ran until he was thoroughly out of breath and thoroughly lost. When he stopped, he was on some dusty, rutted lane that wound in an indefinite course through a warren of shabby, graffiti-splashed buildings. Breathing hard, Luke rocked back on his heels.
Buildings? The houses were crude shacks made of sticks, adobe and cinder block. They leaned against one another like a row of dominoes ready to fall.
Hell on earth had to be junked cars lining a road like this. Hell was dirty, mean-looking, starving cats and dogs, half-naked kids with big brown eyes and ragged clothes. For an instant Luke was back at the pueblo. Then he stopped himself, not letting himself go there.
A lone rooster wandered in circles in the middle of the road. What was the use? Little Red could be anywhere. Luke might as well find a bar, have a tequila, the good kind, and pray for a break. But as he was scanning the houses for a familiar landmark so he could retrace his steps, a woman screamed.
Harsh slaps quieted her.
Then a gun popped, and she screamed again.
“Get off her, so I can kill myself a lawyer!”
Luke knew that voice.
The kid!
Another low-throated cry. This time Luke placed it as coming from the cinder block shack two houses down.
The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Luke’s eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.
When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.
When he was close enough, he yelled from the street. “Damn you, Little Red…you’re crazy to carry a gun into Mexico. Cops down here will lock you away. You’ll never get out.”
“This is good,” mocked his brother drunkenly. “Not before I kill me a lawyer and…and…a bastard.…You’re next—Indian.”
The door banged. Bloody fingers against his golden face, Baines staggered outside. As always he was dressed impeccably in a dark custom-made suit. His two goons, the giant in the jogging suit and the runt with the slicked-back hair, stumbled outside behind him, grabbing Baines before he fell.
“Run, you sons of bitches,” Little Red whooped, rushing after them. “Vengeance is mine.”
The three men took off running. Luke sidestepped into a black pocket between two houses. Something he’d read in one of Sanders’s reports came back to him. Little Red had starred in a dozen plays in high school.
“Corny. Prison damn sure didn’t dim your flair for cheap drama, did it, kid?” he shouted.
“Where the hell are you?” Elbowing his way into the shadows, Little Red waved his gun. “Step out where I can see you.”
“This isn’t a high school play—kid. And you ain’t Rambo. And I ain’t stupid.”
The gun swung wildly.
Luke shrank against the wall.
“Luke! You…you…coward! You bastard!”
Silence.
Then a roach scurried out of the dark past the rooster. Scrawny wings spread.
When Little Red fired, the confused rooster flapped straight at Little Red.
“Sonofabitch!” Swatting wildly at the bird, the kid dropped the gun.
Racing footsteps at the other end of the alley.
Mr. This-is-good and his goons hadn’t gotten far after all.
Little Red roared in rage, then gleefully scooped up his gun and lurched after them.
Silently, swiftly, Luke pursued them.
He got ten feet before she yelled. Then she moaned.
When nobody answered, a final hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled, broken off.
She was scared. The bastards had left her all alone in that shack.
Luke remembered the gunshots and stopped running. With acute frustration he watched Little Red’s bright red head vanish into darkness.
She could be hit. Dying.
Marcie.
3
“Help…” This girl’s Texas drawl was as pronounced as Marcie’s. Thus, the e was elongated.
Luke stared at the black door as if it were the gate to hell.
“Please…” Again her prominent vowels seemed endless. “P-le-e-ease…”
“Marcie?” he whispered.
No. But this girl’s faint cries held raw urgency. He drew in a savage breath and then pushed against warped wood that creaked heavily on ancient hinges.
“Help…”
He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.
A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.
The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one he’d found earlier.
He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. “Cinder-eff-ing-rella!”
“Who are you—Prince Charming?” drawled a small wavery voice, in an attempt at bravery. “What gives? A prince in blue jeans and cowboy hat?”
He liked her spunk.
The yellow-haired girl was tied by her wrists and ankles with remnants of her own nylons to a metal bed in the middle of the room. She lifted her drugged gaze to his.
A board groaned under his weight.
Her eyes bulged when she saw the bottle. Trying to free herself, she squirmed on the bare mattress. Moonlight rippled over her long shapely legs that were spread widely apart.
The room seemed to shrink, and the confines of it were suddenly more stifling. He drew a sharp breath.
Masses of reckless, yellow hair framed her exquisite oval face.
Sexy. Sexy as hell.
He thought, Wow.
He muttered, “Damn.”
It was only natural to want to keep his reaction to himself and to be repelled by it. He averted his eyes from the girl’s face and her awesome legs. But he felt like he’d fallen into a sensual barrel of forbidden delights. A girl with looks like hers made a man think of only one thing.
Images of those endless legs, a short polka-dot dress pushed above shapely thighs, black lace bikini panties and a garter belt had burned themselves into his testosterone-charged brain. Her breasts bulged against a low neckline. And that face…with those slanting eyes that caught the moonlight. Those full red lips…
Ah, such a face would give a saint wet dreams. Not that McKade was a candidate for sainthood. For as surely as there was a devil in hell keeping tabs, McKade’s name would be scrawled in roaring flames at the top of that fiend’s list of sinners.
“Are you going to he-e-e-l-p me…or…”
“Shhh…”