Tracker's Sin

He read her intent before she dived, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch her before she got her hands around the pistol. If his reflexes had been a hair slower, he wouldn’t have gotten there in time to stop her from blowing his brains out. He caught her hand, gun belt and all, letting their momentum roll them over, taking as much of the force of the fall on his shoulder as he could.

“Let go. Those guns have a hair trigger.”

She sank her teeth into the back of his hand. He swore and held on. One wrong move and she’d kill them both.

“Dammit! Let go!” What she lacked in muscle she made up for in wiggle. It was all he could do to keep her finger off the trigger. He pressed her down into the dirt, using more and more of his weight until she went limp beneath him.

“Ma’am?”

Ari didn’t respond. Tracker carefully removed the pistol and gun belt from her grip. She didn’t fight. He stood. She continued to lie in the dirt at his feet.

He’d thought it odd that she didn’t have scars from her ordeal. She did. He’d only been able to see what was uncovered. And all it had taken to bring them out was one fool, half-naked Indian reaching for his knife. Hell.

You’re ugly enough to scare a bad woman decent.

Once again his father had been proved right. The older Tracker got, the more he began to accept that the insults his dad had tossed out in Tracker’s youth were actually truths he’d been too stubborn to accept. The proof lay prostrate on the ground at his feet.

It wasn’t right that Ari lay in the dirt like trash thrown aside. Looking at her there, her skirt hiked around her thighs, her beautiful blond hair a tangle around her shoulders, he grimaced. It was easier than it should be to imagine her time with the Comancheros, to envision the hell she’d been through. They’d probably walked away from her, leaving her just like that when their lust was spent. Left her to rot in the devastation of her soul, this woman who had been created to be cherished.

Tracker wasn’t any different from the Comancheros. Faced with Ari’s reaction, faced with his own demons, he wanted to walk away, too. Instead, he found himself kneeling, sliding his hand beneath her head, lifting her to his chest.

“It’s going to be all right, Ari. I promise.”

Her hair smelled like sweet flowers and heaven, her skin like vanilla and spice. Innocence and passion, a hint of who she might have been if she hadn’t been stolen, raped, sold. Looking toward the house, making sure no one watched, Tracker rested his forehead against hers.

“A lot of people have been looking for you a long time, little one.”

No one harder than him, for reasons he didn’t understand, except that he was driven. He took a napkin from where it had fallen and wiped at the smudge of dirt on her cheek. It felt right to be the one caring for her. Goddammit, he was losing his mind. This was dangerous. She was dangerous. It had to stop. Now.

“Goddammit, Vincente, I know you can hear me. Get out here.”

In Tracker’s experience, women in a swoon didn’t stay out long, and he didn’t want to trigger another bout of hysteria when she woke in his arms, en route to the house. So he sat there and held her, and pretended that he could make it all right, while he gave her a minute or two to come back to herself. After all she’d been through, she deserved that minute. And it was the only thing he could give her.

The screen door slammed. Vincente and a plump woman hurried out of the house. As soon as they reached Tracker’s side, Vincente was apologizing and the woman was fussing. Tracker handed Ari over to Josefina and glared at her husband. “Why?”

“I did not think she would have such a reaction. She has been doing so well lately.”

“She’s not your daughter.”

Vincente shook his head. “Our daughter died in childbirth. Our hearts were so empty, and then we found this one and it was another chance.”

A second chance to love. Not many got them. “So you loved her so much you sent her out here to be scared out of her wits?”

“No. I know who you are, Ranger.” Vincente took the napkin, wetted it and handed it to his wife. “There was no danger to her.”

“Just to her sanity.”

“Yes, but we hoped…” The old man sighed. “She is such a good daughter, a good mother. It is only when the bad times haunt her that this happens.”

Tracker’s breath caught. “Mother?”

“She was pregnant when we found her.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“It has not been easy.”

“She loves the child?”

“With all her heart.”

How the hell could Ari love a child who had to remind her of the hell she’d survived?

Josefina looked up as Ari moaned. “She’s waking. You should leave.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

Tracker looked at Ari. He’d promised to bring her home, no matter how he found her, sane or crazy. “Not without her.”

Chapter Three

They settled on a compromise. Tracker retreated to the barn, and the Moraleses took Ari to the house. He watched as she stumbled between them up the path, clearly disoriented, yet trusting the older couple in a way that suggested they’d done this many times before. As they made their way to the back door, Josefina kept her body between Ari and Tracker. She tossed wary looks over her shoulder at him as she shielded Ari protectively. What was more interesting, though, were the glares she shot her husband. Obviously, the woman blamed Vincente for the incident, which reinforced Tracker’s own sense of being set up. Shoving his hat on his head, he swore and closed the barn door. He hoped the old woman gave the old man hell and indigestion.

An hour later, Tracker sat on the bed in the small but comfortable bedroom at the front of the barn, still stewing. The old one owed him an explanation. The vague excuse he’d tossed out at the washhouse wasn’t going to cut it. Tracker disliked being anyone’s pawn. He disliked people who tried to manipulate him.

The Ari he’d met at the wash shed was the woman he’d been expecting to find—traumatized by her experiences, tortured by her memories, rekindling her past in everyday events. A woman broken by tragedy. He’d thought he’d prepared himself for the reaction she might have to his appearance. After all, her attackers had been men like him. Men who wore their violent history in their eyes, on their skin and in their dress. Men who killed as easily as they laughed. Men who did what they wanted and to hell with the consequences. But Tracker could have avoided seeing that woman if Vincente had handled the introduction differently. Why the hell had the old man forced the issue? Had he wanted Ari to fear Tracker?

He grabbed his pistol from his gun belt where it hung by the head of the bed. Grains of sand clung to the metal. Desi said there was a difference between him and the Comancheros, and maybe there was. He wasn’t one to prey on the weak, but he’d done things in the name of revenge that would scare her curly hair straight and take the look of respect from her eyes. Things that kept him taking bigger and more dangerous bounties, because they took him to places where he was comfortable, places where there was no right and wrong, just a man’s ability to come out on top in a fight.

Tracker yanked his saddlebags toward him. He was very good at coming out on top.

Lately, the line between an outlaw and himself had been growing vague in his mind. As the years passed, killing had become easier in some ways, yet harder in others. Tracker could still pull the trigger, but it bothered him more that whenever such a deed was done, justified or not, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Right was right and wrong was wrong; that’s the way it was out here. The way it had always been. So why wasn’t he comfortable settling with that anymore? Why did every bounty he took now involve a moral debate inside himself if it went sour? Why was it getting harder to live with pulling the trigger? Why was he now seeing the faces of the men he killed, reliving the battles at night when he should be sleeping? Shit. Tracker was who he was. Better than he could have been, not as good as he should have been. He was an Ochoa. Outlaw, killer, bounty hunter, Texas Ranger.

He tugged his cleaning kit out of a saddlebag. The smell of gun oil blended with the scents of hay and cow as he opened the oiled leather wrap. All familiar, all comforting. He took another breath, seeking the edge that the familiar gave him against the anger seething inside.

Laying the cleaning rod aside along with the rags, he began disassembling the gun. It was a daily ritual and as soothing as the scents around him. It was also necessary. Dirty guns misfired. Misfires on the other guy’s part were a good thing. Misfires on his end of the battle were dead-before-his-time bad.

The outer barn door opened. He could tell from the sound of footsteps crossing the floor that the owner was small. He could tell from the swish of skirts that the owner of those footsteps was female. Josefina with his breakfast, no doubt.

“I’m in my room,” he called out.

It was as natural as breathing to prop his rifle across his lap just in case. It was rare that a woman came to his room intent on murder, but it had happened a time or two. Such occurrences tended to make a man wary. And he’d seen the anger in Josefina’s eyes. Clearly, she wasn’t ready to give up her daughter, though apparently Vincente was. The why of that was a puzzle to be solved. As was how they knew Ari’s name. A woman with no past would nave no name.

There was no response. Maybe Josefina didn’t speak English. “Estoy en mi quarto.”

The footsteps halted just outside his door.