Pam Crooks - The Mercenary's Kiss

“Elena, honey.”

At the seriousness in her father’s voice, she darted a quick glance toward him. He stared over his shoulder at something that clearly alarmed him.

“Looks like we got trouble.” He pulled his Winchester from behind the driver’s seat and laid it on his lap. “Hang on to Nicky. I’m going to try to outrun ’em.”

“Outrun who?” Her gaze clawed through the woodlands. “Why?”

And then she saw them. A group of a dozen or so heavily armed Mexicans. They were everywhere in the trees behind them—and gaining fast.

“Hee-yah!” Pop yelled, and slapped the reins against the team’s backs.

The wagon lurched forward and picked up speed. Elena held Nicky in a death grip with one arm and clutched the edge of her seat with the other. The sound of horses’ hooves pounded in her ears, but nothing matched the terror thundering inside her heart.

She and Pop had heard of these men. Fierce revolutionaries who thought nothing of robbing innocent Americans of their money and then killing them for their trouble—ordinary citizens who had little to do with their cause but who found themselves helpless against their ruthless tactics.

The rebels followed no pattern. They killed at whim, whether it was a train or a stagecoach, large or small.

Oh, God. Pop’s medicine wagon would make easy pickings.

The rig careened wildly as the team sped over the narrow, rutted path, and Elena braced her feet to keep from toppling over the edge.

“Pop!” she gasped. “Slow down! We’ll upset if you don’t.”

“I can’t let them get us, Lennie!” he said tersely.

Elena heard his desperation, and her fear increased tenfold. Pop wasn’t a fighter, and while she knew how to handle a gun, she’d never shot at a living thing in her life.

“They’re closing in on us,” Pop said.

The men were close enough now she could see the gleaming rows of bullets in their ammunition belts.

He did all he could to handle the team as they lunged and lurched between the trees. Elena ducked to keep from being struck by low branches; she held Nicky so tight he squealed in complaint.

Suddenly a group of the revolutionaries broke away and formed a blockade in the road ahead of them. A formidable row of ruthless men, fanned out and impenetrable with their rifles cocked and leveled right at them.

“Pop! Stop! You have to stop!” she cried.

To crash through the wall of men and horses was unthinkable, and her father swore in frustration. He yanked hard on the reins, and the team reared, their shrill screams piercing the air.

One of the men barked an order, and the revolutionaries took up position on both sides of the wagon. Elena’s focus locked on him, and the blood froze in her veins.

Two years had passed, but she recognized the wavy-haired Mexican as if it were only yesterday.

“It’s him!” she whispered in horror.

She knew what he was capable of, and if she did anything, anything, she had to keep him from seeing Nicky.

She averted her head and frantically covered him with his blanket. Every inch of him. And though he had long since lost interest in nursing and wanted only to sit up now that the wagon had stopped, she kept him tight against her, pressing his face to her bosom to muffle his protests.

As if the past two years had fallen away for him, too, Pop snarled and whipped out the Winchester.

“You son of a bitch!” he bellowed, and cocked the rifle.

But the leader was too quick. A shot exploded. Pop jerked and toppled from the wagon seat with a sickening thud.

Elena screamed. She bolted toward the edge of the rig, her free arm reaching for him though he was sprawled on the ground, too far to touch. Blood bloomed on his shoulder and stained the fabric of his suit coat. She cried out his name on an anguished sob. Ashen-faced, Pop gripped his leg, twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Get into the back, Elena! Now!” he grated through clenched teeth.

He wanted to spare her from seeing what would happen to him next, she knew, and the wagon’s interior would help her protect Nicky.

But Elena wouldn’t leave Pop. She couldn’t. And she’d be a fool to think the men would let her out of their sight if she tried.

“You should have killed him for his insolence, Ramon,” one of the men grunted, dismounting and taking the rifle, which had skidded out of Pop’s reach.

“There is still time for that, eh, Armando?”

The male voices swirled around Elena. Ramon had controlled her once, left her hurting and humiliated, as helpless then as Pop was now. A fury unlike anything she had ever experienced before erupted inside her, and she spun back toward the Mexican.

“Leave us alone, damn you!” she snapped.

He dragged his glance from the side of the wagon, as if he only now had taken the time to see the colorful lettering proclaiming “Doc Charlie’s Medicine Show” and his infamous herbal compound. Beneath the brim of his sombrero, something flickered in those cold, black eyes.

And a slow smile curved his lips.

“Señorita,” he purred.

A thousand times, she’d heard the taunt of that word in her nightmares. Her nostrils flared with hate. “We have no money. Search the wagon. You’ll see the safe is empty!”

Pop had deposited the last show’s take two days ago. The rebels would be disappointed in the small amount of cash he’d kept back for them to live on until their next performance.

Ramon made a slight gesture, and one of his men circled toward the back. The locked doorknob jiggled; in the next moment a gunshot exploded. Within moments, the rebel could be heard thrashing among her and Pop’s belongings.

Nicky squirmed, and his arm shot up out of the blanket. Horrified that he’d managed it, Elena snatched it back down again.

Ramon’s gaze sharpened over her.

Her defiance died.

“Let me see the child, señorita.”

Raw fear clawed through her and stole her ability to speak, to provide a logical reason why she kept her baby hidden beneath a blanket.

Ramon drew closer. Elena’s pulse pounded. She eased away from him toward the far edge of the wagon’s seat.

“You know what will happen if you disobey me, señorita, do you not?”

Her foot found the step that would help her get down. She’d run from him. As fast and as hard as she could.

“Elena. Oh, God, honey.” Still sprawled on the ground, too badly wounded to help, Pop sobbed her name, his anguish as real as hers.

But she ignored him.

Instead, she moved away from the wagon. And toward the woods. One step at a time.

Armando turned his mount as if to give chase. Ramon spoke sharply in Spanish, and he halted.

Ramon himself rode toward her, his horse’s gait slow. Lazy. Calculated.

“I want to see this child you keep from me.” His voice held a suspicious edge.

“No.” She shook her head, her panic rising in leaps and bounds. “No, no.”

Abruptly she turned, but too soon he was there, in front of her, his horse blocking her path. She pivoted and darted into the trees. Nicky squirmed and wiggled against her, and Elena shifted her grasp, her concentration momentarily broken in her need to hold him better. She stumbled over the splintered branches scattered over the ground.

By the time she righted herself, Ramon loomed in front of her again. Lightning quick, he yanked the blanket from Nicky’s head.

Nicky blinked up at him.

Ramon stared downward.

“Por Dios.” His glance dragged to Elena. “You were an innocent—the child’s age—he looks like—”

Elena cried out and spun around, but Ramon swore viciously and grabbed Nicky by the back of his shirt, plucking him from her arms with more force than Elena could fight without hurting her son in the process.