Tracker’s Sin (13 page)

your gut. “You have?”

“Sí.”

At least the man was whispering and not shooting. “Mind if I ask what made you think I’d come cal ing tonight?”

“Lower your voice. We do not want to wake Josefina.”

“You’re the one with the gun.”

“
Sí,
I am.”

“So how did you know?”

“You are a man of habit. Always you put your saddle away at the end of the day. Today you left it at the ready. When men of habit break

them, it is for a reason.”

Tracker feigned nonchalance, feeling Ari’s eyes on his back like twin daggers. “I could just be running from a shotgun wedding.”

Vincente shook his head. “You came many miles to find Ari. You would not leave without her.”

“You’re right.” He turned slowly back toward the bed. “That being the case, I’l just be going.”

He made only a quarter turn before the old man hissed out, “Do not.”

Shit again.
“Make up your mind, Vincente. Time’s wasting.”

“Not so much time that I cannot say what needs to be said.”

“I think the fact you’re letting me kidnap your daughter-in-law says it al .”

“It is right that she leave this way.”

Tracker shook his head. He couldn’t care less what the old man’s reasons were. And Ari didn’t need to hear them, because for sure they

were the type to tear her world apart. She needed her il usions, in order to keep her sanity.

“I’m not your priest, old man. I don’t want to hear your confession.”

“But Ari must hear.” Vincente nodded to the bed. “She must not think that we did not love her. That we are terrible people.”

Shit.
Vincente wanted forgiveness. Tracker tried another tactic. “You keep talking and your wife wil wake up.”

Vincente shook his head. “She has taken her special tea. It makes her sleep when her mind wil not. She wil not wake if we are quiet.”

Tracker didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy. “It’s a hel of a thing, a guilty conscience.”

“Yes.” Vincente sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. “Our son did not die.”

The bed ropes creaked at Ari’s shock about a truth she didn’t need to hear.

“Shut the hel up.”

Vincente held the weapon higher. “I am the one with the gun. I wil decide who talks.”

“She doesn’t need to hear this.”

“She does. Her memory returns in the night. She says things, remembers things she does not recal in the morning. I do not want her

thinking badly of us when the forgetting stops.”

Tracker didn’t see how she could think any differently. “Let it go.”

“She is a good woman. She deserves the truth.”

He said that as if it justified everything. “Yes, she is,” Tracker agreed. “And I need to get her out of here now.”

Vincente didn’t appear to hear. He stepped to the side so he could see Ari. Tracker had the overwhelming urge to step between them

again, to shield her.

“Antonio was always such a good boy, raised to do right, but maybe a bit spoiled because he was the only one.” Vincente looked for

understanding. “It was easier to make him happy than to see his tears. He became used to such things. When he got older, he stil wanted everything

given to him.”

It was a common enough story. Ranching was a hard life with little profit. Many young men went out in the world for easier pickings. Some

stayed on the right of the law, others went to the left. Vincente’s son had obviously chosen the second route.

If only the old man would lower that barrel a fraction more… “You done?” Tracker asked.

Vincente shook his head. The pistol held steady. “My wife could not accept what Antonio became. Every day she prayed for his return to

the path we had laid out for him. But he got further and further away and my wife’s heart broke more and more.” An apologetic look fil ed Vincente’s eyes

as he pleaded for understanding. “Josefina cannot see Antonio for who he is. She stil sees him as a little boy who just needs guidance.”

There was no shielding Ari now. The only thing Tracker could offer her was the ful truth. “So when he brought you Ari, you agreed to hold

her for him.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“I was not here when she was brought, but had you seen her, you would have understood why I would not have said no, had I been.”

Tracker had seen Desi. It was entirely too easy to imagine how Ari had looked. “I understand.”

Something bumped his thigh. Ari’s foot. He reached down. She twisted away. He caught it, needing to hold her as Vincente delivered

blow after blow with his confession. She needed comfort. Tracker was al she had.

“Antonio is a
Comancheros,
” Tracker said.

Ari went very stil . Tracker looked over his shoulder. Her gaze was locked desperately on Vincente, as if through sheer force of wil she

could change the words coming from his mouth. She shook her head.

Vincente hung his. “To my shame, yes.”

“That’s why your ranch can remain undisturbed and undefended.”

“Yes. Last fal , he came here with Ari, talking big, not caring that she was injured and pregnant.”

Behind them Ari moaned. Tracker swore under his breath. Vincente kept going, as if he couldn’t see the devastation his words wrought.

“He said he just needed a place to keep her until he could find this man who would pay to have her.”

Ari’s family attorney. The man who’d ordered the death of them al . The man who hunted Ari and Desi, because whoever owned them

owned their inheritance.

“Your wife had to know it was wrong.”

“She is not reasonable when it comes to Antonio.” Vincente looked every one of his years as he shook his head. “We did wrong by Ari. It

had to be made right.”

Tracker squeezed Ari’s foot. It was al the comfort he could give. “So you were the one who sent me the message.”

The old man nodded. “
Sí.
I got to know her. She is a good woman. She deserves a life bigger than the lies we told her. Bigger than what

my son would have.”

“You told her the lies about her past so she could be happy.”

He nodded again. “We grew to love her.”

“And Miguel?”

“I love him, too.”

“But he means more to your wife.” Tracker hazarded the guess as he glanced toward the window. Much longer and Shadow would come

check out the delay. One look at the gun and he’d shoot. Tracker didn’t want Vincente dead.

“My wife sees in him another chance to raise a child.”

“And you don’t?”

“I’m an old man in failing health. For my son I have done things that do not make me proud, but I wil not do this. I wil not give to him an

innocent woman and baby.”

“No, you won’t.” Tracker palmed the knife tucked up his sleeve. If it meant he had to kil Vincente to insure that, he would.

“He has chosen his path. I have chosen mine.” He motioned with the gun. “You must take her and leave.”

Tracker looked over at Ari. She was lying stil in the bed, staring at the ceiling, tears leaking from her eyes.

How much of what she’d heard did she understand? How much did she remember?

“There were no gringos in town, were there?”

“I only created them to keep Ari out of town, so there would be no questions.”

“While you waited.”

Vincente frowned. “Yes. You took longer than I expected.”

“I was delayed.” Getting Tucker’s pregnant wife to safety. Fighting off Comanches. Dropping off stray women at Hel ’s Eight.

“You should know that Antonio knows she is worth money to a gringo.”

“Perfect.”

“They wil be coming for her soon.”

“What wil you say when they get here and she’s gone?”

Vincente smiled sadly. “I wil tel them I am an old man and no match for the great Tracker Ochoa.”

He backed into the hal and grabbed a bag and tossed it onto the bed. It clanked and rattled. “Food for the baby and his mama.”

“Thank you.” Tracker picked up the bag and hefted it. There was probably enough for a couple days. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m sick. If
Dios
wil s it, I wil live long enough to get my wife to her family in Mexico. But either way, when I die I’l not have this stain on my

soul.”

Men had done less for bigger reasons. “Fair enough.”

Vincente let the muzzle drop. “You can leave the way you came.”

Through the window, like a thief in the night. Tracker took the bag and set it on the ground outside the window.

He went back to the bed and picked up Ari. She didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. And when he looked down, she was staring at Vincente, al

the agony in her soul reflected in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,
hija.
”

She turned her head away.

It was hard to hate the old man. A parent’s love for his child was absolute. Tracker remembered that rush of emotion he’d felt when he’d

held Miguel. The utter need to protect and shelter. Love was a son of a bitch in al its forms. “
Vaya con Dios,
Vincente.”

“Gracias. Y tú tambien.”
Vincente stared at Ari, his heart in his eyes. Ari didn’t turn her head. Didn’t acknowledge his existence. Vincente

would have to find his forgiveness elsewhere.

The old man turned his attention back to Tracker. “Promise me you’l make an honest woman of
mi hija.
”

That he couldn’t promise. “I’l do what’s best.”

“Take her to a place where she can have peace, a family, her dreams.”

He was taking her to Hel ’s Eight. “I wil .”

Vincente left the room, gun dangling at his side, shoulders hunched. A broken man coming to the end of his life, with his sins riding his

back.

Tracker swore under his breath and headed for the window. No sense pushing his luck by trying for the front door. As he eased Ari to the

floor, he gave thanks he wasn’t going to live long enough to be old. Long before he was faced with the prospect of staring down death with nothing but his

failures to contemplate, his luck would run out and he’d die somewhere alone, likely with a bul et in his back. But before that day came, he had one last

mission to accomplish.

He sat Ari on the windowsil and brushed the curls from her forehead. She stared at him with the uncomprehending shock he saw in the

faces of soldiers who’d seen one battle too many.

He remembered the sweetness of her kiss, the heat of her passion, the purity of her smile that day in the barn, their one time together, as

her desire rose to meet his. She had a future. She just needed the opportunity to believe in it.

He removed the gag from her mouth. “It’s time to go home, sweets.”

7

A
ri clutched the knowledge harder than she clutched the saddle horn. She needed something real to cling to as her mind spun with Vincente’s

revelations. She’d never been married. There’d been no murder. There’d been no disaster from which she needed to recover. She was just a crazy

woman Vincente was holding for his son, so his son could make a profit down the road. And she’d made it so easy for them. Believing what she was told.

Wanting it to be that simple.

Why?
Why had she wanted it to be that simple? What was her mind hiding from her? What could be so awful that she’d be content with a

fiction that didn’t even make sense when she held it up to the light of day? She should have questioned it.

She looked at her son. She should have questioned a lot of things.

It’s time to take you home.

So, where
was
home? What was waiting for her when she got there? Was any of it good? A pounding began behind her eyes, the way it

always did when she thought of going back…where? Where was home?

She put the thought into words. “Where’s home?”

Neither Tracker nor the other man, whom Tracker had introduced as Shadow, his brother, gave any indication they’d heard her, though

she knew they had. The two heard every little thing, even what she didn’t want them to. Which could only mean she’d asked a question they didn’t want to

answer. Sure enough, when she looked back over her shoulder at Tracker, she caught him exchanging with Shadow one of those glances that passed for

communication between the two.

Tracker pul ed his horse off to the right and dismounted beside a smal stream. He untied Miguel’s cradleboard from the saddle and, after

checking for snakes, propped it against a rock. The stream was barely more than a trickle in places. It would be dried up in a month. Riding then would be

torture. Hot, dusty and thirsty. She frowned. How did she know that?

Shadow rode past her. The only acknowledgment he gave her was a brief nod. He was a very rude man and very good at ignoring her. He

dismounted and led his horse over to the water.

“I asked a question,” she said as Tracker stood. She couldn’t see his eyes for the barrier of his hat brim, so she snatched his hat off his

head. Neither man said a word. They just watched her—Shadow with the neutral expression that said nothing, and Tracker with that cautious concern.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to have an episode.” She didn’t think even she could handle that.

Tracker jerked his chin upward, indicating his hat, which she stil held. “You done or were you planning on hitting me with that?”

It did look as if she was getting ready to swing. Lowering her arm, she shrugged. “I couldn’t see your eyes.”

The explanation sounded lame. Tracker didn’t even blink at the absurd explanation. He merely reached up and took the hat from her

fingers.

“I’m rather fond of the shape it’s in already.”

She’d been crushing the brim. “I’m sorry.”

Her hands felt empty without the hat. She needed something to hold on to. She settled for the saddle horn instead.

“I—” Ari couldn’t finish the sentence. How did one put into words the emptiness inside? The longing for something solid in a world that