He’d have done it for free, as half the people of Carlsbad would have told her if she’d asked. He was the person everyone called when someone was missing. Not because he was lucky, but because he was relentless. And because he had another agenda.
He loosened her saddle and slid it from the mare’s back. He did the same for Stone, setting all the packs to the south side of the sandy arroyo he’d chosen for the night’s camp, a place safe for that evening, as no storms threatened. It was September and even in drought years rain always fell in that month, the transition from summer into autumn. They’d had rain the night before the boy ran away and they would again in the next four days. Knowing that wasn’t magic on Daggert’s part; it was courtesy of the National Weather Service.
“Hello?”
He turned in her direction.
She was on her cell phone. She’d spent the better part of the first stage of their journey with the little black instrument pressed against her ear, jabbering into it as if it and not people might conjure up the missing boy.
Daggert went back to setting up the camp as she leaned forward, apparently seeking better reception. She’d better have a great conversation tonight, for the Guadalupe Mountains were renowned for interrupting cell phone service. Unless on cliff sides or in high mountain meadows, wireless communication was almost nil in the Guadalupes, and there wasn’t any other kind shy of smoke signals.
“No, not a sign of him,” he heard her say.
Daggert didn’t even bother to shake his head. There had been plenty of signs of Enrique’s progress; he just hadn’t pointed them out to the lady from back east. A piece of a tortilla covered with ants. A chewing gum wrapper. Hoofprints from the boy’s horse—noted because Rancho Milagro used the same farrier that most of the county did, and this particular blacksmith liked to bend one horseshoe nail backward, leaving his distinct signature every time a horse stepped on anything but pure asphalt.
Daggert and the woman were still quite a way behind their prey, but narrowing the gap considerably. The boy hadn’t been able to push his horse very swiftly in the dark the night before. With luck they might catch up with him by noon the following day.
“Okay, you know my number. Call me if you hear anything,” she said, and hung up without a farewell. A no-frills woman. A woman used to running things her way. And probably getting them her way, as well.
Daggert thought that, given a couple of millennia, they might actually find they had a few things in common.
“Are we really stopping for the night?” she asked him with more than a hint of accusation in her tone. “Shouldn’t we just take a rest and keep looking?”
He shook his head and continued setting up camp. Again he felt a reluctant stab of admiration. Grit? The woman had more than mere grit. She had class. She couldn’t have ridden another step, but here she was, ready to get back out there.
Better than she did, Daggert understood the need to continue the search, no matter the hour, no matter the lack of light. The ice princess only believed Enrique Dominguez had run away from Rancho Milagro.
Daggert knew she didn’t have a clue what dangers lurked out there. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she didn’t know she had come in contact with lions, tigers and bears. She had no way of knowing that no one, especially little Enrique, was safe from the dangers lurking in the Guadalupes.
She didn’t have the foggiest notion of what might have befallen the boy just a few yards outside the fence surrounding the massive headquarters of the children’s home—not from rattlesnakes and other animals, though those were prevalent enough. Worse things than nature and nature’s creatures lurked among grasses, stunted trees and thorny shrubs.
But Daggert wasn’t about to tell her what really scared him. He didn’t want to have a hysterical woman on his hands. Not that Leeza Nelson seemed the type for histrionics. But she was still laboring under the idea that the boy she followed was simply running away from a foster care situation, if not—if the ranch hands were to believed—from Leeza Nelson personally.
Daggert knew that accepting such an easy explanation for the boy’s continued absence was almost like selecting his gravestone. Daggert should know, he’d lost his own son that way.
Having finished taking care of Stone, he tended Leeza’s mare. He hummed a little as he worked and, between the brushing and the tuneless susurration, both horses relaxed their bunched muscles and gently whickered their thanks.
He decided he couldn’t call the mare by her given name; Lulubelle was a ridiculous handle. Noble creatures demanded dignified names. He ran his hand down her withers and on down her legs, feeling the powerful muscles ripple beneath his palm. No sign of her being winded, no overt indication of lather, no swelling… Like Stone, she was in prime condition. “I’ll call you Belle,” he told her. “You’re as beautiful as your rider.”
Belle nodded her head as if agreeing with him.
Chapter 2
In the fading light, Leeza watched Daggert touching Lulubelle, and knew a pang of something akin to envy. The man ran his hands over the horse as a lover might, firmly, with sure intent and deliberate strokes. He knew just where to touch the beast to gentle her, to soothe her, to make her understand his wishes. He applied light pressure to her knee joints and, one by one, she lifted her legs for him. He stroked her neck, whispering to her, and she swayed into his embrace. His hand traveled every part of her and she trembled beneath his touch.
By the time Daggert turned around, Leeza’s mouth had gone dry once more, but this time exhaustion had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Her face, usually schooled to reveal nothing, must have showed her every thought because he checked his stride, and his golden eyes seemed to sharpen.
At that moment, she couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it. He looked every inch the warrior she’d imagined him when she’d stepped out on the veranda earlier that day and coolly announced she was accompanying him on the search for Enrique Dominguez.
But there was more than the warrior in his eyes now. His frozen stance reminded her of something feral, wild. A black wolf, perhaps—wary, dangerous and dominant. The sudden heat in his gaze only underscored the impression. Then he moved again, his stride fluid and muscled, deliberately turning his gaze away from her.
She wondered if she’d imagined what had just happened, then questioned if he’d provided the show with the horse just to drive her crazy. She shook her head. He couldn’t have. He would have to have eyes in the back of his head to know she’d sat there slack-jawed, imagining the touch of his hand on her body instead of the horse’s.
She’d simply been affected by the day’s intense heat.
The difficult ride.
The worry over Enrique.
And the fact that she was wholly out of her element.
Her reaction was nothing more than these things. Absolutely nothing.
But none of those reasons explained away the fire his gaze had lit inside her.
To her relief, Daggert’s dog, Sancho, came running up then, his long, black-spotted tongue lolling. He spat out a branch of some kind at his master’s feet and barked twice before sitting down and panting heavily.
Leeza blushed when Daggert pulled a plastic bowl and cup from one of his packs and poured a little canteen water into each. She’d drunk directly from the canteen. He set the bowl down for the dog and quickly quenched his own thirst. When Sancho barked, he shook his head and picked up the bowl.
“Fire first, dinner later,” he told the dog gently.
He carefully replaced the items in his packs before beginning to gather large river rocks from the arroyo’s sandy banks. The dog settled down in the sand beside