“You’re forgetting something,” Sir Giles said as Cruz remounted his bayo.

“Oh?”

“What about the evidence I have against your wife?”

“Do whatever you want with it. It was never any good anyway.” With that enigmatic statement, Cruz spurred his stallion in the direction of the tracks that led away from the Englishman’s camp.

As soon as Cruz was gone, Sir Giles Chapman picked himself up, scowling at the irreparable damage done by the mud that now stained his bright yellow trousers.

Things were not working out exactly as he had figured. He didn’t trust Alejandro, and he believed Cruz’s threat. He had better get to Alejandro’s hideout as quickly as possible and make sure that nothing happened to that crazy Spaniard’s wife.


Sloan was frightened. She was tied hand and foot, and that sense of helplessness alone was enough to curdle her blood. To make things worse, ever since they had arrived, Alejandro had been drinking steadily.

The small adobe house to which Alejandro had brought her was the same one in which he had murdered Tonio. Four years later, the door still hung on one leather hinge, the open windows lay bare, and flies buzzed around them. She sat on the dirt floor in a corner of the room and watched as Alejandro leaned back in a rickety chair and stuck his feet up on the wind-and-weather-scarred table. He tipped a bottle of beer up and drained another swallow. He smiled beneath his bushy moustache and his eyes narrowed as his cheeks rounded.

Sloan shivered at the gruesomeness of his drunken features.

From the lascivious glances being thrown her way, it was plain he was thinking about fulfilling the promise he had made in the stinking San Antonio jail cell so many months before. She reminded herself she was Rip’s daughter. She was brave; she was strong; she was no coward. But that didn’t stop her stomach from churning.

“Tell me, puta, does your blood run hot every time Tonio’s brother touches you?”

She heard the chair legs hit the floor and Alejandro’s spurs scrape off the table. A moment later, he stuck a dirty hand under her chin and shoved her head upward. His breath smelled of sour chili and Mexican beer.

Her dark brown eyes flashed with hate and contempt. “Pendejo!”

He hit her with his fist and knocked her into a sideways sprawl. Then he grabbed the front of her shirt with both hands and yanked, sending buttons popping in all directions as he tore the shredded garment off her shoulders.

His hands grabbed her breasts through her chemise and kneaded them roughly as his weight came down on top of her. He tried to shove her legs apart with his knee and realized, through his drunken stupor, that her ankles were tied together.

“Chingada!” He rolled off her clumsily and onto his knees. He pulled a knife from the sheath at his waist and slipped it through the knots that held her feet.

The instant she was free, Sloan kicked Alejandro in the groin as hard as she could.

He hissed in breathless agony and pitched over in a heap on the floor.

She had trouble getting to her feet because she had been tied up for so long, but she knew that she didn’t have much time before the bandido recovered. She grabbed the knife from the floor and cut her hands free. When she finally managed to stand up, she slipped the knife into her belt, feeling hope rise in her breast that she would actually escape.

She spared one more glance at Alejandro, then turned to the door-only to find her way to freedom blocked.

“Going somewhere?” Sir Giles waved Sloan backward from the door with the pistol in his hand.

He looked from the growing bruise on Sloan’s cheekbone to the Mexican bandido writhing on the floor and said, “I told you to leave the woman alone. Now, get up off the floor. Don Cruz has already come looking for her. I want her kept in a safe place where he won’t be able to find her.”

“It is too late for that.” Cruz snaked an arm around Sir Giles’s throat and put his Colt revolver to the Englishman’s temple.

“Cruz!” Sloan cried in relief.

“Move over here, Sloan.”

Sloan had started toward Cruz when Alejandro reached out and tripped her. As she fell, he caught her in front of him and rolled so there was no way Cruz could shoot at him without taking the chance of hitting Sloan.

Alejandro made it to his feet in a surprisingly agile move, rising with Sloan as a shield, her arms bound by his grasp around her waist. He had grabbed his pistol and held it at Sloan’s temple in a mirror image of Cruz’s hold on the Englishman.

Alejandro grinned slyly. “So, Don Cruz, it is a standoff, no? Except, I do not care if you kill the Englishman.”

Sloan watched the whites appear in Sir Giles’s eyes as the Englishman said, “I am worth a lot more money to you alive, Alejandro, than dead. Don’t forget that.”

“What is money compared to revenge?” Alejandro said. “This man put me in a stinking jail cell. This man would have hanged me.” As he tightened his grip on Sloan, his hold on her hair pulled her head back at an awkward angle. “And this woman would have unmanned me. No, I think I will have my revenge now. There will be time enough later to think of money.”

Alejandro turned his head and shouted out the window, “Ignacio! Tomás!”

“They are indisposed,” Cruz said, his lips twisting sardonically.

“Chingada!” Alejandro quickly regained his composure. “That makes no difference. Move out of the doorway and let me pass, or I will kill your woman now.”

Sloan watched a transformation occur as Cruz’s eyes darkened. His hackles rose and his body tensed like a wolf ready to spring. She felt Alejandro’s arm tensing and knew that in a moment he would shoot the Englishman-and then kill Cruz.

She lifted her hand far enough to reach Alejandro’s knife where she had put it in her belt, and in the same motion stabbed him in the thigh as hard as she could.

When Alejandro shrieked, she threw herself onto the ground and was met there by the Englishman, whom Cruz had also shoved out of his way. There was the deafening roar of two gunshots occurring almost simultaneously, a grunt of pain, a bitter laugh, and then silence.

Sloan lifted her head to search for Cruz and saw him slumped against the wall, his eyes closed, the side of his shirt covered with blood. She whirled to find Alejandro slumped against the opposite wall-his eyes glassy with pain, and then vacant, the life gone.

She was too stunned to move.

“Nooooooo.” The wail of pain and grief wrenched itself from deep inside her. She beat her fisted hands futilely upon the dirt floor. “Not again… not again…”

She was inconsolable, and so she fought the consoling hands on her shoulders-until the sound of the reassuring voice found its way through to her consciousness.

“… it is all right, Cebellina. I am fine. It is only a small wound.”

Her head came up off the ground and she scrambled to her feet, her hands pulling at his shirt where he had been shot. “How badly are you hurt? I have to do something to stop the bleeding. Sit down. Sit down!” She shoved him into the rickety chair at the table and he pulled her down into his lap, capturing her hands to keep them still and cutting off her protests with his mouth on hers.

Sloan couldn’t get enough of him, the taste of him, the smell of him, the feel of him. She tore her mouth away to say, “I love you, Cruz. I love you. I love you.”

Then he was kissing her again, his heart as full of her as his body was starved for her.

The sound of the Englishman clearing his throat brutally interrupted them. “This is all quite fascinating,” he said, “but haven’t you forgotten something?”

They both turned to find Sir Giles standing with a pistol aimed at them.

Cruz held Sloan still in his lap when she tried to jump up. “I have not forgotten anything, Sir Giles. You are free to return to England at any time. But I would suggest you make it soon.”

Sir Giles narrowed his eyes in confusion. “I’m the one holding the gun, Hawk. I will give the orders.”

Cruz raised his voice only slightly and called, “Luke! Creed! Long Quiet!”

Instantly, three tall, forbidding men bearing Colt revolvers appeared to stand guard at the windows and door to the adobe house. Beside Luke stood Beaufort LeFevre.

“My friends promised to leave Alejandro to me,” Cruz said. “But I will be happy to accept their assistance in dealing with you. I suggest you drop your gun, Sir Giles.”

“I still have the papers your brother left-”