Shifting in her seat she stepped down to stand by the bike to have a better view of the camp. It was a well-chosen site, a walled fortress carved into the mesa by wind and water and ancient cataclysm. On the boulder-strewn floor lighted by a single campfire, there were people. Men. Women. Some sitting by the fire, others moving frenetically on the fringes.
The orgy of drinking begun on the roadside continued, as if never interrupted, in this secluded place.
“We’ll wait here, until it’s calmer,” Indian said, his tone conveying no judgment of any kind. “In a while they’ll drink themselves to sleep or into a stupor. It will be easier on you that way.”
Easier? Patience wondered what about this could ever be easy as she studied the enclave. There were no cabins or tents. Nothing in the littered clearing suggested any sense of permanence. Through dry, weary eyes she looked down on a primitive and barbarous scene in a primitive and barbarous land.
“This is it?” she asked as she faced him. “This is what you call home?”
“We have no home, nor any of its trappings. Out of necessity we travel light, and often on a moment’s notice.”
“Leaving your litter behind.” This observation followed the shattering of a bottle tossed against a sandstone dome. “A delightful welcome when you pass this way again in your wanderings.”
“We never camp in the same place twice, but I try to see that we leave as little evidence of our passage as possible.”
“Oh, really?” Patience drawled. “Who cleans the litter?”
“The women do a passable job.” The crash of another bottle punctuated his response, the sound wafting to them on a rising current of cooler air.
Patience waited for the resonant clatter to fade. “Broken glass and all?”
“Yes.”
“Figures.”
Indian ignore her derision. “You’ll be one of them. The difference will be that you belong to me. You will ride when I say. Eat when I say. Sleep when I say, and where. Whatever I ask, you will do.”
“Ask?” Her tone was cynical.
“It would be easier if asking were enough.”
“Easier for whom?”
“The both of us.”
“Somehow,” she observed wryly, “the rationale for that escapes me.”
Indian swung off the bike, secured it and wheeled toward her. He was a darker shape, sketched against a dark sky. “I have explained.” With a motion he indicated the canyon below. “And you’ve seen.”
Patience nodded, not bothering to look down again. Sensing even from this distance, the inherent depravity. “I’ve seen. They’re like children. Vicious children, who make no secret of what they are and what they want.” She lifted her gaze to his. A gaze she could only feel. “You aren’t the same. There are secrets in your eyes.” She shook her head, despair rampant in her. “What do you want, Indian?”
“To keep you from their tender mercies.” The answer came quickly, without need for thought. “And, one day, to take you home.”
“Tender mercy.” Patience laughed shortly. With the bravado of Scarlett facing Armageddon she drawled, “My, how you do go on.”
“You won’t think this is a teasing matter when you see what men like Snake, and Custer, and Blue Doggie do to their women. Especially Snake.”
“Maybe I’ll take your word for what I think it’s worth,” she lingered on the last, giving it a disparaging emphasis. “And maybe I’ll take my chances with one of the others. Even Snake.”
He took a step closer, looming over her, shutting out the waning light of the moon. “You won’t.”
Her defiance blazed up at him. “Who will stop me?”
“You’ll stop yourself.” He walked away, to the edge of the mesa. “There is a young woman, little more than a child, really. An exquisite child with hair like corn silk falling to her waist. Her eyes are that rare shining violet of a desert sunrise after rain. Her skin is smooth and translucent, and, oddly, never burns nor freckles. She’s stunningly beautiful.” His fisted hands flexed and curled again into fists. “She was beautiful, until she displeased the Snake.”
“What did he do to her?” Patience stared at his back, reading horror in his posture. What, indeed, had Snake done to fill Indian with utter revulsion?
“Snake fancies himself an artist. His brush is his knife, his paint, ashes. His favorite canvas is a woman’s face.” He turned his back on the canyon, walking to the bike and Patience. “Tomorrow seek her out, see for yourself what Snake has done. Look at the other women. Learn who belongs to whom, and how they’re treated.”
His face was grim, his mouth drawn into a rigid line. “If you find one you prefer, I’ll give you to him.”
Another time Patience would have lashed out at him at the possessive arrogance, would have doubted what he said. But not now, when his every move and word were filled with bleak sickness. Now she could only stare up at him, imagining a beautiful girl, a knife, and ashes. Like tears, a sickness of her own welled in her eyes.
Indian felt a twinge of guilt for the heartache he saw. He’d spared her some of the story, but he wondered if it were kindness. Perhaps it would have been kinder to prepare her, but could he say or do anything that would prepare for Callie, for all that could be done to an artless child in a short, sordid existence?
The women were camp followers. Bikers’ groupies. None were like Patience. None was captive against her will. In her special unworldliness, not even Callie. None had been taken, innocent and unsuspecting. Not since he’d ridden the deserts and the mountains with the Wolves.
He didn’t dwell on Callie. Callie was another story, for another day. A day he’d promised himself long ago that would come. If there were any semblance of life in him when this was done, it would come.
Patience was his first concern. For now, for always. What he’d done to her was unforgivable. He’d pushed her to the end of mental and physical endurance, then pushed for more. Even in his shadow she was haggard and drawn, barely clinging to the last of her energy. Body and mind feeding on a spirit that burned like a consuming fever, at a cost that was all too easy to see. The bones of her face were more prominent, her eyes huge and seething with fear and hate. The taut, supple body beneath the flow of a clinging chambray shirt and tight jeans seemed to be shrinking, as if none-too-ample pounds melted from her in a matter of hours.
“I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek, drawing a finger down the smooth curve of it. When she turned her face away, his hand followed, curling at her chin, bringing her gaze back to his. “Dear God, I’m sorry.”
Again, when once she would have lashed out at him, she was silent, unwillingly beginning to believe a little what she saw and heard in him.
A night wind stirred, only a small, secret gust. Too little to feel or notice, but enough to tease a tendril escaped from the band he’d tied around her hair. Enough that the clean, fragrant perfume of it drifted to him.
He didn’t recognize the scent, couldn’t separate the blend of a woodsy bouquet. It was simply natural, unpretentious, honest. All things that had been missing in his life for so long.
Catching the fluttering strand, he wound it around the tip of a finger, reveling in the silken resilience, the soft strength. A woman could bind a man to her with hair like hers. Weaving a gossamer prison from which he would never wish to escape.
Stunned by the direction of his thoughts, hastily he tucked the strand behind her ear. With a mind of its own, his hand lingered to stroke her hair as he filled