This was a freakin’ rattlesnake, and he didn’t need her showing off how tough she could be just now!
Besides, men were beasts, right? He liked killing things that threatened his life.
“Just leave it alone a minute,” Jo soothed, now right beside him, “and it should go away. It’s a lot more frightened of us than we are of it.”
“Oh,” he challenged. “So you’re scared of it, huh?”
He felt her stiffen beside him. “Not particularly. But it would make sense if you were. Being a city boy and all.”
Right. Like cities didn’t have snakes right alongside the rats. “News flash. First, I’m no boy. Second, I’m not exactly crumbling under the pressure here. I’m just trying to keep you out of harm’s way while I calculate how to avoid the gas line.”
But when Jo touched his wrist, staying him, he knew she would get her way. Wasn’t that just like a woman? He couldn’t aim his pistol now without shaking her off, which he was pretty sure counted as a “sudden movement.”
For a moment they just stood there, facing down a snake that was clearly more frightened of them than they were of it, since it turned out neither of them was scared. Jo continued to hold his wrist, her hand soft and steady, and Zack noticed again that she was smaller than he generally thought she was. Not that he had reason to think about her. Incense from the Bruja’s sanctuary clung to Jo’s short, shiny hair. The Texas heat felt magnified, with her so close, despite the wind. He began to feel flushed.
It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the rattler.
Finally, just as the sheriff had predicted, the snake’s buzzed warning softened. It began to lower its triangular head.
Then, in a sudden whiplike movement, it slithered right at them. It was not scared!
Zack elbowed Jo away from him to raise his pistol, but she was already stepping between him and his target—damn it!—and stomping.
Like that, she was standing with a cowboy boot firmly planted on the snake’s head. She crouched, a jackknife in her hand. In a sure, firm movement, she cut right through its neck.
Zack lowered his pistol to point at the desert floor and started to breathe again.
Backing away, Jo lifted one foot to wipe her blade on the sole of her boot first and then—the worst gone—on her jeans. If she’d had hair of any real length, the cocky little lift of her head when she looked at him would have tossed it. “There.”
She’d blocked his shot, risked her life, and that’s all she had to say? There?
He stared at her, short and solid and smug. More protests than he had words for pushed up into his throat before he gave them up and stalked past her to the dead reptile. He knelt, picked up the long, headless body, and stood. The thing was so thick around, his fingers didn’t meet his thumb as he held it. It had to be at least five feet long. Unless he held his arm up almost shoulder height, its rattle dragged in the sand.
He’d seen a lot of postcards about everything being big in Texas, but—Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
“Watch out for the head,” cautioned the sheriff, behind him. “The fangs are still poisonous.”
Her words were tough, but her voice was still a woman’s.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Zack demanded, turning on her. “It could have killed you!”
“Not likely,” she assured him, slipping her knife back into her pocket. “There’s antivenin in town.”
“But possible. And what happened to it going away? Maybe I’m just some dumb city guy, but I’ve got to ask—do snakes normally charge at people like that?”
Jo had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Actually…no.”
He waved the headless snake closer to her. “Exactly!”
To her credit, she didn’t flinch from the gory trophy. Any of his sisters would. Gabriella would’ve fainted by now; she’d always needed him to deal with the creepy-crawlies.
Then again, Jo was the one who’d beheaded the thing.
“You know,” she murmured, leaning closer to the reptilian corpse, “that was exactly what a snake shouldn’t do. Snakes don’t get rabies, do they?”
He shrugged. “Like I should know?”
Then their gazes met. They both knew who might. Ashley Vanderveer.
Doña Maria strolled past, startling them both. The old woman, her white skirts not quite brushing the rocky ground, bent low over the abandoned snake head.
Zack considered warning her that the fangs were still poisonous, but she lived out here. She probably knew.
When she produced a large cooking knife and skewered the thing, lifting it on the point of the knife, he was just as glad he’d kept his mouth shut—unlike some women he could name.
“Señora,” said Jo after a moment, following as the Bruja carried the snake head back toward her adobe house, “Do you—or the Holy Mother—consider snakes as evil omens or anything?”
Since it was a good question, Zack followed. Besides, who knew what trouble the sheriff might get into otherwise?
“No,” assured Doña Maria, circling the house. “Spiders, si. Wolves. But snakes, they are medicine animals.”
Well, that’s a relief, thought Zack—until they rounded the corner of the house and saw the old shed back there, its wooden wall papered with nailed strips of what he realized were snake-skins, undulating in the constant breeze.
There had to be…ten…thirty…fifty…?
How many snakes had the old lady skinned? And why?
“But these,” continued the Bruja, moving the lid of a large, clay jar and dropping in the fanged head. “These have been called, I think. They answer the diablero.”
Zack said, “Our diablero?”
“Say your thanks to Guadalupana for protecting you,” Doña Maria suggested, heading back to the house.
“But what about the snakes and the diablero?” asked Jo.
The old woman went into her house and shut the door behind her. So much for that line of questioning.
“Is…?” Zack looked over his shoulder at the wall of reptiles. “Never mind.”
He stalked back toward the car with their headless snake.
“Is what?” demanded Jo, following him.
He’d been going to ask if this was normal, but when had he started wanting backup? “This can’t be normal. The number of snakes she’s put under the knife isn’t, and the way this thing came at us definitely isn’t. We’ll take its body back to Vanderveer. If we ask nice, maybe she’ll test it for rabies.”
“Wouldn’t she need the head to check for rabies?” asked Jo. It annoyed him that he hadn’t remembered that much.
“You wanna go fishing in her jar-o-venom for it?” he challenged, then regretted it. Jo James might turn around and go back, in some feminista show of courage.
Instead, she caught up with his longer stride and gestured toward the body. “We might as well leave this too.”
“Maybe I want to keep it,” he said, aware that he was just being contrary now. “Make a belt or something.”
She shrugged, all suit yourself.
Though he doubted the rental agency would appreciate snake guts in the trunk any more than they would’ve liked him shooting the car, insurance or no insurance.
Then he heard another rattle—and the headless snake writhed in his hand!