Desert Dreams (26 page)

"Let it go," she whispered, fighting her
tears. "Killing El
Alacran
won't change anything.
Can't you see this is destroying you?"

"Why couldn't you have let me die? Why couldn't
you have done what I told you to do and left me behind?"

"Because I love you."

He smiled, the most bitter, hollow smile she had ever
seen. "Annie, you can't love someone who's dead."

Slowly he led the horses from the barn.

She stumbled toward the open door and collapsed. Her
head spinning, she clutched the door frame for support. A terrible ache filled
the very depths of her being, as if her body and soul had been turned inside
out. She struggled for air as she watched him stride across the stable yard.

He left the horses tied to the hitching post before
the house and went inside. He was going to get Carlos Delgado.

She closed her eyes to block out the pain, but all she
could see was Rafe lifting a rifle, sighting down the barrel, killing the woman
he loved. He'd had to do it, but she knew that hadn't made it easier.

Easier? Dear God, the horror of finding someone you
loved in that condition would be enough to destroy anyone, and then to have to
end her life to end the pain, the unbearable, unimaginable pain.

She should follow him, stop him, but she couldn't. She
could hardly move, and even if she could, he would never listen to her. He was
going to meet his destiny, and there was nothing she could do.

Skinned alive!

He had said he couldn't forget Christina's eyes, so
she had been conscious when he found her, conscious and aware that there was
nothing left for her but agony and death, nothing to keep her company but her
own tormented soul.

Anne shook her head to dispel the unbearable images.
What would be worse, to be the victim or to be the one who found her?
Christina's pain was over. She was dead. But Rafe had to live on.

She took a deep, ragged breath that ended in a sob.
The memory had haunted him all these years. He hated himself for what he'd
done, hated himself for failing Christina, for not saving her. She wanted to
comfort him, to tell him it wasn't his fault.

How could he have known? Until that hideous day, how
could he have known that men were capable of such horrors?

He was going to die, she knew with a sickening
certainty. He hadn't been speaking figuratively when he'd called himself a dead
man. Her blood ran cold as she realized what he planned to do, what he had
always planned to do. He would kill El
Alacran
and
die in the process.

Her control broke and she began to weep, silently,
bitterly. The world seemed to be collapsing around her. Rafe emerged from the
house with Carlos Delgado in tow, his hands bound behind his back and a gag in
his mouth.

Rafe forced him to mount one of the horses before he
swung up into the saddle himself. She watched them ride away until they were
nothing more than a faint puff of dust on the horizon.

Chapter 18

Concepción shimmered
in the heat
reflected from the desert sand. A slight breeze stirred a cloud of dust and
sent a tumbleweed careening down the street. A single buzzard circled high in
the sky, its screeching the only sound in the stillness.

El
Alacran
held up a hand as he and
the dozen men with him neared the edge of town. The place was quiet, empty,
deserted, yet he could feel the pressure of eyes upon him. The hairs on his
arms and neck pricked as he guided his horse into town. He looked up at a second-floor
window of the deserted cantina, but he saw nothing beyond the dirty glass
windowpanes.

Both sides of the street were lined with squat adobe
buildings, one not much different from another, with high windows and open
doors and crumbling staircases. At the far end of town stood a small church,
its once-white walls now faded and dirty, one
of the
bells missing from the twin arches above the front door.

A movement caught his eye, and he swung his head to
the left, noticing a wooden structure at the far end of the street near the
church.

"What is that?" one of his men asked.

"A gallows," said Diego Munoz, who rode
beside him. "He built a gallows. In less than three days he built a
gallows—alone?"

"We will hang him on it!" El
Alacran
laughed loudly, and most of his men joined in.

Diego Munoz remained sober. "It's not
empty."

A shiver of apprehension traveled down El
Alacran's
spine, but he managed to subdue it.

"Carlos!" He let out an animal growl and
spurred his horse forward, but before he could make any progress, a bullet
whizzed past his head so close he could feel the air on his cheek.

Bullets riddled the ground in front of the horses and
the riders pulled back fiercely on the reins. Through a cloud of dust, he saw
Carlos on the gallows. Another shot resounded and the trap door beneath his
cousin fell away.

"No!" El
Alacran
bellowed.

Carlos's legs dangled in the air. He kicked
frantically, screaming at the top of his lungs. His wrists were tied above his
head to the same beam as the noose.

The chaos subsided and quiet reigned. El
Alacran
searched the upper windows in all the buildings but
could see nothing. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his gut twisted in
helpless fury. There was a cat-and-mouse game going on here, only this time he
was the mouse instead of the cat, and he didn't like it one little bit.

"Come out,
cobarde
,"
he shouted.

"I don't see anything," Diego whispered.

"He said—he said—" Carlos shouted haltingly
as he struggled to take the pressure off his throat, "he said he'll kill me
if—if you don't tell your men to leave town. He said—he said he wants you
alone. Help me,
primo!"

Rage smoldered inside El
Alacran
,
impotent fury. He clenched his teeth and weighed his options. He had none.

"You heard him," he snarled. "Leave
me."

"But
jefe
—"

Another gunshot rang out. Carlos screamed, and one of
his hands came loose. He coughed and choked, struggling to pull himself up.

Instinctively, El
Alacran
urged his horse forward and another bullet whirred past his head, this one
taking his hat off. Trembling with anger and frustration, he watched as Carlos
managed to take the pressure off his neck by grabbing hold of the rope that
bound his other wrist and pulling himself up. He couldn't hang on like that for
long.

"Get out," he murmured to his men in tight
rage.

El
Alacran
had the advantage
of superior numbers, but as long as Carlos's life was at stake, there was
precious little he could do but play along.

"But—"

"Now! Go!" he shouted, then added more
quietly, "Watch. You will find a chance to move back in. I am depending on
you."

Diego swallowed convulsively. "Si,
jefe
."

He wheeled his horse around and signaled to the
others, and they moved back up the street to the perimeter of the town.

El
Alacran
looked around him
but still saw no one. "What now, Rafael?" he called out.

He waited for several minutes, always conscious of
Carlos dangling from the hangman's noose. When there was no answer, he nudged
his horse forward, moving slowly up the street toward the gallows.

The lone church bell began to ring, stark and eerie in
the desert silence. El
Alacran
smiled as he drew even
with the gallows, in spite of the grimness of the moment. Rafael was in the
church. He was trapped, whether he knew it or not. He would never get out
alive.

No one outsmarted the Scorpion. Rafael should have
learned that.

The ringing of the bell subsided. El
Alacran
dismounted, his gaze fixed on the door of the
church as he took a step toward Carlos.

"He booby-trapped the gallows," Carlos told
his cousin. "If you try and cut me down, we'll both die."

Two gunshots exploded as the rope around Carlos's neck
and the one around his wrist broke and he fell through the open trap door to
the ground below.

He scrambled to his feet, tearing the noose from
around his neck. He didn't move toward El
Alacran
but
stood beneath the gallows, massaging his wrists.

"He said if I didn't hang, I was to walk down
that street to the edge of town and not come back."

"Go,
primo,"
El
Alacran
said.

Carlos walked past his cousin, then turned around to
face him again. "Did you do it? Did you do what he says you did to his
wife?"

El
Alacran
faced him
unblinkingly. His expression hardened, and his eyes took on a maniacal glint.
"This is not your fight. There are things you can't understand. It will
soon be over. As soon as you are safely with the men, I want them to surround
the church. Tell them."

Carlos studied his cousin's visage for a long moment
before turning and running up the street.

"Wide is the gate and broad is the road that
leads to ruin."

El
Alacran
looked up to the
bell tower above. Rafael Montalvo stood leaning against a wall, his hat pulled
down over his face so his features were indiscernible. A flame ignited as he
struck a match and lighted a cheroot.

"Narrow is the gate and hard is the way that
leads to life," Rafael went on. "In case you had other ideas, I'd go
in through the front door if I were you."

El
Alacran
glanced briefly
over his shoulder to see that his men still waited at the end of town. When he
looked back at the bell tower, Rafael was gone.

“Perdition!"
El
Alacran
ran a sleeve
over his sweat-soaked brow. He told himself it was foolish to be uneasy. He had
nearly fifteen men behind him. As soon as he walked through that door, they
would move in. There was nothing to worry about.

As he pushed the door open, he heard an explosion that
seemed to come from behind the church. Fire sped toward him around both sides
of the building, two flaming paths that met behind him. Acrid smoke burned his
eyes and caused him to cough. Quickly he stepped inside and closed the door
behind him.

Just inside the door, he paused, blinking until his
eyes adjusted to the dimness, focusing on the man at the front of the church.
Rafe sat on the altar, tapping his left foot, resting his left arm on his bent
knee.

As the
comanchero
walked slowly up the middle, Rafe studied him closely. El
Alacran
had changed little over the past five years. He was tall and lean and clothed
in silver-studded black. His aquiline features and high sharp cheekbones
proclaimed the Apache blood that flowed in his veins. The cruel edge to the
mouth was unmistakable.

In a flash,
Rafe's
mind sent
him back five years to the desert. He was staked out on the ground, his body
naked,
the
sun already beginning to sear his flesh. He
was crazy with horror and fury and self-loathing. He could hardly see past the
sweat that trickled into his eyes, the sun that glinted off the belt buckle of
the man who knelt beside him.

"You are lucky, my
inexperto
niño
."
El
Alacran's
face had
loomed over him, his lips curved in a demonic smile. There were other men there
who had beaten him and stripped him and staked him to the ground, but they
seemed inconsequential. Now there was only one: El
Alacran
.
His face was emblazoned on
Rafe's
mind for all time.

"I don't want to kill you,
pequeho
.
I only want to warn you. I'll
even leave water for you." He laughed. Rafe turned his head to see the
canteen on the ground ten feet to his right 

El
Alacran's
laughter
followed Rafe back to the present.

"Rafael—
companero
!"
El
Alacran
exclaimed, taking another step toward him. "Your mother would be proud of
you. You ride into town and the first thing you think of is going to church. I
see you have been expecting me. I am impressed with your cleverness. A ring of
fire? How—?"

"Not that it matters," Rafe said calmly,
"but Concepción used to be a mining town. Sulfur. They manufactured
gunpowder in a factory not five miles from here."

El
Alacran
laughed.
"Very clever."

Silence stretched between them as they measured each other.
Rafe had learned a great deal about judging an opponent since the last time
he'd seen El
Alacran
. He'd learned how to read a
man's eyes to determine how far he would go, how crazy he was or how
frightened. The eyes he examined now held no fear, but he could see flashes of
madness in their onyx depths, and he stifled a shiver. The madness did not
block out the intelligence, however, and the two were doubly dangerous when
taken together.

"Rafael." El
Alacran
tried to appear self-assured and completely in control, but Rafe sensed an
uncertainty in his manner, as if he knew the man before him now was every bit
his match. "You have been trailing me for five long years. You have
managed to kill many of my most trusted men. Now we are finally face to face, just
the two of us. Don't you have anything to say to me?"

When Rafe didn't reply, El
Alacran
continued. "You are alone. As honorable as ever, I see. You have come to
settle things with me, no? Rafael, haven't you learned? Look at you. You have
nothing. No wife, no home, no money—nothing. Even the army has turned its back
on you. Then look at me. I have prospered greatly since last we met. Honorable
men die young."

"I have come here to die," Rafe said evenly.
"Haven't you figured that out? A man who doesn't care if he lives or dies
is a dangerous man."

El
Alacran
laughed. "A
brave man, too. Cowardice was never your shortcoming. Recklessness, perhaps.
But your true shortcoming, the one which has destroyed you, is that there are
things you care about more than your own life. You cared what happened to your
beautiful wife. You even care what happens to a girl you hardly know,
a nobody
. Yes, I can see that you are harder now, stronger.
But you cannot be ruthless, Rafael. You cannot be ruthless."

A sudden explosion rocked the building and El
Alacran
jerked around, surveying the balcony and church
rafters until he realized the sound had come from outside.

"I may not have learned much about desert
survival at West Point, but I learned a great deal about weapons and ammunition,"
Rafe said evenly. "Black gunpowder makes one hell of an explosive. They
should have stayed out of town. There are charges scattered everywhere."