A Wolf in the Desert (5 page)

Their trek continued, Indian leading, Patience following, saguaro lining their path like spine-encrusted sentinels. The scent of beer, peculiar smokes, and drunken mutterings reached out to them before the refracted light of headlights still burning.

“I won't stop fighting, Indian,” she declared in a hushed tone. “Not ever.”

Indian stopped at the shoulder of the road, keeping his back to her. His shoulders lifted in a long, drawn breath, a breath exhaled in a resigned sigh. “I know.”

As he stepped into the light, a haggard Blue Doggie looked up at him and beyond. Virulent hate burned in rheumy eyes.

Indian reached back, pulling her to him. “Go to the car. Choose what you will need. Sturdy serviceable clothing as you're wearing now, and no more than a couple of changes. A hat if you have one, but don't bother with a bag, bundle everything in a shirt. When you've finished, tie your hair back and wait until I come for you.”

Patience nodded. When she moved toward Beauty, without looking away from Blue Doggie, Indian stopped her with a hand tangling in her hair, detaining her.

“Stay there, until I come,” he repeated.

“I will.”

“Promise.” There was a new, watchful tension in his voice, arcing through his body.

“I promise.”

“Thank you.”

Patience was surprised by the courtesy but wasted no time thinking on it. Beauty had sustained more damage, clothing and toiletries were scattered inside the car. Even that garnered little of Patience's attention.

The rifle. She wanted the rifle. Where was it?

To the sound of revving engines, she picked her way gingerly through splintered glass. Her luggage lay in the back as it had. It had been opened and riffled through, the clothing tossed in all directions, but the bag had been moved little. Hoping against hope that the rifle remained undiscovered, she threw the bag aside, scattering clothing and glass more.

“Thank God!” Miraculously the case was still strapped in the special niche created for it by brother Kieran.

The sound of motorcycle engines was fading. She was alone with Indian. This was her one chance to escape. Hurriedly she attacked buckles and straps. Too hurriedly. Haste made her injured hands clumsy. She'd barely managed to yank the case from its place and slide the rifle free when she heard his footsteps circling the car.

There was no time to retrieve bullets and load. When he stopped at the broken window at her side, she faced him, the empty rifle pointed squarely at his chest. “Back off, Indian.”

“Ah.” He acted as if it were common to face a rifle. “The rest of the arsenal?”

“Don't be cute. Cute doesn't suit you. Do as I say, back off.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked down at her. He was perfectly calm and at ease. “You're going to take my bike and ride out of the desert, and you'll shoot me if I stand in your way.”

Patience shifted the rifle against her shoulder. “Precisely.”

“I don't think so,” he murmured.

“Are you fool enough to challenge a rifle?”

“Yes.” He reached inside, closed his fingers over the barrel, taking the rifle from her. “When it isn't loaded.”

She didn't resist, there was no need. Burying her head in her hands, she faced failure and accepted it. Wearily she dropped her hands to her lap. “How did you know?”

“The derringer. If the rifle had been loaded, you wouldn't have wasted time with it before.” He laid the weapon aside and extended his hand. “It's time to go.”

The rifle was her last stand. The adrenaline that bolstered this last hurrah, vanished. She was hardly aware of leaving the car; like a puppet she walked mindlessly through gathering the clothing he felt suitable. All of it no more than vague perception.

When she struggled with her hair with hands grown unbearably stiff, it was Indian who bound it. As he did his own with a bit of fringe ripped from his vest.

She was astride his bike behind him when she realized she would likely never see Beauty again. “What will happen to her?”

“Her?” He glanced over his shoulder. “The Corvette?”

“She was a gift from my family. In a strange way, she had a personality. She was my friend.” Maybe it was crazy to consider a car a friend, but Patience didn't care. She asked again. “What will become of her?”

“She'll be stripped. Anything of value will be sold, what's left will be pushed into a canyon and covered with dirt.”

“Poor Beauty.”

“There's no hope for the car. There is for you. You don't have to trust me or like me, but we must do this together. You've that choice to make. We have a couple of hours of hard riding tonight. Think on it.”

The engine revved; Indian turned his bike into the desert. To a place Patience knew she might never leave.

A
bsorbed in her own fortune and in keeping her seat as the Electra Glide sailed, then flew over inhospitable terrain never meant to be traversed, Patience spared no energy on speculating what the camp would be. As Indian climbed one last incline, cut the engine and rolled to a silent halt, she realized no amount of thought or speculation would have prepared her for what lay before them.

Shifting in her seat she stepped down to stand by the bike to have a better view of the camp. It was a well-chosen site, a walled fortress carved into the mesa by wind and water and ancient cataclysm. On the boulder-strewn floor lighted by a single campfire, there were people. Men. Women. Some sitting by the fire, others moving frenetically on the fringes.

The orgy of drinking begun on the roadside continued, as if never interrupted, in this secluded place.

“We'll wait here, until it's calmer,” Indian said, his tone conveying no judgment of any kind. “In a while they'll drink themselves to sleep or into a stupor. It will be easier on you that way.”

Easier? Patience wondered what about this could ever be easy as she studied the enclave. There were no cabins or tents. Nothing in the littered clearing suggested any sense of permanence. Through dry, weary eyes she looked down on a primitive and barbarous scene in a primitive and barbarous land.

“This is it?” she asked as she faced him. “This is what you call home?”

“We have no home, nor any of its trappings. Out of necessity we travel light, and often on a moment's notice.”

“Leaving your litter behind.” This observation followed the shattering of a bottle tossed against a sandstone dome. “A delightful welcome when you pass this way again in your wanderings.”

“We never camp in the same place twice, but I try to see that we leave as little evidence of our passage as possible.”

“Oh, really?” Patience drawled. “Who cleans the litter?”

“The women do a passable job.” The crash of another bottle punctuated his response, the sound wafting to them on a rising current of cooler air.

Patience waited for the resonant clatter to fade. “Broken glass and all?”

“Yes.”

“Figures.”

Indian ignore her derision. “You'll be one of them. The difference will be that you belong to me. You will ride when I say. Eat when I say. Sleep when I say, and where. Whatever I ask, you will do.”

“Ask?” Her tone was cynical.

“It would be easier if asking were enough.”

“Easier for whom?”

“The both of us.”

“Somehow,” she observed wryly, “the rationale for that escapes me.”

Indian swung off the bike, secured it and wheeled toward her. He was a darker shape, sketched against a dark sky. “I have explained.” With a motion he indicated the canyon below. “And you've seen.”

Patience nodded, not bothering to look down again. Sensing even from this distance, the inherent depravity. “I've seen. They're like children. Vicious children, who make no secret of what they are and what they want.” She lifted her gaze to his. A gaze she could only feel. “You aren't the same. There are secrets in your eyes.” She shook her head, despair rampant in her. “What do you want, Indian?”

“To keep you from their tender mercies.” The answer came quickly, without need for thought. “And, one day, to take you home.”

“Tender mercy.” Patience laughed shortly. With the bravado of Scarlett facing Armageddon she drawled, “My, how you do go on.”

“You won't think this is a teasing matter when you see what men like Snake, and Custer, and Blue Doggie do to their women. Especially Snake.”

“Maybe I'll take your word for what I think it's worth,” she lingered on the last, giving it a disparaging emphasis. “And maybe I'll take my chances with one of the others. Even Snake.”

He took a step closer, looming over her, shutting out the waning light of the moon. “You won't.”

Her defiance blazed up at him. “Who will stop me?”

“You'll stop yourself.” He walked away, to the edge of the mesa. “There is a young woman, little more than a child, really. An exquisite child with hair like corn silk falling to her waist. Her eyes are that rare shining violet of a desert sunrise after rain. Her skin is smooth and translucent, and, oddly, never burns nor freckles. She's stunningly beautiful.” His fisted hands flexed and curled again into fists. “She
was
beautiful, until she displeased the Snake.”

“What did he do to her?” Patience stared at his back, reading horror in his posture. What, indeed, had Snake done to fill Indian with utter revulsion?

“Snake fancies himself an artist. His brush is his knife, his paint, ashes. His favorite canvas is a woman's face.” He turned his back on the canyon, walking to the bike and Patience. “Tomorrow seek her out, see for yourself what Snake has done. Look at the other women. Learn who belongs to whom, and how they're treated.”

His face was grim, his mouth drawn into a rigid line. “If you find one you prefer, I'll give you to him.”

Another time Patience would have lashed out at him at the possessive arrogance, would have doubted what he said. But not now, when his every move and word were filled with bleak sickness. Now she could only stare up at him, imagining a beautiful girl, a knife, and ashes. Like tears, a sickness of her own welled in her eyes.

Indian felt a twinge of guilt for the heartache he saw. He'd spared her some of the story, but he wondered if it were kindness. Perhaps it would have been kinder to prepare her, but could he say or do anything that would prepare for Callie, for all that could be done to an artless child in a short, sordid existence?

The women were camp followers. Bikers' groupies. None were like Patience. None was captive against her will. In her special unworldliness, not even Callie. None had been taken, innocent and unsuspecting. Not since he'd ridden the deserts and the mountains with the Wolves.

He didn't dwell on Callie. Callie was another story, for another day. A day he'd promised himself long ago that would come. If there were any semblance of life in him when this was done, it would come.

Patience was his first concern. For now, for always. What he'd done to her was unforgivable. He'd pushed her to the end of mental and physical endurance, then pushed for more. Even in his shadow she was haggard and drawn, barely clinging to the last of her energy. Body and mind feeding on a spirit that burned like a consuming fever, at a cost that was all too easy to see. The bones of her face were more prominent, her eyes huge and seething with fear and hate. The taut, supple body beneath the flow of a clinging chambray shirt and tight jeans seemed to be shrinking, as if none-too-ample pounds melted from her in a matter of hours.

“I'm sorry.” He touched her cheek, drawing a finger down the smooth curve of it. When she turned her face away, his hand followed, curling at her chin, bringing her gaze back to his. “Dear God, I'm sorry.”

Again, when once she would have lashed out at him, she was silent, unwillingly beginning to believe a little what she saw and heard in him.

A night wind stirred, only a small, secret gust. Too little to feel or notice, but enough to tease a tendril escaped from the band he'd tied around her hair. Enough that the clean, fragrant perfume of it drifted to him.

He didn't recognize the scent, couldn't separate the blend of a woodsy bouquet. It was simply natural, unpretentious, honest. All things that had been missing in his life for so long.

Catching the fluttering strand, he wound it around the tip of a finger, reveling in the silken resilience, the soft strength. A woman could bind a man to her with hair like hers. Weaving a gossamer prison from which he would never wish to escape.

Stunned by the direction of his thoughts, hastily he tucked the strand behind her ear. With a mind of its own, his hand lingered to stroke her hair as he filled himself again with the scent of it.

“O'Hara.” He said her name hoarsely. For no reason but that it was like her fragrance, like her.

Reluctantly he pulled away. Resignation lay heavy on him as he looked to the sky and the desert, gauging the hour. Moon shadows were long around them now, for soon it would be setting. There was little left of the night, little time for her to rest before the ordeal of her first day in camp would begin.

He repressed a flinch as an enraged roar rose behind him. The sharp report of an open palm against bare flesh preceded a shrill curse. The coarse and vicious culmination of a drunken quarrel echoed through the canyon. Indian caught back a sigh. He was taking her into this. Into a culture few could imagine. A life-style she shouldn't have to suffer.

Temptation was strong in him. The need to ride out of the desert with her, turning his back on commitment and obligation, nearly overpowered him. It would be so easy, if he were truly Indian. Truly the man she thought him.

But there was more to this than Patience O'Hara and a man called Indian. More lives at risk than hers. More than his.

He was so close to a truth that had eluded him for months. One he couldn't turn away from. Not even for her.

“Indian?”

He heard the edge in her voice and forced his thoughts aside. “Yes?”

“You were so quiet. What were you thinking?”

“Only that soon it will be time we went into camp.”

She shook her head, gazing intently into the darkness that shrouded his face. “It was more than that.” She looked past him to the camp. “You hate this, don't you? You hate my being here as much as I. You hate it for my sake, but for your own purposes, as well.”

“I have no purposes.”

“I think you do. And now you're torn between that purpose and keeping me safe.”

Indian stood impassive. By neither gesture nor word did he reveal how near she'd come to the truth. Patience O'Hara was truly a woman to guard against. An intuitive woman, who saw and understood more than he would wish. He laughed, shrugging aside her suggestion as if it were nonsense. “Careful, if you endow me with such nobility, next must come trust.”

“Maybe.” She brushed a hand over her eyes, as if by brushing bangs from her eyes she could brush cobwebs from her mind. “Maybe I do trust you. A little, at least.”

“At least.” It was a beginning. He had his first concrete hope that he could make the best of this for both of them. She was frightened. She hadn't stopped being frightened. He'd seen it through her anger, when she fought with him, or goaded him.

Patience was no stranger to fear—the gut-wrenching, heart-stopping fear that could paralyze and decimate. She'd learned to deal with it and function with it. He'd guessed it from the first, when she'd faced impossible odds with stoic courage. Now he was certain.

Where? he wondered. How and why? What circumstance had given her the stamina to deal with this? She'd wondered about him, and questioned. He wondered now about her. “Who are you, Patience O'Hara?” he asked, bemused. “What manner of woman are you?”

“A cowardly simple-minded one,” she answered. “If I weren't, I wouldn't be here.”

“Foolhardy, perhaps, but not simple-minded.” He smiled to himself, remembering a derringer and most of all a rifle that was not loaded. The bluff had taken more than courage. “Certainly not cowardly. I would say daring, even reckless.”

“Daring? Reckless? My family wouldn't agree. I'm plain Patience, prudent Patience. A dullard with my books and quiet walks. Poor, placid Patience, jinxed by a placid name.”

“I think not.” She was anything but placid, anything but dull. “I should think your family would appreciate what you are, and love you for it.”

“Oh, they appreciate me, and they love me. There's no question of it. They appreciate and love me to the point of suffocation. That's why I'm here.” Patience stopped abruptly. A hand tugged at the spill of her hair tied securely by Indian. “If they could see me now, they'd think I was insane.

“
I
think I must be insane! Sitting astride a motorcycle, in the dark, in the middle of a desert, heaven knows where. My beautiful, impractical car stripped and dumped in a canyon. Ravening monsters at my feet.” She looked up at Indian. “And you. And what am I doing? Babbling on as if it were teatime with an old friend.

“My Lord! I'm losing my marbles.” With her fingers at her temples, she massaged muscles that ached from teeth clenched too long and too hard. “Why else would I forget that for all your soft words and your sweet promises, you're still the enemy?”

Indian grasped her wrists in his, holding them, forcing her to look at him. “I'm not the enemy.”

She tried to pull away. When he wouldn't release her, she stopped struggling. “No?” She looked pointedly at her wrists manacled by his fingers, then at him. “Then what do you call this? What do you call holding me against my will? Taking me where I don't want to go? You keep saying you'll take me home. If that's true, if you really want me to believe you and trust you, take me now.”

Releasing her, he backed away. “I can't.”

“Can't or won't?”

Indian considered lying. He was sorely tempted. But if she was going to trust him, she needed the truth. “Both.”

“That makes no sense.” She gestured toward the canyon. “Look at them. Who's to stop us from riding out now? Right this minute. Not one would be sober enough to follow. We could go, Indian.” There was a wistful note in her voice, a note of entreaty. “No one would be the wiser before morning.”

“I can't.” Indian raked a hand through his bound hair, nearly tearing it free from the leather that held it. Where would he take her? Who was out there in the sparse settlements that dotted the fringe of the desert? Who could be trusted to take care of her? If the Wolves came looking, bent on taking back their booty, who could keep her from them? Who would? Who was innocent and uninvolved? And who among the innocent did he dare put at risk?