Caine's Reckoning (24 page)

Caine patted the shoulder of the horse they sat on. “Horses.”

“Horses?”

His eyebrow cocked. “That expression on your face mean you never considered I’d like to do something besides survive?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t given the subject any thought one way or another.” Which, after she’d said it, didn’t sound any better than a blunt “no.”

“I’ll allow you might have had other things on your mind.”

He didn’t say anything more, just surveyed the land before them with a determination that was tangible.

“What made you decide on horses?”

“My pa raised the best horses in the territory. Guess the need just rides in the blood.”

He’d lost his parents as a boy. Lost his home. His childhood. His future. But he hadn’t given up. She had to wonder how much of the determination to make Hell’s Eight a name to be reckoned with was a need to get his life back and how much was to make something of himself. “But you’re a Texas Ranger.”

“Most men are more than one thing.”

“Women, too.”

“That is a fact.” She had his attention once again. “What do you want to be?”

She didn’t have to think twice on it. “Useful.”

That sent both his brows up. “What makes you think you’re not already?”

“I grew up very spoiled by your standards. Whatever I wanted was handed to me.”

“Seems to me that’s about perfect.”

“It was fun as a child, but as I got older, it became irritating.”

“Felt the urge to kick over the traces, did you?”

Caine didn’t sound as shocked as her parents had been. Probably because he’d never seen her proper. She was very good at proper when she put her mind to it. “Yes. I got a little outrageous.”

“That how you landed out here?”

“No.” The summoning of the memory called up the pain. It was hard to keep her voice even. “My father fell in love with the West. He read about it in his newspaper.”

Though she tried to push it back, Desi recalled her father’s face as it had been then—animated, cheeks slightly flushed as he talked about the opportunity and adventure waiting for them west of the
Mississippi
. And then she remembered how his face had been the last time she’d seen it. A bloody hole oozing gore. She dug her fingers into the quilt, holding back her grief and rage through sheer force of will. “He saw it as a place of opportunity and adventure.”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t look as Caine pushed the quilt down off her face. “And he thought it was a good idea to bring your ma and you with him?”

“And my brother and sister, too.”

“Goddamn fool.”

She studied the way the moonlight played across the folds of the quilt. The immediate agreement that swelled in her throat was a betrayal she couldn’t suppress. “Yes.”

“What happened to your family?”

“They killed everyone but me and my sister.”

“Where’s your sister?”

“I don’t know.” Her face went rigid with the effort to keep the agony of how she’d last seen Ari out of her voice. It actually hurt. She would never forget. Ari’s eyes, swollen from tears and blows, lip bleeding, kneeling in the dirt as the Comancheros bared her body to the men who’d bought Desi, trying to get them to go double on the price. “The men who saved me were too cheap to ransom us both.”

“Ransom?” His finger traced the angle of her cheekbone. “Is that what they were calling it?”

She bit her lip, refusing to let Caine drag her into the truth of what it was. Part of her couldn’t bear it, as irrational as it was. She didn’t want to discuss how stupid she’d been thinking the white men had come to save her. How naively she’d gone with them, how confident she’d been that she could convince her rescuers to save Ari, too. “Yes.”

“So the Comancheros took your sister on south?”

“Yes.”

“How long has it been?”

“Three hundred and fifty-six days.”

“You ever hear from her?”

“No.”

“She might be dead.”

She wrenched around in his arms, her hands curling into claws with the need to rip the possibility from his lips. “Don’t you ever say that again.”

“Desi…”

Rage screamed out along with her, “Shut up!”

Rather than argue her into accepting what she wouldn’t, his arm went around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. “I’m sorry.”

So was she. It didn’t change anything.

Her sister was still lost, suffering God knew what, hoping with the same desperation as Desi had that she’d be found, saved. And Desi couldn’t do anything to save her because she didn’t know where she was.

The weight of that crushed the air from her lungs. She let Caine hold her. And when he released her hands she didn’t fight.

“You can’t say it and make it true,” she whispered, staring at the stretch of night sky. Somewhere maybe, Ari was staring at the same sky, wondering where she was, if she was all right.

“I won’t.”

“She’s my twin.”

“Damn.”

“I’d know if she was dead.” She wrapped her fingers around her wrist and rubbed. “Deep inside, I’d know.”

“I’m sure you would.”

She looked up, knowing it was stupid to ask for comfort but needing it anyway. “Do you think she thinks I abandoned her?”

Ah, hell, why didn’t she just take a knife and gut him? It would have the same effect as looking at him with those big blue eyes brimming with sadness but no tears. Just bottomless pain that Caine didn’t know how in hell to ease. He played with a curl that fell across his chest. “I think she knows the truth. That you would have helped her if you could, but you were both helpless and neither of you could have done anything.”

“I could have tried harder when they bought me.”

“How?” He’d seen the condition the Comancheros left women in. “You were beaten, raped, half-starved, in shock and exhausted. Imprisoned by men with no conscience—what exactly could you have done?”

“I could have convinced them twins were twice the pleasure.”

The way she said that told him she’d heard it often enough to convince herself that it had actually been an option.

“If they’d wanted both of you, they would have taken both of you.”

“I could have—”

Shit, she couldn’t have done anything. Caine caught Desi’s chin and yanked her gaze away from her hands. “They would have just fucked you both in the dirt, had the experience and a laugh and then still walked away with only one.”

She jerked her chin. “You don’t know that.”

He didn’t let go. “Yes, I do.”

“I could have at least made them take Ari.” The hot, burning desperation in her gaze worried him. She’d thought about this a long time. To the point she wasn’t rational. He’d brought her up here to give her the sense of place it always gave him and all he’d managed to do was open a snake pit of memories.

“Ari? Is that your sister’s name?”

She blinked. “Yes.”

“Whatever happened to her, I’m sure she was just as worried about you being dragged off by James and his crew.”

She shook her head. An awful blankness came over her face. “No.”

“There’s no way, being your twin, she didn’t feel the same way about you as you do about her.”

Her tongue licked her lips, but it didn’t leave any moisture behind. “They lied.”

“How.”

“They said they could only save one of us. We had to choose.”

“And you won.”

A shake of her head denied his assumption. “I lost, but they took something I said wrong.”

On purpose he bet. “And?”

“They took me.”

He might as well have it all. She’d already about cut his heart out of his chest. No sense leaving the job half-done. “And?”

“I couldn’t convince them they’d made a mistake. I tried, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“Ari understood.”

Again, the shake of her head. “I heard Ari scream, when I looked back they had her on her knees. She was naked and fighting. Her face was all bloody.”

The fingers around her wrist were going to leave bruises they were clenched so tightly. Caine pried them open, knowing he was opening a chasm in her control as he did. Not caring. Needing her to let go. To let him take this pain from her.

“They were laughing.”

Son of a bitch. The bastards could have at least waited. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

“I could have insisted on staying.”

As fast as he broke her grip she replaced it. “To what end? It wasn’t like you walked into a picnic.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered in a cry that ripped layers from his soul. “There were eleven of them. And with me gone, there was just her.”

Tracker’s “Son of a bitch” whipped out of the darkness, echoing the frustrated anger roiling within Caine. What had her father been thinking, bringing two sheltered young women out here? And once he had, why hadn’t he hired enough protection to keep them safe? Caine drew the rage up short. No amount of might-have-beens were going to help Desi deal with the horror. What she needed was something to hang her sanity on. A hope. “You said yourself, Ari survived. That’s all that matters.”

She blinked, guilt and desperation taking second place to the need to believe. Where her fingers bit into her wrist, the skin glowed an eerie white. “Yes. She survived.”

He was never so glad to see tears in all his born days as the ones that flooded Desi’s eyes. A crying woman was a sane one. “So all that needs to be done is to find her and then you two can talk it all out, right?”

A branch snapped from Tracker’s direction, along with another curse. Caine knew what prompted it. Chances were, Ari was dead or so bad off she might as well be, but Desi didn’t need to hear that. She needed something to carry her through, and he was going to give it to her, no matter how unlikely the possibility was. “As long as she’s alive, there’s hope.”

“You think she can be found?”

“Yes.” If she was alive, she could be found. It was the “if” that had him troubled. The fragile width of Desi’s ribs expanded and then jerked to a halt. About the time he got concerned she was going to have another attack, she released her breath in a whisper so full of pain and hope he felt cut up inside.

“Do you think you could bring my sister back to me?”

Caine couldn’t get his lips around the promise. If Ari wasn’t dead, her mind probably was as far gone as her body would be from disease and abuse. White whores got little rest in the Mexican-dominated territory. And as much as he wanted to make Desi the promise she needed, he couldn’t promise to bring her the sister she remembered. Explaining that would require some fancy phrasing.

A shadow separated from the trees. “I’ll bring her back to you, ma’am.”

Over Desi’s head, Caine raised his brow at Tracker. The man just sat there on horseback, a black silhouette, nothing in his stance to indicate why he was offering.

Desi sat up against him as Tracker urged his horse out of the tress, his shadow expanding in the moonlight, reaching them before the light reached his face, revealing the hard set of his mouth and the coldness of his gaze.

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

Desi shifted in Caine’s lap, leaning back to see his face, her fingers digging into his wrist hard enough that he’d be wearing bruises to match hers come morning. They were nothing compared to the bruises her pain left on his soul as she asked, “Can I believe him?”

“If anyone can find your sister, it will be Tracker.”

Her searching gaze held his. He didn’t flinch. He had nothing to hide. It was the truth. The last of the bleakness fled her expression and was replaced by a determination that would be scary if he didn’t recognize what drove it. She turned back to Tracker. Her “Find her” was the snarl of a woman who’d never give up.

Tracker reined his horse as it responded to the aggression radiating off Desi. His expression didn’t change as he asked, “And when I find her, if she doesn’t want to come?”

“Why wouldn’t she want to come?”

“Sometimes a woman can let what happens to her shape the way she sees herself.”

“You’re saying she might feel I won’t want to claim her as my sister after all she’s been through?”

“She might be bad, Desi,” Caine warned. “Physically and mentally, there might not be much left of the sister you remember.”

Desi’s expression hardened to the stone of Tracker’s. Her head came up and she shook with the emotion burning within her. “You bring her home to me, no matter what you find, do you understand?”

Tracker nodded and picked up his reins. It wasn’t enough for Desi. Caine could feel the impatience building in her, the need, as she practically growled, “No matter what, you bring her home.”

Tracker nodded. “I’ll bring her.”

It still wasn’t enough. Leather creaked as Desi shifted again to pin Caine with her glare. “You’ll make him do it?”

No one could make Tracker do anything. Caine held Desi’s gaze, feeling as if he held together the remnants of her soul as he promised, “I’ll gut-shoot him if he even tries to back out.”