Tracker’s Sin (2 page)

Shadow grunted, knowing exactly what he was talking about. “We should have just gut shot the bastard.”

“Next time we wil .” He wasn’t a man natural y given to playing by the rules, especial y when they weren’t working. Things might be

changing, but he wasn’t. He liked things clean and neat, with no messy loose ends. John Kettle was a loose end, and sooner or later Tracker would have

to clean it up. The bastard kil ed for the pleasure it gave him. That kind of sickness inside a man only got worse, not better. He would kil again. And again.

And again. Until someone stopped him.

“Amen,” Shadow muttered.

A warm breeze blew up, lifting Tracker’s long hair off his neck in a subtle warning. Goose bumps rose along his skin. His senses

sharpened and that inner voice that so often saved his ass issued an alert. He traced the breeze’s path backward. South. The sense of inevitability that

had been haunting him since the day he’d met Caine’s wife, Desi, increased. The woman who might be Ari was south. So was his destiny. He gripped the

stock of the rifle, letting the familiar feel of the sun-warmed wood anchor him. The letter rustled. Damn, he wasn’t sure he was that eager to meet what was

coming.

It was too much to hope Shadow hadn’t sensed the tension flowing through him.

“What is it?”

Tracker didn’t know what to make of the inner prodding, the overwhelming sense of destiny crashing in on him. “A feeling.”

Shadow swore. Their whole lives they’d had a strange connection, strange feelings. What happened to one often was felt by the other. It

had kept them alive more than once. Shadow finished tying on his saddlebags. “I’m going with you.”

Tracker didn’t want his twin anywhere near the disaster that had to be his destiny.

“No.”

Glancing from beneath the wide brim of his black hat, Shadow said, “You may be twenty minutes older, but you don’t tel me what to do.”

The hel he didn’t. “We made Desi a promise to find her sister.”

“Yeah, so? We’l give the Cavato lead to someone else.”

“Who would you suggest? Cavato is in Indian territory. It would be suicide for most men to get within ten miles of there.”

“I’d say Zacharias and his men, if he weren’t stil stove up from that run-in with Comanches.”

“They could do it.”

Zacharias and his vaqueros were from Sam and Bel a’s ranch. Tougher men had never been bred, unless it was Hel ’s Eight themselves.

Hel s’ Eight owed them a debt that could never be repaid. Zach and his men had volunteered to sacrifice themselves in a near-suicide mission, standing

against Comanches to buy Tucker the time he needed to get his pregnant wife to safety. Everyone thought they’d been kil ed. It’d been quite a shock to

have them ride up, bloody and near death, at their own funeral.

“I’l be glad when Sam’s connections get us what we need to put an end to the attempts on Desi’s life.”

Tracker nodded. “And Ari’s.”

“Yeah. Amazing what men wil do for money.”

And Ari and Desi were worth a lot of money to someone back east. From what Sam and the rest of them had deduced, the whole family

had been slated to be murdered on their trip west, but the kil ers had gotten greedy when they’d seen the girls. Instead of kil ing them, the attackers had

sold them to
Comancheros.
Both girls had suffered horribly. Desi’s suffering had ended when Caine had found her standing al but naked in a creek,

fighting four men with that hel ion spirit. But Ari’s suffering probably continued.

No one knew if Ari had survived, but Desi’s gut said she had, and that was enough for Hel ’s Eight. They each carried a letter that

contained a promise to bring Ari home to her sister. And no member of Hel ’s Eight ever went back on a promise. None of the men real y expected to find

Ari breathing, except maybe Tracker. Perhaps it was because he was a twin himself and understood that strange connection between close siblings that

surpassed logic. Or maybe, he admitted only to himself, it was because of something else, something deeper. But he knew Ari was alive, and he knew he

would find her. The only thing in question was whether he would find her in time. Inside him a clock ticked, and lately the tick was becoming louder, as if

time was running out.

He glanced south again. Ari was waiting and she needed him. He wouldn’t listen to anything inside that said more than that. But he stil

didn’t want Shadow anywhere around what his gut said was going to be his end.

“We can’t afford to wait for Luke, Caden and Ace to hit the rendezvous points and pick up their messages. If the woman in Cavato is Ari,

you need to get there before she’s sold or stolen again.”

“Yeah.” Shadow’s face set in that blank way that said he was accepting what he couldn’t change. “And if she’s not Ari?”

Tracker patted Buster’s flank. “I’l do what I think best.”

“Tia said if we bring home another mouth to feed who can’t cook, we’re not getting another biscuit for the rest of our lives.”

Tracker grunted. “Then we teach them to cook on the way to Hel ’s Eight.”

Shadow snorted and picked up his horse’s reins from where they dangled to the ground. “Says the man who’s always ducking the women

trailing behind him.”

Tracker looped the reins of his roan around the horn of his saddle. Buster lost a bit of his lazy slump. There was nothing the horse loved

more than covering ground, and since he had a stride as smooth as butter, there was nothing Tracker loved more than riding him. “I don’t want their

gratitude.”

It made him uncomfortable, made him feel like a liar. He wasn’t a hero. There just wasn’t much else a man could do when a woman

looked at him with hope fading from her eyes as she realized he was there to save someone else, not just give her something on which to hang that hope.

A ride to a safe place. A chance to start over. Not al took it, but some did. And those who did he brought home to Hel ’s Eight. From there they did what

they wanted. Went home to family, went off to new beginnings or stayed under the group’s protection. Something Shadow knew, because he’d brought

just as many women to Hel ’s Eight as Tracker had. The difference was that the women didn’t imagine themselves in love with Shadow. Tracker wished he

knew the secret of keeping them at arm’s length. He was getting damn tired of being the butt of jokes.

Leather creaked as Shadow swung up into the saddle. “You might as wel enjoy it, since you can’t escape it.”

“No.” He wasn’t a ladies’ man and never had been.

“Women have touched us for less clear reasons.”

“Yeah.” He recal ed the way Desi looked at Caine. The way Sal y Mae looked at Tucker. The only greed in either woman’s eyes was that

of a woman in love who wanted her man. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been looked at with love. Any softness he’d received in his life, he’d

paid for. He was damn tired of paying. He was getting damn tired of a lot of things.

Buster tossed his head and snorted impatiently. Tracker agreed. It was time to leave. He swung up into the saddle.

Shadow stopped him. “Tracker?”

He gathered up the reins. Buster pranced with impatience. “What?”

“You don’t have to go.”

He blinked. “I gave my word.” For the longest time the Ochoa word hadn’t been worth shit, but now it stood strong. He wasn’t going to be

the one who dragged it back into the dirt.

“Desi wil understand.”

“I doubt it. She loves her sister.”

“She also loves you.”

He shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

Shadow adjusted his hat against the glare of the morning sun. “What is it with finding Arianna, Tracker?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You told me once that you had a feeling she’d be the end of you.”

“I was drunk.” The dreams had been getting stronger lately, coming nightly, yanking him from a sound sleep with a sense of urgency and

doom. He’d tossed back the whiskey in an attempt to escape them.

“You never drink, but when the last one wasn’t Arianna, you went on a two-day bender.”

“I’d been a month on the trail with five women who did nothing but argue. I was just cutting loose.”

“You hate drink and what it does to a man.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not as foolish as the next when I get off the trail.”

“Bul .”

He didn’t need this from his brother. Not now. “Let it go, Shadow.”

“Not if finding Ari means I lose you.” Shadow’s horse shifted with the tension in the man.

“There’s no ‘if’ about it. I’m going to find her.”

“And if it means your death?”

He’d made his peace with that possibility a year ago. It wasn’t that hard. The pain in Desi’s face as she spoke of the last time she’d seen

her sister, the agony in her voice as she’d exposed her guilt, the hopelessness as she’d begged Caine to help her…. Like Caine, he’d do anything to

remove that pain from her. Despite al that she’d been through, Desi was the purest soul Tracker had ever seen. An angel with blond hair and blue eyes.

An angel who had seemed so familiar the first time he saw her that he’d thought he recognized her, until he’d gotten closer.
So close,
his instincts had

whispered,
but not the one.

And then she’d revealed the existence of her twin, and that sinking sense had come with the loss of inviolability. Then the dreams had

started. Arianna cal ed to him in those dreams, begged him for help. And he could help her; he knew that as wel as he knew saving her would destroy him.

He imagined Desi’s face when her sister came home. Going out a hero wasn’t a bad way to go. He met Shadow’s gaze and held it. He didn’t want to

leave any doubt that he went to his end with peace in his heart. “Then I’m making the trade.”

Shadow shook his head. The breeze that raised the long, silken hair that lay on Tracker’s back barely disturbed his brother’s. “I’m not.”

Tracker couldn’t help that. “Your destiny lies elsewhere.”

It was a shot in the dark, but the twitch of Shadow’s eyelids revealed what he’d suspected. His brother had demons of his own to wrestle

with in the dark of night, when there were no distractions.

“Promise me you’l watch your back.”

Tracker nodded. “As wel as you watch yours.”

“That wil be damn good.”

“Understood.”

Shadow wheeled his horse to the west and nudged him into a canter. As one, man and horse blended seamlessly into an easy rhythm.

Tracker watched until his brother grew smal in the distance before turning Buster south and urging him into his own ground-eating lope. His destiny

waited.

His destiny rested in a little run-down adobe house about a mile out of the town of Esperanza. Evidence of past prosperity was al around

the property. A barn big enough to house several horses stood just off to the right. Several corrals surrounding the structure were in various states of

col apse. Only the fences near the house were maintained. The home itself clearly had been built for a family, and remnants of happier times remained in

the faded red paint on the shutters. However, the only people Tracker had seen coming and going from the house since he’d arrived last night were a

stooped, elderly Hispanic man, a smal elderly woman, presumably his wife, and a blond woman Tracker had seen only from the back, through the

window. By the lack of hoofprints around the exterior, he was pretty sure those were al the residents.

He trained his spyglass on the window again, hoping for a better look at the blond woman. Al he saw was the back of a wooden chair, a

cup on a table and the edge of a black iron stove. Impatience, a foreign emotion, gnawed at his calm. He wanted—no, needed—to see the young woman

who lived there. His gut said it was Ari. He needed it to be Ari. He was sick of the dreams, sick of the apprehension, sick of the fairy tales his imagination

wove around her. The woman had lost her family to murderers, her virginity to
Comancheros,
and probably her sanity to God knew what else. Whatever

he found, Ari wouldn’t be a woman who tiptoed into his dreams at the end of nightmares, held out her hand in invitation and looked at him with softness.

He’d be lucky if she stil had a thread of sanity.

He shifted his position slightly. There wasn’t much cover around the house, which was good from a defense standpoint, but was hel on

his knees, as it forced him to crouch. There was only so much cover sagebrush could provide a man his size. And only so much strain his twice-busted

legs could take without screaming a protest. He forced the growing discomfort from his mind and resumed his surveil ance. He needed to know if the

woman was a guest or a prisoner. It wasn’t uncommon for women to be sold as slaves this far from the law. And it wouldn’t be a surprise, based on what

she’d been through, if Ari saw that as a step up.

Movement to the left caught his eye. He turned the spyglass on the back door. The old man stepped down into the yard, steadying himself

on the doorjamb a few seconds before straightening his spine and heading toward the barn, where the milk cow was housed. An aged hound strode

alongside. It was clear to Tracker that the old man was il , but didn’t want the other residents of the house to know. Tracker made a note of the routine and

added it to his mental list. From what he could see, it wasn’t a violent household. He’d crept close enough to the house last night to hear some

conversation. He’d caught only a bit, revolving around the care of the rosebush out front, before the hound had caught his scent and growled a warning.

That fragment of conversation had been enough to give Tracker a hint of
her
voice. Soft and sweet, with Eastern overtones. It was hard to tel through the