the curtains.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’m leaving in the morning.”

* * * * *

“Powwow,” Seth announced when Maria had
taken to her room for the night. They gathered at the back of the house, in the
study.

“I knew you had a plan,” the preacher
grinned, relaxing on the cracked leather sofa.

“We going after Juarez?”

“Hocksteder.”

“Hocksteder? What good will that do?” Gabe
scooped a pinch of chewing tobacco from the Redman tin and folded it inside his
cheek.

“The evidence Will turned over will slowly
disappear or Juarez’s attorneys will argue to suppress it. With Will’s
reputation hacked to pieces, both Hocksteder and Juarez will come out smelling
like roses. If we’re going to get the upper hand, we have to divide the house.
I’ll go after Hocksteder, put the bug in his ear Juarez is making moves he
knows nothing about. Gabe, you’ll pay a visit to Juarez, offer to do the job
his men can’t seem to get right.”

“I’ll take Juarez,” Francis insisted.

“Gabe can handle it. You don’t know enough
about explosives to fill a gnat’s ass. Besides, I need him to study the layout
in case we have to go back. Joan has to be able to go about his normal routine
to avoid suspicion, so I need you here with Maria. I don’t want her left alone
for any length of time.”

Francis shook his head. “I told Will going
legit was a bad idea.”