Her heart pounding, her bones liquefying, Jacey jerked around.
Chapelo snaked a big hand out and grabbed her arm. His grip was tight, painful. “Uh-uh. You’re not going anywhere, little lady. You and I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
Almost before the whiskey-scented words were out of his mouth, Jacey had her Colt out and the tip of the barrel jutting into the soft flesh under his chin. With his combined scents of sweat, liquor, and male flaring her nostrils, she cocked her gun with more canyon-sized bravado than she felt. “Take your hand off me. That’s twice I’ve had to tell you in one hour. I won’t warn you again.”
He let go of her. Like he would a scorpion. And raised his hands high. “Easy does it, ma’am. No harm intended.” His voice was somewhat garbled, having to talk around the business end of a Colt like he was.
“Yeah, I’ll just bet. Now, you listen carefully to me. We don’t have any unfinished business between us. So don’t follow me anymore. And don’t try to find me. In fact, if you see me coming up the street, you cross to the other side. Now … do we understand each other?”
In the gray-black shadows, Jacey thought she saw the man grin. With a Colt stuck up under his chin, he grinned? That chilled her more than any January blizzard back home could. She stepped back, keeping her gun aimed at his heart. Chapelo kept his hands raised while he answered. “We understand each other, gringa. Completely. There’s only one problem.”
Jacey cussed herself for letting her danged curiosity get the better of her. “What problem is that?”
“I don’t know what you look like—other’n black hair and one hell of a right hook. But hell, that describes me, too. Now, that being the case, how will I know for sure it’s you, so I can cross the street? All I’ve seen is your backside, lady, and right now I can’t see you clearly for your hat and the shadows in here.”
Jacey quirked her mouth. “Sounds like a personal problem, Chapelo.”
She’d said his name. Mistake. In the ensuing quiet, Knight again whinnied out his impatience. Passing conversations, mostly in Spanish, wafted into the alley. The sounds of laughter and distant gunfire joined them. Wagons creaked by, horses’ hooves thudded in the dusty street. And the rising heat between her and this man’s closeness permeated every pore.
“So you do know who I am.”
Jacey’s mind raced to what Rosie’d said about him. “Everyone knows Zant Chapelo.”
Now he chuckled. “So it seems. But I don’t know you.”
“And you aren’t goin’ to, either. Now, leave this alley the way you came in. You walk straight across that street so I can see you. And while you’re walking, you count to one hundred before you turn around.” Already playing with fire, Jacey lit another match. “You can count that high, can’t you?”
He made a choking noise and then laughed out loud. A clear, ringing, masculine sound that made Jacey jump. “I can. And higher, if need be.”
Jacey sobered and let him know that, “One hundred’s plenty. Now, go. And keep your hands up and keep facing me until you get out in the street. Then you can put your back to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Briefly ducking his head as if showing respect, he began backing up. But then he stopped.
Jacey tensed her gun hand. “What now?”
“I’ve just thought of a way for me to know it’s you.”
Dang him. She was the one with the gun aimed at his heart, and yet he was the one playing with her. “So what is it?”
“Those sweet breasts of yours. They’re pretty nice. I feel I’d know you anywhere. But of course, you’d have to be naked—and I’ve have to have my hands on ’em.”
Jacey sucked in a breath of outrage. And squeezed the Colt’s trigger.
* * *
“Chapelo, it’s after suppertime. Where the—? Man, what the hell happened to you?”
“That gringa shot me. Help me, Blue. My arm hurts like hell. She shot me in my gun arm.”
Leaning weakly against the doorjamb, Zant raised his uninjured arm. Blue immediately draped it around his shoulders and put his other arm around Zant’s back. He kicked the door closed behind them and helped Zant to the one chair in his hotel room. “The gringa shot you? What gringa? Oh, hell, not the one who bloodied your nose?”
“The same,” Zant said, groaning as he settled himself on the chair and then gripped his right arm.
Blue put a steadying hand on Zant’s shoulder. “She shot you? What’d you do?”
Zant chuckled … painfully. “I told her she had mighty nice tits.”
“You what?” Blue then strung together a random sampling of cuss words before observing, “I’ll be taking a dead man home if you run into that woman one more time. Now, sit still. Let me look at it.”
“I lost a lot of blood. Ouch! What are you doing? I said it hurts like hell. See if she broke the bone.” Zant grimaced and gritted his teeth as he watched Blue tear open his bloodstained shirtsleeve and probe the wound. “My damned gun arm, too.”
“I can see that. Now, hold still and let me look.…” Blue’s voice trailed off as he felt around some more. Done with his examination, he snorted his estimation of the wound. “Nah, you’re fine. The bullet just grazed you. Tore out a chunk of hide, but you’re okay.” He picked up an open whiskey bottle and upended the fiery liquid over Zant’s raw wound.
Zant sucked in a huge breath, stared wide-eyed, and then catapulted out of the chair, cussing and yelling and dancing around the room. In his frenzy, he managed to kick over the chair, roll on the bed, hold his arm, and call Blue every name he could think of. But his friend remained unperturbed as he tilted the same bottle to his own lips and drank deeply.
When Zant could breathe and talk again, he was sitting on the floor with his back against the closed door. “You trying to kill me, Blue?”
Blue wiped at his lips. “No. I’m gonna let the gringa do that. You’d already be dead, if her aim was any good.”
Zant snorted his opinion of that. “She’s got a damned good aim, from where I’m sittin’, compadre. She meant to shoot me right through the heart, but I jumped out of the way.”
Blue laughed. “Not far enough, from the looks of that arm.” He then righted the bedside table and set the bottle on it. “Come over here. That rotgut ought to’ve cleaned your arm up good. Sit on the bed and let me see if I need to sear it.”
Zant stayed where he was. “You don’t need to sear it.”
“I think I do.”
“Like hell you do.”
Blue shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“I always do.”
“At least let me bandage it, Zant. Hell, you’re getting blood everywhere. Look at this mess. I gotta sleep here.”
“Well, pardon me for being shot. I’ll sleep here, and you take my room, if you’re that fussy about a little blood.”
“Like hell I’ll take your room. That little lady might come huntin’ you and, thinkin’ she has your room, haul off and shoot me. Uh-uh. I’m stayin’ right here.”
Zant shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Blue’s eyes danced with his chuckle. “I always do.”
A grimace capped Zant’s features. “You’re just having a high old time at my expense, aren’t you? Some damned woman shoots me—”
“Now that’s what I can’t figure, Zant. Why do you keep messin’ with her? There’s a whole lot more willin’ women around this town.”
“I wasn’t looking for her for anything to do with willing.”
“Yeah? Then why were you? Because she walked away from you?”
“Something like that.”
Blue shook his head. “If you don’t beat all. Now, do you think you can behave long enough for me to go get some clean bandagin’ rags from the clerk?”
Zant nodded, feeling suddenly queasy. “And ask that Nancy-boy down there to get me a bath sent up, too, and something to eat, will you?”
Zant watched Blue staring at him. With a shake of his head, Blue started across the room. “Danged nursemaid, that’s what I am. I grow up on Señor Calderon’s land, hire on as a ranch hand, end up a pistolero”—he nudged Zant with his boot’s toe, wanting him to move out of the way; Zant scooted over against the wall—“and then I become a nursemaid to the old man’s drunken, son of a—” The door closed behind him.
Zant slumped over to the floor, out cold before his head hit.
* * *
Sleepless and edgy, Jacey reflected on her day. Let’s see, she’d ridden into Tucson, gotten thrown from Knight in front of a saloon, been groped by Zant Chapelo, bloodied his nose for him—with the entire town as witnesses—then had a confrontation in the alley with first Rosie and then Chapelo, and then she’d shot him—one of the most notorious guns in the whole West—and left him for dead. And then, skittish as a colt, she’d come back here—to the very saloon, or cantina as folks here called it, where all her troubles began. But also where her only friend was.
She quirked her mouth in a self-deprecating gesture. All in all, not a bad way to keep her identity a secret—especially in a town where her life depended on not drawing any attention to herself. And a town where anyone could have a reason to hate the Lawless name. This was all she needed right now—some yahoo with a grudge to sidetrack her from her own mission here.
Jacey groaned and rolled onto her back on her narrow bed, kicking at the entangling covers over her legs. The danged sheets kept snagging on her knife sheath. Too bad, because as long as she was here, she wasn’t taking it off except to bathe. Still, she gave up on sleeping and sat up, looking all around the small, stuffy room. Moonlight shining in through the one closed window forbade the room’s shadows to come out of the corners.
With nothing but her own problems to occupy her mind, she retreated to an inventory of her room at the back of Rosie’s father’s noisy business. Let’s see, there was this bed, herself, that rough-cut table and chair, the washbasin and chipped pitcher on the table, three crucifixes, and a couple of wood hooks for her clothes. That didn’t take long. Now what could she do?
Someone knocked on the door. That was a pretty quick answer. Jacey slipped her Colt out from under her pillow, bent her knees, and rested her arms atop them with the Colt pointing at the door. “State your business.”
“My beez-ness? Señorita, my beez-ness is to be the owner of this cantina. It is I—Alberto Estrada. Rosarita’s padre. I have some news for you. About el desperado—Señor Chapelo.”
He sounded breathless, conspiratorial. The little man was getting the biggest kick out of being involved in her predicament. Jacey relaxed her arms, allowing the Colt to dangle from her fingers. “All right. Hold on a minute, Mr. Estrada.”
She hid her gun under the pillow again and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Standing up, she smoothed her chemise down and then grabbed at the bed’s top sheet. She drew it Indian-style around her shoulders. Then she crossed to the door and opened it, which only intensified the sounds of glasses clinking, men laughing and swearing, and the scraping of chairs coming from the cantina. Yep. Just like he’d said—it was Señor Estrada, cantina owner. “Yes?”
Mr. Estrada ducked his head in greeting and smiled broadly under his mustache. “I hope I have not awakened you. No? Bien. I have just checked out in the corral, and your horse—he is fine. Not like earlier when he bit at me. And how are you, señorita? Is everything to your liking?”
Before Jacey could say a thing, he bowed low and spoke very formally. “I am honored to have a Lawless in my home. Mi casa es su casa.”
Jacey fought her urge to chuckle at his elaborate manners, especially in light of his stained shirt, dirt-shiny pants, and the bar towel slung over his shoulder. “Thank you, and yes, everything’s fine. Now, what about Chapelo? Is he dead?”
Alberto’s eyes widened. “No, no.” He crossed himself and mumbled something in Spanish, which sounded like a hasty prayer. Then, to her, he said, “No, he is only wounded—here.” He pointed to his right arm. “He rests now at La Casa Grande. Tomorrow—a pistolero such as himself—he will be fine.”
“Good.” But she wasn’t sure if she meant it. “Thank you, Mister Estrada.” Then, feeling obliged, Jacey added, “I apologize for coming to you and Rosie like I did tonight. And I appreciate your letting me put up here. I just wish you’d let me pay you. Come tomorrow, I’ll get a room—”
Alberto raised a quieting hand and pulled himself up to his full and proud height—no taller than Jacey. “No. You must stay here. No money—not from you. Besides, this room is much safer for you, chica. The hotels in Tucson—?” He made a dismissive noise that adequately expressed his contempt. “They are not as nice as what I offer you.”
Jacey raised her eyebrows and then did a half-turn to stare at the bare furnishings behind her.
“Or as clean. Or as safe and as private, señorita. Private for you, and a good place to hide such a big, bad animal like that black horse of yours who repays my many kindnesses with a bite.”
Jacey made an apologetic face. “I’m sorry about Knight. I should have warned you.”
“It is nothing—only a finger or two. Eh, I have eight others.”
Jacey laughed with Rosie’s father, liking him more and more. She looked into sincere jet-black eyes, the same color as her own, and finally nodded her consent to stay. “I’m much obliged, Mr. Estrada. I’ll try to take care of my business in Tucson quickly and clear out without involving you and Rosie any more than I already have.”
He bowed slightly. “Por nada—it is nothing. Rosarita and I will help you in any way we can.”
Jacey cocked her head at a questioning angle. “Are you and your daughter always this helpful to strangers, Mr. Estrada?”
He grinned, showing gleaming white teeth against his olive complexion. “No, Señorita Lawless. But then, you are no stranger.”
Jacey narrowed her eyes. “How’s that?”
“Your papa—he is known to me.”
Something quivered in Jacey’s belly. “My papa’s known to a lot of folks in Tucson.”
“This is true. But especially to me. I am happy to say your father is my friend. Perhaps he has mentioned me?”
Jacey hated to hurt the man’s feelings, but she couldn’t recall a single instance of Papa mentioning any Estrada in Tucson. Still, she hedged, “He probably did. It’s just been so long, and he didn’t talk much about his outlaw days.”
Mr. Estrada nodded sagely. “This I can understand. But many times, as a young desperado, he slept right here in this room when he wished to hide from the world. You also hide from the world, no?”
“No. Yes.” The way these folks phrased things kept tripping her up. “Yes, I’m hiding from the world. For now.” But what he’d said was tripping her up more than the way he’d said it. Papa’d slept here—in this very room?
Jacey felt a sudden warmth spread through her. She hadn’t once thought of encountering people and things here that her father’d touched and loved. She didn’t think of Tucson that way. Not since someone from here had stolen from her—and, she supposed, from Papa. In a way. With that thought, she roused herself enough to stare somberly at Rosie’s father. She had to tell him.
She tried to get the words out, but they wouldn’t come, not on the first try. This would be the first time she’d said them out loud. She cleared her throat and willed a flat steeliness into her voice. “My father’s dead, Mr. Estrada. He was murdered.”
Alberto froze, but then his expression and his posture crumpled. “I am sorry to hear this, chica. Your father was a great man, a man of heart and soul. He helped me many times. Please tell your beautiful mother of my pain.”
Jacey swallowed hard and sniffed, raising her chin a notch. “I can’t do that. She was murdered, too.”
Alberto stared at her somberly for a long moment. When he looked as if he might hug her, Jacey stiffened and raised her chin another notch. Alberto retreated. His gaze then flicked up and down her. “And that is why you are here?”
Jacey shook her head. “Not so much. The killers are in Boston. My sister’s there taking care of that business. I’m here because some thieving scum from Papa’s old gang stole from me, stole something I hold dear. And I aim to get it back.”
“Ahh.” He considered her a moment and then spoke abruptly, as if the words came out of him at the exact moment he thought them. “You are very much like your father. I said to my Rosie earlier that there is something about you that I know. I was not wrong.”
Then, Alberto worked his mouth, twitching his drooping mustache, giving the appearance that he weighed something in his mind, something he wasn’t sure he should tell her. Finally quirking his mouth, and apparently deciding, he said, “We are not so busy tonight. Put on your clothes. I will check on Rosarita, and then I will come back and you will go with me. There is something I must show you.”
For no reason she could fathom, Jacey’s throat threatened to close as a cold shiver slipped over her, tensing every muscle. “Show me what?”
He shook his head and put a staying hand on her arm. “No. I must show you. I cannot just tell you. I have something … something that belonged to your father. You should have it.”
With that, he turned and left, striding quickly down the short, dark corridor and then out through the heavy wooden door that would see him back in the cantina. Jacey stood there for the longest time, just staring down the empty, musty hall at the barrier the closed door made.
She should be getting dressed, she knew, but somehow she wasn’t sure she wanted to see what Mr. Estrada had. Would it be the portrait of Ardis? Was he the one she sought? But that was silly. Mr. Estrada? Hardly. But whatever he had, it belonged to Papa. Those were his words. And the portrait was Mama’s. It belonged to her now, the only thing Mama’d ever said she wanted Jacey to have. Because she was so much like her great-grandmother. Feisty. Independent. Beautiful. No one had ever called her beautiful before. No one but Mama.
Blinking and frowning, Jacey hastily stepped back inside her room and closed the door. She drew the sheet from around her shoulders and tossed it onto the bed. Within moments she had on her split skirt and boots and blouse. Turning her nose up at the sweaty, dirty state of her attire, she tucked the blouse into her waistband and turned toward the door at the sound of knocking.
“Coming,” she called out. Hurrying to the door, with only a passing thought of her Colt still hidden under her pillow, she opened it. And froze. It wasn’t Mr. Estrada. Or Rosie. Or Zant Chapelo. It wasn’t anyone she knew. But he was big, heavily armed, and mean-looking. And his eyes had almost no color to them.
Her heart in her throat, Jacey fought to keep her voice from cracking with fright. “You got the wrong room, mister. You better clear out now.”
“I got the right room.… Miss Lawless.”
The man’s voice was a threatening drawl that stood the hair up on Jacey’s arms. She sucked in a breath through her flared nostrils. The only two people in Tucson who knew her name were Alberto and Rosie Estrada. She’d been set up. She knew that as surely as she was standing there facing a big, ugly man.
Jacey’s right hand went to her hip. No Colt. She met his gaze and saw the deadly gleam in his eyes, like a snake that had cornered a meal.
Well, this dinner isn’t going down without a fight. Jacey tried, with a mighty shove, to fling the door closed, anything just to give her a second to hike her skirt and reach her knife or get to the bed and her gun.
But the big man was quicker. He shoved a hamlike hand against the door’s wood and pushed inward, sending Jacey spiraling backward into the room. Stumbling, she nearly fell but finally managed to keep her feet as she grabbed at the wooden chair behind her. The man grinned and stepped into the room. Terrified but determined, Jacey swung the chair at the man’s head. He raised his arm to block the blow. The chair caught him on his forearm and hand, and broke apart, its pieces clattering to the floor.
Jacey was left holding one end of the slatted chairback. The man held the other end. Jacey looked at his hand. Scratched and bloody knuckles. She then met his gaze. Again, he grinned at her. “What now, Miss Lawless?”
Immobilized in a frozen moment, Jacey stared at him. She instinctively knew that any movement on her part, whether it be a blink or a breath or a raised hand, would set him in motion. He indicated he was waiting for her. He was playing with her. And then he meant to kill her. Think, Jacey.
Knowing her gun was out of reach, knowing he’d never let her reach the bed, Jacey made her move. Releasing her grip on the splintered chair, she hiked up her split skirt and went for her knife.
But she never even got it out of its sheath before he flung the broken chair aside and backhanded her, sending her reeling toward the bed. She landed hard on the floor, her back hitting the hardwood bed frame and knocking the air out of her. Stunned, numb, staring straight ahead, she sat with her legs sprawled out in front of her.
Until the man stepped up and punched her in the jaw. The world receded.
* * *
When Jacey awakened, it was to the smell of cheap whiskey and the sensation of throbbing pain—in her jaw, her ear, and the side of her head. She felt like somebody’d hit her. Then it came to her. Somebody had. Remembering that, she lay perfectly still and kept her eyes closed. He might still be here.
Allowing her other four senses to work, she noted that she was lying on a bed, and that her surroundings were perfectly quiet and cool. Risking discovery that she was awake, Jacey finally opened her eyes. To moon-filtered darkness. But even that hurt. Getting another whiff of the whiskey, she grimaced, a motion that hurt worse. She closed her eyes, wondering what was going on here. She’d expected to be … what? Dead? Hogtied? Thrown over the back of a horse? Surrounded by hostile Indians? Abandoned out in the desert? Anything but what she actually was.
Which was alone and in her bed at the back of the cantina. Clutching at the sheet under her, Jacey opened her eyes again. Blinking back the pain, she raised up on an elbow, worked her jaw with her other hand, and looked around. The door was closed. There was no sign of the big ugly man. Pieces of the chair still littered the floor … which was wet, smelled of liquor, and sparkled with bits of … Jacey looked closer … broken glass?
She cupped her swollen, tender jaw and worked it gently. Almost crying with the pain, she sent up a silent thanks that at least it wasn’t broken. She then smoothed a hand under her pillow. More than likely, he’d taken her Colt. No, there it was. She drew it out and checked the cylinder. It was still loaded. She laid the gun down in front of her and felt along her thigh. Her knife was still there. This didn’t make any sense. Who was that man? And why would Alberto and Rosie be in cahoots with him?
The door latch clicked. Jacey snapped her attention to the slowly opening door. She quietly raised her gun in both hands. Whoever this was would receive a welcome he wouldn’t soon forget.
Rosie and her father, both shushing the other one, stepped into the room. Jacey cocked her pistol. And caught their attention.
“Madre de Dios. Don’t shoot, señorita.” Alberto Estrada’s hands went straight up in the air.
Rosie’s hands joined his. “It is only us, mi amiga.”
“Don’t you call me friend.” Talking hurt. Jacey grimaced, taking a hand away from her Colt to cup her jaw. Looking at the frightened duo through pain-slitted eyes, she then mumbled on. “You let that man in here, and he knew my name. You’re—”
“He knew your name?”
“Yeah, he knew my name. Because you told him.” Jacey bent her knee to rest her gun arm atop it.
Rosie exchanged a startled look with her father, who began shaking his head and protesting. “No, Señorita Lawless, you are mistaken. We would never—”
Jacey swung the big Colt to sight on Alberto. “I’m doing the talking here. So, where is he? And I mean that mangy coot who hit me. I owe him something.” To prove it, she frowned horribly and touched the warm and swelling knot that rode her jaw.
With her hands still raised, Rosie managed to jerk a thumb back over her shoulder. “El malo … I mean, the bad man is out there. Outside.”
Jacey stared hard at the girl she’d thought was her friend. “And what’s the bad man doing out there, outside?”
Rosie shrugged as best she could and exchanged another look with her father before looking again at Jacey. “Nada. Nothing. He is just lying there.”
“He’s just lying there?” Jacey heard herself repeat. “Why’s he just lying there?”
Rosie dared grin. “Porque mi padre … um, because my father hit him hard on la cabeza”—she tapped herself on her head—“with a whiskey bottle. What is left of it, you see and you smell here.”
Jacey looked askance at Rosie. All the evidence seemed to be in their favor. She swung her gaze to Alberto. “Why’d you knock him out?”
His black eyes were big and rounded. “I was sure you would want me to, querida. I checked on Rosie, like I said, and then came to my back storeroom for the whiskey she needed for the bar. But then I heard the noise in here, and me and my bottle, we come running. I saw the malo bending over you. So, I hit him. I”—he briefly lowered a hand to thump himself on his chest—“I, Alberto Eduardo Luis Estrada, will not allow anyone to harm you. Then, Rosarita and I dragged him outside. And now we have come to see to you.”
Jacey stared at the father and daughter. All of a sudden she didn’t care if this was a trick and they did kill her. Her jaw hurt like hell, her head was killing her, she was dangerously close to tears, and her arm, despite her leg’s support, was shaking from holding the Colt up. Relenting, Jacey uncocked her gun, straightened her leg out, and let her gun arm fall limply onto her lap. “Put your hands down.”
They did. But they didn’t move, either. Jacey looked from one to the other of them. “Who is that man?”
Alberto shrugged dramatically. “¿Quien sabe? Who knows? Tucson is full of bad men.”
Jacey wasn’t convinced. “Maybe so, Mr. Estrada. But it’s not full of men—good or bad—who know I’m here. And that man called me Miss Lawless. And you two are the only ones I’ve told who I am.”
Rosie shook her head. “And we have told no one. So maybe you bring this bad man with you, no? You have come a long way and have met many people. Did you tell no one your name?” Her tone of voice and raised eyebrows plainly said that Jacey had some apologizing to do.
Feeling suddenly too warm, Jacey looked away from Rosie’s black-eyed, accusing stare. She focused instead on the gun in her lap and thought about what Rosie’d asked her. Had she told anyone her name? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure. She looked up again at Rosie and her father. “I don’t think I did, but I could have without realizing it. Maybe I did bring him in with me.” She looked from one to the other of their sober expressions and added, “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
Alberto forgave her first. He waved her apology away. “Eh, your fear is understandable. But, tell me, what will we do with him now?”
Jacey bit at her lip while she stared at Alberto. Rosie put her hands to her hips and waited, too. “Well,” Jacey began as she scooted off the bed, “let’s go see him and see what he has to say for himself.”
Rosie and Alberto nodded their agreement and preceded Jacey outside. She nearly ran into them when they stopped suddenly in a tiny, walled courtyard that enclosed one side of the cantina. Forewarned by their actions, she raised her gun. “What? What is it?”
Rosie turned to her. “He is gone. We put him right here. And now—he is gone.”
Jacey lowered her gun, looking all around on the moonlit ground. “Gone? How can he just be gone?”
“¿Quien sabe? Perhaps the same way he just appeared,” Alberto offered.
The three then stared at each other in the moonlight.
* * *
Zant figured that today just had to be a better day than yesterday. It sure as hell couldn’t be any worse—if he expected to get to the end of it alive. At least he was sober, cleaned up, and rested. Sitting in a rickety chair out in front of La Casa Grande Hotel, his booted feet up and crossed on the hitching post, Zant enjoyed the relative coolness of the morning.
Then he felt his nose and his arm. That was another thing that would make today better than yesterday—he wasn’t going anywhere near that crazy woman he’d had run-ins with yesterday afternoon.
Well, at least he wouldn’t knowingly. But how the hell was he supposed to avoid her, if he hadn’t gotten a clean look at her face? He knew other parts of her well enough. Again he saw her sweet little bottom sashaying away from him in the street. Then he felt again her full, firm, and warm breast in his hand. Oh, he knew her figure well. Very well. She was a fine figure of a woman. And she had long black hair. And a big, loaded Colt. And a big, black horse with a temper like hers.
And that was all he knew of her. No, wait. Despite her black hair, she wasn’t Mexican. Her skin was too light, and she didn’t speak with an accent. Pausing long enough to realize the drift of his thoughts, Zant had another question for himself. Why was he spending his first sober day in three weeks thinking about a woman who’d hit him in his nose and then shot him? Like Blue’d said yesterday, there were women in Tucson more willing than her.
Now, that was a pleasant thought. A willing woman. Maybe he’d go find himself one today. Then, he remembered and slumped, nearly upsetting his chair. Windmilling the least bit, he finally got all four chair legs down before it pitched over backward. Forget women. He was leaving today to go face Don Rafael Calderon in Sonora. Again. He’d never get up to No Man’s Land and J. C. Lawless at this rate.
Letting out a long, slow breath, Zant tugged his Stetson down lower on his brow. Just then, someone stepped out of the hotel lobby and came up behind him to flip his hat forward, knocking it off his head and onto his lap. Only one person in the world would dare. “Cut it out, Blue.”
Zant ran a hand through his hair and replaced his hat on his head as Blue, spurs ever jangling, walked around him to lean his butt against the hitching rail. “How’s the arm today?”
“Why? You got more whiskey you want to pour on it?” Having said that, Zant worked his arm and shoulder. “Sore as hell, that’s how it is. Same as my nose and jaw, thanks to you and some gringa.”
Blue chuckled good-naturedly. “Yeah, me and the little lady pretty much kicked your tail, didn’t we?”
“Enjoy it while you can, pardner. But just remember, I owe you one.”
Blue made a fist and flexed his biceps. “Ready when you are.”
Zant dismissed Blue’s muscles with a snort and then slyly slipped in his question. “Did you get a good look at that woman yesterday? I never did.”
Blue’s blue eyes twinkled and his mouth fought a smirk.
Zant narrowed his eyes in warning. “I’m sober today, Blue. And I don’t need but the one good arm to knock you off that rail. Now, answer me.”
Blue performed a lazy imitation of a military salute. “Yes, sir.” Then he looked up consideringly at the overhanging roof as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Let me see. Yep, now I remember.” He looked down at Zant, revealing pure devilment in the sparkle of his eyes. “She has the face of an angel.”
Zant stood up abruptly. “Don’t start with that ‘face of an angel’ crap. You always start with that.”
Blue stood up, too. “But it’s true this time. She does have the face of an angel. Big black eyes, fair skin, ruby-red lips, pink—”
“Ahh, never mind. Shut the hell up.” Zant turned to go back inside the hotel.
Blue followed him. “Pink cheeks, all soft and dewy. And her neck is white and slender. Looked soft to me—”
“You’re not going to be able to look at anything, if you don’t shut—”
“Chapelo!”
Zant and Blue stopped and turned around—with their guns in their hands. But when they saw who it was, they relaxed and reholstered their weapons. Zant stepped to the edge of the wooden boardwalk. “What the hell are you doing in Tucson, Rafferty?” Not giving the man a chance to answer, he turned to Blue. “He come with you to get me home?”
Blue licked at his lips, like he was nervous, and cut his gaze from Zant to Rafferty and back to Zant. “I don’t need no help with you. And especially not from the likes of him.”
Zant squinted at his friend and focused on Rafferty. He’d never liked this big, ugly man. One day it’d be his turn to go around with this mean son of a bitch. And what a fight that would be, because no one had to tell him the nature of the man’s work for his grandfather. It was enforcement, pure and simple. “What’s Don Rafael got you doing up here, Rafferty? Kicking puppies? Drowning babies?”
Rafferty marked Zant’s insolence with only a slightly raised, bushy eyebrow. Then he pulled out his cigarette fixin’s and began rolling one. “Something like that. You on your way back to Sonora?”
Zant watched the man’s hands move, and noted the fresh scratches and swellings over his knuckles. And wondered who today sported the bruises that’d caused them. “What if I am?”
Rafferty, intent on his task, just shrugged. “Seems to me Señor Calderon wanted you there, that’s all.”
Zant stiffened. “You got nose trouble, Rafferty? What I do and where I go is none of your business. So stick to your own.”
Rafferty focused his pale, almost colorless eyes on Zant. “Usually I do, boy. But not this time. This time you are my business.”
Sudden wariness pulled Zant up taller. “What the hell are you talking about? How am I your business?”
“Easy now, Zant.”
Zant heard Blue’s entreaty from behind him, but ignored him. Locking gazes with Rafferty, he repeated, “I asked you how I’m your business.”
The hired killer shrugged. “Señor Calderon has me tracking someone. Someone who’s mighty interested in relieving you of your short, sorry life.”
“Somebody wants me dead? Hell, that describes about a hundred people I can name. Is he going to have you kill ’em all?”
For some reason, that made Rafferty chuckle. “No. Not this one, anyway. This one he wants alive. For now. And I’d already be on my way to Sonora with my catch, except for some interferin’ Mexicans. In fact, I’m on my way there now to set ’em straight.”
“Is that so?” Zant exchanged a look with Blue and was surprised to see how round-eyed and frowning he was. If Zant didn’t know any better—and it occurred to him that he didn’t, having been in prison for the past five years—he’d say Blue looked guilty about something. Or like he was afraid of Rafferty. Well, hell, so was he. Any smart person was. Still, Zant looked back at the killer and asked him, “Don Calderon wants this one alive, huh? Who is he?”
“She.”
“She? Don Rafael set you on a woman?” Zant straightened up. Blue put a restraining hand on his arm. Zant jerked his gaze to Blue’s hand on his arm, and then to Blue’s face.
Blue shook his head. “Let it be, Zant. I was there when the order came down. You weren’t. You were in prison still.”
“Order? What order?” Zant jerked his arm out of Blue’s grip. “My grandfather’s not some damned military general. He’s a vindictive old son of a bitch who wants to control everything and everybody he comes into contact with. Now, who’s going to tell me who this woman is?”
“It ain’t no skin off my nose, boy. But the fact is, you weren’t supposed to be here still.” Rafferty’s gaze accused Blue of not doing his job. Blue cut his gaze away from Zant and edgily shifted his weight.
Increasingly uneasy, Zant focused on Rafferty as the gunman stepped up to strike his match against the hitching rail. He then lit his cigarette, shook out the match’s fire, and took a deep drag. All while looking Zant in the eye.
Flipping the match out into the street, Rafferty pinched his cigarette between his thumb and index finger to remove it from his lips. He blew smoke all around Zant and grinned. “The old man didn’t want you in town when I took this one in. She’s supposed to be a present for you. But I guess it’s too late now.” He turned to Blue. “Ain’t it, Blue?” Then he sighted on Zant again. “Seems you met the lady yesterday, boy. In fact, she gave you that arm.”
Zant’s surprise wrenched him up to his full height. “Who the hell is she?”
Rafferty grunted out a chuckle. “Now, this here’s the funny part. Seems she’s the daughter of the man who killed your pa, boy. The lady’s name is Jacey Lawless. Same as her pa.”