Saint (10 page)

“Er, when should I expect you back, sir?”

“When you see me.”

She frowned at him through her spectacles. “Sir,
are you feeling all right?”

“Never better, Alice. Never better.”

Elliot Galen cleaned up the details of his
life and his business and within hours was on his way.

Saint could have asked for a lung and he
would have given it.

* * * * *

Mississippi

“Whatcha doin’?” The boy perched beside him
on the step.

“Reading.”

“Readin’ what?”

“A letter from a friend.”

“What’s yer friend say?”

Little Jimmy ate bad candy. The man who gave it to him wants to
sell more. Saint.

“My friend would like me to come and visit
for a while.” Tobias folded the note and stuck it in his shirt pocket.

“Yer friend black?”

“No, he’s white. What difference does it
make?”

“White folks ain’t no account. My ma used
to say so.”

“Your ma was wrong. Friends come in many
different colors.”

“How many colors?”

He shrugged. “Black, white, yellow, tan.”

“That’s only four,” the boy scoffed.

“It’s better to have four friends of
various colors than none.”

“‘Round here there’s only one color to pick
from.”

“The rest of the world isn’t like
Mississippi, son.”

“You been around the world?” The boy’s chocolate
eyes widened.

“Yes.”

He’d been too many places. Seen too many
things. He liked it here—life was quiet and slow. But little Jimmy would never
know that.

Chapter Five

“Shouldn’t we keep close to the cabin?”
Maria panted when Francis finally halted by one of the many streams that seemed
to spring up from nowhere. Their early morning jog through the fog took away
the chill of early morning and had her heart pumping harder than it had it a
while.

“Jogging’s good for clearing the head.
Never know when you’ll have to run long distances.” He squatted, splashing a
handful of sparkling water on his face.

She knelt beside him and did the same,
muttering, “My head wasn’t clogged ’til you dragged me out in the morning air.”

He grinned at her. “You’re too citified.”

“Was this Harris’ idea?”

“You don’t like jogging?”

This wasn’t jogging, it was slow torture.
The terrain was uneven, mushy in some place, hard and rocky in others. It was a
wonder she hadn’t twisted her ankle. “Not particularly.”

“Then it was the colonel’s idea.” He
winked.

“Uh huh. What else did the colonel order
you to have me do?”

“Self-defense. We’ll start the first lesson
when we get back to camp.”

By the time they made it back to camp, as
Francis had begun to call the house, she was fairly sure her lungs had expanded
another fifty percent.

“Cigarette?” Francis offered, hooking a leg
over the porch railing.

“I don’t smoke.” She dropped onto the step,
trying not to be obvious about sucking air into her aching lungs. “Doesn’t that
defeat the purpose? It’s not healthy.”

“Crossing the street isn’t healthy either,
some days. But most people don’t think so ’til they get hit by a semi.”

Okaaay… “If you say so.”

“I do. When I finish this smoke, we’ll see
what kind of moves you’ve got. Breathe in through the nose, honey, out through
the mouth.”

“I know a few things. My father was a
police officer. He taught me some self-defense tactics.”

Ten minutes later she landed flat on her
back with the wind knocked out of her. She couldn’t be sure exactly how it
happened—Francis hadn’t seemed to move an inch.

“Sorry.” He offered her a hand up. “I’ll
try to be gentle next time.”

“Will that be before or after you break my
neck?”

“Before. Okay, let’s try it again. This
time don’t look at the spot you plan on hitting. It’s in the eyes. The eyes
will always give away the direction of your movement. And just remember,
Angelface, this was the colonel’s idea.”

* * * * *

Morning came too soon.

“Okay, lazybones, let’s move out.”

Maria groaned, rolling over to pull the
covers tighter about her shoulders. “I can’t. I think I’m dead.” Every muscle
in her body ached, even ones she hadn’t known existed. She told herself if she
was this pathetically out of shape it was because of the forced inactivity of
the past six months. At the moment she felt more like seventy-nine than
twenty-nine.

“All the more reason to get moving. It’ll
loosen you up. Five minutes. That includes getting dressed this time.”

“It will take more than five minutes for me
to—”

“Time’s wasting,” he called, already
halfway down the hall.

It wasn’t going to happen. Every limb
screamed in protest and she hadn’t even managed to stand up yet. It took a hell
of a lot longer than any five minutes, but Francis didn’t come back. Her plate
was on the table when she made it to the kitchen, gingerly easing her abused
body into the chair.

“I told the colonel this PT thing wasn’t a
good idea,” he said in mock apology, filling the cup she held up. “Women aren’t
physically attuned to nature like men.”

“Physically attuned to nature?” If she could
move her arm, it would be possible to actually sip her coffee.

“Just tell me one thing.” He crossed his
muscled forearms, leaning back against the counter. “What woman in her right
mind wants to live in a foxhole for weeks or months on end?”

None she knew. Then again, her brain was
just now registering the fact it was no longer the boss of what her body did or
didn’t do. “Is this a trick question?”

“No. Philosophical.”

“I don’t know. It’s never been a dream of
mine to live in a foxhole.”

“My point exactly. Men are hunters, women
are gatherers. The only thing a woman is going to gather in a foxhole or an
airless tank is a bad case of jock-itch, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh good, another chauvinist, because you
can’t have too many.” So, Francis thought she couldn’t hack his training
schedule. She could. If she wanted to.

“You betcha. I like my women soft and
curvy, not hard and masculine.”

“You sound like my father,” she said to her
coffee cup, now that she’d managed to get it to her lips.

“Your father was a smart man.”

Maria held out her plate for a second
helping. Her appetite had increased over the last several days in proportion to
her physical activity. “What’s on the agenda for today, rock climbing?”

“Close. Tree climbing.”

“Never know when you’ll have to climb a
tree, huh?”

“Nah. I just like climbing trees. But it
does come in handy when you’re scouting.”

By the time the evening fog settled in on
the mountain she was too tired to think or move, even too exhausted to swat at
the mosquitoes emerging into the dusk to hunt their victims.

Francis sprawled leisurely on the steps
after dinner, smoking. “Can you sing?” he asked suddenly.

“You mean like a church hymn?”

“Whatever. It’s too quiet. Sing something.”

Quiet? “How can you hear anything over that
racket the crickets are making?”

“I don’t want to hear crickets. I want to
hear a human voice. Sing.”

She thought about it, recalled a Spanish
song her father had taught her. Her voice wasn’t the best in the world, but it
wasn’t the worst either. Francis didn’t seem to mind. He leaned his head back
against the post and closed his eyes as she sang the verses.

* * * * *

Six feet of blond Marine met her the next
morning as she stumbled into the kitchen, thinking to surprise Francis by being
up and dressed before he had breakfast in the pan. Why that seemed like a good
idea, she didn’t know. In retrospect it sucked. Unable to help herself, she let
out a piercing scream.

The huskily built guy with green eyes
continued to stand there in front of the fridge, staring at her. “That’s one
hell of way to wake up the chickens.”

“Francis!” She turned and slammed face
first into the preacher’s tattooed chest.

“Whoa.” Francis steadied her. “No need to
panic, Angelface. Gabe, you shouldn’t sneak up on a woman like that. It’s bad
for the nerves.”

And he wasn’t kidding. Her heart was
racing, thumping heavily in her chest. “You know him?”

“He wouldn’t have made it to the porch if I
didn’t, darling. This is Gabriel. I heard you coming up the hill, Gabe. You and
those big-ass boots.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Gabriel
crossed the room and offered his hand. His hair was a sunny color, almost like
a…halo.

She shook his hand briefly. “I’m Maria.”

“Have a seat, Gabe, grub’s almost ready. I
was gonna give you ’til noon before chalking you up as a dry well.”

“I’ve never hit a dry well in my life.”
Gabriel pulled out the chair next to where she was standing and sat down.

Maria took her usual chair. “Are you an
offshoreman?”

“No, ma’am. I pay
the
offshoremen.”

“Gabe owns Texas,” Francis said over his
shoulder as he threw ingredients into the frying pan haphazardly.

Texas. Well. “Sorry I screamed like a
schoolgirl.” She glanced pointedly in Francis’ direction. “But I didn’t know we
were expecting company.”

“Gabe likes schoolgirls, don’t you, Gabe?”

“Can it, Francis.”

“So, Gabriel, not your real name I’m
assuming.” It was a shot in the dark, but there seemed to be some sort of weirdly
disturbing theme emerging.

“It is for now,” Gabriel replied.

“Who’s next, Francis? The Pope or another
saint?”

“Saint’s here?” Gabriel looked up at
Francis just as the preacher slapped a plate in front of him.

“No. But thanks for stirring up her
curiosity, Gabe.”

She glanced from one to the other. “Who’s
Saint?”

Francis shrugged lightly, sitting down to
attack his own breakfast. “Some say he’s a myth, some a legend.”

“And what does this saint do?”

“He reaches through the veil of death and
snatches its victims back into the light.”

Lovely. “Is this, er, Saint, joining the
party?”

“Maybe.”

And neither one of them was offering to fill
her in on the details. She was getting tired of being kept in the dark. “Francis,
what’s going on?”

“You can ask the colonel when he gets back.”

“I’m asking you,” she said flatly.

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Gabe,
you know anything?”

“Nope.” Gabriel continued to eat as if it
were normal for him to show up on a moment’s notice, dressed for war in the
outback.

“You show up here, on some Godforsaken
mountain in the middle of…” She’d forgotten where she was… “Nowhere, and you
don’t know why you’re here?”

“I’m on vacation,” Gabe said.

She threw her napkin on the table. Her
chair screeched backward as she came to her feet. “Vacation my ass. I want to
know what’s going on and I want to know now.”

“You always could charm the skirt off a
woman, Gabe,” Francis quipped dryly. “Now, honey, calm down. Sit down and
finish your breakfast.”

“My
name
is Maria,” she snapped out in precise tones. “And don’t you dare
take that condescending tone with me. Will dumped me on this mountain with a
bunch of…of…thugs for hire, and I’m not jogging one more step, climbing one
more tree or rolling my sorry female ass out of bed before dawn one more day
until you tell me what the hell is going on. And don’t you dare say it’s Colonel’s
orders!”

“Well now, that’s a fine temper,” Gabriel
drawled, smiling for the first time to reveal perfect white teeth. “Almost as
hot as some of the gals back home. Will’s the reason for all this ruckus, eh?”
He and Francis exchanged a look.

Francis helped himself to a toothpick,
leaning his chair back on two legs. “This is what happens when Larry Lawfollower
hooks a shark.”

“Maybe he should’ve used heavier fishing
line.”

She slapped her palm against the table,
relishing the sting. “Stop it! I want a straight answer.”

Francis rolled his shoulders at Gabriel. “You
riled her.”

“Well, ma’am…” Gabriel followed Francis’
lead, leaning back in his chair. “It’s a fact I did come all the way from Texas
without knowing the reason. But I take it you’re in some kind of trouble Will
couldn’t bail you out of, so he brought you up here. You say he dumped you?”